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“You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.” 

Lauren Oliver, Delirium

I.

She is bright and brilliant and fierce. Luke is drawn to the light that surrounds her the very first time he sees her. However, that doesn’t change his decision to never train anyone, not even someone like her. He soon learns that she is tough and stubborn and patient as well. Every day at the break of the dawn, she climbs up the steps from her makeshift shelter that lies close to the beach and asks him to train her. Every day he denies her.

On the 27^th day, she climbs up the 2,387 steps. Her pace never falters and her face is impassive when he tells her that he cannot train her. The thing is, he knows she will not give up, not even when she has to climb the hill a hundred times, not even when she has to climb it a thousand times. On the 28^th day he says yes and her face splits in a smile so bright it rivals the sun.

::

When Finn wakes up, everything is fuzzy. He has cotton in his head and sand in his mouth. Somebody is speaking to him, but he does not comprehend the words being said. His fingers burry themselves in a soft material and his breathing turns labored. Something warm and soft touches his cheek.

“Finn. Hey, Finn.”

Finn’s fingers uncurl. He would have recognized that voice anywhere. He breathes in and out, slowly this time, and turns his head. Poe is standing beside him, slightly crouched over. His left hand is touching Finn’s cheek and his brows are creased in concern. Finn swallows; his throat feels like sandpaper. He licks his lip.

“Poe,” he breathes.

“Hey, big deal,” Poe smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach is his eyes. “Don’t cry. Everything is going to be alright.”

His thumb caresses the thin skin underneath Finn’s eye. His touch it so careful, as if Finn is something with worth, something precious. A sob breaks from Finn chest. The noise scrapes up his throat and falls out of his mouth before he can stop it. Before he knows it, Poe is there, hugging him. He holds the back of Finn’s head with the hand that brushed away the tears while the other hand strokes up and down Finn’s arm.

He is so close. His lips brush Finn’s ear when he speaks. “It’s okay. Rey is fine, really, she’s doing great. Starkiller Base is destroyed. Everything is going to be alright.”

Finn hears the words and while he is happy that Rey is fine, he can’t stop crying. He grabs the hand that lies on his shoulder weakly, buries his head in the curve of the other’s neck and cries and cries. Poe lets him. Finn can feel the caress of his thumb on his neck and parched lips on his forehead. He thinks about FN-2199, who called him a traitor. He thinks about the fact that FN-2199 is most likely dead.

::

She is a good student, eager to learn with a quickness of the mind. Luke finds that he enjoys teaching her. He enjoys talking to her even more.

She takes to fighting with a lightsaber like she takes to everything else: with determination and curiosity and even a touch of excitement. She had fought all her life; he sees it in the way she holds herself. With her back a straight line, her chin up and her shoulders pushed back, she seems taller than the 5’7 she is.

The only thing worrying him is her inability to sit still, to mediate. It reminds him of a failure he made long ago. He explains to her that she should release all her emotions to the force and concentrate on the quietness around her, to see that the force is everywhere. She masters the first part in two sessions and he is in awe at the ease she does it with. She lets go of her emotions so easily it’s almost disturbing, as if they were merely a piece of attire she could take off. Sitting still is a different matter. No matter how often he explains it to her, she can’t stand the quite for more than a minute or two.

They have been sitting together, knees almost touching, for ten minutes and Luke can feel that she opens her eyes.

“What is the purpose of this?” she asks. She doesn’t sound impatient, just curious.

“We mediate to let go of our emotions,” he answers. She frowns.

“Yeah, but for what?”

“So that one does not let them influence our decisions,” he says patiently and she nods, but the frown is still in place.

“Is it always bad to let your emotions decide?” she asks. It’s a question he heard before. Without him being able to control it his hands turn to fists. He closes his eyes for a moment and breathes out. The instant passes. Rey looks at him, eyebrows raised and eyes earnest. She did not miss his lapse in control.

“Trust, fear and anger can be powerful motivators,” he concedes. “However, they can lead down to darker paths.”

“Like it happened with Kylo Ren.”

He does not flinch. He had years to mediate over all the mistakes he made with his sister’s son. It still leaves him feeling guilty.

“Like it happened with Kylo Ren,” he amends, and admitting it makes it not better, but it also does not make it worse. A curious kind of feeling fills him. “Like it happened with my father as well. It seems that love is a much more vicious motivator.”

Rey does not reply. She closes her eyes again and the muscles of her face relax as she tries to let go of all her emotions and find the quite around her. If he is being honest with himself, he is not sure if this lesson stuck, but he is tired. He lets it rest.

::

Rey likes Luke. He’s a little bit like the father she wished for when she was a child, sitting alone under the starlit sky on Jakku. He is a good teacher, patient and willing to explain. But he hoards guilt like other people hoard credits.

It’s not obvious at first, but Rey learned the hard way to read people as easily as a book. When the next meal in your stomach depended on the whims of strangers, you learn faster what a twitch of the eye or the flick of a hand meant. Luke hoarded guilt. It’s in the unhappy slope of his mouth and the wrinkles in his face. It’s in the way he straightens his shoulder when he explains and in the undertones of his voice when he speaks. She wants to tell him that he has nothing to feel guilty about, but he would not believe her. She wants to tell him that people make their own choices and whatever they choose is not his fault. She wants to tell him that there are no prophesies and there is no fate, because everybody writes their own story.

::

They tell him, that Kylo Ren’s lightsaber damaged his spinal cord. He does not feel anything below his waist, can’t wriggle his toes or jerk his knee. When he touches his thigh, it does not feel like the leg even belongs to him. They also tell him, that they do not possess the resources to regenerate his spinal marrow, but they could transplant an electronic device, that would make it possible for him to walk even if only slowly and choppy. He nods haltingly. The thought of another operation, his body being out of his control again, makes the bile rise in his throat.

Poe touches his hand, gentle as ever.

“Do you understand?” he asks, and Finn is glad the pilot is with him.

He is dimly aware that the General is standing beside Poe, arms behind her back and her graying hair done up in a complicated twist. Finn swallows and when he can’t seem to be able to look anybody in the eye, he focuses on Poe’s hand lying on top of his, warm and heavy. He nods again, this time more fluidly then before.

“You don’t have to do this right now, Finn,” Poe says. It is still strange to not hear a string of letters and numbers when somebody addresses him. Finn still looks at their hands and what a stark contrast the colors of their skin make. “We can get you a hoverchair, if you want.”

This gets Finn to look up.

“What use I am for you, if I can’t walk?” he asks and he does not understand why General Organa presses her lips to a thin line and Poe looks like somebody punched the air out of him.

“You have more to offer than two legs to walk on,” General Organa says in a soft voice that Finn never heard her use before. Finn looks at her incomprehensively. His only value for the Order had lain in his functioning body and his obedience. Leave one without the other and he wasn’t even worth the blaster they would shoot him with.

::

It is like he left something of him inside her mind. She feels his anger, his bloodlust and his pain. It should be difficult to differentiate his feelings from her own, but Rey never had felt anything with the sort of intensity Kylo Ren did. His wrath was as absolute as his gloom and determination. He felt nothing halfway and it made Rey dizzy. What must it be like to live only in extremes? All Rey felt was exhausted when wave after wave of his emotions crashed into her like a rising tide.

It is even worse when she mediates. With the quietness all around her, nothing distracts her from the steady stream of his feelings. Instead of focusing on the quiet around her, she finds herself listening to his heartbeat and times the rhythm of it with one dirty fingernail on her knee. The longer she does it, the more she feels the hum of the force, as it swirls around her in a warming embrace. It’s not what she is supposed to do, but quietness reminds her of the long, cold nights on Jakku. The memory does not bring her peace. She doesn’t question why the sound of his heart does.

When she thinks about him, she feels scared and helpless. The memory of him pushing inside her mind makes the bile rise in her throat. She hates him for how he violated her and it’s such a cold and dark feeling that it makes her unpredictably calm, like the stillness of the desert before wind and sand rages up a storm.

::

She feels herself running in high grass, her hands and feet tiny and clumsy, towards General Organa. But Rey is not herself, she is Kylo Ren and General Organa is much younger. In her head, she calls her Mum. Through Ren’s eyes, she sees Han leave. He does not come back. She trains under Luke and she fails time and time again. Expectations lie on her shoulders and disappointment on her tongue. She tries to find the peace around her, tries to quiet her mind. She gives up. Her father falls from the bridge and the boy inside her screams.

::

They get him a hoverchair and Finn refuses to leave the room they assigned him. He is afraid that the resistance will realize that he is worthless. He can’t walk and he can’t fight.

He wakes up soaked in his own sweat more nights than not and on one memorable night, he panics so badly that all he wants to do is flee. He pushes himself up and makes a grab for is deactivated hoverchair. In his haste he knocks the chair over and falls out the bed. He crawls along the floor, rights the chair with difficulty and when it tries to push himself up from the floor to sit in the chair, he finds he can’t. He is still too weak from the two-week-long coma; his old strength gone.

He sits on the floor and tears swell up in his eyes. It turns out that even fleeing his above him now.

Poe finds him like that hours later, sitting on the floor with bloodshot eyes.

“I fell out of bed, when I tried to get up this morning,” Finn lies. Poe puts the plate of breakfast he brought Finn on the closet table.

“Right,” he says. Finn knows he sees through his lies. It puzzles him that Poe does not point it out. “You know, you can call for help if something like this happens.”

Finn nods. Poe smiles and it almost convinces Finn, but the corners of Poe’s lips twitch and his eyes are sad. Finn feels like crying again.

“Up you go.” Poe grabs him under both arms and lifts him on the bed. Then, he crouches down in front of Finn and just stars at him. It makes Finn’s skin crawl.

“Maybe I should let them fix my legs.” It spills out of him without him being able to stop it. Since they had explained him, what had happened to him, it’s all he can think about. If he could walk again, he could fight again. He could be useful for the Resistance once more. He would have a purpose.

“If you really want to.” Poe touches Finn’s left cheek lightly. Finn presses his lips together and says nothing. The only thing that scares him more than the thought of somebody altering his body is being forced to fight again.

::

They are standing opposite each other. He looks at her and an unearthly bluish glow illuminates the tears streaming down his face. A shadow looms behind him, enormous and emitting so much coldness that it makes their breath fog. Rey sees herself reach for him. Her small, pale hands rest on his torso. Kylo Ren does nothing. Her fingers rip through fabric, skin and bone, as if it they are merely paper. And he does nothing. Rey wants to stop but her fingers keep on digging. The blood is warm and sticky on her skin and the copper smell makes her lightheaded. He only looks at her, lips pressed together and sweat gathering on his skin.

The shadow is watching, waiting. When she finally holds his heart in her hand, it is still beating. She squeezes until it does not any longer. The shadow disappears.

Rey wakes with a jolt. Her breath is ragged and her face wet with tears. She looks at her fingers, clean and pale in the dim light. She bends over and retches.

::

She will leave. Luke will only be able to watch her go and it will feel like he failed her, too. He could say that she is too stubborn and too impatient to be trained properly. It would all be true. However, she is fearless where he is afraid.

It starts like this:

“There is still good in him,” she says to him one day after one of their mediation sessions. She has been getting better at them, too. While she does not sit still, she accomplishes such a piece of mind that he cannot chide her for the way her finger taps against her knee. “I can sense it.”

He wonders how she can feel Kylo Ren at all, while Luke is only getting pieces and glimpses of the galaxy stretching beyond this planet.

“Where there is bad, there is good, as well,” he concedes diplomatically.

“He still struggles between the light and dark,” she says. “He still fights.” Her forehead wrinkles as if the thought never occurred to her. “He can still come back.”

The way she says it makes him ponder. She sounds so genuine and hopeful and while that is not unlike her, it is surprising nonetheless. The last time they had discussed Kylo Ren, Luke could feel her resentment towards his former student, subtle and cloaked, but unmistakably there. Now she gives away nothing and it worries him.

“Redemption is a long and rocky way,” he says in lieu of answering and. It’s not a lie. He carries the burden of his mistakes every day.

The frown on her face deepens. “Is it?”

Her question is not meant to be unkind, not intending to hurt, but it cuts at him anyway. She stares at him as if she’d known that for a second that he was not only speaking of Kylo Ren.

“You know the funny part?” she asks, and he thinks that there is nothing funny about it. “Your sister already forgave you. All you have to do is forgive yourself and come back.”

::

Poe learns many things about Finn. He will never complain about what Poe gets him from the cantina. He will eat the Bhanta-meat and the Corellian pancakes. If Poe brings both, he always eats the pancakes first and only takes a bite or two from the meat. He would never ask for anything, so Poe does that for him. He starts giving  Finn choices, at first only between two things, but later on between four or five. It’s like a game. How many options can he offer before Finn’s eyes go wide? It’s a sad game. Sometimes Finn gets better, sometimes he gets worse.

He asks Finn “Do you want water or juice.” When Finn feels good, he will contemplate the answer as if it was the last time he was allowed to drink. When Finn feels bad, when he is tired because the nightmares he pretends to not have left him awake all night, his eyes widen in panic and the words stumble out of his mouth. “You choose” is all he says then.

Poe learns to read the signs. He never gives a choice when Finn’s blinks so often his eyes are more closed than open. He makes choices for Finn, when he is like that. Poe does not enjoy it.

One day he comes into Finn’s room, to ask him what he wants for dinner. Finn is sitting in his hover-chair, holopatt in his hand. He turns his head, when he hears Poe enter his room and smiles brightly.

“Should I get you porridge or scrambled eggs?” he asks, touching his hand to Finn’s neck in a way of greeting. He is never really able to stop himself for reaching out for Finn.

“I’d rather come with you and get it myself,” Finn says. For a moment Poe freezes, and then a soft smile twists his mouth up.

“That is a wonderful idea,” Poe answers and squeezes the side of Finn’s neck lightly.

::

She dreams again and she has had this dream many times before. She is Kylo Ren, Ben, again and she stands on a bridge in the Starkiller Base. Her father stands in front of her, his face old and wrinkled in sorrow. It pains her to see him again. Everything plays out as it always does. Han comes closer, pleading with her to come with him. And she is more honest with him than she has been with herself in ages when she tells him that she is being torn apart. Her helm clatters uselessly to floor before she reaches for her lightsaber. She watches him, when it pierces through his stomach, his face illuminated red by the hue of it. There is no surprise in his eyes, only pain and sorrow and something else. It’s the first time that Rey looks down at her hands clad in black gloves clutching her weapon hard. It’s not her fingers, not Kylo Ren’s fingers, which lie on the button to activate the lightsaber. It’s her father’s.

::

It ends like this:

“There was a prophecy that a chosen one will bring balance to the force,” Luke tells her as she listens intensively, knees tucked underneath her. “Many believed my father to be this chosen one. He was one of the most powerful force users that ever lived. He fell to the dark side and became Darth Vader. But when he finally died, the balance was restored and the prophecy was fulfilled. At least, I thought so. However, it seems the dark side is still strong. I always wonder if he was the chosen one after all.”

He looks at her then. Rey’s back is a straight line, shoulders drawn up, muscles taunt. Her hands lay clenched in fists on her knees; faint shadows darken the skin under her eyes. There is an urgency about her that wasn’t there two days ago. It irritates him that he did not spot the change sooner. She wrinkles her forehead.

“Haven’t you told me that where there is bad, there is also good?” she asks. “How can there be light when there is no darkness?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he explains. “Where there is darkness, chaos prevails.” He reaches for her hand and stills the finger that had begun tapping away again. Her skin is warm and smooth under his touch. He knows that she will be a great Jedi some day, better than he or his father before him. As if she senses his thought, she looks at him sharply and withdraws her hand from his touch.

“I don’t care about your prophecy,” she says. “I am not going to kill him for empty words.”

::

Rey knows about Luke’s father. She knows what caused his downfall. Luke had told her all about it, about his father’s fear and his love and the visions that had not let him sleep. She wonders if she will come to the same end. After all, everything she had seen in her dreams could be a trap, elaborately laid to lure her in. At first, she wants to talk with Luke about it, but she knows that he will think the exact same thing. His guilt will color his judgment.

When she closes her eyes now, it’s never quite in her head. There is always another heartbeat drumming in the same rhythm as her own and there are thoughts that brush her consciousness if she lets them. It’s a terrible wonderful feeling. Being on Jakku had made her lonely and now she never is, even though Kylo Ren’s presence in her mind is not pleasant at all.

Kylo Ren does not deserve to be saved. Rey leaves anyway.

 II.

Rey does not like touching people or being touched. On Jakku, being touched meant being beaten or worse. She does not flinch anymore when somebody reaches for her but she does not enjoy it either. When she touches somebody, it is very deliberate. She knows that touching is important and meaningful for most people. It’s a useful thing to know.

The only person she wants to touch is Finn. Finn, who gives and gives and never takes. When she is back at the Resistance Base, she can’t seem to let him go. She hugs him tightly, touches her forehead to his and caresses his neck. She is like a desert plant, soaking up the warmth of his skin like water. She never wants to let go and he hugs her just as fiercely. It feels like he missed her as much as she missed him.

::

General Organa is and was many things. Princess, Leader, Wife, Widow, Daughter, Sister and Mother. So different from her brother, yet so similar. The force dances around her in a subtle way and she looks at Rey with an unwavering gaze. Rey wonders how such strength fits in such a tiny body, how she contains her grief living in a world that is so unkind to her.

“How is my brother?” Leia asks, and Rey does not for one moment believe that the woman in front of her has any illusions about her brother’s state of mind.

“Your brother is…” Rey falters for a moment; she doesn’t know how to put it into words. He is far from fine, but Leia already knows this. “He’s sad, but he’ll get here in the end. It’ll just take a while.”

A bitter smile appears on Leia’s face and it’s gone after only a blink of the eye. “At least you have returned to us,” she says and with only this one sentence she makes Rey feel home and guilty all at once.

“I am not here to stay,” Rey admits. “Your son…” She starts, not knowing what to say again. She wants to tell Leia about the vision she had. About Ren not killing is own father, like they all had believed, but she does not know it to be true. Rey does not want to give Leia hope where there maybe is none.

Leia looks away. “The First Order is on the move, but there weren’t any sightings of Ben since you last saw him. We do not know where he is.”

“I do,” Rey says with a surety she did not know she possessed. If she was to name the place of Kylo Ren’s whereabouts now, she wouldn’t be able to, but the sound of his heartbeat tells her that she’ll find him if she has to. Leia regards her with an unreadable gaze, then she sighs.

“I worry about you. You are so young.” She touches her wrinkled hand to Rey’s cheek and Rey thinks, this is what mothers do. They worry. “I sent people to their deaths every day and yet I worry still. One would think it would stop after a while.”

Rey smiles sadly at that. “I’ll come back and I’ll bring him home to you, I promise.”

“What do you need?” Is all Leia asks after that.

::

He finds them in Finn’s quarter. He is fast asleep, lying peaceful on the thin mattress, while she is sitting on the concrete floor before the bed. Her eyes are closed, her back is pressed against the bed frame while her head rests on the mattress, exposing the long line of her neck. He would think her asleep, but her left foot touches the floor in a slow and steady pace. The fingers of her right hand cover Finn’s where his hand lies on top of the covers. The sight twists something in his stomach that Poe does not want to identify.

He turns around to leave.

“He has nightmares, you see,” he can hear her say and it makes him turn to face her again. Her eyes are bright and blue as she regards him. Poe swallows.

“I know,” he says simply. Her pretty face wrinkles in a frown. Poe can see how her thumb brushes up and down Finn’s skin.

“Leia gave me a faster ship. I am leaving tomorrow,” she says matter-of-factly. “Don’t let him be alone. He deserves better.”

“I know,” he says again. “He’s a good man.”

She smiles at that.

“Does he know that you are leaving?”

She shakes her head and the smile vanishes. “He wouldn’t understand. I have a mission to accomplish.”

Her jaw is set and she looks up at him, challenging. She is just as stubborn as Finn, determination and goodness packed in a fragile hull of skin and bones.

“You love him as much as I do, right?” she asks then. It makes Poe freeze. He knows that he is not being subtle. However, being confronted with his own feelings makes him uncomfortable. Every time he touches Finn, he feels like he is preying on something innocent even though he knows Finn likes being touched.

It startles him when Rey stand up and brushes his shoulder lightly. Poe cannot recall that she ever touched him. A strange warmth seeps from her hand, and while it’s a pleasant sensation, he cannot help feeling tricked. Rey takes back her hand and smiles apologetically.

“Don’t worry,” she says and leaves.

::

Finding him is easy. He is a bright light in the vast darkness of the universe, hard to miss, harder to look at, even. She just follows the tug on her consciousness. The planet is covered in sand, burning hot in the glaring light of its two suns and icily cold in the moonless nights. It’s like a miniature version of Jakku and Rey would laugh at the irony if she did not hate it so much. She can feel his presence in the force, piercing through everything else and it makes her hurry to land her ship and step out in the stifling heat. As far as she can tell, they are the only living beings on this planet. She tries to hide her presence in the force, but maybe she stands out like a beacon the same way he does for her.

The entrance to the cave is not natural. Two pillars frame it, cut out of red stone and reaching high into the sky. At first, there is no light when Rey enters, but as she goes further a constellation of tiny blue dots appears on the ceiling and walls. It’s breathtakingly pretty and with every step she takes, the sound of her footfalls echo from the wall, the dots glow brighter. It’s like the ceiling is its own little universe. It makes her walk as if in trance, not realizing how cold it gets, as she walks deeper and deeper. Her breath fogs in front of her and gooseflesh covers her arms, but she walks on. Her teeth start to clatter, and she still walks.

Maybe it’s dump luck, maybe it’s the force, but she stumbles over a stone and the spell breaks. When Rey turns around, she cannot see the entrance any longer. She listens for the force and dread fills her. Instead of a soothing presence, the force is a wild and viscous thing down here, lashing out and attacking her senses. Rey clenches her hands to fists and keeps pushing forward. Ren is so close, she can hear his heartbeat as if she was pressing her head directly to his chest.

The blue dots are enough to light her way and when she finally reaches the end of the tunnel, the cold had numbed all her senses. She cannot feel her toes or the tips of her fingers any longer. The tunnel opens into a much bigger cave and the tiny blue dots are further up on the ceiling. Was the illusion of a universe almost convincing before, now it’s perfect. Ren lies in the middle of the cave, his skin glistening in the blue hue. He does not move, his eyes closed as if asleep and Rey cannot even make out that he is breathing. If she wasn’t able to hear his heartbeat, she’d think him dead.

Rey feels terribly alone, standing in the dark cave, no means to find reassurance in the force. They way Ren is laid out in front of her makes her rethink every step it took for her to get here. All too easily, all too effortlessly. Her breath is getting harsher and there does not seem to be enough oxygen to fill her lungs. She sinks to her knees and dark dots appear in front of her vision. She tries to breath so badly, icy air biting her lungs. In her hand she clutches her lightsaber, but it does not bring her any comfort. She tries to snap out of it, tries to focus on Ren’s heartbeat, on Luke’s stern teaching, on Poe’s aching expression when he found her in Finn’s room. It’s the love of a mother, Leia’s warm touch to her cheek, that breaks her free. She tries to hide in the memory of feeling loved and cared for, so foreign to her when she was a child and all alone.

Her knees shake when she stands up and makes her way to him. He is eerily thin, his ribs standing out under his skin for Rey to count them. The first thing she feels when she touches a finger to his forehead is how cold he is. Then, it is like an electric surge. She stumbles under the onslaught of images flooding her head. She is him again, just a boy. Young, afraid and terribly foolish. She hears Snoke whisper in her head, feels him crawling under her skin and the cold he is emitting. Promises of strength make her fists clench and she feels special for the voice in her head. She sees Luke glancing at her, his face drawn in worry. He is much younger then and she looks at him with such a contempt only children are able to feel. In her eyes, he’s weak. She doesn’t like the condescending hand that he lays on her shoulder, she doesn’t like the disappointed tone he chides her with, when she hurts the other children during training. She hates that her father left her and that her mother abandoned her to Luke.

Rey wrenches herself free, stumbling over her own feet in an attempt to get space between them. Her breath is ragged, and she empties her stomach on the cold stone beside her. His thoughts echo through her head as if they were her own.

He is awake now. He looks at her, eyes unfocused and confused. She picks herself up and guards her mind as she walks close. He does not move, does not try to defend himself, when she lunges at him. He is not able to, she realizes as she knocks him out with the hilt of her deactivated lightsaber. She clips it on her belt again. This time, when she touches him, no pictures come flooding her mind, but the sound of his heartbeat fills her head. She lifts him with the help of the force, one leg and one arm over her shoulders and starts walking.

She lived her life in sync with the rhythm of his heart for so long now, that she does not even realize she sets her feet to it.

::

When Poe enters Finn’s room, he is having a nightmare. Theoretically he had always known that Finn had nightmares. The evidence had always been clear on display; the rumpled sheets, the bloodshot eyes and the shaking hands. But witnessing it in person makes it even worse. Poe does not know what to do and for one moment he even contemplates leaving so that they both can still pretend that Finn is not having any nightmares at all.

Finn deserves better though. Rey’s words echoing around in his head, make him stay. He sits beside Finn on the bed and reaches for his shoulders.

“Finn, buddy, wake up. It’s just a dream,” he says. He catches the hand that tries to hit him and presses Finn’s body to his. Finn shakes with tears, not fully awake, not dreaming either. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he promises, and he does not know what else to do. His heart breaks when Finn’s fingers dig into his shirt, leaving bruises on his skin. He strokes Finn’s back and caresses the skin of his neck and Finn cries.

“Why did she leave?” Finn sobs. “Why?”

“She had to, Finn. She’ll come back, I promise,” he says gently. He leans his forehead against Finn’s and closes his eyes because seeing the pain in Finn’s face breaks him.

“Don’t leave me,” Finn pleads, voice hoarse and just a whisper. “Stay, please.”

“I’ll stay. I promise”

Poe stays. Poe stays the night after that, too, cramped in the tiny bed, Finn’s elbow digging in his stomach and feet entangled with his own. The night after that he stays as well, and his lips touch the back of Finn’s neck and if he pretends long enough it’s a kiss. He stays days, weeks, months holding Finn when he trashes in his sleep. He stays.

And he is so, so terribly, terribly stupidly in love with Finn in a time where there is no room for love at all.

::

He wakes three hours later where she left him on a cot, while she is in the cockpit trying to erase their tracks. Stars fly by and his consciousness brushes against hers. She switches to autopilot and gets a water bottle, before she goes to his improvised cell. As soon as the door opens, he attacks. Darkness grabs for her throat, but she brushes it aside with a wave of her hand. He is too weak to do her any harm now, still exhausted from whatever he endured on the godforsaken planet she found him on. Even standing seems to cost him greatly, sweat gathering on his forehead and rolling down his face. The graze on his forehead still leaks blood, because while Rey had felt generous when she carried him on board of her ship, she did not feel generous enough to bandage the wound. His lips are chapped and the color of his skin is strangely grey. Rey knows the signs of dehydration all too well, can almost feel the endless thirst on her own tongue. She puts the bottle of water besides his bed on the floor. His eyes follow her every move. She straightens herself again and stands directly in front of him

“I am not afraid of you,” she simply states. He looks at her, his breathing labored and eyebrows furrowed. She wonders how so much fear and anger can fit into one body. She lifts her hand and tips one sharp fingernail against his breast to the tattoo of his rabbit heartbeat. His eyes narrow. “But you are afraid,” she finishes.

“You know nothing,” he spits out. She laughs at it. She knows his thoughts. She knows his feelings. She knows his memories. What she does not know is why.

“When you tried to get the information from me, when you attacked my mind, you left something behind. A connection,” she says. “Why?”

Confusion flickers over his face and she understands his need to wear a mask. The tapping of her fingers slows while his heartbeat increases. A realization floors her. He did not intend to form any kind of connections between them. He did it by mistake, completely unaware that he is in her head constantly. She wants to laugh again, but instead she says, “You did not kill your father.”

He tries to hide his surprise, but she catches it in the way is eyebrows twitch slightly. She did not need any more proof that she had been right about that. “But that does not make it ok,” she says, and looks at him sternly. She wants to grab and shake him, wants to scratch and tear him apart. The thing that makes them different is that she chooses not to. “But that does not make it ok.”

::

When Rey leaves him a second time without saying goodbye, it makes him break in more ways than he can count. Sleep eludes him almost completely now, even though he finds himself in the warm embrace of Poe every night. It makes Finn want to hate her, while also realizing how selfish that is. The thing is, he knows he would not have let her go.

Back when he was still part of the First Order, he had hardly ever wanted things. They had hardly ever let him want things. He vividly remembers being beaten, drowned, deprived of sleep and food. His sisters and brothers being killed for disobedience. He remembers the one time at the beginning when there had been still compassion left in him, and they had broken his left leg and had made him walk and train on it for three days because he gave his food to a sick girl of a village they had occupied. They had shot her in the head right in front of him.

Now, however, he wants a great many things. He wants to bury his head in the space where Poe’s neck touches his torso. He wants Rey to be back and for Han to be alive again. He wants General Organa to smile. He wants to apologize to FN-2199.

He wants to see the First Order burn to the ground.

His name is Finn. He is his own person now. He is selfish, he is vindictive, he has fears and hopes. He cannot sleep more than two hours undisturbed. His favorite food is Corellian Pancakes. His fingers shake when he picks up a blaster. They stop shaking when Poe touches him.

He is broken, but he has a name.

III.

She does not know what will come next. The ship Leia gave her seems too small for his stifling presence and her own. It’s like he demands space wherever he goes and he’s not used to people not yielding. When she had seen him laying in that cave, she almost felt sorry for him. He had seemed more like an echo of himself, a translucent shadow of his own. Now angers seeps through her skin like an articulate poison and his closeness makes it hard for her to differentiate if it’s his or hers. She avoids him whenever possible and she avoids thinking about what she will do. Bringing him to the Resistance Base had seemed like a good idea, now it was the furthest thing from her mind.

Three days had already passed, since she had picked him up and they were aimlessly travelling through space. He is sitting in the middle of the improvised cell, finally looking more alive than dead. He is mediating, his eyes closed and hands resting on his knees. Rey bites her lip, when she sees that he couldn’t sit still either. His eyes move rapidly underneath his lids while his lips speak soundlessly.

She takes a step in his direction and then another. Her gait is sure, but her hands are clenched into fists. His eyes snap open when she draws close. A smug smile dances around his lips that she wants to wipe off immediately.

“Being in that cave, that was your punishment, right? For failing your master,” Rey says, and it is curler than she had intended to be. His face betrays nothing, but she can hear the skip in his heartbeat.

“Was it?” he asks, one eyebrow drawn up in amusement. His mockery cuts more than his anger or resentment ever have. Anger pools hot and sour in Rey’s stomach, but this time she knows that it is hers as much at it is his. It doesn’t make it better though: it’s that kind of anger that wants her to scratch and bite and destroy.

“Losing against Finn and me when you trained all your life must have been disappointing,” she spits out and realizes her mistake too late. She had been sitting to close to him with no weapon to defend herself. He snaps. This time he doesn’t reach out with the force for her. Instead he lunges across the narrow space between them and presses his hands on her throat. His hands are so much bigger than her own. His fingers reach completely around her neck. He could shatter her vertebrae, instead he forces the air out excruciatingly slowly. Rey scratches his hands, kicks him repeatedly, but he does not let her go. Of all the ways to go, this is the most foolish one Rey can imagine. It had been a trap all along, the way he had goaded her, the way he had mocked her.

“I’ll kill you and your silly friends,” he screams. “You think you are strong, but you are nothing.”

Rey reaches out with the force and tries to push him way. Dark spots dance in front of her eyes and her cheek turn wet. When she cannot shake him off, she crashes into his mind. It’s easy to wreak havoc there. She knows his thoughts and the hidden pathways to the memories he buried in boxes. She drags them up and throws them at him viciously.

She cannot help but watch them, too. He sees his mother cry when his father left and his chubby hands are not enough to wipe away the tears. When he kills his first victim, he is just a boy and he face looks strangely hollow when he vomits afterwards. He is better than every other student of Snoke and is avoided for it, until there is no one left that could avoid him.

Desperately she hurls picture after picture at him and when she shows him his father’s death over and over again, he lets her go. His pain about his father’s death echoes in her. Rey scrambles away, hands touching her neck where there will bloom bruises tomorrow. She has to cough, even though all she wants to do is breath. His breath is as uneven as hers. He looks at her in in utter confusion and horror dawns on his face.

“Don’t ever touch me,” she wheezes, voice rough-edged like ice. She stumbles to her feet and leaves him.

::

Poe’s friends are kind. They don’t complain when he joins them for dinner. Nal, a humanoid woman with skin as white as porcelain, moves away a chair, so that he can sit beside her in his hoverchair. Poe sits on his other side and it makes Finn feel warm and content. They joke with him. Simi reaches over the table and claps him on the back when he says something especially funny. Finn melts under the touch and if his skin was a shade lighter, everybody would see how he blushed. Instead he grins. It hurts his cheek with the sheer newness of it.

Nobody tells him he does not belong. Nobody comments on his inability to walk. It’s this moment that he decides that he will fight for these people. In his own way, but he will fight nonetheless.

::

They have shaky truce. She brings him food and water and leaves immediately afterwards. They don’t look each other in the eyes any longer. There are purple bruises around her neck and he gazes unmoving into empty space as if he was craved from stone. Rey still does not know what to do with him. Killing him seems like a viable solution now, but for all the grief he had caused, he is only a symptom of the darkness that looms much bigger behind him.

She counts his heartbeats and it is as calm as it’s ever going to be. She enters his makeshift cell. This time she keeps her distance. He does not turn around to face her. For all that he is older than her, he seems more like a petulant child than an adult.

“What do you want?” he asks, and his voice is deep and rough.

“To kill your master. To kill Snoke,” she answers, and it sound so easy when she speaks it out loud, not like the impossible task her brain wants her to believe it is. He snorts. This time she is not baited. “You must know where he is.”

“You cannot kill him,” he says instead of answering. Something in the way he speaks makes her pause. She regards him closer now. It’s easy for her to sense his emotions. He feels anger, resentment and beneath it all, buried deep, is fear. He is not afraid of her, though. She understands why the little boy, who always felt too much, fled to the dark side where emotions were glorified. But she does not forgive him.

“Then you will.”

::

Poe meant it when he said that Finn was a good man. Finn, who guards every name like a treasure, not only is own.

People will follow Rey to fight. He can see it in the way their gazes wander after her in awe. This is something it does not take him long to figure out.

But people will follow Finn to die and he can read this in the subtle way they touch him. A hand on a shoulder, a slap on the back. Finn is soft and warm and forgiving. Poe used to think those things made someone weak. It takes a different kind of strength to leave yourself vulnerable like that.

::

It turns out that knowing the hierarchy and schedules of the First Order is helpful, even though Finn already had told the Resistance most of it. However, the knowledge is ingrained in his bones, he never has to think about it. It’s helpful to know, who had delivered what and when. It makes the Frist Order easier to track.

Finn is on a mission with Poe and while Poe and been reluctant to let him come, he smiles whenever Finn is in the room. Poe touches Finn’s neck, his arms, his shoulders. He patiently explains all the controls in the cockpit. He shows Finn his favorite soap operas on the holonet.

But Finn still has nightmares. He is lying beside Poe, who is warm and safe and asleep, and tears track down his cheek. He does not even know what he dreamed about. He also does not want to wake Poe up but the man always seems to know when Finn is in distress. Warm arms tug him closer to Poe’s body while Poe’s lips graze his cheek. Finn does not do it on purpose, but he turns his head. Poe’s mouth catches on the dry skin of Finn’s upper lip. The simple touch makes Finn’s heart beat quicker. Poe does not flinch, he just moves his head away slowly. With the thumb of his left hand he brushes away the tears on Finn’s face. The corners of his mouth are downturned and for a long moment his eyes close before he looks at Finn again.

Finn reaches for Poe’s face, fingers tangling in the dark hair, unhappy with the sadness he sees in the other’s eyes.

“You do love me, right?” he whispers in the air between their faces. Poe swallows and nods. This time, Finn bridges the distance on purpose. The kiss is short and dry and Poe is unmoving under Finn’s lips, before he shifts away.

A wet laugh falls out of Poe’s mouth and he looks wide-eyed at Finn, before he cradles Finn’s face between his fingers and kisses him again.

“Loving you, Finn, is the easiest thing,” he says.

::

They catch him on a surveillance mission near Anoat. It’s the first time Poe, whose arm is still healing after a crash landing on Felucia, is not with him. It was supposed to be a simple mission, trying to investigate where the First Order got their Quandanium from. Much later, Finn will figure out, that they had stumbled upon one of three makeshift bases the First Oder had set up after the destruction of Starkiller Base.

They are not able to put up much of a fight; their ship is not designed for combat. Finn is useless in his Hoverchair and he can only watch when Nal is shot square in the chest after Stormtroopers had swarmed the bridge. Her blonde hair fans out like a halo around her head, when she crumbles to the ground beside him. In the chaos of the fight Finn falls out of his chair and knocks his head on the control panel. Blood is running warm and sticky down his face and is obscuring his sight. When he tries to crawl to safety, a boot catches him in his side and turns him on his back.

Phasma recognizes him immediately. And never in his whole life was Finn more afraid. She makes a grab for his neck. He spits in her face.

She knocks him unconscious.

::

“How did you escape?”

He doesn’t answer. The slap rings loud and hollow through the room.

“What is your mission?”

If Finn concentrates hard enough, he cannot hear the bones of his hand crack. He presses his lips together.

“Where is the Resistance Base?”

The silence lies heavy on his tongue. It’s ironic that it was them who taught him not to break during torture. When his head collides with the table, darkness engulfs him.

::

A sea of white and silence greets him when he staggers on the stage. In front of him, thousands of stormtroopers are gathered. Phasma grabs is shackled arms and drags him forward. Finn can barely walk. Even though they had fixed his legs, there are no muscles left to support him. What a spiteful gesture, that they had healed his spine just so that he could walk to his own execution. His left eye is swollen shut and he is sure that the bones of both of his hands are broken. He can scarcely breath, because his ribs ache with every movement. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the sparingly bright red hair of General Hux, who donned a self-righteous smile. It seems like the only color left on the planet.

“Witness what happens to a traitor,” Phasma’s announcement booms. “Kneel, FN-2-“

“My name is Finn,” he says as loud as he can without screaming and his jaws aches with every syllable. He is not a string of letter and numbers any longer. He refuses to kneel. They hit him. He still does not kneel. He thinks of Poe and wishes he could see the man, who remade him, gave him a name, one last time.

They shoot him standing on the two legs they had provided for him and all the choices he had made for himself.

::

The pain is too much; it brings her to her knees. She digs her finger into the clothes above her breast as if she wanted to tear out her heart. She doesn’t even realize that she is screaming, her voice high-pitched and raw. Something has been stolen from her, something warm and pure and precious. Her face is wet with tears.

“Finn,” she whispers when she cannot scream any more. Like a prayer, she repeats his name over and over again. Waves of grief crash into her. They make her immobile. And in this moment, she is the loneliest person in the galaxy.

Ren watches her with an unreadable expression from the cot he is perched on. The tablet with food that she wanted to bring him lies scattered around her. His lack of reaction snaps her mouth shut.

“This is your fault!” she screams then. There is nothing graceful about the way she leaps up from the floor. She lunges at him, hitting him square in the face with her fist, while shouting insults at him. She rams her knee in is stomach and scratches away at his face. Blood is tripping out of his nose, coating her hands in red. Tearing him up is easy, the way he falls apart at the seams quietens the beast in her belly. He doesn’t even move, just let’s her bruise him. The stillness and lack of emotions is so unlike him that she stops. It’s almost like he wants her to hit him.

She is still crying, when she spits, “He was my friend. And now he’s dead because you and your people lust after power like starved men after bread.”

Her breath is ragged when she finishes speaking and she can’t help the howl of pain that escapes her. She presses the heels of her hand against her eye sockets, so hard she sees stars.

“Killing billions of people won’t make you stronger,” she says then, in a much quieter voice, one that she can barely muster. It will not make you feel less, is what she wants to say, and she realizes the truth in it when she’s picking up her body and heart before leaving him. He brings out the worst in her, make her feel things she does not want to.

::

Poe sees Finn’s execution a week later on holo-transmission.

::

When the light falls right, there is a shadow behind him, much larger than his crouched form should allow for. When she blinks it’s gone, like it was only a figment of her imagination. She wishes she knew for sure that it was.

She has no idea what to make of him any longer. He had stopped eating and drinking after her attack. Slowly, very deliberately, he turns back into the shadow she found in that cave. The effects of dehydration should have made him delirious days ago, but he never moves and never wavers. Darkness dances around him and it’s beautiful in way that destruction always is. It swirls around him with long tendrils, caressing his skin and blanketing him. The scratches on his face haven’t healed yet, just like the gaping wound in herself. The absence of Finn is like a phantom pain in her gut. It makes her want to stop eating and disappear just like him.

::

He’s dying. She realizes this much too late, the cut of his robe hiding the real state of his body. It’s early afternoon and he just topples over. His breath is labored when she runs to him to kneel beside his body.

“What are you doing to yourself?” She whispers. Fear grips her heart. It is his fear. He looks at her, eyes unable to focus.

“You wanted Snoke dead, did you not?” he rasps. She nods uncomprehendingly. “I created him. I made him up and so he came to be.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks. His fingers are clammy and shake when he fumbles for her hand. She doesn’t want to touch him, withdraws her hand without a thought. But the desperation she can feel coming of him in waves makes her extend the fingers of left hand. Carefully, she touches his wrist and feels his rapid pulse drumming through his veins. Almost automatically, she reaches for his thoughts as well, trying to make sense of his words. She is bursting through memories, while the walls of his mind collapse around her.

She is a young boy again, not older than six and there is a voice in her head, saccharine sweet. She talks with it and her mother smiles behind her back about her imaginary friend. She feeds the voice all her fears and anxieties and it grows. It becomes a black mass shadowing her life, following her in every direction. When she learns to control the force, it becomes even bigger. She is tired all the time. The shadow has a face now, scarred and gaunt like a skull. It gets a life of its own, taking over her body at will. After the face, it gets a name. It draws from her constantly, sucking the force from the tips of her fingers. Snoke builds his own body, being able to exist outside her presence, while still only being held alive by the feeble power of a twelve-year-old. In the end, he is a being purely made out of force and fear with his own will, alive because she is and she serves him.

Tears stream down Rey’s face when she opens her eyes again. Very deliberately, she squeezes his wrist and a knowing grin tugs at his lips for a second.

“You tried this before,” she states, thinking about the glittering blue cave. Flashes of many other times, times when he was no older than ten, flicker through her mind.

“I could never go through with it before,” he whispers. “He always found me.”

It turns out that his regret is as comprehensive and destructive as all his other feelings. For the last time, she measures seconds in his heartbeats.

Tick Tack.

Tick Tack.

Tick Tack.

Tick Tack.

Tick.

The silence in her head is deafening.

::

Somewhere in the galaxy Snoke crumbles to dust, screaming.

::

With Snoke dead and Finn the martyr he never wanted to be, the First Oder falls apart like a card house. It takes a couple of carefully planned out attacks and strategically placed information by the Resistance and it all comes tumbling down. Stormtroopers change sides. Corrupt politicians flee. It’s chaos. Nobody knows who poisoned General Hux or shot Phasma in the back, all they care about is their deaths. Even Rey cannot seem to care any longer.

She feels strangely hollowed out, like a puppet on a string, when she lands her ship on the Resistance Base. Ben’s body lies lifelessly in the back of her ship, skeletal thin. Guilt is a peculiar thing, Rey thinks. She wanted to bring Leia her son back, instead she brings her peace and a corpse. If she had given Leia a choice, Rey does not know what the other woman would have chosen.

Between all the smiling faces and the cheers and laughter that greets her when she arrives, she finds Poe sitting on the floor in Finn’s old room. His knees are drawn up, his arms resting on them. There is a bottle of liquid standing beside him and tears shadow his eyes. Rey understands. She feels tiny and helpless, like the child she was never allowed to be. She does not even have enough tears left to cry with him. It seems like all she is good at is being left behind.

Victory never tasted so hollow.