Darkness Within

Meditation

A/N: I know this is a Dark Rey AU, but I really want to explore Finn and more of his potential storyline, so if you're not a Finn fan, sorry, but maybe you'll like him after I work on developing him more :) 

Rushing down the dim hallway, Finn looks quickly over his shoulder to be sure he isn't being followed by anyone before he ducks into the storage unit he had put Rey's box in. When they evacuated the base on Ajan Kloss, Rose had run upstairs and packed all of Rey's items up and loaded them into the Falcon for him while he and Poe had completed their sweep of the building shortly before Rey and Ren showed up. After arriving at this new base, he had quickly stashed them away in storage where he was sure Poe wouldn't find them.

Rey's betrayal is being handled by Finn and Poe in two very different ways. On one side, Poe is angry, writing Rey off and refusing to engage in conversations with Finn about her. It's obvious that Poe is hurt by Rey's turn, but he wouldn't humble himself enough to actually admit that out loud to anyone. Meanwhile, Finn has been spending countless hours thinking about and problem-solving ideas of how to find Rey, and bring her back.

The box opens with a click, the hinge releasing stubbornly, and he peals the lid open, releasing Rey's scent that he had come to be so comforted by. The box is filled by her extra clothes, a few books he recognized as Jedi texts, and the pieces of her lightsaber she had spent countless hours building. Shifting it back and forth in his hands, he feels the weight of it and the coolness of the black metal.

Setting it to the side, he shifts how he's sitting from his knees to rest back on his butt, crossing his legs in front of him. On a few occasions, he had witnessed Rey meditating, both on her own time and during training sessions with Leia. Her posture was always straight, with her hands resting lightly on her legs and Finn mimics her posture the best that he can remember.

The silence in the room is deafening, a distant hum from a ship in the hangar powering up and taking off audible through the walls. Blindly moving into meditation is confusing to him and he doesn't know how to progress and how to do it properly. Surely there is a right and wrong way?

After many extended moments of silence, he feels a shift, and movement into another space mentally as images faintly flick across his mind. At first their faint, but they slowly build in intensity before he's seeing them in clear detail as if he's back in those moments. A small boy, ripped from his family's grasp, from parents who are faceless, his mind unable to recall them after the years of brainwashing from the first order. The screams of his mother crying out as she is held back by other troopers fill his ears, forming a visible grimace on his face as he relives the pain. The scene from the Barracks, his first nights there, crying himself to sleep in the fetal position, leading into constant days of grueling training and abuse from the generals.

The light darkens around him, the walls seem to close in, until he feels as though he's trapped and might suffocate until the walls break apart, seemingly shattering in every direction, but not leaving any signs of shrapnel or debris. Light flashes around him, discombobulating him as he regains his bearings. Ahead of him is a large object comprised of thick spikes and he steps towards it cautiously. A flash lights it up, revealing a throne, with a figure on it, but he is unable to tell who or what it is.

He feels as though he's in a dream as he steps forward again, his limbs feeling as though they're floating out from his sides and his feet aren't touching the ground. Another flash illuminates the figure and the singular figure appears, the face of Kylo Ren staring back at him, then going dark again. With the next flash, Rey's face is illuminated, or at least a version of Rey's face. Her hair is styled differently, she wears dark makeup making her eyes look like sunken holes, and her lips are darker.