bodhircck:

Flying did not bring Finn the joy it brought Poe or Rey. Not at first. The First Order did not allow joy while flying. Finn and his unit were transported in windowless shuttles to his first battle. They were kept deep inside the corridors of Star Destroyers when they traveled between planets and star systems. Flying was an essential part of taking the galaxy from the Republic. But there was never any joy in that.

It was when Finn traveled with Han and Rey in the Millenium Falcon for the first time that he realized what flying was supposed to feel like. Flying was a freedom he had never known. The ability to control where one goes, when one wants to go. The entire universe was open at his fingertips with the possibility of flight.

But it was more than that. It was the ability to see the galaxy in a way that Finn had never been able to. He could see that when he looked at Rey’s face when she saw Takadona for the first time. He had seen the galaxy before, in controlled and restricted ways, but Rey, stuck on Jakku her whole life, had never seen the diversity the galaxy had to offer. A diversity the First Order would gladly have stamped out.

Before the First Order came to Takadona, he wanted to leave not just to get away from the war that had stolen his life, but to allow himself to see a galaxy as restricted to him as it had been to Rey. He imagined the planets the First Order had occupied and the beauty he had been unable to see before. He imagined wading into the lakes of Takadona and feeling the water against his skin, or wandering through the forests of Endor and smelling the rich, ancient soil and plants. New worlds and experiences away from the war, away from the smoke of blaster fire and the sanitized cleanliness of the Starkiller Base.

He thought that those opportunities closed on him when the First Order arrived and Rey was taken away. But then Poe took him on a supply run – standard, basic routine, designated and regulated. And it was as different from the First Order as it possibly could have been. Poe lit up when he stepped into the cockpit of his shuttle, when the shuttle lifted off the ground, and the ground faded from view. There was joy on his face and he made a point to fly over landscapes for Finn to look at. Flying was so much more than a means of transportation. Flying was joy.