Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Not knowing who you are is like standing on the cusp of a storm, waiting for the lashing rain and the lightning to strike but it never comes. So it comes to this, the memories hanging heavy like dark clouds, their whisperings like the wind in the cloying humid air, half-formed phantoms never to be heard from again.

And every time he closes his eyes he hears them, taunting him with their elusiveness, smoke in the wind never to be grasped by a mortal hand. More often than not he would will those whispers to become words. He would have even taken the screams and the horror of his past, anything but this, this phantom menace, the old haunt at the back of his conscience with no story to remind him of why it was so horrific in the first place.

And yet a part of him could not help but feel relief. 

His name was Finn, simply Finn and in that simplicity, he had found himself comforted.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“Have you ever thought of a last name?”

Finn had spoken those words to Rey under the night sky of Ajan Kloss before they had found out she was a Palpatine before she had taken on the name of Skywalker. Poe, who Finn usually bunked with, had been on a mission that week, so Rey had dragged him out every night and talked to him until he fell asleep. She knew how anxious he could get in Poe’s absence if he did not have someone to talk to. She knew all too well the way his mind would wander, the terrifying possibilities that would flash before his eyes. Poe bleeding. Poe dying. Poe dead. 

 Rey had been sitting across him that night had shrugged at his question, yet Finn had caught her look of embarrassment as if the answer was at the tip of her tongue but she dare not say it. She knew, perhaps she had known for a long time but was too ashamed to say it out loud. A few months ago the very thought that Rey was keeping something from him would have been pain unimaginable, but on that day he had not felt it. 

Instead, he had felt glad. Even if she had not wished to say it out loud, even if she did not want him to know, she at least knew in her heart of hearts and that was something. 

She had leaned closer to him at that moment, the moonlight illuminating her hazel eyes.

“Why? Have you thought of a last name?”

He shrugged but the truth was he knew too, in his own way. Most got their last name from their parents, and the closest thing Finn had ever had to one was the silver-haired ex-rebellion general, Han Solo. The man who had handed him the first laser blaster he could call his own, the man who had pulled him aside at Starkiller and had told him outright “that’s not how the force works”. The man who had given him so much in so little time. 

Finn Solo.

The name was burned on his heart like Kylo’s lightsaber had burned on his back as the snow fell softly around them. A beautiful thing, a terrible thing. Beautiful because it was all he had ever wanted, terrible because he remembered the look in Han’s eyes, the undeniable love scorching, pulsing despite his own son’s lightsaber in his body. 

And he wondered if someone would ever look at him like that. If someone had once loved him like that. Suddenly the name felt shameful. As if it didn’t belong to him. And he cursed Ren. 

You had a father how could you. 

“What about Dameron?” Rey had asked, interrupting his thoughts, a mischievous grin on her face. The first in a long time it reminded him of the girl he had met on Jakku.

“What about him?” Finn asked feigning innocence.

“I meant as a last name,”

“Why would I want his last name?”

He was met with an eye roll and a nudge at his side and Han Solo’s words came back to him.

Women always find out the truth.

It turns out even when the truth was something you didn’t want to admit to yourself.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The day they had gone to Tattooine was the day Rey had finally taken the name she wanted, Skywalker, though she did not tell either Finn or Poe, at least not until months later. 

Finn is sitting in the Falcon watching the gold sands of the desert planet blow gently in the arid midday breeze as he waits for Rey to come back. From time to time his eyes glance toward Poe. The other man is seated on the pilot’s seat leaning back, eyes half-closed his hands at the back of his head, a far cry from the General of the resistance, forever rash, forever irritated.  The man Finn had felt he could not wholly trust in spite of his deep affection for him. But now looking at him in the light of Tattooine’s twin suns, he seemed calm, relaxed, the Poe Dameron he had first met.

And that was when Finn realised he had been wrong. Like looking at kohl, Finn had only seen a stain, not the eyes themselves, not the soul. That was the thing about Poe Dameron he wore his heart on his sleeve. At it was still there beating clean and fierce.  He was still the same carefree pilot and somehow they had both lost sight of that.

“Poe?”

“Mmm?” The other man turned to him dark brown eyes peering out through his lashes. 

“The thing I was going to tell Rey…” he paused noticing how Poe had started to sit up tensing at his words. It was clear the wound was still fresh.

“What about it?” Poe asked.

“I don’t want to keep it from you.” He said. “It’s just really important that I tell her first.”

There was something almost akin to realisation n the pilot’s features. For a moment he did not speak. 

“Buddy…you don’t have to tell me,” Poe said it quickly as if to make up for his hesitation, but his voice was soft and broken. “I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to…”

No Finn thought.  I should be the one who was sorry I forgot what you meant to me and never let you know.

“I do want you to know what it is Poe,” he said. 

He held out his hand and the other man’s features almost seemed to sparkle. 

“Hands?” Poe asked, the corners of his lips curling up.

“Hands.” Finn confirmed.

Poe took his hand and laced his fingers through Finn's, they were warm and callused, pilot's hands, warrior's hand. They held on to each other as if they were the only real points of safety in the entire galaxy. Ironic considering they had fought for the whole galaxy to be safe. They stayed like that for a while in silence, simply enjoying each other’s presence. A part of Finn wished that this moment would never end so much so that even when Rey had returned and the twin suns had set low over the horizon Finn found himself unwilling to let go of him. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

And truth be told you would be forgiven for thinking this is where the story ends. And for the most part, it has, at least for the annals that passed through the galaxy in the coming centuries. The truth, that dirty stark, bright thing is not so simple. 

There are no ends. 

Nothing ever truly goes away, it lives and continues. Our universe is a layer of different beginnings, building on top of each other leading us up and up. 

They had won the war there was no doubt of that. But for better or for worse with it came new beginnings, new layers, new stepping stones. And it is then that you realise what infinity truly means. 

Chapter Text

Home. It used to be a foreign word that long stuck in Finn’s mind begging to become familiar. For many years home was a void,  an empty hole, a place where you knew something once stood, even if you were not quite sure why you thought that. 

He fancied himself one of those archaeologists he had heard about only in books, people, usually force-wielders, who would dig through the barely visible remnants of history to glimpse the past with their own eyes. (Back then he had been taught the name of Sith archaeologists, later Rey would provide him with Jedi names like Jocasta Nu and Coraask Slen’da). He had always been fascinated by the way they took fragments, broken pottery, shards of glass, small clues from which they created whole mosaics and stories.

Every night he had spent in the stormtroopers barracks Finn would do the same. Heart racing, praying that no one could hear his thoughts. In his mind they always seemed so damn loud. He would go to sleep in his bunk under Phasma’s watchful gaze, he would close his eyes and rummage through the only clues he had:

1. He knew he had been five years old when he had woken up on his bunk at the troopers barracks. He knew because their batches were sorted by age and everyone else in his room had also been five. That meant for five years, he had been somewhere else, he had been with someone else and he had been someone else. For five years he had had a name that was not FN-2187.

2. He knew he was smarter and quicker than the others and he knew for some reason Phasma was holding him back. Giving him jobs in sanitation rather than promoting him to an elite squadron.

3. And finally he knew he was like his mother. Phasma had told him as much when he had been thirteen and one of his comrades, FN-2003, sLIPS, the man who had later died on Jakku, had gotten into an altercation with another trooper from their division, FN-2199. Finn had been the one to cut through the argument, piercing through it like a knife, protecting his friend. 

Just like your mother he had heard silver armoured trooper mutter under her breath, thinking he couldn’t hear her. (But he had heard it all the same and nothing in the galaxy could change that). There’s a fire in you. She had said it like she was afraid of him.

And yet even with these clues, more than any other stormtrooper had he was willing to bet, he could not quite figure things out. So he turned to myths, to stories, to legends and folklore. Both real and ones he made up. A different one every night and he would pretend the stories were his own. And over the course of the years, lying back on the lumpy mattress, in the cold cell, under thin sheets, he had probably lived every life there was in this galaxy. 

But a thousand stories never filled the void that was the home he had lost. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The First Order had been practically decimated at Exegol and in its ashes would come another Republic, a new democracy and a new senate. Poe had joked once that they would soon run out of names for the various iterations of the Republic and for the first time since Exegol, Rey had found it within herself to laugh, truly laugh without abandon. 

She had not missed the way Poe and Finn had looked at each other then, seemingly relieved, as if they had been waiting for this moment for years. It was a small gesture but something in her almost broke because of it. She couldn’t remember a time, before them at least, when someone had actually cared whether her laughter was genuine or not. And not for the first time she wanted to wrap her arms around both them, if only to feel alive again, as she had while embracing them after their victory on Exegol.

Victory. A strange word. It gives the semblance of finality, a conclusion, a happily ever after. No one ever talked about the work that went into ensuring the victory would not ring hollow. 

The resistance and the remnants of the former republic had gathered together on Naboo to rebuild what the First Order has destroyed. Poe had thought it fitting, it had been were Senator and former Queen, Padme Amidala had found her footing in politics. 

They call her the Mother of the Rebellion Poe had said to them as they had flown from Ajan Kloss to Naboo. The pilot had a well of stories stored in him and both Finn and Rey found themselves enraptured whenever he talked about history. Usually because she’s the mother of Luke and Leia. But a lot people don’t know that she laid down the foundations of the rebellion in other ways by leading the Delegation of 2000 against Palpatine and presenting him with a petition while she was still alive. 

Poe would smile as he spoke of Padme, he would straighten his back as if her achievements were also his own, it was clear she was a hero of sorts.

How do you know all this? Finn had asked him, voice so soft, it had made Rey want to roll her eyes.

And Poe had shrugged in turn.  My Ma used tell me stories when I was a kid and later Leia would tell me more.

Naboo was one of the most beautiful planets Rey had ever laid eyes on, with its sweeping plains, beautiful great lakes and soft gurgling waterfalls that sparkled in the sunlight. Paired with the exquisite architecture both ancient and timeless, it was easy to see how it had given rise to someone like Padme Amidala, beautiful, bold, intelligent and magnetic. 

But it was Palpatine’s planet too.

The thought made Rey’s blood curdle. His very name threatened to mar the goodness of this planet, like a large ugly scar shattering all that was once beautiful. 

She supposed she should feel something akin to coming home, being the granddaughter of Palpatine by blood, in many respects Naboo was her ancestral planet, but it wasn’t home. It could never be. She knew that for certain in her heart of hearts. 

She knew because home was Finn’s warm arms and Poe’s stories, it was Rose’s wise sayings, her soft eyes, it was BB-8 chirping obscenities alongside R2-D2 while C-3P0 tried and failed to instil a sense of civility in both of them. It was Leia and Luke, both gone and here, guiding her still through a world she was not quite ready to face.

That was home, not the gilded weight of her ancestry carved on stone and the histories, in the flames of the Sith Lords, the bloodshed and the politics of her blood family.

She knew all that and yet it did not make things better. No matter how many people knew her as Skywalker there was a part of her that screamed Palpatine.

But she stayed in Naboo nonetheless and let herself appreciate the wonders of the planet, such as its famed Five Blossomed Bread and kept Palpatine far away from her thoughts. She had to see these meetings through, as gruelling as they were and as conflicting as being on Naboo was.

It was during the final few meetings, when the Senate and the New Republic were practically almost functioning, that Poe was offered a core leadership role in the new government. For a moment the meeting hall was silent as the unspoken words rang out and echoed down till they would reach the history books.

Leia should have been here.

It was a role that should have gone to Leia. The woman who had lead two rebellions, the woman who had been in politics since she was much younger than Rey was now. What they wouldn’t do to have her guidance and expertise nos.

“Thank you but…I’m not a politician,” Poe said in response, after almost a minute of silence. “I’m a pilot I belong to the stars. Call me when you need to blow something up.”

“You’ve lead the resistance your support would be invaluable,” said a representative from Coruscant, whose name Rey could not remember. 

“So did Finn and I don’t see you offering him a position.” Poe said his voice suddenly cutting. It was clear the fact had bothered him greatly. 

“But he was a storm-“ the representative stopped in their tracks their fear palpable as the very air in the room had shifted. 

Rey’s hands had instinctively gone to her lightsaber, Rose who had been sitting beside her had become impossibly still before making a move to sit up. They were all ready to do something, anything in Finn’s defence. But it was Poe whose rage spoke the loudest, like the flames of Mustafar or a small angry sun visible even from another planet. He moved to rise seemingly ready to fight, but Finn had laid a hand on his chest, holding him back, he shook his head and in an instant Poe’s rage seemed cooled.

“He’s General Finn of the resistance,” Poe calmness was just as deadly as his rage. “If his loyalty is up for question you’ve clearly new this galaxy.” Poe paused. “And I go where he goes. You can kiss your offer good-bye for good.”

With that, he went silent. 

The meeting went on as usual after that, and Finn stayed through it all. To an unfamiliar eye it would seem as if the incident had not bothered him all that much, he was still actively giving out suggestions and discussing points of government as he usually did. But his fists were clenched and when the meeting had adjourned he was the first to leave the hall. 

He was angry and he had every right to be. 

And in a way Rey understood. She wanted to go after him, talk to him, but Poe had practically followed the other man straight after. So she decided to wait. Maybe he was the person Finn needed right now. She did not need to interfere.

When she finally did allow herself to go outside and find them, she noticed them standing near a lattice of vines and flowers in the gardens, heads so close from a distance you could have been forgiven for thinking that they were merely moments from kissing. Finn was much calmer, less tense and Poe was visibly relieved. They were deep in conversation and neither of them had noticed her presence. 

“I’m sorry,” said Poe. “I know you can handle yourself, but I was just…so angry and I was half afraid either Rey or Rose would sever the poor guy in half.”

“It’s fine really,” Finn paused. “It’s just…I thought people would see past that now and not throw it at my face as if it were a point of shame, a way to make me feel lesser. I’m not ashamed of it.”

“I’d say it was a point of pride if anything, going against all you grew up with to do the right thing,” said Poe. “You saved my life that day, remember?”

“I remember.”

“You're a hero Finn, my hero, and I’m sure as fuck never letting you forget it.”

Finn’s breath seemed to catch in his throat then and they were both looking at each other with a certain intensity. Poe opened his mouth slightly, as if he was about to say something, admit something, but promptly closed it, apparently thinking the better of it. After a moment, he asked:

“Have you told Rey yet, the thing you wanted to say?”

Rey thought it a perfect opportunity to make her presence known “No he has not.”

They both started as they saw her walking toward them. Finn pulled away slightly from Poe, keeping a much more civil distance, the latter had gone bright red.

“Eavesdropper,” Poe mumbled. “We were having a moment.”

“Not my fault I can hear you both from a mile away,” she answered before slinging her arms around both of them before turning to Finn. “Go on then Big Deal, what do you need to say?” 

Finn met her eye and something told her it was bound to change all of their lives forever.

Poe cleared his throat and when Rey turned to face him for a moment she could have sworn there was a look of defeat there. Even as he let out a brilliant smile, it did not take away from the fact that his eyes had darkened considerably.

“Guess I’ll leave you to it.” He untangled himself from Rey before heading off to another part of the garden.

“Is he alright?” She asked watching as the latter mournfully observed the flowers in the garden. “I haven’t seen him this moody since pre-Exegol.”

“I wish I knew,” Finn admitted. 

Rey turned back to him and raised her eyebrow. 

“So what is it you wanted to tell me?”

Finn looked down at his hands. “I really don’t know how to say it.”

He seemed nervous. Rey could have laughed. She’d seen him go through mission after mission, each more dangerous than the last, and he would often carry himself with a certain poise and command. To see the nervousness surface again so prominently after all these years reminded her of the Finn she first met and all she wanted to do was hold his face in her hands and remind him she was his friend, he could trust her.

Then a thought occurred to her.

“If all this is to tell me that you’re in love with Poe, you’re telling the wrong person.”

She thought of Poe's recent behaviour. His look of defeat, his current melancholy and his insistence that he be let in on whatever Finn had to say the day they had gone to Pasana. He probably thought they were confessing their undying love to each other which was far from the truth. She almost felt sorry for the pilot. Almost. In the end, it was rather amusing to watch him so obviously pine after Finn. 

“I’m not- look it's not that ” Finn breathed in. And something in his words and actions pulled Rey short. There was an itch, a premonition of sorts. 

“Rey I think I’m…”

She knew before he even finished his sentence. 

“Force-sensitive,” the answer came involuntarily from her lips, but judging from the expression on Finn’s face, she was right. “You’re force-sensitive.”

Something burgeoned in the gaping hole that had been in her heart after Luke and Leia’s death, after Exegol. And one thought seemed to dominate.

I won’t be alone in this I never was. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

As much as he wanted to pretend he did not care about whatever Finn had to tell Rey. The truth was Poe did care. Even from a distance, he was trying to make out what they were saying to each other. 

He heard the familiar roar of a Wookie and almost yelped. He turned to see Chewbacca and scowled. How long had the furball been observing him trying to discern Rey and Finn’s conversation?

“I’m not love-struck or jealous,” Poe grumbled back at Chewie's remark.

But that was a lie. With every moment that passed he found himself hoping and praying that neither of them said the words, the words he had always wanted to say to Finn, ever since the day he had met him. I am in love with you. He watched as Rey grinned and wrapped her arms tightly around Finn and how Finn returned the embrace with the same intensity, holding her close. Poe felt the sharp stab of betrayal and something cold sink into the pit of his stomach, but it was not enough to kill the hope in him. So what? They’ve hugged before, why would this hug be any different?

He wished he was more like Rose. 

He hadn’t known it at the time, later Finn had told him they had shared a kiss with her on the battlefield. I wasn’t sure how to let her down gently, I’m not good at these things, but she took it in stride and I’m glad we’re still friends.

Poe wasn’t quite sure he could do the same.

Chewie let out another sound. It was teasing. Poe felt himself colour.

“Yeah I know they’re coming back,” he muttered. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

And maybe he will never be.

Soon Finn emerged along with Rey. They were laughing and smiling and Poe could not take it. He was about to say something. Something he would have been ashamed of saying. But as soon as they were close Rey spoke first, saving him from a lifetime of regret.

“Tell him, I think Poe is about to implode,”

Finn met Poe’s eye and the other man’s smile began to falter a little. It was almost as if he could sense something was wrong with Poe. 

“I really didn’t want to keep it from you, you know” Finn reiterated.

Poe was taken aback by the apologetic nature of his voice. He softened his expression and smiled as best he could.

“Yeah I know bud,” he tried to sound calm but in truth, his whole being was quivering trying to contain a war. 

“I’m force-sensitive” said Finn looking at him. 

Chewie roared in both disbelief and congratulations. Poe felt strangely relieved.

“Oh.” He let out and suddenly it all made sense to him. He found himself ridiculously happy, though it had almost nothing to do with Finn’s revelation. “And here I thought you were going to tell me you were the one who stole my five blossom bread this morning.” He narrowed his eyes. “Was it you?”

Finn smiled and that was all Poe needed, to see him smile. The rest did not matter. He was happy for him, of course, he was. But Finn was still Finn, the man he adored. No weird space magic was going to change that.

“Are you also going to be a Jedi now?” He asked. 

Finn shrugged. “I think so, it feels right.”

It’s the right thing to do. Finn had said that once, the day they had met under the stark lights of the small corridor where Finn had pulled Poe into. He remembered the words, the earnestness in the dark eyes of a stranger who was fast becoming his friend and Poe knew would never forget him, not for as long as he lived. The conviction in Finn was like the very earth he stood on, steady, familiar it kept him upright. 

“And what about the Great Poe Dameron?” Asked Rey. “What are you going to do now?”

Poe stopped short. He had not thought about it, no one had asked him in all this time. But the answer was as clear as day. 

“Go home,” he said. “See my old man again.” 

Home. It had been years since he’d stepped foot on Yavin-4. In all that time had seen every inch of the galaxy and somehow that little moon still beckoned him, with its memories of starlit nights under the shade of what his parents dubbed, the force tree, the familiar scent of his father’s prized garden, the oil that his mother had used for her X-wings. It beckoned with the taste of warm home-cooked meals, of childhood mischief in the streets, the sharp sweetness of petrichor and stories his mother used to tell him, and his father…

His father. He hadn’t talked to Kes Dameron in years and wasn’t sure if he had the courage to do it.

“I was thinking though.” He said tentatively. “Maybe you guys should come along even if it's for a bit or forever, I just…”

I can’t do this alone. He wanted to say. I need you both with me.

Finn smiled. “I think we’d both like that. That is if it’s no trouble.”

“So when are we leaving?” asked Rey

“Whenever you wanna ditch these fuck-all meetings?”

They all rolled their eyes at his words. The truth was everyone would see these meetings through, especially Poe. And why wouldn’t he? His mother had fought for this, so had his father, so had Leia and everyone else they had loved and lost in the last few decades. The fight had been laid on his shoulders in the end and the victory had been hard-won. Poe did not want to see it slip beneath the cracks again. He would not able to live with himself if it did.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Later in life when anyone asked Finn about the first time he truly felt like he was home he would tell them this. 

They are all sitting on the Falcon, travelling through lightspeed towards Yavin-4. Rey is at the pilot seat while Chewie co-pilots, Poe is leaning against the wall while Finn sits at the table. 

“So how do I know you both haven’t mind-controlled me into being your friend?”

Chewie lets out a groan, BB-8 chirps, Finn finds himself rolling his eyes while Rey mutters “Piss off,”. It’s probably the thousandth time Poe has asked something like this during their journey.

“What?” Said Poe. “It’s a valid question.”

“As if any of us would willingly want to be friends with you,” Rey said. 

Poe lets out an exaggerated pout and Finn laughs. He used to hate seeing them fight during their days in the resistance. He wanted so desperately for them to love each other the way he loved both of them, but it had not been easy for them to get along. Yet now… now he understands that their fights were their own way strange of showing each other affection.

At this moment Poe seemingly bored starts to tap his feet and click his fingers. He is humming a tune, Finn recognises it as an old song, popular during the Empire, a favourite of Han’s. Leia used to play it on her portable music player on lonely nights under the stars of Ajan Kloss when it was just her and the three of them.

Soon enough Poe starts singing the words. He has a beautiful voice. Finn admits that much to himself, he could hear him sing all day if had to. As the pilot reaches the chorus, Rey joins in, and to both their surprise, her voice is better than his.

Finn knows it then, home is in this moment. It's Poe and Rey singing to each other back and forth, mangling the lyrics of the old song so terribly, that Finn is sure Han Solo will rise from his grave and sternly tell them off for such sacrilege. It's Chewie groaning for them to shut up while BB-8 and D-0 ran in circles around a startled C3PO and an amused R2D2. It’s when both Poe and Rey would turn to him, gesturing for him to join in, and rolling his eyes Finn would acquiesce. He would sing too, not caring about how he sounded.

Home. He thinks in that moment. This is home.

Chapter Text

Kes Dameron sits in his homestead on a small moon, they call Yavin 4. He is alone save for the memories of the family that once was, they haunt every corner of this place. A scratch from when Poe had knocked his first toy X-Wing against the floor, the permanent caf stains from where his late wife Shara Bey used to rest her favourite mug, the furniture they had picked out together, laughing as they assembled it. 

The place was filled to the brim with it, these memories, so much so that any sane person would have gone mad. 

But the truth is Kes can’t live without it, the slow crawl of madness that threatens to tear him anew each day, this punishment, this self-imposed isolation, this terrible exile. He had brought it upon himself losing those he loved the most over and over again. A part of him craves the pain, he feels like it's the only thing he deserves. 

He runs a finger over the wooden desk in the study room, it's the same desk he and Poe had built together when the latter had turned thirteen. It had been the last time they had been truly happy together before the nights spend arguing, before the barbs and wires that they had thrown at each other before Poe had left. On the desk, a hologram gleams stark against the darkness of the room, icy blue and impersonal. Yet somehow it’s the warmest Kes has felt in years. 

He’s barely seen his son, only in holovids, wanted posters and the holojournals, Seeing him now, before him, addressing him, even if it is in a prerecorded holo makes Kes’s heart still.

Poe stands straight and tall, a soldier through and through - no not a soldier, a hero, a leader. He shares most of Kes’s features, but there is something about him that undeniably screams Shara and in all these years Kes hasn’t quite been able to figure out what it is. 

The first time Kes goes through the message he does not register it. And when he does he could not help but play it back, again and again, looping it until the words blurred together. He does this long after he had sent his own response across. He sears the image of his son in mind, as the glow of the holo line his tears with a gleaming sapphire thread. It’s an old habit and one it seems that will would never die, even though he knows his son is safe, that he’s coming home, that he doesn’t have to memorise him as if he’ll never see him again.

He’s coming home. 

It’s all Kes can think about.

He doesn’t even try to wonder whether Poe is thinking of him too. He does not have the luxury. 

But he is.

Stars away Poe Dameron is mirroring his father. Watching Kes’s response over and over again. It’s polite, it’s welcoming but Poe doesn’t quite know if Kes has forgiven him for leaving. He’s not quite sure he himself has forgiven Kes either, for trying to keep him away from the fight.

The tears glisten in his eyes but he wipes them away when hears the sound of Finn groaning in his sleep from the other end of the Falcon. Another nightmare. He needed to be there for Finn, and tears on his end would only worry the other man. He could not have that.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Poe’s silence only grew as they neared the small moon that was his home, so much so that even Rey had stopped being jokingly snide with him. The last time she had been like this was after the war when Poe had very clearly been mourning Leia’s death. When they had all been mourning her death and if truth be told they still were. 

They were in the Gordian Reach sector of the Outer Rim territories, and Yavin-4 was now visible to the naked eye.

Finn had seen his fair share of planets by now during his tenure with the resistance, and every planet had been strange and brilliant in its own way. He thought he’d be over it by now, he thought it would fade and go away, the rush he felt, the sweet flames of wonder that licked through his veins every time a new corner of the galaxy would be revealed to him. But it had not gone. In fact, as time went by it seemed to flourish. 

And Yavin 4 was no exception. 

The green and blue moon glittered like a rare jewel in a sea of darkness, wrapped in a misty haze, as it lazily orbited the gas giant, Yavin Prime. There was a wildness to it. The kind of wildness you wouldn’t mind getting it lost in, the kind of wildness that you would let consume you rather than remain in monotonous sanity, a wildness that protected you. It was the kind of wildness that reminded Finn of Poe. But he kept that thought to himself. 

“You ready?” Asked Rey as they neared orbit.

“Yeah, I just…” Poe paused, his fingers on the chain at his neck, where he kept his late mother’s wedding ring. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

No one needed to ask him who he meant. They all knew.

Poe spoke again “Do you mind if I…” he gestured to the controls of the Falcon.

Rey stood up and gave them up readily. A thing she usually wouldn’t have usually done without putting up a fight especially since Poe had recently light speed skipped and almost set the whole ship on fire. But somehow they all knew it was important for Poe to go back home, manning the controls himself.

Usually, when Finn came to a new planet or moon he would be looking through the transparisteel windows, mesmerised by how seemingly shapeless colours from a distance, would transform, into mountains, sands, seas and forests.

But today all he could do was watch Poe, watch the way his knuckles turned white on the controls, watch as his brown eyes became intent, watch as his carefree style became calculated, overthinking. In Finn’s experience, Poe overthinking was never a good thing. Ironically he had come to find safety in his friend’s recklessness. If Poe was being reckless it usually meant he knew what he was doing. If he wasn’t, all Finn could do was close his eyes and pray that they would land safely.

Eventually, when Falcon landed on Yavin 4 with a gentle thud, Finn breathed a sigh of relief and he could have sworn Poe breathed with him.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Later Poe would tell him how his parents had built their little homestead from scratch. There were stories laden in every corner and one day Finn will learn them all. It would become his home, one of many and it would be doubly special because it was Poe’s.

But the first time they had come to Yavin 4 none of them had even noticed the homestead. They were all too focused on the man who stood in front of it.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Poe was the spitting image of his father. So much so that Finn wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between them if it were not for the latter’s beard and flecks of grey that were sprinkled through his short-cropped hair.

The two had stood for a few moments a few metres away from each other in the clearing surrounded by thick trees, the mountains looking down on them. Unable to move forward, unable to go back.

“Poe?” Kes has spoken first, his voice was tentative as if he was afraid this was all a dream, that any wrong move would send the vision before him spiralling into oblivion. Never to be retrieved, only a regret to be remembered fondly, bitterly.

Finn knew the feeling all too well. He had felt it the day he had broken Poe out of his holding cell, he had felt it when Rey had looked at him in wonder when he had lied about being in the resistance. At that point in time, no one had ever looked at him the way these two had, and he never wanted to lose it (and he never did).

“Da,” came Poe’s answer. His voice cracked in that one syllable. 

It was Kes who closed the gap between them clasping Poe’s shoulders in both his hands.

“Let me have a good look at you,” with that Kes’s hands moved to grasp Poe’s face. He studied the young pilot intently and Finn remembered again the look in Han Solo’s eyes, just before he died. The desperation, the regret. It was here in Kes’s eyes too and Poe could barely look at him. Just Ren had been unable to look at his own father.

But there was something in Kes's eyes that had not been in Han's. Pride. Kes Dameron was proud of his son. 

“Da, I-“ but the young pilot could not go on.

Poe always wore his heart on his sleeve that was no lie. Finn remembered once the other man had said “If one can’t be brave about showing how they feel how can they be brave about anything else?”. But at the same time, Poe had always been careful about how he showed his feelings to the world. As a leader, he knew the right emotions could create revolutions and the wrong ones could topple dynasties. Finn had seen him weep, many times in fact. But he was sure he had never quite seen him like this. 

His eyes were red and the sobs that racked his body were almost painful to watch. He looked like he was in agony and yet he was doing nothing to hide it. It was almost as if he had been stripped to the bone. It made Finn want to look away, but he dare not.

“I’m sorry Da,” he sounded like a child, not the man who had led the resistance to victory. 

Kes spoke no words. He simply wrapped his arms around his son and held him close letting him weep. Finn fought the urge to hold Poe in his arms too. Rey turned to Finn and met his eye. He knew her thoughts mirrored his own.

“There’ll be time to talk later,” Kes pulled away from Poe, once the weeping had subsided a little and wiped the tears from his son’s eyes. He looked at everyone else and smiled. It was then Finn realised exactly where Poe’s smile came from. “I believe introductions are in order and besides your friends must be hungry.”

“Starving,” said Rey with a small dimpled grin. And that settled the matter. 

Song: Kalle Kalle 

Chapter Text

Being an only child Poe Dameron’s pictures would always be in pride of place in his family home. For as long as he could remember, the hallways were filled with his face, alien and familiar immortalised in picture frames and holos. His first wobbly steps on their doorstep, his first broken bone, him covered in mud as his mother scolded him from behind the holocamera, him standing next to his first ship, his mother's old A-Wing that he had loved to literal death.

They had always been there, a tradition his mother had started, documenting his every move, as if she wished to set each precious moment in stone, to remind herself that it was real, that she had a family and that they were happy. 

He had not understood it then but he did now. Because it is what war does to you. It takes away your stability, rips the earth away from your very feet and when you finally find it again, you can’t help but wonder if it’s even real.

He had always thought it would have stopped when he had left, the pictures, the careful documentation of his life. But it had not. 

As they move through the hall he saw items on the walls that he knew had not been there when left. Scraps of articles printed from holojournals, wanted posters, clips from the holovids. Something in it had made Poe’s heart ache and bend to breaking point, more than anything else ever had. 

His father had kept the tradition alive, watching his life in pictures despite everything, despite the unhealed wounds and the words that had cut them both open to the bone. The fact that there had still been love threatened to break Poe’s resolve. Because the truth was he did not think he deserved it. The tears welled in his eyes again and he didn’t feel strong enough to fight them anymore. 

He feels a hand latch on his, he looks up to see Rey, concern in her warm hazel eyes. They seemed to ask are you all right?

He squeezes her hand and manages to smiles back at her.

He’s not alright they both know that, but he’s not alone in this either.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Kes made them all a cup of caf along with his signature honey cakes. At the first sip Poe could almost imagine himself five years old again, standing on his toes, trying desperately to be at least eye level with the kitchen counter, as his mother used to let him take a sip her caf in the early mornings. Not too much she would say Stars I swear you were already born caffeinated. 

Not much had changed since he had first left home he found himself thinking as he inhaled the hot beverage. The furniture was the same, the gardens, the smells, the tastes, everything. And his father still made his caf the same way, the way his mother used to like it.

And yet it was different too.

BB-8 was chirping away with D-O, while Threepio and Artoo were arguing (again), Chewie was inhaling Kes’s cakes, while Rey and Finn were carrying most of the conversation with his father. Unsurprisingly Kes had become fast friends with Rey, who was as talkative and as charming as ever in her bizarre spirited way. A Rey that up until very recently Poe had only ever heard about. Finn had been slower to start talking openly, content to listen at first, while he kept himself small, his movements precise and polite, as if not to offend anyone.

But Kes Dameron always had a way of putting people at ease, bringing them out of their shell and as time passed Poe watched as Finn became more relaxed more comfortable, taking up more space, becoming less refined, less afraid to offend. Poe adored Finn no matter what, but if he had to decide, the unrefined Finn, the Finn whose dark eyes would gleam with mirth, the Finn who laughed until he complained that his sides ached, his bright smile lighting up the room, the Finn who would say whatever the hell came to mind, that was Poe’s favourite Finn and he could watch him like that all day.

For the first time in a while, the Dameron homestead was alive in a way it hadn’t been since his mother’s death and Poe could not help but feel…solid and he found himself content to simply watch everything unfold before his eyes instead of being in the thick of it.

“Rose in on Naboo,” Rey explained to Kes as she took another cake. “She was going to come for a small visit but got offered a position in the senate instead, so she’s busy.”

Chewie explained how it was initially offered to Poe, then as a courtesy to Finn, but both of them had refused. 

Poe was not one to be tied down to what was essentially an office job and Finn…well Finn was going to go do greater things than Poe could ever imagine, even in his wildest of dreams. He knew it without a shadow of a doubt. He could only hope and wish that he would be a part of his friend’s life, in the years to come, even if that part was small. 

Poe shrugged at Chewie’s declaration “Yeah but Rose earned it, she doesn’t get half the credit she deserves if I’m honest. And she’s got a better head on her shoulder than all three of us combined.”

Rey nodded in agreement while Finn gave a wistful smile.

“She’s gonna give them all an earful if they try to fuck things up,” he said. “I can’t wait to read the holojournals when she does.”

It was moments like this that though Poe knew otherwise he found himself wanting to ask whether Finn had feelings for her, whether Finn would do the same for him if they every parted.

“She seems like quite the character,” said Kes taking another sip of his caf.

“You’d love her,” said Rey. “She used to be a mechanic.” clearly remembering that Poe had told her Kes that had studied architecture. He was touched that she remembered but he would be damned if he ever told her that.

“You do realise mechanics and architects aren’t the same things right?” Piped in Poe. 

“Piss off laserbrain,”

“You have a really nice home by the way,” Finn said directing the conversation elsewhere before Rey and Poe's argument escalate. “It was really nice of you to let us stay I hope we’re not intruding or anything,” he said it in such typical Finn fashion it made Poe want to roll his eyes. “Rey and I shouldn’t be in your way, we’ll find our own place soon.”

Rey and I. Those three little words seemed to pierce Poe’s heart the more he thought about them. Whatever Finn had in mind for his future it did not seem to involve Poe. Even now it seemed he was already being erased from the story of Finn’s life. 

Don’t ever become a stranger to me Poe wanted to tell him. Because I would be able to recognise your laughter anywhere and I don’t think I’d be able to bear it, knowing I can’t come close to ever being the cause of it again.

“Not too soon I hope,” said Kes. “It has been…a bit of a solitary existence since Poe left.” And Poe knew his father wanted to say lonely, the word had been at the tip of his tongue, but that was a conversation for another time. “I am happy to have you here as long as you need it though there is a thing about space we only really have one guest room…”

Finn shifted. “Really, I don’t mind sleeping on the Falcon.”

“Fuck off Finn, you’re sleeping with me,” said Poe, but he coloured immediately as soon as the words came out of his mouth and Kes was starting to look at both of them in a new light.

“They used to bunk together during the resistance,” Rey explained before Poe could make it worse for all of them. Thank the stars for her presence of mind. “Which means I’ll have the guest room, thank the stars, they both snore worse than Chewie.”

Chewie groaned, Finn protested and Poe could not help but grin. Kes shrugged.

 “Whatever your arrangements are,” he said turning to both Finn and Rey “Just know you’ll always be welcome here. It will never be an intrusion. Consider this place another home.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Neither Rey or Finn could say it then, neither of them had the heart to admit it. But it was the first home they had been offered a stable home, and not only that, they had been offered the same home twice, first by Poe then by his father. 

A part of them knew even then that in years to come, no matter how far their lives took them across the galaxy, they would always end up here on this small moon, in this homestead, drinking caf and eating cakes like it was the first time, wondering whether any of it was real.

(And it was, it would always be real).

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Finn had always thought that that ones lives were made of stories just waiting to be told. Every object that you hold, every breath that you breathe, every word that you speak, has a tale or legend behind it. Our pasts, our hopes our dreams, are a never-ending anthology. We are living poems, breathing myths if only we take the time to close our eyes and let our fingers feel the threads of lore that are woven into our lives.

Even now, laughing as they drag a spare inflatable mattress into Poe’s room, (as smart as Rey could be Finn wished they hadn’t listened to her when she suggested they blow the mattress up outside) Poe tells Finn a story. He tells him how he had stolen it from his roommate when he had left the Republic Navy to join the resistance.

“It was a joke I meant to give it back,” Poe explains. “After the war was over.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Poe takes in a deep breath. “He’s dead now. He was somewhere on the Hosnian system when the First Order blew it up. I’ve kept it with me ever since.”

Finn remembers the scarlet streaks in the skies of Takodana, the Starkiller’s rays red, magnetic, monstrous against the pure blue sky. He remembers the sinking feeling in his chest as the system is obliterated completely. The millions of screams, red, flaming, bloody, had forced their way down his throat into his heart of hearts and had scorched it through.

Back then he had merely thought he had felt it, all their deaths, now he is sure he had.

As they make their way to Poe’s room, Finn’s mind fixates itself on the Hosnian Tragedy. The war had taken many lives and somehow those lives stay with you. Whether it was the mattress of a roommate long gone, or the echoing screams of whole peoples and their histories raging as they died, filling your ears even years later.

You could let them haunt you, or you could remember them, honour their existence by telling their stories again and again letting threads of their lives weave themselves into the lives of others. 

That was what Poe had decided when he had given Finn the mattress, that was what Finn would decided years later when he would spend hours reading about the Hosnian systems, compiling histories of their culture, customs and artefacts for the future generations to venerate.

He does this because he knows something the Sith and Jedi never learned. There are many paths you could take in order live on forever, and memory is the most powerful.

But that is for the future, for now, Finn pushes the Hosnian tragedy to the back of his mind and lets the mattress fall  on the floor noiselessly.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

If there was a word that could describe Poe’s childhood bedroom, Finn would not know, but there was an ache in his chest as he looked at the pastiche of childhood toys, holos and posters of bands and celebrities of all species and genders that Poe had very clearly been attracted to in his adolescence considering the red hearts he had drawn on some of them. Poe seemed duly embarrassed he tried to explain it all away I was basically a kid when I left home. Finn did not find it childish the slightest but was too amused by Poe’s blustering to truly reassure him.

And besides, he found himself utterly bewildered. He was not new to the concept of having your own room, but the idea that you can make it your own was new to him. What stood before him and surrounded him was a microcosm of Poe Dameron, or at least the person he had been when he left this place. 

As of now, Finn was sitting on the mattress looking at the action figures on Poe’s bedside table. He had his back to the other man who was currently changing into his sleeping clothes. The first time Finn had done this, the first night they had shared a room together Poe had laughed at his modesty. Look at you being so bloody respectful. 

Having grown up in the First Order Finn was not a stranger to naked bodies, alien or humanoid, male, female or otherwise. But there had been something about Poe, something so magnetic about the way he moved, that Finn could never truly be clinical when he looked at him, even when he was fully clothed. And he was afraid, afraid that if he let himself indulge in the temptation of simply looking, he would lose himself entirely to his thoughts, he was afraid of the way they would stay in his imagination burgeoning beyond the point of control, changing all that was good between them. And he did not want to lose Poe for something as stupid as that.

While Finn had felt the blood rush to his cheeks at Poe’s teasing words that day he had bitten back with a cunning remark, a remark that he could not remember for the life of him but it had made Poe laugh and he had remembered that, Poe’s laughter. Bright and unexpected, but the pilot had not pointed out his little oddity again and Finn was glad for the unquestioning ease in which they set up and respected these kinds of boundaries with each other. Even if they were largely unspoken.

“I know this room is kinda small,” said Poe as he changed. “If you’re not comfortable here I can try and rearrange things, hell, I can sleep on the Falcon with Chewie.“

Finn turned around to see Poe in his loose-fitting trousers pulling a shirt over his head. Unconsciously he found his eyes utterly transfixed the lines and curves of the man’s bare torso, before the shirt was finally pulled into place snapping him back into reality. He forced himself to look into the pilot’s eyes, ignoring just about everything else about him.

Friends don’t think about each other like that he berated himself. Friends don’t look at each other like that. So why the hell are you doing it?

“Why wouldn’t I be comfortable?.” Finn said answering Poe’s question with one of his own. “We’ve bunked together for at least a year in smaller cells. And besides,” he grinned picking up a miniature blue and white clone trooper from Poe’s bedside table. “Why would I want to miss out on this?”

Poe gave an embarrassed tight-lipped smile, rolling his eyes he retorted “What? Never held a toy before?”

He knew Poe was trying to be lighthearted, teasing him to stave off his own embarrassment. But a heaviness sank in Finn’s chest. 

No, he had not in fact held a toy in his hand before. Not until this moment.

In a matter of seconds, he is there again in his cell, back when his name had been FN-2187, back when the coldness of the sheets would seem to creep into his very soul. 

He is eight years old, a blanket over his head, a story in mind, he’s never held a toy in his life, but has given all ten of his fingers different names and personalities and they change every night. In the dim light of his cell, made dimmer by the blanket over his head, he would play out those stories and transform his small bed into a shadowy diorama, hoping he wouldn’t get caught.

Even then, only eight years old knowing nothing more than the life of a storm trooper, a part of him knew that his childhood wasn’t normal. But Phasma had told him he was special, she had told him he was important, and that was why things could not be normal, not for him.

Even now her words haunted him.

“Finn, what is it?” Poe’s voice pierces through the haze of memories like a firefly in a dense jungle. “Did I say something wrong?”

Finn forced a smile. “It’s alright really, I’m fine”

“I fucked up didn’t I?” Poe walked over to Finn and sat down on the mattress across him. “I’m sorry, Finn, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s fine, it’s not even really your fault. And it’s stupid but…” he looked at the clone trooper in his hand. “It’s just that…I don’t think I’ve ever held one of these before. At least if I did, I don’t remember it.”

Poe met his eyes, for a moment neither of them spoke and Finn almost regretted speaking about it all at all. But then Poe reached over and clasped Finn’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly before gently  pulling it closer to him so the action figure was on full display. 

“That’s Commander Rex,” he said. “I named him after one of the only Clone Troopers who went against his programming. I even tried to paint his colours on the figure.” He looked up at Finn.“He eventually fought in the Battle of Endor…he kinda reminds me of you actually, brave and cool.”

Finn could not help but smile at that. He had studied the Clone Wars during his time in the First Order and of course those histories had been filtered through the ideologies that Hux had wanted to instil in them. He had not heard of Commander Rex, and why would he? A soldier that went against protocol, was not a soldier that the First Order would ever want. But Finn found comfort in knowing there was someone before him, who had done what he did. That he was not alone.

“Is Rex your favourite?” He asked.

“One of them,” Poe smiled he reached behind Finn and brought out another Clone Trooper. His markings were also blue and white but they had a different design from Rex’s. “Fives is my favourite though and I reckon he could beat Rex’s ass if it came down to it.”

Sometimes Finn felt he didn’t give Poe enough credit for being clever. Sure he understood what Poe was doing but that did not mean Poe had not done it with a certain tact and sensitivity. The pilot did not pity Finn unnecessarily and he did not try to infantilise him in the slightest either. For that Finn was grateful. This was merely an invitation and it was completely within Finn’s prerogative to deny or accept it if he so wished. Poe was offering him a chance to indulge in a childhood that been long denied to him.

Finn knew he would never be able to tell him how grateful he was. But he also knew he did not have to.

"You sure about that?" he asked.

"Oh, absolutely."

Finn held up the figure of Rex.

“You’re fucking on.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

He had never really thought about it until this moment and he finds it stupid that he hadn’t realised it sooner.

Yet then again could he truly blame himself. The life of a stormtrooper was all he had known and despite their extensive programmes, intense education, lines and words drilled into their mind by rote the First Order failed to teach them the one thing that ever made any sense to anyone in this galaxy. Love. 

But in the soft amber light of Poe’s childhood bedroom, as Poe rests his head against Finn’s lap laughing as he crashes a small TIE-fighter into an X-wing, Finn finds that he can’t look away from him. 

He loses track of their elaborate plotline, he loses track of time itself, but he doesn’t lose sight of Poe, his sparkling eyes, his dishevelled curls and a smile that seemed to fill every dark hollow in his heart.

And as Poe looks up at Finn meeting his gaze every moment, every stolen glance, every skipped heartbeat, every embarrassed side step, every teasing remark, every forbidden thought, every lingering touch comes crashing down into one realisation. 

So this is what it’s like to fall in love.

It hits him like thunder, reverberating so violently in his chest it changes the course of his heartbeat for this lifetime and the next. 

Song: Tera Yaar Hoon Main

Chapter Text

Every planet has a say in what dreams are made of. In some, they say it was the death of a god, his body fragmented into a million celestial pieces, all gifted to the inhabitants of their planet and passed down through generations. Others say that they are a message from beyond, from the gods from the force itself. Of course, there was also the belief that stemmed from a more scientific standpoint, but still, it could not take away from the mythos of it all.

No matter how anyone looks at it, the galaxy can all agree on one thing.

Dreams are the strangest anomaly in our existence. A life that is not a life, a vision only in our minds, that only resides behind our eyes. They hold our highest hopes and our deepest fears.

That is why we seek them out. That is why we run from them. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

As a child, Finn's dreams had always been a source of comfort. For a few hours at least, he could escape, the dreary existence that had been the First Order. By as the years went by the dreams transformed. He had been alarmed at the horrors that existed in his mind not knowing they had been around his waking moments all along. Yet he slept still for the hope that his dreams would one day bring him comfort again.

Usually when he dreamt, even if it was in hindsight, there were still distinct categories, neat labels, into which he could divide them into:

1. Sweet nothingness,

2. Terrible nightmares

3. The rare beautiful dream that he would secure in the deepest most secluded corner of his heart and cherish for a lifetime.

But this was different. This time, as he slept in Poe’s childhood bedroom, on Yavin 4, he was not sure how to feel. There was no category in which he could place this particular dream, not even long after when reality had long dispelled any delusions the dreams may have held.

This time when he dreamt he did not know where he was, around him all was dark as if he was suspended in the dying heart of a dark storm cloud. He has known this feeling before, it was the feeling he felt whenever he tried to search for the past in the First Order, tried to break through the meaningless darkness that should have been memories. The only difference was this time he could feel something, a hollowed scream, echoing in his ears and there is something familiar about it, but he can’t say what it is, or who it belonged to.

But the voice, the scream, whatever it was, it becomes louder. It was a wordless scream and yet somehow Finn felt as if it was calling out to him.

He opened his own mouth. Who are you? What’s happening? Are you alright?

He was at the cusp of getting an answer, he could feel it in his bones, but then it was gone. He wanted to scream. He wanted to weep. 

He ended up doing both. 

It was then that he felt warm arms hoisting him up to a sitting position in a motion that was all too familiar. The dark cloud around him dissolved to reveal the low amber light of Poe’s room, Poe’s arms is holding him close, Poe’s hands in his hair and the simple gesture stifled the dread that had risen in Finn within an instant, he held on to the other man clinging to the feeling of relief, a relief so strong that his newfound realisation of loving Poe could not conquer it. He let it travel beyond his heart, through veins, smothering every electrified crevice of his body. 

When he felt like he could breathe again he, pulled away slightly from Poe and looked up at him. and noticed the other man’s dishevelled hair and red eyes, he too must have had another nightmare, but before he could say anything about it, Poe spoke first. 

 “First Order shit?” He asked.

Finn had told him about his nightmares, after the Battle of Crait, the first night they had bunked together. He had told him about how his dreams centred around the First Order taking him back, of Phasma rising from the ashes, of them reconditioning him. That’s my worst fear he had told Poe Not dying but losing Rey, you, everyone, never knowing exactly what you mean to me ever again. I don’t care if they torture me or kill me. I’m a better person than I ever was as a stormtrooper and I don’t ever want to lose that.

He had been afraid Poe would think him weak, a ridiculous notion he knew, but the thought had been palpable, half his squadron back on the First Order would have laughed in his face. But the pilot had listened attentively to Finn's ramblings through his tears and ever since then Poe had always been ready, whether it was the dusky mornings or the moonlit night, to slay the monsters that crept into his dreams with the reality of his soft reassuring voice, his steady arms and most importantly his ready ears. 

“Not this time,” answered Finn. “It was really fucking weird Poe.”

“What was it?”

Finn looked into the other man’s eyes. 

“That’s the thing, I don’t even know. But I feel so…”

He did not know how to describe it to the other man the strange concoction of fear and hope that had struck him at the moment when he had been met with silence. 

Poe did not say a word. He did not question him any further. He merely wound his arms around him again and Finn let himself relax, listening to Poe’s heartbeat.

“What about you?” Finn asked softly. “Was it Ren?”

The same night Finn had told him about his nightmares Poe opened up about his own dreams too and the torture Ren had put him through after his capture on Jakku. The way he forced himself into my mind, burrowed his way in Poe had shuddered I felt so used, so dirty, so broken. And it happens over and over again, almost like it gave him some sick pleasure and I couldn't do anything about it. In the end, you came and I thought, stars if he’s here then I must be worth something. But in my dreams, you never come and I’m still on that chair. I wanted to die then. I want to die in my dreams. And sometimes I want to die even when I’m wide awake and the past is long gone.

Finn knew Rey had seen good in Kylo Ren during the years they had fought the war. He knew she clung to the small spark of light, the sliver that had been Ben Solo. But that was Rey. Finn could not find it in himself to do the same.

All he had to do was remember the terror on Poe’s face the blood on his lips, his temple trickling down his features like a river and the way Rey’s body had fallen on Starkiller, the way he had held her in his arms, she had been as cold as the snow around and let the anger course through him. In remembering any forgiveness he may have harboured for Ren disappeared.

Ren had killed Han, his own father, he had hurt Poe, hurt Rey, he had hirt own mother and Uncle. In Finn’s eyes, no redemption could wash the blood away from Ren’s hands.

“It wasn’t Ren weirdly enough,” said Poe interrupting his thoughts. “I dreamt of Leia and my Ma.” He gave a small smile. “It was…” 

Poe stopped short.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Finn assured him softly. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Every since Exegol a certain coldness had followed Rey, stuck itself into her heart like a shard of ice that refused to melt.

And as she fell asleep on the other side of the Dameron residence she had thought she would dream it again the lightning flashing bright in her eyes as she lay dying on Exegol. Palpatine’s dry laugh crackled with thunder as all the Jedi before her encourage her to rise. But in her dreams she does not rise, she simply lies there paralysed unable to heed their wishes not even as they turned to desperate begging.

She had dreamt this dream every night since Exegol, it taunted her with the possibility of what could have been, had her strength failed her. 

She had not told anyone about it. She knew Finn and Poe would have given anything to help her, she had seen them do it for each other on countless nights, but she dare not burden them. And besides, it was so easy to hide. She did not scream as Poe did, nor did she wake up breathing heavily in a cold sweat like Finn. Her nightmare was the silent taunting kind that left her cold, frozen and helpless.

But as she slept tonight she did not dream this dream.

Instead, she dreamt of a time before Jakku. She dreamt of fingers running through her hair, her mother’s smile, her father’s laughter. She dreamt of water and the reeds tangling between her toes. She could not see their faces, the faces of her parents, she could not recall their names, but somewhere in her heart she still felt love for them.

For the first time since Exegol, she was no longer cold.

For the first time since Exegol, she was warm.

Strangely it was nothing like the heat of Jakku, but more like the warmth of a lightsaber, the thrum of the Falcon’s engines or the twin suns of Tattooine as Leia and Luke watched over her.

I don't have a song for this specific chapter so here are two I associate with each trio member

Rey:

seven (Taylor Swift)

Clean (Taylor Swift)

Finn:

my tears ricochet (Taylor Swift)

Wonder (Shawn Mendes)

Poe:

The Archer (Taylor Swift)

cardigan (Taylor Swift)

Chapter Text

Finn eventually fell asleep after his nightmare but Poe did not. 

He was sitting at the edge of Finn’s mattress watching him breathe. It was steady now, a rhythm so sweet Poe could have set it to music. He could only hope that this time Finn was dreaming of something pleasant. It was early morning now and Poe estimated that he had probably slept about four hours that night if he could call it sleeping. The faces of Leia and his mother Shara Bey had seemed so real to him and their words. They had spoken many words to him but one phrase had stuck out…

You need to stop running. 

He tried not to think about it, lest he be reduced to tears again. 

He turned his mind to the coolness of the early morning to Finn’s steady breathing.  It was the kind of morning that was perfect for drawing the blankets more snugly around you and closing your eyes surrendering to the slumber instead of facing the sun.

But Poe knew could not do that. Not today at least. He needed to talk to his father and he needed to do it now. He had already come this far and he was sure that there was only so much his courage could buoy him in the moment before it gave way to the urge to run. His bravery had never been called into question no matter how scared he felt on the inside…

You need to stop running. 

He supposed there was a difference between being a coward and wanting to run. Sometimes running was the brave thing to do. 

And he knew he had been brave that day when he had left Yavin 4, for what he had thought would be the last time. He knew it had been the right decision then. But there comes a point when your legs can’t take you much further. 

You need to stop running.

He sighed and rose from the mattress slowly, careful not to wake Finn up. Even so, the other man stirred a little at the slight movement before smiling sweetly in his sleep and despite himself, despite his resolve to head towards his father without distractions, Poe found himself utterly transfixed. In the shallow light of the morning sun, Finn was a vision to behold. The sunlight seemed to line his dark skin with gold. Poe almost wanted to stay and watched as Finn’s eyes, his beautiful dark eyes fluttered open and met his own. 

He wanted to stay and tell him that he wanted to wake up to his eyes every morning because they were better than any sunrise he had ever seen on any planet.

But he did not. Instead, he brushed his hands against Finn’s cheek one last time before leaving the room to meet his father.

He knew his Kes Dameron’s routine by heart. The other had man used to run like clockwork for as long as Poe could remember. Even now his father’s familiar routine was coming back to him and he found Kes where he expected him to be, awake before anyone else was, making his caf in the kitchen. 

When Kes turned to see Poe he seemed shocked at first before giving him a small smile “You’re up early. I remember trying to drag you out of bed in the mornings when you were a kid,”

It struck him that his father knew, still knew, so much about him, things Poe himself had forgotten and yet there were things that Kes knew nothing about and maybe never will. 

Poe shrugged.

“Force of habit,” he explained. “Used to wake up at 4 am every day since I joined the Republic Navy and then with the Resistance, well…”

Kes nodded understanding. “Odd hours,” he said. “Sure as hell don’t miss those,”

A smile found its way to Poe’s lips.  “Yeah,” he answered not understanding why their conversation sounded so normal as if it hadn’t been almost a decade since they’d seen each other. He wasn’t sure how to talk to someone again, after years of not talking, after years of still loving them while forgiveness had not yet been granted on either side and yet here he was. He hated how normal it was. The thought sent nervous stings into his heart.

“How’s Finn?” Asked his father.

“Asleep.” Said Poe, feeling a certain warmth in his chest at the mention of Finn, words and conversation came easy now, as they always did when it came to the topic of Finn. “He won’t admit it but the journey here was tiring, he doesn’t sleep well sometimes so…”

He paused feeling himself colour as his father gave him an all-knowing look. Suddenly he was six years old again telling his parents about his first crush in school.

“He’s a good kid.” Said, Kes. 

“More than good,” said Poe softly. “He’s my best friend.”

Kes cleared his throat. “Are you two…”

“No,” said Poe. “Well…not yet anyway.”

“I take that you’re not here to ask me for dating advice though?” said Kes. 

Poe smiled grimly back at his father. “We didn’t exactly part on good terms.”

Kes looked down at his mug of caf and Poe could have sworn there was guilt there. “I can’t do this now Poe.”

He felt the old anger rise at that moment, he felt the urge to scream. It had taken him years, fucking years to be here and all his father could say to him was not now. 

(He remembers being fourteen he hears stories and whispers from the galaxy outside Yavin, he hears of the horrors, the brutalities and injustices inflicted by the First Order. He hears them and he is angry not just because they are happening, but because it seems no one tries to stop them. Eventually, he asks his father “When can I fight like you and Ma?” And his father would simply answer. Not now.)

“When will it be then?” It came out bitting.

Kes flinched and Poe knew he too was thinking of their countless fights before he had left. And not for the first time, he realised, he had hurt his father. Poe felt his anger cool immediately at the expression. How easy it was to re-enter the same cycle of destruction. And yet it was just as easy to break.

For one he was no longer that person. The boy who let his anger rule his words. He understood now that his father had his reasons back then, as misguided as Poe thought them, as misguided as he still thought them, they were reasons. He most likely also had his reasons now.

“Sorry,” Poe muttered.

“Don’t be,” said Kes. “I understand your anger Poe but I swear to you it will not go unaddressed. I just need more time.”

And Poe knew his father well enough to know he would keep his promise but there was something in his words, the way he said them, a slight inflection perhaps, or maybe it was just a feeling, whatever it was, it told Poe, his father was hiding something.

“Alright,” He acquiesced. “But in the meantime, I don’t know what to do.” Said Poe. “Or what to say.” 

Kes handed him a frying pan. “You can start by making breakfast. Do you remember how to make pancakes?”

And just like that Poe found himself thrust back into a certain normalcy that he hadn’t known in years 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Finn woke to the smell of…well he wasn’t quite sure what it was but it smelled delicious. Delicious enough to drag him from his comfortable sleeping position into fresher to go through his mundane morning routine. A routine that had not changed since the First Order. He supposed there were some things you could not forget, things that had made their way to your very bones and remained carved there with such depth and precision, not even time could wear away the marks. 

At least he thought to himself. At least this is efficient.

Soon enough he was following the smell of the food to the kitchen where Rey was already seated eating and talking with Kes and Chewie while Poe was in the kitchen with BB-8 making breakfast. Seeing them all there together alongside Threepio and Artoo made his heart quake in a way he had not thought possible.

“Morning sleepy-head,” Poe’s greeting was accompanied by a mug of caf thrust into his hands and a large grin.

“Morning,” Finn mumbled, his voice giving truth to Poe’s words.

Poe’s fingers brushed against his as Finn took the mug and for a moment the latter found himself wholly paralysed as he took the other man in. The lazy grin, the mess of dark curls. In light of his realisation last night and the morning light itself, he wondered if he ever really had a chance. And at the same time, he couldn’t help but think Stars I could get used to this. 

Chewie let out a low mournful growl which snapped Finn out of his reverie.

“Don’ts worry bud,” said Poe. “I’ll make extras for you and Lando to last your trip back to Kashyyyk”

In the rush of the last few days, Finn had simply forgotten that Chewie, C3P0 and R2D2 and the Falcon itself would no longer be with them.  The Falcon would go to Lando, Chewie would go back to Kashyyk, while Threepio and Artoo will be working with Rose in the senate. 

It felt like something was ending. And he wasn’t quite sure he wanted it to end.

“Take a seat,” said Kes, gesturing to an empty spot next to him. Finn had forgotten he was still standing next to Poe in the kitchen. Hastily he made his way to the table and took a seat between Kes and Rey. 

“You have to try these,” said Rey deftly piling a whole stack of pancakes on his plate. “I never thought Poe had the capacity to cook.”

“Hey!” Poe pointed a wooden spoon at Rey. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds.”

Rey raised a fork full of pancakes. “I’d rather bite these than your hands.”

At this Finn found himself rolling his eyes while Kes let out a chuckle. Eventually, Finn followed Rey’s example and dug into the pancakes. He had tried many foods during his time in the resistance and pancakes were not new to him. But this…this was indescribable as if it were autumn and gold. He found himself agreeing with Rey. He never realised Poe could cook so well. And it occurred to him that there were things about his friend, one of his best friends, that he still did not know.

Chewie groaned again and at the sound of his mournful words, the taste of the pancakes turned stale in Finn’s mouth.

“I’m gonna miss you too Chewie,” he said softly.

“We all will,” echoed Poe.

Rey did not say anything but the way she looked at the Wookie told Finn it hurt her the most, having to say goodbye to Chewie and to give up the Falcon.

(And why would it not, he thought to himself, the memories were all there, they hiding in the vents, the countless arguments while fixing the Falcon over why anyone would even want to go back to Jakku, the trip back from Starkiller where she had watched over him until the medics had taken him away, her saving the remnants of the resistance at Crait and the three of them soaring across the galaxy, lighting the spark of the resistance everywhere they had gone. Every corner of that piece of junk was carved with memories, generations' worth of them. It had become a part of them and in the end, how can you expect someone to let all that go?)

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

But the decision to let go of the Falcon was one Rey herself had made. 

Earlier when they had been in Naboo, after they had all agreed to go to Yavin 4 with Poe, Rey had been sitting with Lando at the foot of the Falcon. He was telling her stories as the sun set over the lake, he told her of his adventures with Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie and the droids during their time at the rebellion and long after. 

Rey loved the Falcon, she loved it with all her heart. But as each story passed, it became increasingly clear that while she loved the ship, there was still someone in the galaxy who may yet love it more.

“You should have it” she blurted out. “After we get to Yavin, I’ll get a new ship, and it’s not like I’ll need one for a while.”

Lando had protested profusely but Rey had insisted. “Han would have wanted you to have it.”

Lando had paused taking in her words.

 “Alright kid, but don’t get attached to the new one,” he said with a bright smile “‘Cause when I’m gone, this piece of junk is coming right back to you.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

It is always hard to say goodbye. There was always the fear that the things you let go would never return to you. But there is an ease to it too. Because a part of you knows that if you love something enough, somehow, someway the universe will conspire to bring it back to you. It may not be in the way that you imagined but it will come back.

It was all she could think about as they stood on the tarmac where the Millennium Falcon now stood, the wind whistling through the dense jungle of Yavin 4, with the scent of foreboding rain filling the air.

Ad she hugged Chewie she told herself it was a new beginning. Nothing is ever truly gone. She knew that as well as anyone. 

“Come back soon,” she whispered it was all she could manage.

Chewie groaned in response, a promise that he will.

And yet did not stop the ache in her chest as she watched Chewie leave, as she listened to Threepio and Artoo’s farewells while they followed the Wookie into the ship. 

It did not stop the tears from falling as the Falcon’s engines started up, it did not stop the inevitable sobs as the ship slowly hovered in the air before disappearing across the skies of Yavin 4 in a clear blue streak.

I'm too tired to think of a song that fits this chapter.

Chapter Text

We all speak of the memories that a person or people can hold through centuries, passing them down until they become legends. We do this, not knowing that the earth on which we stand on holds memories of its own. And the fourth moon of Yavin is no exception. 

It remembers. Oh, how it remembers.

It remembers the builders that had built the great pyramids, the Massassi, the great warrior race, which had become thrall to the Sith of Old, sabres glowing blood read in the dark, ruling from a throne of bones. It remembers the sweat of work, the blood of battle and how it had sunk to the very bones of the moon along with the corpses of an ancient race now long dead. 

It remembers legions and battles scarring its jewelled surface. The ships piercing through its blue skies in search of hope. It remembers a Princess, with soft eyes and dark braids, precise and glinting, a princess who lost everything but all was at her command. It remembers her voice, the steady tremor echoing through the empty space of the ancient pyramids, the anger in her eyes, the strength in her step reverberating through the galaxy.

It remembers. Oh, how it remembers.  

The scars and the burns that had collected on its surface, as the killer of planets was burned to ash by heroes. How could Yavin 4 forget? These stories became legends.

But the fourth moon of Yavin remembers more. It remembers the crevices and corners, the things that may never come to light but remain in its memories nonetheless.

It remembers a little boy in the lap of his mother, with curls, and dark eyes closed already flying through the stars in her arms, while the father sits by and smiles. The boy says pointing to the stars that’s where I belong. A prophecy of sorts. He is now the greatest pilot the galaxy had seen. 

And the centre of it all is the force tree seeping new life into the very soil, the living soul to the moon’s beating heart. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“I only bring it up because I didn't think there'd be two trees. One of them is spoken for, obviously, but I'd like it if the other found a good home….”

Those had been Luke Skywalker’s words, spoken to Shara Bey after the mission to Vetine. She had remembered them clearly and now that she was gone, Kes would go on remembering them for her. But often, he wondered if it was the other way around. Whether the tree itself had given them a home instead.

He was never quite certain of the answer.

But the memory of it, the day they had planted the uneti tree, laughing with dirt between their nails, and the smell of wet earth in the air, Shara’s wild curls flying the breeze, her eyes alight with mirth. They had been young then, with fire in their veins and the stars of what tomorrow could be, blinding them to a reality they hoped would never come to light.

But there had been a certain feeling that had taken root in him as surely as the force tree had taken root on Yavin 4. It was the feeling that somehow, someday all will be well, that what they had spent their whole lives fighting for would not go to waste.

That was the one certainty Kes clung to.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

A Jedi does not form attachments this much Rey knew. It was written in the Jedi texts, it was in the memories of all the Jedi before her. But in these memories was also something more. Though she was not quite sure what it was yet.

It made sense, in a way. A Jedi’s attachments lead to grief, fear, anger, jealousy, and a host of other negative emotions that may better tempt them to the Dark Side of the Force. But she also knew that the Jedi were never wholly immune to them. She knew that as well as anyone else. She had been fighting the anger, the grief, the temptation of the dark her whole life, somehow without even knowing it. Temptation was inevitable. Anakin and Luke Skywalker were shining examples of it. She herself was an example of it.

(She remembers the wreckage of the death star, her own visage before her smiling sweetly, as the ruby light of the lightsaber glowed starkly in the cool dim light of the ruins. The other’s voice was soft caressing, her eyes almost kind, welcoming. 

“Don’t be afraid of who you are.” She says.

But that’s not who Rey is.)

And yet Rey was terrified. She knew she was a Skywalker, her life had echoed the Skywalkers before her, Luke and Anakin’s blood may not be in her veins, but their stories were in her bones, in the desert sands and the burning suns. But just like them, the dark was still there, lingering like stubborn ink, shadows waiting to rise again. 

You are never truly victorious against the dark, not even when you have stamped it underfoot. It is another battle entirely to keep it within its bounds.

It was a battle she would not wish anyone to face especially not Finn. But he was eager to start upon the long-forgotten path of a Jedi Padawan and Rey could not deny him this.

So here they were standing under the Force Tree that grew in the Dameron homestead, looking upon it with sheer wonder. Poe had told them about it countless times during their tenure in the resistance and had even implied that it could be the reason why his instincts were so sharp. And seeing it with her own eyes, she could almost believe it. Despite its youth, the tree was magnificent, in three decades it had grown strong and firm. Its branches reaching out, like fingers unfurling towards the stars. 

Rey breathed in, the very air seemed to pulse and flicker with concentrated force, it burned, but not in the way that killed. No, it burned like life in a newborn, like a flame on a cold night. It put you at ease.

“I can feel it. It’s like Ach-To,” she said as the steady thrum of the force flowed through her. “But if feels more…alive”

“I can feel it too,” said Finn, he sounded just as amazed as she was. “It’s like a heartbeat, but something more…I can’t describe it.”

But besides them, Poe, who had until then been studying their amazement with affection and mild amusement, was now frowning. 

“I don’t feel anything,” he said quietly after a few moments. The words seemed to have escaped him involuntarily. When he realised he had said them out loud he smiled hastily and added laughing. “Which is probably unsurprising, considering.”

And somehow Rey understood. It wasn’t just about force-sensitivity or a sense of inferiority. He was far too confident in himself for that. No, it was something more

He feels left out. She realised. He sees us and thinks, that there is no room for him now in our lives. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. Though he would never admit to it. 

“I mean you grew up with it didn’t you?” she said gesturing to the tree.

He shrugged “More or less. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there.”

“Maybe you’re used to it” Suggested Finn. “It’s like with you, Rey, BB-8, it hurts more when you’re not here.”

Though he didn’t say it Rey knew his mind was still there on Exegol, on the Millennium Falcon when he had felt her death. He had told her about it. Don’t fucking do that ever again, he had choked out and Rey had sworn she would not.

Poe’s features softened in newfound realisation.  

“I think you might be right.” He paused and turned to the tree in question. “I can’t believe it is so rare a thing now to see a uneti tree?”

“In the days of the Old Republic these used to be everywhere,” said Rey. “But there was only one during the time of the Empire on Coruscant,” she looked up at the tree. “You said it was an offshoot of that one right?”

Poe nodded.

“This was one of the first ways Jedi Padawans used to train if I recall,” said Finn, with a seriousness that was far too endearing.

Rey turned to him and raised a brow. He grinned back at her. “I read it from the Jedi texts on the way here.”

“Of course you did,” she scoffed jokingly. 

Finn was always hungry for knowledge, for experiences beyond the cold cell on the Star Destroyer. Hungry for worlds and histories not filtered through the regime of the First Order. And he seemed to store it all within him unceasingly as if his mind held caverns pre-made to place these treasures. 

“So that’s why Ma always told me meditating under it would help clear my mind.” Poe said. Both Finn and Rey turned to him. He gave a small sad smile. “I mean couldn’t concentrate for that long, I ended up playing on its branches instead. And after she left…I didn’t have the heart. Eventually, Leia showed me some, breathing exercises to help settle the nerves before a flight though I swore I never needed them, but they helped. They helped a lot.”

Ever since she had met Poe Rey had always wondered if he too was force-sensitive. It seems Leia thought so too. For one he was a good pilot, the best, better than Rey herself, though she was loathe to admit it in his presence. But every time she tried to broach the subject the pilot had always brushed it off laughing. It’s just pure dumb luck, no mystical wizard shit here. It would have sounded casual, but the laughter seemed forced and something in it sounded awfully desperate as if he did not want it to be true. She had initially put it towards cockiness, the need for his achievements to be his own, yet…

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

(She’s sitting under the trees in Ajan Kloss, fresh from an argument with Poe.

“Does he hate me?” She had asked Finn picking at the dirt beneath her feet.

“No,” said Finn. “He admires you, trusts you even…”

“Then what?”

“His experience with Ren, the torture…” Finn doesn’t say much more but Rey understands, sometimes she too can feel the coldness of Ren trying to pry open her mind and force his way in. She can only imagine it would be worse for Poe and how it would have changed him.)

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“Does that mean I should start growing out a braid?” Finn asked as they made their way back to the homestead. 

They had been discussing how they could help Kes on the homestead, while also considering the structure for Finn’s training as a Jedi Padawan. He seemed so excited that Rey could not help but compared him to an eager child. 

“If you like,” she said. “But don’t start calling master or expect me to call you my padawan.” She grimaced. She was half-afraid he would in his zealousness.

Finn rolled his eyes. “Yeah, hard pass.”

“I think a braid would…” Poe paused. “I think it would suit you.”

Finn’s eagerness turned into something more akin to silent pride, he gave a small smile and said. “Thanks” 

Idiots. Rey thought to herself silently. A fool could see what they could not.

“So should we start tomorrow?” Asked Finn, turning her. 

There was a certain determination in his eyes. It was like an arrowhead of piercing light, determinedly forging its path through the dark that surrounded him. And something told her that despite everything he at least would not fall. 

She found she was no longer afraid. 

“Yeah,” she found herself saying. “Tomorrow sounds good.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Finn isn’t quite sure why it means so much to him to spend every spare moment poring over old texts and histories, with the smell of old paper and ink, almost sweet, filtering through starlit nights, as he commits the teachings of the Jedi to memory. He’s not sure why, but there is an urgency to it, a sharp craving, as if it would fill a vacancy in him.

He reads and he learns but he is never quite satisfied, the hunger remains like a great snarling beast, with its bloody jaws wide open still expecting prey.

The path of Jedi is not an easy one. But then again had any of his choices ever been easy?

(On Jakku, when he still wore the white helmet, he remembers how the blasters had fired around him, with every bright ray came the death of an innocent. It would have been easy to pull the trigger, but he had not done it. Instead, he had lowered his weapon and watched the massacre through his blood-striped helmet.

Then on the star destroyer, he had defied orders, he had gone to Ren’s prisoner, the pilot with all bravado and fear, and dragged him into a supply closet, sweating, breath ragged, he had offered the man salvation, not knowing his own came with it. It would have been easy to have complied with orders. Instead, he had run.

Then on Takadona, there had been a ship ready to take him away to safety, to anonymity instead he found himself holding the blue flame of the lightsaber in his hands and had fought those he had once called comrades.

Then came Crait, Ajan Kloss, Exegol. Choice after choice he had opted to walk upon a path of blades than the field of flowers.

And now…)

It is hard to rise from the ashes of something once destroyed. With Order 66 came the destruction of the Jedi and the millennia upon which their teachings stood. All they have now are scraps and memories. But then again scraps and memories all Finn had ever had and he been able to make something of it. 

Traitor. Scum. Rebel. Hero. General. Jedi.

One just needed to take the first few steps

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The thing about the First Order was, it does not leave you, not even when it is dead. Its ghost follows you to madness and possession. A Finn knew that just as well as anyone else. Despite himself, despite knowing better, despite knowing Rey, a despite his own enthusiasm, when the mention of training came, his heart often seized. 

Training in the First Order always meant something terrible. Something you would rather run from than eagerly await. But something you had excel in because you don’t want to know what happens when you fail. 

Rey opted for a combination of lightsaber techniques and meditation. Both would help him feel the force around him and concentrate on it. Only then will he be able to go further.

The use of the lightsaber came quickly to him. In the First Order, he had become proficient with various weapons. It only took a few adjustments for him to wield a lightsaber as well as Rey could. Meditating on the other hand proved to be far more difficult. On his first go he had been unable to concentrate at all.

He was not gentle to himself in those moments, the moments where he failed. But Rey was and that made all the difference. 

“You don’t have to be so hard on yourself Finn,” she had told him. 

“But I need to get this right,” he had told her plaintively.

“Not always all at once.” 

“What if it takes years?”

“We have time now,” she had reminded him gently.

Time. He was still trying to navigate it, this idea that some failures were alright, that sometimes you don’t have to master something instantly in order to survive. 

Later one night lying back on his mattress, he had told Poe about it.

“Would it help,” Poe had asked softly. “If you had someone else there? Some of my trainees in the resistance preferred it when they have someone spotting for them on the ground alongside me, a friend or lover. They feel safer. I could rearrange my chores around the homestead if needed. Of course, it doesn’t have to be me but…”

“I want it to be you,” Finn had said hastily, and perhaps too eagerly. But Poe had smiled, reached out and clasped Finn’s hands in his and for a moment it was all worth it. 

And after that Finn was able to meditate.

But as much Poe brought a certain safety, encouragement and humour to his training sessions with Rey he could also prove to be a distraction. 

The pilot would stand at the edge of the forest clearing sometimes playing around with BB-8, sometimes pacing and kicking rocks, sometimes bringing the more mobile of his chores with him, such as chopping wood or fixing machine parts. All the while looking so effortlessly beautiful that Finn’s eyes were constantly drawn to him. Or maybe that was just what it was like to be in love. You find even the more mundane things about the person you love endearing. 

More than once Rey had knocked him over with her staff in his distraction during sparring or would scold him silently when she realised he wasn’t focusing on meditation.

Today Poe was sitting on the edge of the clearing ‘upgrading’ the kitchen toaster (it currently looked a like a disaster but then again Finn did not know all that much about machinery). While Poe would be loud and ribald when Finn and Rey were sparring, shouting encouragements or witty remarks throughout, he would be dutifully silent during meditation. And in those moments of rare concentration he looked especially beautiful, brows furrowed, his hair falling over his eyes. 

And in those moments Finn wanted to get up, he wanted to walk toward Poe and brush those stray curls away from his face. He wanted to meet his eyes, and then…

“Finn?” Came Rey’s voice cutting through her thoughts.

Finn snapped his eyes away from Poe and knowing the pilot's eyes were on him now, wholly concerned. Rey raised her brow. She had her hair down today, out of her usual three buns, the flowed gently in the breeze. She looked every bit the Master Jedi, all serenity, elegance and sternness. 

“Sorry.” Her said. “You were saying?”

“That this time I don’t want you to feel the force around you,” she said. “But the force within you.”

“Sounds daunting.” He said under his breath. 

“It is,” said Rey. “But I think you’re ready.”

“Are you sure?” Poe’s voice interrupted. Both Rey and Finn turned to him. It was the first time he had ever spoken during the meditation hour.

Finn flashed him a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

Without further ceremony, he closed his eyes and breathed in. 

At first, there was complete stillness. But he did not fear it, not anymore.

The rhythm of the force was familiar to him now as if he had been born to it. 

He breathed again, this time he could feel the air, alive with the force. He could feel the soil and the roots of the force tree thrumming gently, pulsing. He could feel Rey and Poe, bright and solid before him, like the twin suns of Tattooine. He could hear every bird call, every footstep, every scream every laugh. He could hear the crackle of flames, the breaking of glass. He could feel the birth and death chasing each other in countless infinite cycles. All here on Yavin 4.

He could go on and on, beyond this small moon’s bright horizons, he could spread himself out through the galaxy, he could waltz through the stars, through the very fabric of the universe. He could lose himself to the force, letting his mortal body starve itself to death, while his consciousness revelled in ecstasy. 

But that was not his purpose today. 

Look at the force that is within you.

He pulled at the threads of consciousness that had unravelled about him and pulled them back, thrusting them inwards.

Too quickly. To deeply. But he doesn’t know that. A part of him still wants to excel, because it in another time, another place, it meant survival. 

Suddenly it was as if his world had plunged into darkness and there he was again suspended in the heart of a dying storm cloud. Except this time, it did not remain dark for long. 

The low rumble of thunder, a flash of light.

He sees dark eyes, warm, they are like his own but they are not. He hears a voice.

“Go! Run!”

His mother it has to be.

Another flash. 

His feet ache in his feet, and he smells the blood, it is sharp, he breathes in the smoke, it burns, and the heat is unbearable. He is running but he is barely four years old and there’s only so far his legs can take him.

The light is in his eyes again it blinds, that is until it doesn’t. 

He is captured, heavy col armoured hands grip his arms so hard, he can feel them dig into his skin, piercing it, he can feel the blood, warm, starting to trickle. But he looks up because his mother had always told him to be brave and it is tragic how at four years old he realises it is the least he can do.

He looks his captor in the eye, the woman in the silver armour, whose polished helmet reflects the blood and destruction around them. He sees his mother’s corpse in it too. He wants to weep but he can’t do that now.

“You’re scum,” he curses. He’s angry and four years old and it’s the filthiest insult he could conjure. 

She laughs. “He’s got spirit. He’ll do, we’ll put him with the others.”

She bends down to his level. “Now what’s your name?”

He never finds out. 

The next thing Finn knew was that he had collapsed onto the ground. He was in pain, his body burned but his mind was soo much worse. He could barely hear anything. Nor could neither see nor feel. He could not breathe. And for a moment, a brief pathetic moment, he wondered if he was dead. 

But he wasn’t. That soon became clear as the world around him came into focus. He feels at first Poe and Rey’s hands on his shoulders hoisting him, then the ground beneath him. He hears BB-8’s worries chirps and muffled talking - no pleading.

“Finn?” Came Rey’s voice it was getting clear now, she sounded desperate

“Buddy come on, say something,” Poe.

Finn opened his eyes to see both his friends, leaning over him. Rey was on the verge of tears, and Poe was already red eye and weeping. Finn wanted to say he was fine but instead of words, he let out a groan. He was evidently not as fine as he thought he was. But the relief on both Poe and Rey’s faces at that moment was palpable. 

He made a move to stand up, but sheer exhaustion held him in place. He had never felt like this after meditation. Never felt so utterly drained. Suddenly he felt something warm and wet at his temple. He brought his trembling fingers up to make sense of what it could. It was only on contact that he realised how much his head actually hurt and when he pulled his hand away his fingers came away with blood.

“Stars,” cursed Rey, she reached out as if to touch the injury. “Let me-”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Poe hissed.

Through his barely conscious state Finn could see that the pilot was seething. But no there was more to that than just anger. There was desperation, and fear. Poe looked haunted as if an old horror had visited him.

“I’m just going to heal the wound, Poe.” She explained calmly.

“And fuck things up more?”

“This was not my doing.” Said Rey bitingly, it was clear she was trying to suppress a rising anger.

“No” he agreed sarcastically. “You just pushed him until he couldn’t bear it.”

“I swear I didn’t know this would happen.”

“Why not?” Poe was yelling now. “You’re supposed to be this great fucking Jedi ever and you can’t even keep him safe.”

“Stop…” Finn said weakly but it was no use they were too caught up in their argument and his voice could barely go over a whisper.

“Poe you need to calm down,” her voice was cutting now.

“He could have died.”

“And you don’t think I know that.”

“I think that you-“

“Both of you. Quiet.” 

Kes’s voice cut through the argument as his familiar figure emerged through the clearing. He had most likely walked here hearing the commotion but to Finn, it seemed as if he had emerged from thin air.

Without another word, Kes came to him and hoisted him up. Poe and Rey made a move as if to follow. But Kes shot them a sharp look. He did not say anything but the message was clear. 

You have both done enough.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Finn had always wondered what it would have been like to have a father, he had thought he had gotten a glimpse of it with Han Solo, but with Kes Dameron, he sees the whole picture. He knows now what it means to be a father. Or at least he thinks he does.

A father talks to you gently, trying to distract you from the pain and exhaustion. He sits you down in a warm place, and he covers you in blankets because even if you don’t realise that you’re cold he does. He makes sure that you’re comfortable before washing and bandaging your wounds and making you a cup of hot chocolate. He’d give you caf, he explains, because he knows how much you like it, but that would only make you more jittery in your state. He stands by, he does not press for answers. He simply lets your break and heal again and again before his eyes ready to fix the broken pieces you cannot piece together yourself.

This is what Finn focuses on, fatherhood because the other option would be to go back to his vision of the heat, to his mother and Phasma and the mystery of who he was. And he was not sure he wanted to confront it just yet.

When Finn’s cup of hot chocolate had been drained Kes asked:

“How are you feeling now?”

“Much better” admitted Finn,” “Thank you for all this. You didn’t have to.”

“And why not?”

Finn did not have an answer for that. But Kes continued speaking.

“You know back in the rebellion the same thing used to happen to Luke,” said Kes.

“It did?”

Kes nodded. “He was a hard worker, to the point where even Leia used to worry and you know how tirelessly she worked. He was eager to excel, but sometimes he pushed himself too hard,” he put a reassuring hand on Finn’s shoulder. “I don’t know much about the force Finn and I’m no Jedi, but my Da used to tell me in order to take a great leap forward one must often take two steps back.”

So this is what a father is Finn thinks as he listens to Kes Dameron. A presence, a pillar, steady and non-judgemental, reassuring. A space in which you let go of your fears, ghosts and expectations and simply be.

“Poe is lucky to have you.” Said Finn. BB-8, who had followed them both back, chirped in unison.

Kes smiled as if they had something amusing.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The sun was near setting and neither Rey nor Poe had moved, neither of them had spoken either. They both sat with their backs against the uneti tree, letting the time pass in silence. Poe’s anger had burned viciously but now it had left the ashes of regret in its wake. He knew he needed to apologise, to Rey, to Finn, to both of them but he wasn’t sure how. 

He fucked up. He knew that. He’d hurt Rey and instead of helping Finn which should have been his first priority, he had decided to pick a fight with her and all for what?

(But he cannot shake the image of Finn crumpled on the ground, almost lifeless, drained, his temple bleeding from having hit the side of the tree as he fell. And somehow it takes him back to the Star Destroyer, the metal biting into his own wrists as he tries, uselessly, to wrench himself free from Ren’s torture.)

He knew the dark side of the force better than most. He knew how something so powerful could be so misused by the evil or inexperienced. 

I want to die. It was a thought that had emerged from shame in the aftermath of Ren’s torture but had followed him long after, adding an edge to his usual recklessness, taunting him to the point of fulfilment and it had almost cost him the resistance during their evacuation of D’Qar. Sometimes he heard those words even now.

I want to die.

So when Rey had reached out to heal Finn’s wounds, Poe had only been able to the gloved hand of Ren ready to rip open a new mind, to violate it so thoroughly that it put those monstrous words in one’s mind.

I want to die.

The conflation of the two had no rhyme or reason. He could see that now. Rey Skywalker was not Kylo Ren. Poe had faith in that, he will always have faith in that. But sometimes his fears were more powerful. And he never wanted anyone to know the kind of pain he had felt. Especially not Finn. 

Still, he reasoned it was no excuse to be cruel.

At that moment that he heard a small sob from beside him.

Shaken from his thoughts he turned to Rey and it was only that he realised she had been crying. He moved closer towards her because despite everything that happened as of late she was still his friend and he hated seeing her cry. Silently he put an arm around her and let her lean her head against his shoulder. He let her weep, and he let himself do the same. 

“I’m sorry,” she managed out.

“No,” he said. “I should be the one who is sorry.” And he meant every word. “You only did what you thought was right what any teacher would do. And I was wrong to have said all that. Wrong to have mistrusted you.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted.

I don’t know how to do this. Hadn’t he said those very words, sitting beside Leia with tears in his eye before Lando had come. It had been months but it hurt to think about it even now.

“You think any of us do?” He asked. “You think Luke Skywalker or any of them ever knew what they were doing?”

“But-”

“Rey, you are the greatest Jedi. And beyond that you’re one of the strongest people I know,” he grinned. “And besides you’ve got Finn, you’ve got BB-8 and you’ve got me. What could possibly go wrong?”

Despite her tears, Rey snorted, which promptly led to fits of laughter. And Poe found his heart warmed at the sight of her smile. He held her closer. He always knew her happiness meant something to him, he never understood the extent until now. She was a friend, a sister and someone he had come to love dearly. 

As the laughter died down she turned to Poe and met his eye.

“Poe can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Ben,” she started and it was then that Poe realised he had forgotten the man behind the mask had not always been Kylo Ren.  “I forget sometimes,” she told him. He suspected it was the first time she had told anyone. “What he did to me. I swore I wouldn’t forgive or forget but on Exegol he-“

“He was a hero in his own way,” said Poe. “And I thank him for his sacrifice, I thank him for saving you and admire your forgiveness. But I can’t forgive him for what he did to me, what he did to others.”

She nodded. 

“I understand. I know he tortured you for information. Like he tortured me” She said. “I know he forced his way into your mind. I just…did it change how you saw the force?”

He remembers Ren, the cold sharpness of the force, ripping through him, through his mind. Butt he remembers most of all the aftermath, the shame of being known so intimately, in a way that not even your lovers know, the exhaustion that seeps to the bones, and those words. 

I want to die.

He had resisted, somehow someway, he knew he had done it. He could tell because Ren would only grow more irritated as time went by and would channel more of the force to penetrate his mind. But it had nod been enough. Eventually Kylo Ren had broken through his defences

Leia was most likely right, maybe Poe was force sensitive to some capacity, but he never wanted to admit it, because doing so would mean that he had given up during the interrogation. He could have done more but he hadn’t. He had failed. Ren had won.

I want to die.

“It’s not that I’m scared of the force,” he said. “You and Finn, you’re my best friends. Hell I grew up with stories of Luke Skywalker. And Leia…”

He still couldn’t say her name without wanting to burst into tears. Rey squeezed his arm in understanding.

“I don’t know what to think,” he said. “I know I trust you, I know I’m fucked up because of Ren. But right now when Finn collapsed, I knew I would go through it all again if it meant he didn’t have to feel the pain."

“You really do love him then.” She said.

“So do you,” said Poe embarrassed that he had revealed too much. “We both do. I would do the same for you as well, you know that.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

He looked down at his hands “Is it that obvious? Or is this some sort of Jedi mind trick”

“I would never use the force like that on you.” She said sternly.

“I know,” he said looking up at her.

They are probably the most sincere words he had ever said to her. 

“You know,” she said. “Finn didn’t tell you about the force sensitivity thing because he didn’t want to scare or hurt you in any way. He didn't want it to feel like a betrayal like you couldn’t trust him.”

“I would never-“

“I know that and so does he but…” she paused. “You mean a lot to him too. Though I don’t know if he’s figured out quite how. He doesn’t want to lose you.”

“That’s fine,” said Poe. “He doesn’t have to. As long as he’s still here. I don’t want to lose him either.” He smiled. “Or anyone else for that matter, I’ve already lost so much.”

His mother. I’ulo. Leia. Snap Wexley. Too many people had been taken from him

“Whatever happens I just wanted you to know, I will break your legs if you ever hurt him,” she said jokingly.

“I can’t tell if you’re threatening me or giving me your blessings.” Said Poe.

She laughed “Both.”

“Glad to see you two have made up,”

Both of them looked up to see Finn walking toward them. He had a bandage across his temple. Poe recognised his father’s hand. Finn seemed tired but, alright, though he looked puzzled. Rey and Poe both got up and embraced him.

It was like their hug after Exegol. Both Rey and Poe buried their faces against Finn’s neck, his arms around them, as he held hands with Rey. The gesture was becoming wholly familiar to them and Poe did not mind it the slightest.

“You feeling okay buddy,” asked Poe murmuring into his friend’s neck.

Finn shrugged “A little tired can I sit?”

They pulled back from each other and sat down under the force tree, Finn in the middle.

“Why are we breaking Poe’s legs?” He asked. Clearly, the question had been plaguing him all the while.

Poe was glad he hadn’t heard most of the conversation.

“Poe can tell you all about it himself,’ said Rey.

“It’s nothing.” Said Poe hastily. “Though…” he looked up at him. “I did want to say I’m sorry, I only made it worse for you I should have tried to help you more. I got too caught up.”

“And I’m sorry too,” said Rey. “For pushing you,”

Finn shrugged. “Shit happens. It’s not like Palpatine’s coming back or anything.”

“Still…” said Poe.

“I forgive you both,” Finn rolled his eyes. “Happy?”

“Do you wanna talk about what happened?” Ventured Rey. 

“Not really no,” he sighed. “I just want to…” he looked up at the sky. “The stars are different here.” He sounded amazed. If it had been anyone else Poe would have said yeah no shit. But all Poe could do was look at Finn’s startled expression with wonder.  Finn continued. “Isn’t it strange how every planet has different stories and different constellations? How the same stars on Tattooine mean something else on Naboo.”

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” said Rey.

And Poe had to admit neither had he. 

Finn put an arm around both of them and held them close.

Just like the force tree in Yavin. Realised Poe as he told them the legends in the stars on Yavin 4. He’s our beating heart. Both of ours. One way or another.

Song: Best Friend by Conan Gray

Chapter Text

Even though the exhaustion had long crept deep into his bones, even though his body was practically begging for it, Finn found that he did not wish to sleep. 

But he dare not close his eyes. 

Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever. 

He did not want to return to it, the fire, the blood, to the dead woman who he knew somehow in his heart of hearts, like the back of his hand, to be his mother. But most of all he did not want to return to Phasma with her silver helm, gleaming like a mirror, reflecting all the things he had once been, all the things he never wanted to see again. 

But he did not dare admit it out loud. He did not even dare let any of it, cross his mind for more than a moment, worried that the thought might somehow manifest in his expression, marring it, becoming the cause of undue distress for the others. 

Besides Finn had done enough of that already. So he buried himself in conversation, laughing and talking with them incessantly, despite the throbbing in his head, despite the ache in his heart, until their worrying seemed to have visibly eased. 

It was only later, when Rey was far from him, when Kes had long retired to his room when BB-8 was recharging in its unit, when Poe had fallen asleep on the bed beside him, his breathing soft and steady, that Finn finally surrendered to it, the indescribable sense of loss, the mourning. 

His grief was written so clearly in his ugly racking sobs, muffled into a pillow, scarring the lungs beneath his ribs with such a  violence, that even the most illiterate would be able to read it all on him within a single glance. And yet Finn did not have the strength to stop it, this great sadness, so he let himself weep and weep and weep, grateful that no one would be able to see him like this. 

He had not realised just how vast that loss had been, just how deep it ran, just how cavernous. Finn had been shining a light in the missing chasm of who he was for all his life and now that he had finally glimpsed the monstrous thing that awaited him at the bottom of it all, he was not sure he wanted to venture much further, he was not sure he wanted to meet it face to face.

He did not want to unravel the mystery of who he was, because it would no doubt leave him a bloodied mess. Or at least more of a bloodied mess than he was now. 

He did not know it all and already the truth was slowly torturously ripping him anew until his whole body would become a great searing wound. 

He wept for many things that night, but most of all, for the boy he had once been, the boy who was now lost to time, nothing remaining of him but wisps of memory, tendrils of smoke disappearing into the night. He wept boy who had lost his mother, his childhood, his name, ripped brutally from everything he had once known and loved, from everything he had once been, the soil that had once kept the roots of his being steadfast in the face of the universe.  

Finn mourned him, that little boy, he mourned him as one mourned the dead and he knew he would continue mourning him until the day himself would be laid to rest, burned, buried or sung away to the stars, nameless once again. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Fortunately for him, the night was not to be entirely sleepless. Eventually, exhaustion wins over his unwillingness and he manages a slumber of sorts. He manages a dream. 

In this dream, Finn is much older. He’s a decent enough pilot now. He’s not like Rey and Poe, who are brilliant and reckless, burning fiercely through the heavens as if they were the stars themselves. But he knows how to man a ship, he knows how to not get killed and that has to count for something.

In this dream somehow he knows. He knows things as if he had lived them already. He knows the path he is charting through the stars, he knows it better than anything he had ever known. He has charted it a thousand times, and he will chart it a thousand more. 

It is the path that leads him to Yavin IV, to Poe, to home.  

His home. 

His Poe. 

Somehow in this moment, in his dream, calling Poe his is not some sweet forbidden thing, reserved for thoughts only fit for the deep wilderness of late night when no one awake to catch him. No, this was something real, something tangible, something he could touch and taste and something knew almost as well as he knew himself. 

When he lands on Yavin IV in his dream, Poe is there to greet him, his curling hair a little grey, the lines on his face have deepened, but his smile remains the same as it had always been, bright, warm and sharp in its brilliance like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. It makes him feel alive. 

Finn can’t help but feel a certain finality in it all. A death of all things dark and spiralling and the life of all the rest. He finds himself smiling.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The smell of caf and toast permeated the very air as Poe and Rey stood together in Kes Dameron’s kitchen in the early hours of the morning. Neither of them had planned this, meeting each other while the rest of the house slumbered. But now that they were here, Poe was glad, he had much to discuss with her. 

“What do you think it was?” Poe asked her as placed two pieces of toast in his now upgraded toaster - an invention he was rather proud of.

He had wanted to ask her the night before but was unsure how to articulate it. And besides he had not wanted to broach the subject with Finn present. He knew no matter how hard Finn tried to hide it, it was a wound and Poe should not probe further than necessary. 

“What do you mean?” Rey asked. Sometimes Poe forgot she couldn’t actually read his mind. 

Poe turned to her, his hands found themselves deep inside the pocket of his trousers and to his surprise they were met with something cool. A metal badge. He didn’t need to look at it to know it was his old cadet badge from before he was in the Republic Navy. He used to carry it around with him on his early missions, his fingers worrying over the edges until they had smoothed out and his fears with it. Sometimes, just like now, he would find it in one of his pockets and sink back into the familiar habit. 

“Do you think Finn saw something then before he collapsed? A vision or something?” He explained his fingers, running themselves over the familiar lines of the badge. “I don’t know I just…”

“It’s not unheard of,” Rey replied leaning against the counter as drank from her cup of caf, her brows furrowed. “Why? What’s up”

Poe paused. “It’s just that…it looked like he had been crying when I woke up, I saw him and just…” 

He could not finish the sentence, he did not know how to. 

All he could feel now was the same cold sinking feeling in his stomach that had settled when he had woken up to see tear tracks on Finn’s face. Any sense of relief he had felt the night before had quickly dissipated, leaving something in him that was so cold, sharp and blue that he could feel nothing else, do nothing else. He had no language left to in him convey the sheer helplessness he had felt when he realised he had been able to do nothing, absolutely fucking nothing, to ease Finn’s pain in the night. He would break before he could even attempt to tell her. 

Poe’s fingers tightened around the cadet badge as if it were a lifeline.

Having now long abandoned his pursuit of the toaster, looked up to see Rey’s hazel eyes on him, and somehow he knew she understood. She wearing an expression that was… well her expression alone told him nothing, but he knew otherwise. 

Poe had never been very good at reading her, she had a certain stoicism that he admired, a stoicism that even he could only barely manage in the most dire of circumstances. But he was getting better at it,  so much that even if Rey did quite allow herself to express her feelings as easily as Poe did, he knew the concern she felt for Finn right now went just a deep as his, right into their beating and bleeding hearts, piercing through bone and soul. 

But he also knew that this mask, the one she now wore now, was for his sake, she was trying to be a pillar of sorts for him in his visible distress. And Poe wanted so desperately take his words, his emotions back, to put on his own mask of stoicism, to tell her to stop being so selfless, to stop putting others before herself, to let him look after her as well. Stars know they both needed it in this moment and they both needed to be there for Finn. 

Yet in a way he understood why she held back. It was amusing, really, how all three of them had that in common, a strange synthesis of selflessness and trust. As if they needed to tell each other everything that comprised the very substance of their souls, and yet at the same time they simply could not bear to do it. 

“He’ll let us know…in time.” She said slowly.

But even then there was doubt in her voice. Finn usually did let them both know when something was amiss. But this, this was different, Finn might never tell them and Poe did not need the force to know that. 

“I just don’t want him to feel like he’s alone,” Poe admitted looking down at the floor the grip on his cadet badge was a vice, the metal pressing into his skin, no doubt it would soon leave a mark.

As soon as those words were spoken into existence, he felt Rey’s hand on his shoulder. A comforting touch, warm and steady and something in its eased the cold sharp thing in Poe’s chest, melted it down to something that was more manageable. Poe savoured the feeling, it was a rare thing on her part. 

“He’s not alone,” Rey said. “We’ll make sure of that.” 

He turned to her and smiled and felt his heart melt a little more as she smiled back at him reassuringly.

“I was thinking,” continued Rey. “We should take a break today from Jedi training. Just…” 

She trailed off. Poe nodded. It would be good, not just for Finn but for all of them. He winced remembering the blood on Finn’s temple, bright red and glinting in the sun, as he lay collapsed against the tree, looking like a man dead. He remembered the tears in Rey’s eyes, her wretched sobs. He remembered his own state, the blind rage that had swept through him.  

The war was over, they had vowed to never go back to it, the bloodshed, the grief, the anger. So why were they still fighting, bleeding and weeping as if it wasn’t?

“Maybe we could find you a new ship today?” Suggested Poe tentatively, searching desperately for a much-needed distraction. “I know just the place…that is if it’s still around. To be honest, I haven’t been here in a decade, a lot must have changed.”

Rey looked at him as if about to say something but she stopped suddenly, her brows furrowing. 

“Poe…”

The tone in her voice was cautious. He realised he might have hurt her with his suggestion considering that the loss of the Falcon had been so recent. He did not want her to think that he thought the Falcon was replaceable. Because it wasn’t. He knew that better than anyone else. (The ashes of his mother’s A-Wing, still a bitter taste in his tongue, even now years later). And he did not want a repeat of yesterday’s argument. So he tried to explain himself, apologise even.  

“I know nothing is ever going to be the Falcon, Rey. Hell I miss it myself but…”

“That’s not…”

“I’m sure we’ll find something good, someday. It doesn’t have to be today, I’m sorry if I brought it up too soon we can always do something else. In fact there’s this great diner with the best doughnuts on Yavin, we could…”

“Poe!” She was shouting now. He stopped in his tracks. 

“What?”

“The toaster…”

It was only then that Poe realised that the sharp pungent smell of smoke, burnt toast and fried wires had replaced the golden warmth of heated bread and caf. He turned to see the toaster - his magnum opus - burning and melting away into a pile of twisted metal and ash. 

“Shit."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Finn woke up to a sharp metallic smell that made him want to gag, the sounds of Rey and Poe yelling at each other, while D-O and BB-8 chirped and talked incessantly and anxiously in tandem. 

And somehow that did not shock him into action. 

He readied himself as he usually did, putting on the first pair of clothes he could find. When made it to the kitchen he was met with the sight of Poe’s upgraded toaster now a sad pile of burnt metal and wires while Rey had fixed Poe with exasperated expression. Poe himself was looking at the toaster in almost complete and utter despair.

Rey was the first to notice Finn’s presence and just as she opened her mouth about to inform him of what happened, she stopped in her tracks, her eyes narrowing on him before raising an eyebrow in confusion as if there was something strange about him. 

Finn found himself frowning. He had washed his face, cleared the tear tracks, he had waited for the redness in his eyes to subside before even daring to venture out. He had emptied his mind of all the thoughts that had haunted him at night and had schooled his features into some semblance of normalcy. He had done everything he possibly could to make sure he seemed fine. And yet…. was it even enough? Was it really, that obvious that he had cried himself to sleep? What gave it away?

“B-B-B-Burning,” stuttered D-O. 

“Don’t remind me,” groaned Poe. He met Finn’s eye and gave him a small smile, his cheeks had gone red. “I managed to salvage some of the toast if you want it.”

Finn looked at the charred toast. He knew Poe was joking. But there was still a part of him that could not let go of the man who had been a stormtrooper and could not help but think It’s not too bad, I’ve had worse. Yet in the last few years, the part of him that was now Finn, Finn the rebel, Finn the General, Finn the Jedi, thought it felt nice to refuse things, to have the freedom to simply say no. Even if he did feel guilty about it later. 

“Pass,” he said smiling back at him.

“Your loss,” Poe said, he then paused and took Finn in properly for the first time since he had entered the kitchen and his eyes widened like Rey’s, his smile slowly turning into an expression of shock.

Stars, was it really that obvious? Was Finn really that pathetic?

He was about to explain himself, horribly, unconvincingly perhaps. It’s just allergies. He might have said. I didn’t cry myself to sleep you know, what kind of an idiot does that? But as soon as the words were on lips, Poe interrupted him. 

“Is that my shirt?”  He asked. The other man’s cheeks turned a deeper shade of scarlet.

Finn looked down and realised he was right. He was wearing one of Poe’s shirts, one of Poe’s favourite shirts actually, beige in the style of the rebel fighters of old, that he usually paired with his black jacket. Finn must have accidentally taken it out of their shared drawer instead of his own, his mind more focused on looking physically presentable than the clothes he was supposed to wear. No wonder Rey was looking at him strangely. 

She might have thought that they…

Finn felt the heat rise in his cheeks.  

He wasn’t new to wearing the other man’s clothes. The first item of clothing he owned in his own right after his escape was Poe’s old jacket, and even later after Crait, before supplies had come in, Poe had lent him his own clothes so Finn didn’t have to wear the same thing every day. 

Finn should be used to it, he knew that, but that was before, before he knew anything, before he had his own clothes before he knew how he felt about Poe. Things were different now and wearing his clothes felt like crossing a certain line into forbidden territory. 

“Sorry, I’ll change back I-“

“No, no it’s fine,” Poe paused. “You wear it well, better than me anyway. So uh…” he smiled. “Keep it.”

(Keep it Poe had said once on D’Qar.It suits you. The air had been thick with the sharp smell of the forest rains that day, as well as the leathered scent of Poe’s jacket and burnt-up fuel from the X-Wings.Poe’s eyes had shone, as he bit his lips, looking at Finn as if he were filled to the brim with the stars themselves, not knowing that for Finn all the stars were in Poe’s own eyes. And Finn had known then and there that he would never forget that moment, not for as long as he lived.)

BB-8 let out a series of beeps that sent Rey into fits of laughter, making Poe bury his head in his hands. Finn did not know binary, at least not enough to properly understand the droid just yet, but judging from Rey and Poe’s reaction, the droid had most likely said something to embarrass Poe.

Finn did not ask for a translation, and he did not want it. Their joy was more than anything he had ever needed. It was enough to make him break a smile after a horrible night, and an equally confusing dream, enough to make him feel incandescently happy, even if he didn’t quite understand what was happening.

“Stars remind me to get back to binary lessons,” he said to BB-8, who looked up and beeped happily at him. 

He had started his lessons after Crait, and Leia had graciously offered to teach him in her final months. He knew a bit, but not enough to fully communicate, progress, after all had been slow-going considering how many missions he had had to take back then. But those lessons had been precious to him. 

He held the memories of them close to his heart. He remembered her patience, her bright laughter and her quick wit. But most of all, Finn remembered her eyes, piercing through the blur of binary, bright blue on his data pad. They had been soft, dark and infinitely wise, and they would watch over him, a guardian of sorts. 

Unlike lessons in the First Order and even his lessons now with Rey, he had felt safe with Leia.

He remembered the first time he had made a mistake, he had felt the familiar panic that often come to him in the First Order, the sharp dread that would send his heart racing, his muscles rigid awaiting a blow. But it never came. Leia had put a hand on his shoulder and had gently corrected him. 

He remembered bursting into tears then, like a child. Her tenderness then had the violence to shatter and heal him in one instant. It had torn through the armour he had forged for himself and stuck its roots deep into the broken man, the broken boy, bleeding and begging for a semblance of kindness and he held him. She did not ask him why he had been weeping. She had only drawn him in her arms and held him closer. I know, she had whispered. I know. 

Memories were one of the only things he had left of Leia Organa but after her death, he found that he did not even have the heart to even touch the exercises she had downloaded for him on his datapad. For when you come back. She had said. An extraction, a promise. It was as if she was saying. Don’t die on me, I have so much to teach you. And Finn had kept his word, he had stayed alive, and he had come back, but she had not been there to greet him.

He supposed he would be honouring her in her, continuing them and yet…

“Please don’t,” groaned Poe, he seemed to be in agreement with Finn but for different reasons entirely. “Having Rey understand BB-8 is already bad enough.”

Rey laughed harder. “Please do, you’re missing out.”

Finn rolled his eyes at both of them, the burnt toaster now forgotten amidst the laughter. When it had died down and the red in Poe’s face had faded a little Finn found himself asking:

“So when are we training?”

The energy in the kitchen immediately shifted to one that was more sombre. The memory of yesterday lay on them heavily like the shadow of a hanged man. Poe turned to Rey who met Finn’s eye, not even a ghost of her previous dimpled smile remained. 

“We both thought it would be better to take a few days off,” she said her eyes on Finn, taking him in, studying him. “Besides Poe said there was a ship sale here and we need a ship now that Falcon’s gone.”

“Best ships in the galaxy,” Poe gave a small smile. “And I’m not just saying that because I grew up here.” But much like Rey, his eyes were on Finn, watching him steadily. 

Though Finn would be loathed to admit it, he felt relieved at their suggestion. He was not sure he could have done it, connect with the force like that again.

“Sale it is then,” he assented. 

“S-s-s-sale?” 

Finn looked down to see a nervous D-O at his feet, he’d always harboured a certain fondness for the droid ever since they had found him on Pasaana. D-O had been a wreck, no doubt from being mistreated by its previous owner, it had come out of its shell gradually but there were still times when the poor thing would spiral into anxiety and in a way Finn understood. He had been just like him once, and in a way he still was. He often felt the suffocation and the need to cave into it and there were days still where he found he felt safer confined to his bed.

“You don’t have to come,” he assured D-O. “You can always stay here with Kes.”

At that very moment, Kes himself walked into the kitchen. He stopped in his tracks his eyes narrowing on the pile of burnt wires and twisted metal.

“What the hell happened to the toaster?”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

After a strenuous cleanup and Poe’s promises to make it up to his father, Kes let them borrow his old landspeeder so they could go to Yavin’s marketplace for the ship.

Poe made a point to drive the speeder within the speed limit - a rare thing, even when they weren’t being chased by the First Order - but this, this idle travel was almost like an unravelling and revelation all in one. 

For the last few years, out of necessity more than anything, travel for the three of them had often been swift, and though they had encountered many planets, seen almost all that the galaxy had to offer, they had never been able to truly savour it, they never quite had that luxury.

 That was, until now.

As they drove through Yavin IV Poe pointed out various landmarks, telling stories both ancient and new, all that had occurred under the shadow of moss wreathed pyramids left by the Masassi, now glinting, time-ravaged, in the sun. As always Finn and Rey would listen to him, entranced, by his words and the wealth of knowledge he seemed to hand out so casually, generously, as if doing so, having so much knowledge was the most natural thing in the world. 

But in the years Poe had been away Yavin 4 had changed as well.

Though it had begun as a rebel base, becoming a key scene in the epic struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire you would not be able to tell that now. Yavin 4 still had one main settlement, Wetyin’s Colony, with the moon’s population being sparse and mainly focused on agriculture, as well as being a centre for trade and transit with the active port area consisting of docks and restaurants, cantinas, and more nefarious entertainment corners. And for the most part, this was still true. But there were more people now than Poe was used to seeing on this planet, people he no longer recognised, and not only that there were now patches of areas that they passed through that could be described as suburban. 

(It was not the Yavin 4 he had left behind, and his heart broke a little for it. He never got to savour the home of his childhood as it had once been. But it could still be home and he would make home again.)

When they finally reached the marketplace in town Rey’s mood had suddenly turned sullen, her eyes had fluttered over the ship’s, calculated analysis distilled to the point of boredom. Poe and Finn both found themselves looking to her constantly, not knowing how two draw her out of her mood. And despite Poe’s assurances that they did not have to purchase a ship today Rey in the end had chosen one. 

I’ll have to get one someday. She had said to them both with a smile but her tone gave way to something more grim. Might as well rip the bandaid off now. 

The model was most likely pre-empire, off-grid, the seller had assured. It was sturdy, fast enough, spacious and not too expensive. A great ship on all accounts. And yet…

(No one had said it out loud, no one had the heart to, but they all knew it could never be the Falcon. And they all felt sorry for it, set up to fail from the first, a replacement, forever a shadow to its predecessor.) 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“You two go ahead,” said Rey as she now stood next to the new ship. 

She met their eyes and saw a shared look of disappointment pass between them as if they did not want her to leave. It always surprised her, just how much they cared. Their love for her was like rain after a long drought, it didn’t feel real, a mirage in the desert. But real or not she was grateful for it, even the mere suggestion of it made wanting to live easier. 

“Is everything okay?” Finn ventured.  

She flashed him a smile and hoped it was convincing enough. 

“I promised Kes I’d help him with his tractor repairs,” she said, she wasn’t lying, but they were both looking at her like she was. In a way she supposed they were right, it wasn’t the whole truth but she persisted nonetheless. “And anyway, I wanted to fly this thing myself for a bit.” 

“You sure?” Asked Poe, crossing his arms, his brow furrowed. The gesture was familiar, brotherly, she had seen it a thousand times whenever they were in the resistance.

She rolled her eyes. As unreal and touching as both their concern was, it did get a little irritating from time to time. 

“Yes, I’m sure, c’mon BB-8,” 

The little droid beeped in question. Rey grinned despite herself, “Yes that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

Ever since she had gotten confirmation of Poe’s feelings for Finn the night before, a truth she had long suspected, Rey was determined to see that somehow it worked out between them. That included forcing them to spend more time together - without her at that. But that too was only another half-truth. 

Finn deserved a break. A proper one and she knew that her current mood would only weigh him down. But Poe…Poe could do it, he was a genius when it came to lifting one’s spirits, and he would do anything for Finn, anything, and that was something she was counting on. 

Poe gave her an incredulous look, catching on to her intent, not doubt hearing BB-8’s comment about setting them both up, while Finn seemed blissfully oblivious to it all. Not for the first time she was left marvelling at how neither of them could see what was so obvious to everyone else. She could say it for them, it would save everyone the trouble, and win her a few credits from the others in the resistance, but she supposed that that would be unfair.

BB-8 looked up between Poe and Finn letting out slow knowing beeps before whizzing forward and bumping into the back of Poe’s leg, which promptly made him lose balance, Finn steadied him holding on to his arm as if by instinct. 

“Hey, what was that for?” Poe scolded. 

BB-8 beeped back teasingly wishing him luck. Poe groaned. “Yeah, yeah real funny.”

“Have fun,” Rey said managing a smile and with that, she turned back and made her way toward her new ship. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Finn found himself growing a little tense as Rey disappeared, the familiar feeling in his gut building, as it always did when he knew that she was far from well, but would not admit to it. She was  self-sufficient to a point of admiration, but also to a fault. 

“You think she’s okay?” Asked Poe.

Finn shrugged. “You know how she is, I think some alone time with the ship and then your dad would suit her.” But even then it was almost as if he was trying to convince himself. 

“After Exegol she…” Poe trailed off. “I think it’s more than the Falcon”

He knew what he meant. There seemed to be something hollowed in her, something haunted. As if the storms of Exegol had somehow left her ravaged on the inside. She had not told him much of what had happened and Finn did not know what she had seen or done while he had been in the thick of battle. All he had known was that he had felt her die. He had felt it so keenly it was almost as if a part of him had died with her, as if the sun, its rays, its light, its warmth had been brutally ripped from the skies, leaving his world cold and dark. He had felt her die but he had also felt her come back to life.

Ben, she had told him. He saved me.

And that was all she had said about it. 

“She’ll let us know in time,” he told Poe. 

Poe gave a quizzical, slightly amused look, and before Finn could ask him what he was thinking, Poe's eyes flicked up to meet his and Finn found himself completely disarmed. How did Poe do that? Finn often wondered. How could one look from him make Finn forget even his own name, the name he had given him?

“You hungry?” Poe asked.

“Famished,” Finn responded honestly. 

In all their time looking at the ships, all three of them had simply forgotten about eating. Before Poe could say much more however they heard a small voice:

“Excuse me?”

Finn turned to see a young girl looking up at both of them in an expression he could only describe as one of awe. She was nine, ten at most, black hair cut short, sticking out all over. She was barefoot, dressed in beige with dark overalls, her cherubic face, with her rose-tinted cheeks shining with curiosity. Finn smiled at her. How could he not?

“Oh hello,” said Poe also realising she was there. “Do you need help?” He looked around. “Where are your parents?”

At first, the girl seemed too stunned to speak, looking at both of them as if they were stars descended from the heavens themselves. She gathered wits rather quickly, however, her dark eyes alight with a sharp glint, that reminded Finn eerily of Rey.

“Are you the Generals of the Resistance?” She asked. 

It was strange, usually being recognised meant death, it meant the spike of adrenaline in your veins and the urge to fight or flee, not knowing whether the choices you make will get you out alive. So it was a strange feeling that now burgeoned in Finn’s chest, a warmth, a certain sense of relief when this rare moment of recognition meant admiration. 

“I don’t know,” said Poe grinning he turned to Finn and the affectionate expression on his face made Finn’s heart ache. He could have done anything for him at the moment, absolutely anything. “What do think General?”

“You know what General,” Finn answered matching his smile. He turned back to the young girl. “I think we’ve been compromised.”

She seemed terribly delighted her mouth parting in awe.

"Do you know Rey?” She gasped out. “Is she here?”

“You just missed her,” Poe informed her ruefully. “She had to go back, top secret stuff.”

The girl seemed momentarily disappointed before launching into more questions. 

“Is she as cool as people say?”

“Cooler” confirmed Finn. “Once she lifted a whole tree using just the force, roots and all.”

It was a slight exaggeration, she had been able to lift it, but not enough to completely unearth it from the soil. Still, the amazement on the little girl’s face was worth the small lie. 

“What’s your name?” Asked Poe. 

The young girl’s eyes sparkled. “I’m Jyn,” she said. 

Jyn. 

Finn knew that name, he knew it all too well. 

After Crait, when he had expressed a desire to learn more about the history of the rebellion from the side of the rebels, Poe and Leia lent him books. It was one of the first of many small acts of rebellion on his own part after his defection from First Order, as he slowly broke away from the teachings that had caged his outlook and state of mind. 

Among some of the texts that Leia had given him had been some of Mon Mothma’s unpublished reflections on the Rogue One squadron, the team who had retrieved the plans for the first Death Star, which proved to be instrumental in its destruction. 

Bodhi Rook, a member of a squadron, a pilot who had defected from the Empire had become a hero of sorts to Finn, someone he could hold on to as proof that there had been others just like him before, others who too had been a part of something brutal and unforgiving and yet still emerged from it all trying to do the right thing. 

There had been other names too, alongside Bodhi Rook. Cassian Andor. K2SO. Baze Malbus. Chirrut Imwe. and Jyn. Jyn Erso. Daughter of Galen Erso. War Hero. Martyr. 

”In a kinder universe,” Mon Mothma had written. “She would have walked away from Scarif. I cannot imagine who she would have become, but I think she would have been extraordinary." 

And perhaps this was a kinder universe - perhaps all this fighting had been worth something - because it seemed to Finn that Jyn Erso lived on long after her death and not just in her name. He could see glimpses of the woman he had read about in the little girl who stood before him, in the gleam in her eyes, in her smile the spark the flame…

Finn wondered if one day anyone else will be named after him. If he too would live on like Jyn Erso now did. 

“I read all about what you did in the holonet,” Jyn said excitedly, the words tumbling out like a steady torrent as she turned to Finn. “The way you defected from the First Order, and fought Kylo Ren. That was wizard!” 

Wizard? That was new. Finn warmed at the words. He had always been told, reassured that he was a hero, that his achievements were admired, but this was the first he truly heard them. He let them settle and slowly sink into skin and bones until they became an inextricable part of him. 

Jyn then looked up at Poe and stood on her toes as if trying to reach his height. 

“And when I grow up,” she said, if a little shyly. “I want to be a pilot just like you.”

The words seem to stun Poe at first and Finn wondered if he too felt the same thing, the same strange feeling of finally realising your own achievements as they were mirrored before your eyes. Eventually, Poe bent down so that he was at eye level with Jyn. 

“You’ll be better.” He told her. 

Because that’s the thing about war, you do what you do, no matter how terrible, so the generations after you can do better.  

Poe reaches into his pocket and pulled out something shiny. Finn recognised it as Poe’s cadet badge when he had first joined the academy. He had seen him play with it whenever he got nervous. 

“Here,” he said. “It’s yours now. One day you’re going to be the best pilot in the galaxy, and when that day comes, remember me yeah?” 

What was it about Poe and him giving away things that were dear to him? He thought of the jacket, the supple brown leather that had been his only thread to reality in the burning deserts of Jakku. Involuntarily his fingers idly found themselves on the hem of his shirt - both of them had once belonged to Poe and now they were his. 

Finn could not help but smile.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

It happened within the blink of an eye. One moment he had been looking at Poe and Jyn and the next he sees it. No. He doesn’t merely see it. It is all around him.

He smells freshly baked bread, he hears laughter, and he feels warmth. He sees Poe, smiling, his grey curls illuminated by the morning light, and on his shoulders a little girl, with dark skin like Finn’s but her smile is undeniably Poe’s. Her hair is done at two buns on either side.

They call her Leia. 

He opens his eyes.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

When Finn finally came to his senses, the first thing he felt was Poe’s steadying grip on his arm, holding him upright. Finn turned to him and gave him a reassuring smile, which did nothing to ease the concern that had collected on the other man’s face. Poe’s attention however was soon accosted by Jyn who did not seem to notice what had happened instead telling them that she needed to be home soon before embracing both of them, uttering a breathless thank you before running off.

As soon as she was gone Poe turned his attention back to Finn, giving him that familiar discerning look that he often wore when he was worried and needed answers.

“Finn…” he started.

“I’m fine-“ Finn started but Poe shook his head.

“Buddy,” Poe whispered. “As much as I hate seeing you hurt, it’s worse when you lie about it.”

The pain in his voice made Finn stop short. He had never thought of it like that. He had never thought that it would be hurting Poe too. 

He wondered then how many times he had lied to him and Poe had just taken it, knowing better, knowing that Finn had lied, knowing that Finn was hurting but would not tell him, and unable to say or do anything about it, out of respect mostly, nursing that wound silently.

“Sorry…” Finn started.

“Don’t be, I just want to know if you’re okay,” said Poe. He paused. “Was it the force?’

The vision had left him warm, like his dream, but he did not know how to explain it to Poe, it had drained him and yet filled him with so much hope at the same time. He did not know what it was. A glimpse of the future perhaps or his own desires reflected back at him? He was not sure. After all these years, after all this training, the force was still foreign to him. 

“Yeah, I think so,”

“Well tell the force to fuck off,”

“Poe,” he found himself saying. “That’s not how the force works.” 

And suddenly he was back on Starkiller Base, Han’s blaster in hand, the cold sharp and biting against his skin. He’d been young then, more naive and somehow more full of hope. Poe’s jacket was his only protection against the cold. “We’ll use the force” he had said to Han, feeling something warm, beautiful and golden had spread itself through his chest. And then Han had said those words, the very same ones Finn now said to Poe.

That’s not how the force works.

Han’s tone had been gruff, but that had not killed the warmth in Finn. He could still feel it now, an endless pool of hope, pure and sweet.

“Who gives a shit about how the force works right now,” said Poe, he was grinning and yet there was a certain desperation to his voice that Finn could not quite place. He put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re getting caf and doughnuts.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Rey had never been good at letting go, never been good at watching people leave. There was always a certain ache, that threatened to collect in her throat, in their absence. An ache in the very place that had been ripped raw, when she had called after her parents, screaming, begging for them to come back, as they turned their backs on her on that accursed desert planet. 

So she held onto things, to people, the memory of her parents, the stability of Jakku, the light in Ben. Small slivers of hope, all of them, but she held on to them desperately because, for Rey Skywalker, it had been a matter of survival. 

And the Falcon was no exception.

Whenever she had felt the need to get away from the world around her, to feel at home, to feel safe, she had always gone to the Falcon. But the Falcon was no longer here. At least not anymore.

She had thought her new ship would become a replacement of sorts, or at least she could distract herself by pretending it could be. And why shouldn’t it? It worked well, it was sturdy and with a few repairs, it would be as good as new. She could grow to love it, she was determined to. 

So it surprised her when she found herself not staying in the ship, loitering for as long as possible, as she usually did with the Falcon but instead, making her way to the Dameron homestead as quickly as she could.

It had only been a few weeks here surely, surely it couldn’t already feel like home. 

(But it did, it did feel like home because every time she was there she always felt like she could breathe again. At first, she had thought it because it had been Poe’s home, and Poe along with Finn were family, but somehow even then she knew there was far more to it.)

When Rey finally reached the homestead however the initial relief quickly faded as she noticed Kes sitting on one of the chairs on the front porch, his head bowed, grey hair falling over his face as what seemed like a medical droid stood before him talking to him in hushed in undertones. He was holding a data pad in his hands, clutching it until his knuckles were white. His features only seemed to turn more grim as the droid continued to speak. 

Rey found herself frozen mid-step. In the short time she had come to know Kes she had never seen him so…so utterly defeated. There was a certain ache in her that she had never quite felt before. It made her want to rush to him to tell him all will be well, to see his expression turn to something more familiar, if only to ease her own ailing heart. 

But she did not instead, she waited until the droid left, before finally stepping into Kes’s line of vision, making her presence known to him. 

He didn’t notice her at first, not really, seeming to looking through instead of at her. As if he was contemplating something far beyond the planes of their existence. However as soon as he broke from his reverie and saw her, a smile broke out on his face. 

“You’re back early,” he said as he motioned for her to come and sit by him, a request which Rey readily complied. “Where are the boys?”

Boys. Rey the word struck her funny, it was exactly what Leia would call them, despite Finn and Poe’s vehement protests that they were grown men. She gave Kes an amused smile as she sat beside him. 

“I left them, alone, I wanted to give the new ship a spin,” she explained. “And I thought it would be good to let Poe give Finn a proper break. He’s good at that, making people feel better.”

After all he had once done the same for her. Rey remembered well the empty hole in her chest when Ben had said those words to her on the Finaliser as the flames rained down on them as surely as her tears.  

“You come from nothing,” his voice had been soft as if her nothingness was something precious to him. “You’re nothing”. 

She would have carried that with her, it would have been an ever-bleeding wound in her soul, but now it was only a scarred thing, a reminder certainly, but a healed one. 

Healed because of Poe. 

After Crait on the Falcon, when she had been trying to stave off the darkness Ben had stained her with, Poe had come to her smiling, like a shining light cutting through the shadows, he had been the first to manage that, to break through the shadows that day. Even now she had thought it strange, how a man she at that point barely knew, had done what not even Finn or Leia had been able to. 

When she told him who she was, thinking that an introduction might have been necessary. He had simply said. “I know”. 

Those two words I know had been everything. It was as if he was saying. “You don’t have to prove yourself to me, you don’t have to do anything, you’re someone already, you’re not nothing, you’re Rey and you always will be” An antithesis to each and every word that Ben had spoken. 

She never did tell him how grateful she had been for that, she was not sure she ever could. 

Kes nodded. “He has that, a way of comforting people, had it since he was  a child.”

He got that from you. Rey wanted to say but did not. It might have been too much. But there was something else at the back of her mind, that itched with increasing irritation. 

“The med-droid?” she asked. “I saw it as I came. Are you sick?”

Kes looked down at the floor. The expression on his face belied a certain type of guilt. A secret that Rey felt she was not supposed to uncover. And for a moment she regretted even asking. He shrugged and said simply. 

“Old age, Rey, a mere inevitability.”

She did not need to be a Jedi to know that he was lying. Or at least not telling her the entire truth. She had no desire to press him further on this, it did not feel within her rights, but…

(She remembers then a rare moment of peace between them, Rey confesses to Poe about her grief over Han’s death and how she couldn’t find herself moving on, stuck in a perpetual loop of inaction, the memories as stark as the scarlet sabre that had pierced the old man’s body. Poe tells her about Shara. “I miss her every fucking day,” the pilot had said. Then a moment of vulnerability she had never seen from. “Don’t feel bad for grieving. Her death… fucks me up to this day. I’m not sure I can do it again Rey, got to another funeral.” But he had to do it anyway no matter his desires. But every time they said farewell to a fallen comrade it always looked like Poe had lost a part of himself).

“Have you told Poe?” She asked.

“Not yet,” Kes answered honestly. “Haven’t had the chance.” 

She nodded. Unsure of what else to do she picked up the spare part of the tractor that was lying on the front porch. They needed a distraction, both of them, from their losses, the ones that were long in the past and perhaps ones that were soon to come. She looked up at him and smiled. 

“You said you needed help with repairs.” She said spare part in hand. “So where do we start?”

Kes grinned back at her. “I thought you’d never ask.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“It’s just like how I remembered,” Poe said as they sat themselves in one of the booths in the corner of an old diner. 

It was the first ever on Yavin 4 if the sign at the front was to be believed. And while Finn was aware of the existence of diners, he had after all been in one or two for missions, he had never once had the chance to truly savour them, not like this at least, not at his own leisure. He found himself fascinated by this particular one. Even Poe was looking around him with a smile so infectious that Finn found himself smiling with him. 

“Been here often then I take it,” Finn commented. 

At his words, Poe’s delight turned into something more tender, vulnerable even. In a soft voice he said.  

“Ma used to take me here before she died once a week at least, whenever she had time.”

Finn nodded. He had never met Shara Bey and he knew he never would, but there was something in the way that Poe talked about her that made it seem like he could see her so clearly. Her sparkling dark eyes, her sweet smile, her mess of curls and her laughter like a crackling flame in the dark. It created an ache in his chest a longing he couldn’t quite articulate. All he knew was that even if he had never met her, he loved her in his own way.

He wanted to say something to Poe, he wanted to tell him just how honoured he was that Poe felt like he could share something like this with him. But before he could say anything Poe spoke again.

“Do you like it?” He asked with a smile gesturing to the diner around.

“It’s…” Finn didn’t know how to describe it, not in proper words. 

He looked around him and took in the richly coloured wooden tables and the deep burgundy cushions fixed into the booths. The smell of food and caf, as well as the sounds of talking and music permeated through the whole place while the amber light had been dimmed to fit the evening mood. The diner was warm and comforting in this raucousness. It made him feel safe in a way he had never thought possible, at least not in a place that was so public. It felt like…

“It’s so you,” he said and immediately felt the blood rush to his cheeks at those words. 

He did not look back at Poe, instead opting to take in as much of the diner as he could. He prayed that Poe would not question him further and make him explain exactly what he meant. He was afraid that his answer would be far too close to the heart of things.

But at his words, Poe had sucked in a sharp breath and despite himself, Finn glanced back at Poe only to see that the other man had fixed him with a strange look, a look of wonder and fascination, as if Finn were some great mythical thing sprung from the pages of legend. It was a look that seemed to have been meant especially for Finn. And when their eyes met, Poe smiled at him, before hastily looking down at the menu, seemingly abashed. 

It all happened too fast that it left Finn reeling, a sharp pull in his chest urging him to chase that moment, those eyes, that look, now long gone. It left him wishing he could play it back, over and over again. Wishing Poe would look at him like that, at least one more time.

Soon, however, Poe’s embarrassed smile  grew into something akin to a smirk. He looked up at Finn once again but this time instead of that look of wonder, that Finn found himself so desperately craving, there was a certain spark in his eye and it was one that Finn easily recognised. Wild and reckless, like lightning streaking the starless sky, the warning of a wildfire crackling in the air. Finn braced himself. A spark like that could either give way to genius or madness, and when it came to Poe Dameron you never knew which it could be.

Finn felt his breath hitch in his throat as Poe leaned in, his lips barely millimetres from his skin as he whispered “How do you feel about holding hands?”

Finn found himself confused by the request. 

“We already do that,” he reminded him.

Poe seemed amused by that remark. In a lower tone, he added more seriously “There’s a couple’s extra. It’s cake, I don’t know, it always looked so good when I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to try it. But…”

Poe did not need to explain. His mother’s death, a tumultuous adolescence, then the relentless pursuit of justice for the galaxy with all a child’s demanding. Finn could imagine Poe barely having any time for a proper romantic relationship, let alone have it be steady enough for him to bring such a partner to his favourite diner. 

Then it dawned on Finn, he realised then exactly what Poe was asking of him. “Oh so we’re going to-“

“Yep”

Finn held out his hand and Poe took it readily. His fingers were warm against his skin, calloused and familiar and Finn took comfort in them as they tangled together in a way that felt like being home at last. He found himself grinning. 

“Babe?” Poe said more loudly. 

He was smiling sweetly as his eyes were fixed on Finn once again with an intent adoring gaze. And Finn would have killed to see that expression his face again, to hear him speak with that exact sweetness as if he was the whole galaxy to him. 

“Yeah, babe?” Finn reciprocated as if it was the most natural thing in the world. 

Poe’s smile only grew wider and Finn could have sworn there he had turned a barely noticeable shade of red. He wanted to discern its meaning, he wanted to see if there was something more to it, as if somehow the way the blood had rushed to his cheeks could ever be an indicator as to whether Poe’s heart was beating in time with his own. But he stopped himself. 

Hope was treacherous, hope was uncertain. It was like closing your eyes and stepping off a cliff’s edge, not knowing whether you would fall or fly. At least not until you feel your bones crush beneath you and your mouth fill with your own blood. 

He should not hope. 

But his resolve seemed to weaken with every moment that Poe spent thumbing circles on Finn’s palms. Finn felt like he could not breathe. All he could think about, all he could feel was him. It was as if something had crawled through his mind and had devoured everything there until only Poe’s name remained. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have agreed to this. Maybe he-

“Have I ever told you how good you look in my clothes?” Poe asked breaking through Finn’s thoughts.

Poe's voice had a grounding effect in that moment, pulling him out of the haze that seemed to have left him momentarily blind and paralysed, and settling him once again in this very diner, Poe in front of him. Finn found he could finally breathe. 

He took Poe’s words in, played them around in his head and found himself warmed by them, even though he knew, at least, for the most part, it was an act.

“All the time,” said Finn, relishing in the moment. “Literally one of the first things you said to me on D’Qar when you saw me in your jacket, keep it, it suits you.”

“Well it did suit you,” said Poe, his hand going to the collar of the shirt Finn was wearing. “And so does this.”

“And all the other clothes of yours I wore after Crait?” Finn asked brow raised leaning forward across the table towards Poe. “Should I keep those too?”

Poe grinned mirroring Finn’s actions as he seemed to bridge the gap between them. “Sure why not.”

“At this rate Poe you won’t have any clothes left of your own,”

Poe shrugged. “Oh, I don’t mind. I’m sure you wouldn’t either.”

He tried not to think of what Poe just said, but it wasn’t easy. Finn became painfully aware that their faces were barely millimetres apart, their breaths intermingling. Finn felt the heat rise to his cheeks he prayed Poe wouldn’t notice. All he wanted to do was to give in, to close the distance between them, hoping to ease not only the phantom pain in his lips that seemed to be begging for Poe but also the thoughts that seemed to have sprung in his mind from his words. 

You don’t think of friends like that. He reminded himself harshly. 

“I’m starting to think you steal my clothes on purpose,” continued Poe. 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Finn murmured. 

“Really?” Poe gave him a devilish smile. “Because for someone who can take a shower in under 5 minutes, I can’t think of another reason why you would still get our clothes mixed up.” He shook his head. “How do you do that anyway? I can’t imagine not taking at least twenty minutes.”

Finn shrugged. “Never had the luxury.”

Back in the First Order whenever they showered they would have a timer installed in the fresher, only five minutes had been allowed to them. And if by chance one had not cleared the fresher before the time was up they would be dealt with small electric shocks until they cleared the space. Even the memory of it was enough to make him shudder. 

“Guess I should join you someday,” said Poe with a wink. “You know…show you how it's done."

For a moment, Finn found himself immobilised. He would usually laugh, dispelling Poe’s words and how they might affect him but today his thoughts got the better of him. Because he could see it all in his head now, the lines and curves of Poe’s body, emerged like something illicit and shadowy in his mind. 

“I…” he managed out. 

Before he was able to undoubtedly say something stupid he heard footsteps nearing. They both looked up to see one of the waitresses were making her way towards them. Poe pulled away from Finn directing his attention to her.

She stopped by their booth and smiled. She was pretty with straight blond hair, and blue eyes. Finn wondered if she recognised them as well, just as Jyn had at the marketplace. Finn wouldn’t be surprised. If she did, however, she didn’t seem inclined to say anything.

“Are you guys ready to order?” She asked.

“Yeah sure,” Poe answered. “Could we get two doughnuts and some regular caf to go with it?”

He held Finn’s hand tighter as she wrote it down on her data pad. And a part of Finn wished he would never let go.

“No problem," she answered. “Anything else?”

“Actually uh-“ Poe gave her a small smile and glanced at her name tag. “Jade. We were looking at the extras but…” he flashed his mother’s ring on the chain around his neck and the woman gave him a knowing look. Finn pretended not to notice. Poe continued talking. 

“But you know,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

“So date night huh?” She asked writing something down on her data pad. “Any special occasion?”

“Celebrating three years together,” supplied Finn leaning into Poe.

Because that’s what couples do right? You tend to propose on special days if you could afford to. Or at least that’s what Snap had told him once on Ajan Kloss as Finn had handed him tools while the pilot had repaired his X-Wing. 

“Don’t know how I managed to put up with this idiot,” Finn confessed. “I deserve a prize.”

“Careful,” warned Poe. “I might just have to give you one in the form of a ring and you’ll be forced to put up with me for the rest of our lives.”

Finn wondered if Poe will ever know exactly how much he wanted it, needed it. He couldn’t imagine it, living an entire lifetime without Poe Dameron by his side. 

“Kriiffing adorable, you guys bicker like my parents,” Jade told them. “Just sent the orders through. Your food should be with shortly.” With that, she headed over to the next booth to take orders from a Twi’lek family. 

 As soon as she was out of earshot Finn hurriedly whispered to Poe. 

“That was your mum’s ring,”

“She would have approved my using it for extras,” Poe answered with an all-knowing smile. 

And somehow Finn did not doubt him. Poe’s expression became almost apologetic, the red returned to his cheek, almost scarlet. 

“Sorry if I got a little carried away with the flirting…” he whispered. “If I made you uncomfortable.”

Finn wondered briefly of what had given him away. What had been his tell? What had led to Poe realising something had been different this time?

“It’s fine.” Finn Answered. “Nothing I haven’t heard before, I’ve seen you flirt with everyone on base, even Klaud.”

“Yeah, but I don’t really mean it with… it’s different with you, I…” Poe said then stopped abruptly as if he had said too much. Finn should have asked what he had meant by all that but he was too much of a coward.

Finn decided to push it all aside. 

After all, there was no point in hoping. Not when that hope had the potential to break him beyond repair.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Or would it? Would it truly break him?

Finn did not know it, at least not then, but Poe kept a holo of him in his pocket, along with those of his parents, the Black Squadron, Rey and Leia. The people who meant the most to him in the entire galaxy. They were his little pockets of hope, the infallible guiding lights he could drag into the darkest of dusks. 

And on nights when he found himself going further into darkness it was Finn’s holo that he looked to, it was for Finn that Poe found himself wanting to live.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“You have to dip them in the caf Finn trust me,” Poe said. 

But he was pouting in a way that made it hard for Finn to take him seriously. As promised the doughnuts and caf had arrived shortly after they had ordered. And while Finn was more than content to eat his doughnut separately from his caf Poe had been insistent on Finn dipping the doughnut into it instead.

“The last time you told me to trust you,” Finn reminded him. “We almost got killed.”

“Hey that wasn’t my fault,” Poe reminded him. “BB-8 should’ve listened and-”

“Sure Poe whatever you say, blame it on the droid.”

Poe did not bite back as he usually did, instead his eyes glinted as if presented with a rare opportunity. It lasted for a second, maybe even less, but by the time Finn realised what was happening, Poe had already snatched Finn’s half-eaten doughnut from him and had dipped a little of it in Finn’s cup of caf.

“Eat.” Poe prompted proffering the pastry towards Finn.

“You ruined it,” Finn complained. Poe probably hadn’t actually done anything of that sort but over the years Finn found he took pleasure in being stubborn and argumentative with him.

“Fucking hell man don’t make me force you”

Finn found himself smirking up at him. “Actually, I think I’d like to see you try,”

“And I’d rather not be kicked out of my favourite diner,” Poe told him. “And besides Ma used to do it that way.”

“Really Poe?”

“C’mon if you get to play the orphan card, I get to play the dead mum card.”

While Finn found himself rolling his eye it still surprised him, how comfortably they were able to joke about these things, brush them off as if they were nothing, somehow making their respective burdens easier to bear. 

“Fine,” Finn relented. “But I’m only doing this ‘cause your mum was cool.”

“Fair enough,” Poe said shrugging. “You know I got bailed out of a lot of shit when I was a kid ‘cause my mum was cool.” 

Finn looked at the pastry in Poe’s hands. A part of him briefly considered how strangely intimate of a gesture it was, Poe, feeding him, but he decided not to think too much about it. With that Finn took a bite of the doughnut and had to suppress the sound of delight that threatened to spill out. The sweetness of the pastry combined with the rich flavours of the caf was truly nothing short of marvellous. 

“Good?” Asked Poe watching him with a self-satisfied expression.

“Fuck off,” said Finn taking the rest of his doughnut from him. But he dipped his next bite into the caf which made Poe smile. And for Finn, that was all he had ever wanted. 

“See you should trust me more,” Poe had said it lightly but there was a pained edge there too. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

And he realised then maybe he should have done exactly that. Finn should have trusted him. 

He should have trusted him enough to tell him about Slip, he should have told about the simmering anger that had raged in him, whispering you killed him not knowing whether it was a blessing or a curse. He should have told him about the strange feelings in him that seemed to guide. He should have told him about the force despite what Ren had done. He shouldn’t have pushed Poe away, poisoning himself with the fear that Poe would leave him if he knew. But Poe would never have seen him differently. He never could.

But most of all Finn should have told him that he loved him. He should have told him, every day since the day they met, he should have told him even when he did not have the words for it, shouting I love you, I love you, I love you until the stars themselves heard and his own lungs would be ripped raw from the effort. 

Would haves, could haves, should haves. They seemed to litter his life regardless of how many times he’d forced himself to be brave.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The long-awaited cake finally arrive as Finn was finishing the last dregs of his caf. 

As Jade put it down on the table, Finn could not help but smile. It was small just enough for two people, simple and round but shaped to perfection. The chocolate glaze was rich and so glossy that it almost seemed to reflect their surroundings. The baker had even taken pains to write “Happy Three Years” in white frosting on the top. Finn supposed he should act a little more surprised.

“How did you-“

Poe shrugged sharing a conspiratorial smile with their waitress. “I don’t know you tell me”

“You’re such a hopeless kriffiing romantic,” Finn said to him. 

“And you love me for it,” Poe answered, he reached out and clasped hands. “Happy three years babe.” He looked up at Jade then. “Thank you so much”

“Anytime,” she answered. “Enjoy the rest of your date,” Before she left Poe a wink and a subtle thumbs up which Finn may not have noticed at all, had he not been aware of Poe’s plan the entire time.

“All my childhood dreams come true,” said Poe once Jade had left eyeing the cake with utter fascination.

“I can see why you’d lie to get it,” said Finn. “It looks good.”

“Well, only one way to find out,” 

With any further adieu, they took up their spoons a dug in. And to Finn’s utter delight. The cake was good. More than good, rich yet light enough for him to not feel overwhelmed as he sometimes did with food. 

(Back in the First Order, no one remembered their birthdays, no one had much to celebrate, except maybe when they officially graduated from cadets to troopers. Then as a treat, some of the older troopers would smuggle in cakes. Flat hardened things that had probably gone a little stale on the journey, but they had been sweet, and for a trooper like FN-2187, that was more than a luxury.) 

Once they were done Finn found himself in an almost blissful state. If he died at this very moment he felt he would have been happy to do so, knowing he has lived life to its fullest. 

“I feel like I’ve had too much sugar,” Finn admitted trying to fill the silence. “Need something savoury.”

“Well we could order more food here but if you want try another place…”

“I’m game.”

Poe grinned. “Well, I know exactly where-“ he paused. “You’ve got a little frosting on your…” Poe pointed to the corner of his lip.

“Oh I…” Finn tried to rub it off. 

“No not there…”

Finn tried again. 

“Here let me…” Poe leaned forward and wiped his thumb against the corner of Finn’s lip. And Finn tried to pretend a part of him hadn’t been aching for this kind of touch ever since he had met him.

For a moment Poe’s thumb lingered at his lips, light almost imperceptible but it was there and it was real and Finn could feel it. For a moment their eyes met, for a moment it seemed there was a question, hovering between them.

But the moment died quickly. Poe withdrew his hand and it left Finn wanting in his wake. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

In the end, Rey and Kes stood side by side grinning proudly, covered in grease and sweat. The last rays of the evening sun were slowly slipping over the horizon, raging against the dark its in streaks of muted orange, gold and mauve. The repairs to the old tractor were finally done, and the low rumble of the engines was proof. 

“Where did you learn all this?” Asked Kes with a breathless laugh. “I’ve been trying to get this thing to work for years.”

Rey shrugged but something unfurled in her chest at his words. She found herself smiling warmed by his appreciation. 

“I was a scavenger on Jakku before I was a Jedi,” she told him. “I know parts.”

“Well you’re better than Poe that’s for sure,” said Kes and Rey found herself laughing at that. “If you ever get tired of Jedi stuff in the future feel free to help me on the farm.”

“Are you offering me a job?”

“A part-time offer,” said Kes. “You did good kid.”

Kes clasped her shoulder firmly, before pulling her in for a small hug. (Rey didn’t know it then, but it was something he had done frequently with Poe, that was, at least, before he had lost him). He looked down at her the expression on his face was one she had seen on Han’s face, on Leia’s on Luke’s when she had achieved the impossible. He seemed proud.

For a moment Rey wondered whether working with Han would have been like this, whether staying with her parents would have felt like this. Easy and tragically carefree.

(And for a moment Kes wondered if this was what it would have been like if Shara had lived and had they both had the daughter that she had always wanted.)

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

They walked out of the diner, leaving a generous tip for Jade, hand in hand, side by side, as the last rays of light flitted away leaving nothing but darkness and the starry night sky. Poe felt himself grinning like an idiot and it was mostly because Finn finally seemed utterly content, a far cry from what he had been the day before or even this morning.

The air was quiet and sated and with Finn’s hand in his, it was as if Poe could conquer the world. 

“Rey would love these,” Poe said finally raising the box of doughnuts in his other hand. 

Food was a thing of religion for both Finn and Rey and Poe could not blame them. If he had to grow up eating like they had he too would probably worship food with the same fervour. So every time he went on a mission he would always try his best to bring home something new for them to try and now it seemed that habit had been ingrained in him. Even now it did not stop, he found himself doing the same long after the resistance had disbanded. 

“Too bad she decided to ditch us,” Finn replied. 

“Well, we wouldn’t have gotten the cake if she hadn’t,” Poe said grinning towards Finn as he stopped on the side walking, suddenly noticing that one of the buttons of Finn’s coat had come undone. He handed the doughnuts to Finn before letting go of his hand to fix the stray button. 

“We could have been a throuple, surely they wouldn’t give us shit for being poly,” 

Poe rolled his eyes as he fiddled with Finn’s coat. “Imagine me having to explain why I have only one wedding ring when I’m proposing to two people and besides Rey’s more like a sister,”

“And what about me then?” Finn asked. ‘“What’s different? Am I not like a brother?”

Poe looked up only to find that once again their faces were irresistibly close. The button long forgotten his hand resting on Finn’s chest right over his beating heart. A slight move forward and their lips would meet. Why did they always end up like this? With Poe fighting with every atom in his being so as to not close the distance between them. To pretend like his every waking moment wasn’t spent yearning hopelessly, breathlessly, burning slowly within himself with desire for him. 

He looked back down at the button on Finn’s coat, wondering if he had imagined the question underneath all of his words. What are we? He tried to think of a joke but as soon as he looked up at Finn it all died in his throat. 

His expression was so utterly sincere, so earnest that Poe found that lying to him or joking about it would be a kind of dishonesty that he could never justify. For once, he decided to let go of his fears and ghosts, or at least some of them. 

“You’re my best friend,” he whispered looking Finn in the eye. 

Before Finn could reply Poe leaned in and placed a soft kiss on Finn’s cheek. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done this before. He was notorious for his cheek kisses back in the resistance. But something in this kiss felt different, felt like something that could be more. And judging by the look in Finn’s eyes - so soft, so vulnerable, so delicate- it seemed as if he was thinking the same, and maybe even feeling the same. Poe could have sworn that in that moment Finn’s eyes seemed to reflect the same sort of love Poe felt. 

He had no proof, at least not much, but the way Finn leaned into him, stepping forward as if chasing the kiss, chasing the moment…they were enough to give him hope. 

“You want burgers?” Poe asked lamely, unsure of what to do, what to say.

But Finn’s strangely vulnerable expression turned into one that was all too familiar. He grinned and Poe found himself at ease. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Finn would never forget it, the way they sped through Yavin that night, the midnight sky blurring together, the cool wind in their hair, Poe's grin as bright and sharp as the stars above, while his laughter raged like wildfire dancing in the breeze as the starlight glinted, reflecting against the chain on his neck where Shara Bey’s ring lay. The stars above them streaked past but Poe’s kiss still burned on Finn’s cheek. It had been soft and sweet, like the feathered touch of a moth’s wing against one’s skin. But it had lingered and so had Poe’s words. 

Best friend. 

It wasn’t lover, but at least it wasn’t brother either. 

They only stopped once to get burgers, buying some for Rey and Kes as well, though they would most likely be fast asleep by the time Finn and Poe returned. 

‘

Eventually, around midnight they found themselves under the great pyramids of the Masassi, disposable cups of caf in hand looking up at the stars. Shoulders brushing - far from any kind of proof but for Finn, it was everything - as Poe urged him to look up. 

He did so reluctantly not knowing how to tell him he couldn’t see the stars, not truly, not when the sun, his sun, stood right beside him. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Does it truly matter, if the person you have come to love, doesn’t love you in the same way? Does truly matter if their heart doesn't quite beat in time with yours? Or if your souls were not made of the same matter? At least their heart still beats for you. At least out of all the souls in the galaxy, it was yours they had found in this lifetime. 

It was love no matter the circumstance. The kind of love that makes the brightest of scholars lose their minds, the kind of love that makes the peacemakers fight wars, the kind of love that makes the poets spend their whole lives trying to put it into words. 

Why ruin it? Why force it to be something else?

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

They returned back to the homestead trying and failing to desperately suppress their laughter as they entered the house, a story from Poe’s childhood, one that was more funny than it had any right to be, reeling in their mind. It felt like that one time they had both gotten drunk on Corellian rum during a mission and had returned to Ajan Kloss in the middle of the night trying to desperately hide it from Leia and the rest of the resistance. 

Only this time they seemed to be drunk on something stronger than rum and fortunately they had also managed to make it out of their speeder into their shared room without waking up everyone in their vicinity.

As of now, Poe was lying on his back snug under the blankets as he looked up at the ceiling. Finn beside him, on his own mattress, relishing in the feeling of his tired limbs loosening, his consciousness unravelling, when suddenly he froze. bis newfound contentment was now somehow seized up by a sudden fear. He sat up and tried to breathe.

Phasma’s gleaming helm. The dead bodies. The flames. What if it all comes back?

Poe noticed. As he always did. He turned to face him.

“Finn, what is it?”

Finn did not know how to answer him, but luckily Poe did not need words. He sat up on his own bed and faced Finn, his concern written all over his face. 

“Do you want me near?” Poe whispered. 

Finn considered his words for a moment but he did not have to consider them for long.

“If that’s okay,” he whispered back. 

“Buddy it's more than okay, you know that.”

Without another word, Poe threw his own blanket aside and laid himself down on Finn’s mattress. For a while, they did not speak. For a while, all Finn did was take in the warmth radiating from the other man’s body until he felt his very soul unspooling and his heartbeat still to something that resembled normalcy. 

“Finn?”

“Mmm?” Finn turned to his side to see that Poe was staring at him strange look on his face. The other man paused and then said in a low voice.

“You're my best friend,” 

It was soft, a little delirious and yet so wholly sincere that if Finn didn’t know any better he would say it was love. 

Song is You Are In Love for this chapter

Let me know what you think <3