•LEGACY - A Reylo Story•

EPISODE LXXVI - SN

"Ouch!" Poe slams into the floor on his elbow. He winces.

"Poe!" Finn races over to him, lifting him up. "Are you hurt?"

"No." Poe shakes his head and relief floods Finn. "Just my funny bone." He glances at the shut metal door, biting his lip. "Why didn't you guys use the Force?"

"They're kids," Finn points out.

"Exactly," Luke confirms.

"So, can we use the Force to get out of here?"

"Why don't we wait and see?" Luke suggests.

"They're scared," Finn says softly. He tries to imagine what it would be like for him, if he was still a part of the First Order, for everything to have fallen apart. If it had happened when he was a child...

These past few months, Finn's thought that if only the First Order had fallen when he was younger, he might have found a happier life. But if everything he was being trained to be, everything he was invested in, was suddenly gone—what would have been left?

"Do you have any ideas?" Poe prompts, studying Finn.

"I don't know what to tell them," Finn says. "It's like—if we were to find out the Resistance was gone, and we were the only ones left, and the First Order showed up and said they wanted to help us. How the hell would we respond?"

Poe groans.

"I don't know that we can help them unless they want to be helped," Finn says, pushing the words he doesn't want to say into the air. He leans his head against the metal wall. It's too smooth.

"Did you ever want to leave? When you were younger?" Luke queries.

What's the right answer here? Finn doesn't even know what the truth is.

Poe reaches out and takes his hand, squeezing it. Even if the answer's no, it won't affect how Poe sees you. Who you are today.

"I don't know," Finn admits. "I don't think so. I do remember—I always felt different. I wanted to help people. Some learned to like cruelty, to enjoy it, and even those who didn't learned to tolerate it as something necessary. I tried to think it was necessary, but it never worked. But I remember wishing it had. I wished I could be cruel, could be what the First Order wanted me to be. And at the same time, I wanted the First Order to be what I wanted it to be." He snorts. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I think it does," Luke says, studying Finn with guilt inscribed in his forehead, in the grimace holding his mouth.

"But essentially what you're saying," Poe muses. "Is that there are degrees in how the stormtroopers feel about—about everything. They're people, still."

"Yeah." Finn nods, and Poe leans his head against Finn's shoulder.

The door to the cell slides open.

The little girl from the woods stares at them.

"SN!" Poe yelps.

"SN?" Luke questions.

"SN-3237," the girl recites.

"Are you taking us someplace?" Poe asks.

She shakes her head.

"Are our droids okay?"

"Yeah." She focuses on Finn. "Are you the one he was talking about? Who used to be with us?"

Finn nods. "My number was FN-2187." He jerks his head towards Poe. "Until this one named me Finn."

"Why did you betray us?" The word betray sounds so cumbersome, so ugly, coming from the child's lips.

"They were going to kill him," Finn says, rising to a crouch and nodding again at Poe. "I couldn't let them."

"Why not?"

"He might have been an enemy, but he was nice too. And I didn't want to hurt people."

"Why not?" she repeats.

"Because I was scared, and I didn't want to make what people were afraid of happen," Finn says.

The villagers screaming, so afraid of dying. He hears them still. And he sees others, accepting, calm in the face of their fear. That's never been me.

"Aren't you scared?" Poe asks the girl.

She backs away, her eyes wide. But when the door shuts, Finn and Luke exchange a glance. They know she'll be back.