Finn has trouble sleeping. He lies down on his bed and feels the hours crawl by as his eyes stay stuck on the ceiling. Sometimes, he likes to imagine things, closes his eyes and invents stories to pass the time. Other times, he just lies on his bunk, listens to Poe’s steady breathing and tries to drift off.
When Finn actually sleeps, for the minute snatches of time that his mind goes under and he’s unconscious, he has nightmares. Visceral scenes that trap him in its punishing grip and force him to relive terror after terror.
He always wakes an hour or two after, body shaking and a scream held back by his closed mouth. It twists in his stomach, a knot that doesn’t untangle until hours later; when he’s surrounded by his friends and feels his nightmare get pushed to the back of his mind.
Finn has trouble sleeping. Takes to lying down on his bunk until Poe is asleep and he’s able to sit up and do anything and nothing. He’s able to sit and draw if he wants, creating while also letting his mind wander. Sometimes he sits up and looks out the window; stares up at the moon and the stars and imagines what it’d be like to live up there; undaunted and unbothered.
Sometimes Finn sleeps too long. Body crashing and pulling him under. This only ever happens after the war; after his body and his mind understand that the danger is stymied (not gone no…Finn’s not to sure it’d ever really be gone). His body crumples in on itself; refusing to go off of fumes.
He sleeps too long; hours blurring together until Finn wakes to Poe’s barely concealed worry and his daughter’s overt worry.
“You need to rest more,” they tell him and Finn knows; he knows. He’s just not too sure how exactly to go about undoing this bit of abuse he’d suffered underneath the First Order.
(It’d taken him a long time to call it abuse; painstakingly long hours with his therapist, Na’im, to call it something other than “conditioning” or “training.” It doesn’t help anyone, least of himself, Finn finds, to call it anything but the truth. They hurt him, tried to twist him into something they wanted.
“It’s a testament to your strength,” Na’im tells him, “that you survived.”
Finn thinks about Slip’s blooded face; thinks about the fury in Nine’s voice when they’d seen each other, and wonders what they’d all be like if they’d had a chance to grow up without war.)
Finn has trouble sleeping; sleeps too little, not at all, or too much. But he’s alive and he’s trying to get better. And he counts that as a win.
When he was little, Jake would get a cupcake every year. The icing would be thick, and fluffy, and tasted so sweet he could barely stand it. But the thing that he loved most was the way that his dad would put a hand on his shoulder and beam at him, saying, “Happy Birthday, son.” Jake remembers swelling up with pride, those words making him feel like he could conquer the world.
The kaiju attacks start. Everyone’s scared. He’s scared. He’s young and his shoulders are too thin to deal with the burden or war. But every year his dad still gets him his cupcake, and he still beams at him. And it’s on that day every year where he finally feels safe.
The kaiju keep coming. His dad needs to be away more often but Jake knows he’ll never forget his birthday. No matter how busy things got, no matter how often his dad would leave, he wouldn’t forget.
One year the cupcakes stop. Stacker Pentecost is needed halfway across the world to settle a dispute. World leaders are squabbling and it doesn’t look like there’s an end to the kaiju in sight. Jake doesn’t get a call. Or a smile.
His dad becomes overcome with work. Mako tries to make up for it but she can’t. She’s young, too. She’s scared. She’s not their dad. Nate sees what’s going on so he tries by scraping together a gift that he thinks Jake would like and stocking up on jokes to bring a smile to Jakes face. For a time that helps but it’s still not enough. There’s too much going on.
Then Jake leaves. He leaves everybody and everything behind. Each day blurs into the other until a year passes and he all but forgets his birthday. Years pass.
Jake gets the news of his father’s death. His birthday is a month later. He doesn’t speak a word the entire day.
Then he just forgets. Maybe because he’s just too busy trying to survive in a world so infested by war and insecurity. Maybe because it hurts less that way. Not even he’s sure why.
Then Jake comes back. And things are going normal until Mako shows up one day and sets down a huge cupcake in front of him. The icing is thick, and fluffy, and it tastes so sweet he can barely stand it. She remembered. Jake hasn’t seen that kind of decadence in years and he briefly wonders how his sister pulled that kind of favor but then he doesn’t really think anymore because Nate’s there too, and he’s giving Jake a gift and Nate and Mako are just telling him how much they care about him and there are tears forming in his eyes because he remembers, they remember, and all the emotion and the pride and the mourning for what used to be hits him like a wave crashing against the shore and he’s carried off by the tide.
The next birthday, Mako brings him a cupcake. And for the first birthday in years, Jake can feel himself smile.
Ahhhhhh I love this theory!! Maybe the hangar getting blown up from footage released earlier is from this evacuation, too! It would certainly fit with the way the FO was shooting at the Resistance ships, and I know if I was a commander in that battle I’d be making sure the X-Wings can’t launch.
So Poe, ordered to evacuate, realizes Leia is in danger, gets on an X-Wing with the hangar blowing up around him, dogfights Kylo Ren away from Leia at great risk to himself, and Leia gets mad as hell at him for putting himself in so much danger, against her express orders at that. She busts his rank down from Commander to Lieutenant for insubordination, too.
And what if Leia’s sorrow and fear in the trailer scene are due to watching the dogfight, not daring to imagine what would happen if either of them killed the other? It would certainly add an edge to her anger at Poe, the thought that she could have lost him or that she could have watched Kylo die, an agonizing prospect despite how far he’s gone.
In many ways she may have found the prospect of her own death easier than Poe confronting Kylo in battle, and maybe Poe made this observation in the heat of the moment–that she wasn’t thinking of herself, and her grief and her pain were overwhelming her so much that she wanted to end things and leave the fight for good.
This would certainly get Leia angry enough to hit Poe, because he’s out of line but he’s also right, which is worse. This was something Han did in Hoth, too, shadowing her through the evacuation so she couldn’t stay behind to die a heroic death. The memories would be almost too much.
I hope Leia’s and Poe’s care for each other, their personal philosophies, and their respective traumas collide and overlap to develop their relationship both as a commander and subordinate and as a surrogate mother and son. And I want to see Poe kick his torturer’s ass big time.
In The Empire Strikes Back, when Leia tells Han she happens to like nice men, she was referring to her residual crush on Cassian Andor; a habitual unintentional friend-maker and ally to sassy droids w free will, the nicest man in the galaxy.
Sources: My fists.
Yes this was definitely the case
And also why Leia was so continually ticked off at Han, because the universe was playing such a cruel trick on her that Cassian Andor got to die but this nerfnedder got to live
Here’s a deleted scene from Rogue One that proves this is canon, actually!
“Oh, so you’re not even going to see me out?”
Captain Andor–Cassian, she turned the name over in her mind, examining it, touching it–turned halfway from his post at the entryway where he had his blaster aimed outward to cover her retreat.
“So it was the royal treatment you wanted, after all.”
She felt her face grow hot though his eyebrow was quirked and his tone teasing, or maybe it was because of those things. “I suppose I’ll be on my way then.”
“I hate good-byes. I’ll see you again, Leia. K2,” he gestured with his head, “escort the Princess to her ship.”
The smoky black form of the battle droid lumbered out of a corner, coin-round eyes blinking in something like mechanized innocence.
“I will have you know I am fully qualified for royal protocol. I was a certified Class 3 Imperial Protocol Droid, and I can remove the spinal cord of any being who tries to hinder you.”
“Do I even want to know?” Leia covered her head with her hood. “Don’t die, Captain.”
“You are not part of my chain of command, but I will give your request due consideration.” He turned back outside and bent to his scope. “They’re on their way. Hurry.”
She started saying good-bye, thought better of it, and turned away with one last look at the Captain’s back.
It wasn’t until later, when she learned what had happened at Scarif and it sank in that this last glance was the last she would see of him, that she realized he had called her Leia. She would wish for the rest of her life she had returned the favor.
it’s Finnship Thursday, here’s my short contribution. (past) FinnSlip & FinnPoe
Something Always Gives It feels like a betrayal. Not to the Order, he had no loyalties to the Order, no obligations to it like it had never held any allegiance to him. It feels like betraying Slip. The taste of Poe Dameron’s lips is betrayal. He said he loved another, he told someone he held them dear and would be by their side yet he is breathing, safe as anyone in the universe and Slip is rotting on Jakku’s sands. He had not been able to see Slip’s face that last time, had not been able to watch his last breath leave him or the light leave his eyes and he was grateful for that in a way. Had he seen it it would have haunted him, but he still felt as though his last moments with Slips had been cheapened, the last slight the Order had dealt Slip was not allowing them to see each other. Their goodbye rushed, and incomplete. And this hello, the fluid motion of their hug becoming more, their lips soft on eachothers makes his stomach drop and his heart flutter. Yet he still wonders what Slip’s lips would feel like.
Finn and Rey see some pilots doing the push-ups with their friends on their backs, and they’re like “THIS IS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN,” so they immediately try it themselves, but it always devolves into Finn trying to make himself as heavy and inconvenient as possible on Rey’s back while shouting stuff like “no come on I believe in you!!! don’t let anyone tell you your weak arms can’t do this!!” as Rey lies face down on the ground helplessly giggling
If they ever get far enough along to switch roles, Rey’s a merciless and cruel tickler. It’s entirely possible they have never completed one single push up.
Dark!FinnRey au where Finn ( Finnris ) is a powerful Sith Lord whose sole ambition is to learn the secrets of the Force. He despises ignorance and slavery, so it’s not a surprise that many of those who loyally serve him are former slaves he forcibly freed. People whisper that he had once been a Stormtrooper who’d showed promise, but was snuffed out as a budding force sensitive and yanked out of the program to be properly trained.
Rey is an Imperial politician with a silver-tongue and a sly cunning. She is eager to make changes to the Empire and update some of it’s current policies but winds up making powerful enemies.
Finnris kills a would-be assassin and a thankful Rey is intrigued and instantly attracted to him. It doesn’t take long for the two of them to become the driving force ( and power couple ) that ushers the Empire into what many call the Golden Age.
They may have been evil, but they were very, very good. Finn studied all the historic battles over and over again as part of his training, told about the Empire’s mistakes and how the First Order would avoid them.
He studied the Rebels’ infiltration of the imperial records depository at Scarif, how a team led by the traitors Bodhi Rook and Jyn Erso, the ruthless assassin and spymaster Cassian Andor, and the cult-bred killers Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus infiltrated the installation and destroyed the planet in a deadly suicide mission.
He learned about the Battle of Yavin, where Princess Leia Organa–after all these years still a menace to peace and order–lured the Death Star to the Rebels’ base and an ambush, where Luke Skywalker destroyed the station with one well-placed shot, snuffing out the thousands of lives within.
He read about the Battle of Hoth where the Rebels eluded the Empire’s pursuit yet again, about the Battle of Endor where the Rebellion moved together like the parts of a symphony. Finn found himself glued to the screen as he learned, through reports and surviving archival footage, how the smuggler Han Solo led a ground assault to disable the Second Death Star’s shields while Admiral Gial Ackbar, at large and a threat like Organa, joined battle in space. All this was only a cover, however, for Luke Skywalker to board the battle station and murder Darth Vader and the helpless Emperor. Criminal kingpin Lando Calrissian finished the job in another act of wanton destruction, an assault so reckless, so foolhardy it should have failed by all rights but somehow succeeded brilliantly.
Finn used his own time to delve deeper into these battles, reading past lights-out until he was caught and got in trouble. He told himself as he dug out a drainage ditch as punishment that he wasn’t getting too deep into the history of the Rebellion, he just wanted to know the enemy so he could beat them this time around.
But by Space, those Rebels were good. It was no wonder a terrorist group had toppled the mighty Empire. If the First Order learned more from their enemies’ tactics it would be unstoppable, and unlike the Rebellion whose puppet government was already crumbling, the Order’s victory would be a lasting one based on justice and the rule of the Supreme Leader.
Nevertheless, the sense of awe at the sheer skill of these terrorists stayed with Finn. That was why, when faced with one of those legends, the smuggler, criminal, the terrorist Han Solo in the flesh, the words burst out as though they had been caught in his throat the entire time:
“Wasn’t he a war hero?!”
OH MY GOD, END ME NOW, I LOVE THIS!!!! Finn as the scholar, drawing from the heroes of the past, (and also not having time for Han’s bullshit) BRILLIANT CONCEPT, 13/10, the bit about the Rogue One being lead by traitors, I”M SCREAMING IN THE CLUB
What do you want to bet the OT trio and the Rogue One crew (’CAUSE THEY’RE NOT DEAD, LINDA) get Finn to tell them how the FO curriculum describes them and compete to see which is the best? “’Traitor?’ Not bad, but needs more spice. I did a lot more than that!” “Assassin and spymaster! Accurate, yet badass.” “Who did you pay to get them to call you ‘criminal kingpin,’ you scoundrel? I was there, you were small-time.” “Oh please, like anyone can beat cult killers?”
HEADCANON ACCEPTED (Bodhi wins. Everyone else has to chip in to buy him lunch, which they would totally do anyway, but this way they get to all kvetch a bit. )
They may have been evil, but they were very, very good. Finn studied all the historic battles over and over again as part of his training, told about the Empire’s mistakes and how the First Order would avoid them.
He studied the Rebels’ infiltration of the imperial records depository at Scarif, how a team led by the traitors Bodhi Rook and Jyn Erso, the ruthless assassin and spymaster Cassian Andor, and the cult-bred killers Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus infiltrated the installation and destroyed the planet in a deadly suicide mission.
He learned about the Battle of Yavin, where Princess Leia Organa–after all these years still a menace to peace and order–lured the Death Star to the Rebels’ base and an ambush, where Luke Skywalker destroyed the station with one well-placed shot, snuffing out the thousands of lives within.
He read about the Battle of Hoth where the Rebels eluded the Empire’s pursuit yet again, about the Battle of Endor where the Rebellion moved together like the parts of a symphony. Finn found himself glued to the screen as he learned, through reports and surviving archival footage, how the smuggler Han Solo led a ground assault to disable the Second Death Star’s shields while Admiral Gial Ackbar, at large and a threat like Organa, joined battle in space. All this was only a cover, however, for Luke Skywalker to board the battle station and murder Darth Vader and the helpless Emperor. Criminal kingpin Lando Calrissian finished the job in another act of wanton destruction, an assault so reckless, so foolhardy it should have failed by all rights but somehow succeeded brilliantly.
Finn used his own time to delve deeper into these battles, reading past lights-out until he was caught and got in trouble. He told himself as he dug out a drainage ditch as punishment that he wasn’t getting too deep into the history of the Rebellion, he just wanted to know the enemy so he could beat them this time around.
But by Space, those Rebels were good. It was no wonder a terrorist group had toppled the mighty Empire. If the First Order learned more from their enemies’ tactics it would be unstoppable, and unlike the Rebellion whose puppet government was already crumbling, the Order’s victory would be a lasting one based on justice and the rule of the Supreme Leader.
Nevertheless, the sense of awe at the sheer skill of these terrorists stayed with Finn. That was why, when faced with one of those legends, the smuggler, criminal, the terrorist Han Solo in the flesh, the words burst out as though they had been caught in his throat the entire time:
“Wasn’t he a war hero?!”
OH MY GOD, END ME NOW, I LOVE THIS!!!! Finn as the scholar, drawing from the heroes of the past, (and also not having time for Han’s bullshit) BRILLIANT CONCEPT, 13/10, the bit about the Rogue One being lead by traitors, I”M SCREAMING IN THE CLUB
What do you want to bet the OT trio and the Rogue One crew (’CAUSE THEY’RE NOT DEAD, LINDA) get Finn to tell them how the FO curriculum describes them and compete to see which is the best? “’Traitor?’ Not bad, but needs more spice. I did a lot more than that!” “Assassin and spymaster! Accurate, yet badass.” “Who did you pay to get them to call you ‘criminal kingpin,’ you scoundrel? I was there, you were small-time.” “Oh please, like anyone can beat cult killers?”
Ok but can you imagine if someone tried to pull the “Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering” shit with Finn in the event of a Stormtrooper uprising, cautioning him against anger and violence? The look he’d give that person. Like, “Thank you for your TED talk, but we’ve had our lives stolen and been fed a regular diet of curated bullshit for years, YEAH we’re angry no shit and we’re gonna use our pain, our anger to burn those fascists down. Now help us or get the hell out of our way.” Wouldn’t that be a wonderful pushback against the real-world “both sides” rhetoric we see today?
Omg Finn would school that person so hard and he’d be mad as hell. Not self-destructive anger but an anger that is justified and not sugarcoated. The anger of men and women and children who have been treated like droids their whole lives. It’s the type of anger that topples evil regimes and gives birth to heroes.
And just imagine Hux trying to escape and he just gets swarmed by a giant group of angry stormtroopers who beat him to a pulp and throw his ass in the trash.
And they all burn the First Order to the ground. Brick by brick.
Yes to all this, and I hope Finn tells Hux as he confronts him, “Congratulations. Your program worked.”
And as the enraged troopers fall on the scared space Nazi: “…Just not in the way you intended.”
L.J.'s Obsessions 