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“No!” Poe shouted. “Snap, get back, get them out of range—” He pounded on the holotable with impotent fury, broken ribs clearly forgotten in the frantic rush to guide his squadron from a distance against steep odds.
Ten X-wings jinked and rolled to avoid enemy fire from the remaining cannons on the First Order star destroyer they’d just rendered dead in the water. One by one, they found their hyperspace lanes and made the jump back towards base.
Only one shot landed: Kylo’s X-wing, just a fragment of blue on the holos, blinked out of existence with all of the drama of a grain maggot in the throes of death.
The surviving pilots counted off. Poe snapped out orders to the ground crew as they prepared to ease nine badly damaged ships in for a safe landing. There was a rush of murmurs from the other officers in the room, voices overlapping with dismay and relief and shock.
Leia sat down hard. If the microexpressions of his commanding officers hadn’t been necessary for his survival while growing up, Finn would have missed the faint tremor in her lips, the twitch of her hands, the tightening of the lines around her eyes.
Finn’s eyes fell to the blinking little X by Kylo’s call sign.
Ren was dead. Ren was gone. Ren was done.
Something was happening to Finn, something terrifying and overwhelming and he couldn’t breathe and oh right, this is a panic attack. He made his way out of the room as calmly and quietly as he could. The officers parted around him. Poe touched his arm as Finn passed him; Finn brushed him aside and hurried out of the room.
Poe was following him. Finn knew this. He couldn’t hear anything through the rushing in his ears, he wasn’t looking over his shoulder, but he knew Poe was following him, still in shock from Kylo’s death but worried about Finn’s well-being.
“Breathe, Finn.” Poe crouched before the bed, where Finn was sitting—when had they gotten back to their room? Finn wondered, but he couldn’t hold onto the thought. “Breathe with me, okay? I’ve got you. You’re going to be all right.”
Someone passed down the hallway, whispering to their friend in amazement about what just happened in the control room. An ikopi watched an X-wing pass overhead, then nudged its fawn and kept moving towards the good purple grass on the edge of the forest.
Finn’s heartbeat pounded in his ears.
“Finn.” Poe set his hands on Finn’s shoulders. “Breathe. Please. You’re going to be all right, I promise. You—”
Poe was glowing, Finn was glowing, something was throbbing between his temples, Leia sat in her office and stared at her datapad, shell-shocked and grieving. Across the galaxy, Rey dropped one of the pebbles she was levitating and blinked up at the sky.
“Something’s wrong,” Finn said, dimly aware that Poe was still talking. “Something’s wrong. Something’s—” He was standing, ten feet tall now, or maybe just tall enough to see over the rim of Poe’s worn-out boots.
Poe scrambled to his feet, brow furrowed. He reached out to Finn—
Finn pushed his hands away. “I need space,” he said, trying to breathe past the throbbing spike in his temples. “I need—let me go!”
Poe wasn’t holding him back, wasn’t even touching him, he could see that now, but he could also see how desperately Poe wanted to hug him, layered over reality like a badly edited holo.
“No.” Finn clawed through his hair. “No. Let me go. I need—I need—I need space.” He yanked the window open, slid out through it, and landed neatly on the ground as though he’d done that a thousand times before instead of never. The forest approached, teeming with wildlife and birdsong and cold misty air. Finn closed his eyes and plunged into it, not missing a single step.
He rattled down the narrow cliff path to the ocean. Stones scattered beneath his hasty boots, plunging into the white-capped waves below. When he finally reached the beach, he dove straight into the water in the desperate hope that it might shock him back into himself.
The cold water closed over his head, shutting out sound. Far beyond the shore, a whale crooned to its young. Shells tumbled in the rough current beneath his feet. Poe dropped his wrench and stared at the inside of Black One’s engine, trying to make sense of a world without his torturer. Rey fired up the Falcon and waved Chewie aboard.
Finn shot to the surface and gasped for air. Above the waves, the air was crisp and cold, full of salt and sunlight. The ocean ebbed and surged around his body, teeming with plankton and fish and sea creatures, each seeking their own needs and reveling in their own delights.
Treading water, halfway between shore and deep, Finn could feel the connections between his body and every other living thing. The world soared around him, surrounding him and binding him and—
Finn blinked.
Leia poured out exactly one measure of Correlian brandy into her cut-glass tumbler, then set the bottle aside on the gritty edge of the cliff. It was nearly empty; she hadn’t had a chance to find more since evacuating D’Qar. Her usual smuggler was, of course, gone.
She felt the sudden glow of his Force presence before she heard his silent footsteps change to deliberate noise in order to not startle her. “Sit,” she said, and waved a hand at the rough sandstone beside her. “Almost clear enough to see the Uniret system tonight.”
Finn sat beside her, boots dangling over the edge of the cliff. Leia poured another measure of brandy and handed it to him.
He set it aside, untouched. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” Leia’s voice slipped under the rustle of the wind over the ocean.
“That your son is dead.”
“You’re not sorry for his sake.”
“No,” Finn said. “I’m not. But I am sorry for your grief.”
Leia watched a rook fight against the strong winds, tugging a stubborn fish from the waves. “Thank you,” she said at last. “For being honest with me. I can’t handle any more false condolences.”
“I—” Finn said hesitantly. “I also had a question for you. But I know you must want space now. Do you want me to leave?”
Leia shook her head. She had no idea how to even begin to answer his question, but he deserved whatever she could offer. Luke, she begged.
“When he died,” Finn started hesitantly. “Something happened. I—”
“I think he must have taken it from you,” Leia rasped before he can even finish the sentence.
“Taken—is that—even possible?”
“Yes,” Luke said behind them, then sat beside Leia. She leaned against him as though drawn by his gravity. He wrapped an arm around her back and held her close. “Severing an individual’s connection to the Force is difficult, but entirely possible.”
“The Force,” Finn echoed.
“You felt it return, when he died?”
Finn nodded, utterly dazed. “It was—overwhelming. I could feel everything, see—” He waved a hand through the air. “Everything. It’s connected, the threads, I can see—I went into the ocean, and—just— looked at everything, and felt it. All of it.”
“How did you manage it?” Luke asked.
“I don’t know,” Finn said. “I don’t, I just—I was overwhelmed, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t—I just—I sank into it.”
“And?”
“And that helped, I guess. I—I could see my part in it,” he said, turning back to them. “I could feel—where I belong.” He still felt like he was glowing, iridescent as the stars. “But I still feel like I’m drowning in it. How do you manage feeling all of that?”
“Most people get a lifetime to practice,” Luke said quietly. “Rey and I didn’t start learning how to harness the Force until we were adults, but we still had access to it. He must have taken it from you years ago.”
“Probably,” Finn said.
“Do you remember—”
“No,” Finn said. “I don’t remember anything before I was fourteen.”
“You were reconditioned then?” Luke asked.
A nus-whale surfaced and sprayed a blast of saltwater from its blowhole, completely invisible in the night. Finn knew it was there.
“Is it possible to learn how to handle it?” Finn asked.
“I believe so,” Luke said. “I must say, out of all the pupils I’ve ever had, you’re the one I'm least worried about ever going Dark.”
Leia took another sip of her brandy, staring up at the stars.
“Can you make it stop?” Finn whispered.
“I can sever you again,” Luke said. “If you want me to.”
“No fucking way,” Finn said, before even consciously deciding.
“Okay,” Luke said calmly. “I can also give you Force-severance cuffs. Not attached to each other, just—very large bracelets. You could put them on if you ever need a break. Control what you’re feeling.”
“Maybe,” Finn said. It might help just to have them. To know that feeling the Force was a choice. That his mind was his own to control.
“Can you teach me?” he asked. “How to use the Force. How to—not go insane.” Or Dark, but he didn’t want to even say that out loud.
“Of course,” Luke said. “I would be happy to.”
“Thank you,” Finn said. “I mean—I have to finish the Freedom Campaign, too. Take down the First Order. But—if there’s time, between missions—I would—I would really like to learn.”
He could see the threads connecting Luke and Leia now. If he didn’t learn how to channel it, it would drive him crazy—or at least that was what it felt like.
Luke’s lips twitched up into a smile. “Rey will be thrilled to have someone to practice with.”
Finn snorted. Somehow, crazy mystical powers seemed a little easier to handle when couched in terms of meditating and sparring with his best friend.
“You’re going to be all right,” Luke said.
“If I’d known I had the Force,” Finn rasped, “I could have—”
“Rescued yourself? Prevented your husband from getting captured and tortured?” Leia took her third sip of brandy. “Yes.”
“Fuck,” Finn said. “He’s going to—”
“Have you talked about it with him?”
Finn shook his head, suddenly nauseous. “I wanted to be sure, first. To talk to you both about it.”
“Well, when you do go talk to him—” Leia patted his hand. “May the Force be with you.”
When Finn crept back into their room, it was still brightly lit. Poe sat hunched over the desk, tapping absently at a holo projecting the interior of an X-wing engine into the air. He spun around as Finn closed the door behind himself.
“Hey, love.” He shut off the holo and rose to meet Finn. “How are you? Did that help?”
Finn opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Finn?”
“I need to talk to you,” Finn said.
“I’m here, buddy.” Poe sat on the bed and patted the covers next to him. His hand glowed as brightly as his heart, bright orange and concern and love and exhaustion.
Finn blinked.
“Finn?” Poe bit his lip. “She’ll forgive you, I promise. You saved her, you—”
“I have the Force,” Finn said.
“What?”
Finn stared at Poe.
Poe shook his head. “I didn’t hear you right. What did you say?”
Finn sat on the desk chair, shoulders hunching inward.
“What do you mean?” Poe whispered.
“I have the Force.”
“But you—you don’t. I know you don’t. You’ve never—”
“Kylo took it from me. Now he’s dead. So I have it back.”
“But—what—how? That’s impossible.”
Finn nodded.
“You don’t,” Poe repeated. “You don’t. You can’t.”
Poe’s terror crested over Finn in a roaring wave, knocking him back against the edge of the desk. He set his teeth, hard, determined not to cry. “I do,” he whispered.
“What the fuck.” Poe stumbled up and away from him, face twisting into a mask of anger. “What the fuck. How could you—why didn’t you—”
“I didn’t choose this, okay? I know you’re scared.”
“Get out of my head!”
“I’m not—”
“I don’t want to hear it! I don’t—I—” With a blow to the desk chair that upended it entirely, wheels spinning uselessly in the corner, Poe yanked his boots on and shoved out the door.
Finn pulled his knees to his chest and closed his eyes, trying to pull in a full breath.
BB-8 whizzed towards Finn. Finn didn’t even have the energy to back away. “I’m sorry, Bee,” he rasped. “I didn't ask for this. I won’t hurt him, I promise, I—”
[AFFIRMATIVE], BB-8 informed him. [THAT IS OBVIOUS]
Finn blinked.
[HUG?]
“Affirmative,” Finn whispered, and wrapped his arms around BB-8’s cool round dome. “Thank you.”
Poe still wasn’t back by the time Finn finally fell asleep, deep in the small hours of the morning. Nor when he got up again, exhausted and gritty and hollow and just as overwhelmed as he’d been the night before. When he returned from breakfast to grab another datapad for Cor, Poe’s flightsuit was gone.
Finn stared at the empty hanger in Poe’s closet until his comm beeped again with a summons to Control.
“Just a supply run,” Jess shrugged. “They should be back in a few days. Why?”
“Nothing,” Finn said.
“Didn’t Poe tell you about the mission? I can’t imagine him just leaving without telling you where he’s going.”
“Neither can I.”
“What the fuck happened between you two? He can’t possibly hate you for killing Kylo. Even if the fucker saved him in the end, he still—”
“Bye, Jess.” Finn ducked beneath Dagger One ’s wing and hurried back to the base before she could catch him.
The door creaked open, shut. Finn blinked into the darkness. He couldn’t see a thing, but he knew it was Poe even before hearing his quiet steps. He could feel that it was Poe. His presence glowed warm and sun-bright.
“I can keep pretending to be asleep, if you’d like,” Finn whispered. “And we can talk in—the morning, or whenever you’re ready.”
There was a quiet thud, then another, as Poe took his boots off. Clothing rustled. His comm clacked onto the desk. The chair’s wheels squeaked as he sat down.
Finn sat up and squinted through the dark room, wishing he could see Poe’s face—but he didn’t really need to, did he? He could feel waves of emotion from Poe, crashing and tumbling against each other like the ocean far below them.
“I’m not going to apologize for being afraid of it,” Poe murmured.
Finn’s hands tightened on the sheets.
“I am afraid. And there's—there’s not a lot I can do about that, at least not in a few days of thinking about it. I can work on it. I’m going to. But that’ll take time.”
Finn nodded, then remembered that Poe couldn’t see him. “Yeah,” he rasped instead. “I understand.”
Poe took a deep breath, then let it out. “What I am sorry for,” he whispered, “really, really, really sorry—is how I reacted. I know you didn’t choose this. I’m sure you’re at least as scared as I am, and probably much more. It’s your own mind that was changed, and changed back. Your own body. That’s—that must be terrifying.” The light above the desk clicked on, low and golden, tracing shadows beneath Poe’s eyes.
Finn nodded silently.
Poe held out a hand.
Finn took it.
“I love you,” Poe murmured. “I’m so sorry I yelled at you. And left without talking to you first. I’m—I’m going to try my goddamn best to be here for you. Whenever you need me. However you need me. Whatever I can do.”
Finn nodded again, throat too tight to speak.
Poe held out his arms.
Finn tumbled into them, sending them spinning across the room on the desk chair. It stopped short at the closet and tipped back; Finn toppled into Poe’s lap. Poe wrapped his arms tightly around Finn and held him close.
“How are you?” Poe whispered. “How are you doing with—with—all of this?”
“I have crazy mystical magical powers now,” Finn said. His breath hitched in a laugh, or maybe a sob, or both.
Poe rubbed small circles into Finn’s back.
Finn closed his eyes. “I—I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can’t use them yet, but I can feel them, I can feel the Force, it’s—it’s—I’ll be able to lift rocks, someday, once I train more with Luke and Rey. Lift your X-wing, maybe. Or I might go mad. Turn to the Dark side. Destroy everything I love and I—I—I don’t know what to do. And I know you don’t want to hear this, you don’t want to think about it, just—please—tell me when it’s too much, okay? I—I can talk to Rey, too, when I need to. Or Leia, or Luke.”
“Okay,” Poe whispered. “I will.” He stroked Finn’s back. Finn took a few deep breaths to calm down, centering himself back into the tight circle of Poe’s arms around him.
“What’s it like?” Poe asked softly.
Finn thought this over for a moment. “It’s like…like, you know how holos are just blue, but you can see the colors anyway? Like, I know your flightsuit is orange, and your vest is white, and your hair is black. And so when I see you in a holo, I almost see those colors, even though I know perfectly well it’s just blue. The Force feels like that. I know perfectly well that I’m not seeing anything when I look at you, but—but I can feel it, and I know it’s there.”
“So—I feel different, to you? In the Force, I mean.”
“Everyone does. Every sentient, every non-sentient being, all the flora, every planet. There are a thousand shades of craziness out there.”
“That sounds…overwhelming.”
Finn nodded.
“What can I do? Is there any way I can help?”
“Just—be here,” Finn whispered. “Everything is different, everything is crazy and changing and I’m dizzy, I—I—I’m scared.”
Poe’s arms tightened around him.
“I know that I love you,” Finn rasped. “I know—I know who you are, more or less, I—I just—I just need you. I’m sorry this hurts you. I—I need you, Poe.”
“I know,” Poe rasped. He cupped Finn’s face in his hands, eyes glinting in the light. “I’m sorry. I—I can’t promise I’ll be able to listen to everything, especially once you start learning about—about—yeah. Uh. Anyway. But I’m here, Finn. As long as you want me to be. In whatever way you need me.”
“Thank you.” Finn buried his face in Poe’s shoulder. “Thank you so much.”
“I love you,” Poe murmured against Finn’s temple, rocking them slowly. “The Force—I hate the Force,” he confessed quietly. “But I’ll—I’ll find a way to live with it without freaking out at you again. A way to accept it. I know I can do it. It—it may take a while, but I’ll figure it out. I promise you.”
“Thank you,” Finn whispered again. “So much.”
“Of course,” Poe whispered back. “My love.”
Finn took a deep breath of Poe’s familiar scent, closed his eyes, and let the sweet warmth of Poe’s Force-presence crest around him like a wave on Rey’s meditation rock.
“I would never use the Force on you,” Finn whispered. “I promise.”
“I know, buddy.” Poe leaned his head against Finn’s. “I know. I just need to keep remembering that.”
Rey tumbled out of the Falcon so quickly she nearly tripped over an overenthusiastic BB-8, spinning at the base of the gangplank. “I came as fast as I could,” she gasped. “Finn. Are you—is Leia—what the fucking hell happened here? You—”
She blinked.
Finn stared at her. Rey shone like a sun, glorious and lethal. She stepped towards him and touched his shoulder.
“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.
Finn wrapped his arms around her, buried his head in her shoulder, and finally let himself cry.
“What do I look like to you?” Finn asked. “In the Force.”
Rey cocked her head consideringly, back still erect in her customary meditation position. A stray lock of hair fluttered against her cheek in the gentle breeze of the forest clearing. “Like the ocean,” she said at last. “Or the sky, maybe. On a planet like this one, where the sun isn’t trying to kill you. You’re just—endless.” She spread her hands to illustrate. “Deep. Free. Like, when I look at you, I feel like I can take a full breath for the first time.”
Finn stared at Rey.
Rey flushed. “I’m trying to get in touch with my feelings, all right?” she huffed. “Being able to describe what you feel is important. According to Jess, at least. And Luke. And Dr. Eila."
“It is, it is. That’s—beautiful. Thank you. So much.”
“You’re welcome, peanut.” She grinned at him. “Kriff, it’ll be so nice to be able to train with you now.”
“You’re just looking forward to crushing my ass.”
“That too. But you’ll be able to crush mine too, one of these days.”
Finn laughed in disbelief. He could feel her affection for him curling around his shoulders like a loth-cat, along with—
He looked up.
Poe hovered at the edge of the clearing, hands in his pockets. “Meditation?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Finn said.
“Can I join?”
“Of course.” Finn shifted to make room as Poe took a cautious seat beneath the tree with them. “Are you—are you sure—”
Poe’s eyes glinted warmly in the sun as he smiled at Finn. “I’m sure, buddy,” he said.
Finn brushed his shoulder against Poe’s, then closed his eyes beneath the dappled sunlight of the forest. He could hear Rey’s breathing, and Poe’s, the gentle sussurus of their love for him, a ghoral bird crowing far above them. He could feel the galaxy tilting around them, the slow orbit of their planet, the quiet beating of his heart.
He took another steady breath, then opened himself up to the Force.