So sorry for the long wait, you guys, but life decided to hit big time! My holidays were nice, even with having to stay separate from the vast majority of my family, but January decided to bite me in the butt! I went and got covid! Thankfully, the only symptoms I had were a stuffed up nose and a dry, unproductive cough. The cough, unfortunately, has decided to linger in into February, joy of all joys, so that's been oodles of fun.

Hope life's treating you all better than it has been me!

Enjoy this next chapter!


Chapter 14

Poe is a bit surprised when he blinks his eyes open the next morning and finds Finn still asleep beside him sprawled out on his stomach. His husband is usually the first one up, a remnant from his First Order training that the man never seemed to be able to really shake. So Poe savours being able to lie next to his husband with no pressing demands looming over their heads. General Organa had assured him yesterday while they were waiting for Rey to join them that, barring any abrupt problem that decided to surface, she would allow the four of them today off. Poe very much appreciates that, especially because he's going to have to get himself back in the routine of waking up at a specific time. He doesn't think it'll take too long, but the night shifts are going to be utter crap the first couple of times he's scheduled.

A frown tugs at his lips despite the calm morning when he recalls Finn's prickliness yesterday. While he'd never try to force Finn to get along with anyone he doesn't like, from what Poe recalls of Rey's temper, she isn't going to put up with anyone snapping at Ben for the foreseeable future. Not even her friends. So that's something he's going to have to try and talk with Finn about before they go looking for anyone. And then maybe talk with Rey depending on how Finn answers.

Shuffling noises beside him has his frown turning into a grin.

"Morning husband."

Finn shifts so he can crack one eye open and glare blearily up at him. "You're thinkin' too hard," he mutters. "'s morning."

"Gotta get used to that again," he points out. "We're gonna be back on the clock again starting tomorrow."

Finn grunts. "That's tomorrow."

Poe raises an eyebrow. "Well, yesterday's grumpy attitude apparently stuck around. You aren't usually this grouchy in the morning. That's generally my thing." He figures the reason he isn't this particular morning is because he got to wake up when he wanted to, not because of an alarm.

Finn shifts so he can press his face back into his pillow before groaning loudly. "It's been a rough few days, okay?"

While Poe won't deny that at all, the year of the war the three of them were together hadn't been easy either, what with all three of them struggling to find themselves in one fashion or another. "Buddy, we lived through a rough year. And that's not even getting into all the work we put in after the war."

His husband grumbles more nonsense into his pillow that Poe doesn't even bother trying to understand. "You're not gonna let this go, are you?"

"Finn, you probably know Rey's temper better than me." He gently pokes his husband in the side. "How exactly do you think she'll react to any sort of snippiness directed towards Ben right now?"

Finn groans again. "Kriffing hells, fine." He shuffles around until he's lying flat on his back and staring up at the ceiling of their room. "You know I love you, right?"

The eyebrow goes up again. "Well that's an interesting way to start this conversation."

"Poe."

"Yeah buddy, I know. We've been married for forty years now. I'm guessing this is about why it took me ten years before I could get you to say yes?"

Finn fixes him with a deadpan stare before heaving a weary sounding sigh. "Despite the fact that you were the reason I got out of the First Order in the first place, I'd thought I'd lost you right after we fled and Rey was the first person I really interacted with after that. Something just resonated in me when I laid eyes on her. I think I fell in love with her at first sight. I wanted to help her even when the idea of the First Order finding me scared me shitless." Finn scrubs at his face. "And all she seemed to want to do was concentrate on a man who'd not only killed his own father, but also wanted to turn her. He wanted to take this bright, vibrant light and extinguish it. He wanted to bury it so deep in darkness that it'd never shine again. He probably thought he was just going to make her better, but it would've killed everything that makes Rey Rey. All that would've been left if he'd managed it would've been a shell of her former self, or worse, a monster just like him. And maybe in the end he did save her. Maybe he did have a change of heart, but he still took her from me." He barks out a bitter sounding laugh. "Even after his death he still had more of a claim on her than I ever managed. I would've stood with her after Exogol. I would've stood with her and gone wherever she wanted to go because I loved her. I would've let her mourn for all that I couldn't really stand the idea of mourning Kylo Ren. Instead she ran from us, Poe, and kept on running for fifty years because she was afraid of what we would say about her mourning a man who sought to subjugate the galaxy. She didn't even bother to ask."

Surprisingly, none of this is actually new to Poe. He'd guessed some of it on his own, but he hadn't been interested in dredging up old wounds before all the craziness hit them again. And then there's the fact that he's never actually felt like Finn would ever abandon him for Rey, not even before they really got together after the war. He'd definitely run to help her, but Poe figures a small measure of the trust the two shared during the war was broken a bit when Rey left them like she had after everything was said and done. "Is that what you tried to tell her on Pasaana when we all thought we were going to die in the sinking sands? That you loved her?"

"It was."

Yeah, that's what he thought. "Well, buddy, I'm sure you already know this, but fifty years is a bit of a long time to hold a grudge."

"I'm aware."

"And you realize that Ben's probably not going anywhere anytime soon? That he and Rey are going to be pretty much joined at the hip for the foreseeable future?"

"Yes," Finn growls.

"Just checking."

His husband swats at Poe's arm. "I know he's not Kylo Ren anymore. I do know that, despite what you seem to think. He doesn't even look the same. I only ever saw Kylo Ren when he had a helmet on except for those last few days of the war. He even carries himself differently now. I know all of this in my head. That doesn't make my feelings any easier to deal with."

Poe nods along with him, because he does understand that, and as he's considering the difference, certain memories from his childhood decide to surface for the first time in years. "You know, he kinda reminds me of how he was back before Leia and Han shipped him off for training with Luke. He smiled a decent amount for all that he seemed a bit skittish."

The flurry of limbs that Finn produces flailing himself upright is downright amusing. "Wait a minute, you knew him before he went Dark?"

"Yeah, Han and Leia were close friends of my parents. They served under Leia during the Rebellion even. Ben and I got dumped together a lot whenever they met up. He's only three years younger than me, so I was in charge of keeping the brat entertained." Poe scrunches up his nose. "And now that I think about it, the fact that he has the Force explains some of the weird shenanigans we got into. I never really thought about it at the time, we were kids, and when he left I promptly forgot everything cause he wasn't around to remind me anymore. Huh."

"I think my brain hurts," Finn mutters.

Poe reaches over and pats the top of his head. That earns him a scowl that he just grins at. "I think you might be in for a while of hurt, buddy, at least until you get used to the idea."

Finn flops back down onto the bed dramatically. "I know," he says despairingly, "and I need to talk with Rey about things that'll definitely include Solo so I'm just gonna have to get over myself."

"I can talk with Rey or Ben if you want," Poe offers, already knowing that his husband is going to turn him down.

"No, thanks but no. Unfortunately, I think that what we have to discuss will mean Solo and I spending a significant amount of time together."

"Would it be about why you had nightmares about Rey dying on Exogol so much?" Because there'd been quite a few of those, even five years after the fact when they got together, and Finn never wanted to talk about them. Poe only knows that much because Finn kept shouting Rey's name and he'd pushed for some answers.

Finn pulls a face that shows just how much he doesn't like the idea of having to talk about that. "Probably."

"Lovely." Poe sighs, not wanting to spoil the morning anymore than they already have "Then we should go see about getting things for breakfast, cause I want me some food and caf."

Finn chuckles as he lazily stretches. "I honestly thought you were going to throw a fit when the doctor warned you about your caf intake."

"There's no need to bring up that blasphemy!" Poe protests while he rolls out of bed. "I don't have to worry about that nonsense for at least another forty five years!"

His husband just laughs at him while he hunts around for some clothes to throw on to make a quick run to the canteen. He fully intends to take advantage of his day off, and that means lounging around in their room because wandering around the ship or planet below them will mean getting sucked into the crush of things, and normally he'd be more than okay with that risk, given how often he did it in the past, but today is different. Today is the last day he feels he'll truly be able to relax until they've dealt with the threat looming on the horizon, and despite them knowing exactly what it is that they have to face, that won't make the execution any easier. If anything, it's more terrifying this time round because now they could lose entirely different people, and Poe unfortunately knows himself well enough that each death will weigh heavily on his shoulders for all that he knows they won't truly be his fault.

"You're thinking too hard again," Finn informs him as he throws a pillow at Poe's head.

Poe catches said pillow after it bounces off his face and hurls it back at his husband. The man just laughs some more as Poe huffs at him, knowing he's right. "I'll just go by myself to get breakfast if this is how I'm going to be treated today."

Finn flashes him a grin that's all teeth. "And yet you're still gonna come back."

Poe doesn't even bother trying to stop the fond grin that spreads across his lips. "Yeah, yeah. You want anything in particular if they've got it?"

Finn lazily waves a hand at him. "You know what I like."

After chucking his sleep shirt onto the bed and tugging the one he'd snagged over his head, he bends down to press a quick kiss to Finn's lips. "I do indeed. I'll be back shortly, then." He grabs his boots on his way out of their small bedroom, hopping on one foot and then the other as he puts them on instead of bothering to sit down. It's a bit silly, but he's just happy he can do that again without completely losing his balance. He's managed to stumble his way to the door by then. He opens it and blinks when he unexpectedly finds Ben and Rey on the other side. "Well this is a surprise," he says blandly. "This isn't some weird Force thing, is it, cause I was just about to go to the canteen, but now you're obviously here for something and that unfortunately means no caf for me anytime soon, and I'd really rather not have to deal with this on a daily basis if it's all the same to you."

"No, just ridiculously good timing. We do, however, come bearing food and caf," Ben says, holding up a fairly large karaf. Poe notes that he also has the food boxes balanced in his other hand, while all Rey's holding are cups. "We had this pretty much shoved into our hands when we mentioned where and who we were bringing breakfast to."

Poe snorts in amusement before he can stop himself. "Yeah, I kind of have a bit of reputation in the canteen. The staff joked for years that the General and I should just each have our own karaf, given how much caf we can drink given the opportunity." He motions for them to step inside while asking, "No one gave you any trouble?"

Ben lazily shrugs a shoulder while Rey gets a grumpy tired face that matches Finn's from earlier as she shuffles into the room. "I think everyone was too asleep to really care one way or another."

"Well, I'm not gonna complain if it gets me that much caf." Rey is very much still half asleep because she stumbles over to one of the few chairs Poe managed to wrangle having and plops down in it before pouting up at Ben. Her partner just smiles fondly, setting the karaf and food down on the table next to her. She gets herself a cup of caf that she instantly starts sipping despite the obvious steam rising up from the cup indicating that they managed to snag some fresh caf. It's not really a habit of hers that he remembers from the war, but then again, she had fifty years to make all sorts of new habits. "I'm kind of surprised you're even here in the first place, though."

"Rey wanted to talk with Finn."

"And Finn wants to talk with Rey, so that works out." Poe gives his friend a speculative once over. "Finn's still in the bedroom if you feel awake enough to talk a bit."

Rey frowns down into her cup of caf as though it might hold all the answers she's looking for. Poe is intimately familiar with said thought process. She abruptly twists to top it off, then fills up another one before marching off to his little ass bedroom.

"The food good to sit for a bit?" Poe asks while getting himself a cup of caf.

Ben's nose scrunches up. "I think? I didn't really pay attention beyond getting enough."

"Then we'll give those two about ten minutes before we eat without them," Poe decides. He raises an eyebrow when the man just continues to hover where he's standing. "You're allowed to sit, you know."

Ben's cheeks flush, but he drops down into the chair Rey had been sitting in moments before. "Sorry, I don't really know how to do...this." He trails off while waving a hand awkwardly through the air.

Poe barely manages to stifle the laughter that bubbles up at Ben's words, because that is the understatement of the century. "Yeah, the First Order doesn't really lend itself to good interpersonal relationships," he drawls blandly, sitting as well.

"It really didn't," Ben mutters, slumping in his chair. It just serves to highlight how long limbed and gangly the man is. And despite how awkward his current situation makes him look, Poe knows just how agile and deadly the man can be with a weapon in hand. Hells, he knows multiple people like that.

"You guys have anything planned for today?" Poe asks conversationally after they sit in stilted silence for a bit, wondering if his lazy day is going to get interrupted again before it even begins.

Ben shrugs half-heartedly. "Not that I really know of, but Rey might surprise me on that front. I'm just following her right now."

"She is a force unto herself."

Ben hums in agreement before clearing his throat. "We've been discussing training your husband, though."

Poe nods, having already expected this. "Am I allowed to watch, or is it gonna be some secret Jedi training? I didn't see much of Rey's before, but only because Finn and I were often sent out on missions while she stayed behind with your mom."

"I don't see why not. It's not like we're going to be trying to hide the fact that Finn can use the Force. It might even be a good—"

Abruptly, all the color drains out of Ben's face. He makes a noise like someone punched him in the gut before he lurches towards the bedroom for no reason that Poe can see or hear. Poe, after making sure not to fling his caf all over the floor, scrambles to follow.


The bedroom is seemingly empty when Rey enters, but the door to what she assumes is the refresher is shut, so she sets down the cup of caf she brought for Finn on the lone bedside table and then settles down to wait on the bed proper. She's well aware that this conversation between her and Finn is a long time coming. It's only now with the bond she and Ben share whole and healthy humming in the back of her mind that she can truly see just how badly she erred. They definitely won't be able to hash everything out now, given that there's food waiting for them, but they can at least start. She takes a few more sips of her own caf, staring intently into the dark liquid as she looks for the words she needs to say. Her head jerks up when the refresher door opens and Finn walks out, chest bare and sleep pants she's sure are really Poe's low on his hips. He's smiling at seemingly nothing, only to stutter to a halt when he sees her on his bed.

"You're not Poe," he says almost stupidly.

She feels her lips twitch into an attempt at a smile. "I'm not." She jerks a thumb in the direction of their small living room. "Poe's out there with Ben." She doesn't miss the way Finn briefly pulls a face at Ben's name. It's small, smoothed out almost immediately, and the only reason she catches it is because she's watching for it.

"There a reason you're in here instead of out there with them?" he asks, grabbing a shirt and pulling it over his head.

She takes in a deep breath, because the words are still hard to stay even though Finn deserves them a thousand times over. "I owe you an apology."

Finn visibly falters, obviously not expecting those words from her. "Come again?"

"I owe you an apology. Specifically for how I acted after Exogol. For how I ran away."

Her friend grimaces. "I forgave you for that years ago, even if I still don't understand it."

"I know." Rey exhales shakily, fighting the urge to avoid this conversation all together. This is something that Finn needs to understand though, because she refuses to leave his training in Luke Skywalker's hands, and that means he and Ben will be spending time together. "You mentioned when we first came back that you'd felt me die on Exogol."

"What's that got to do with—?"

Rey holds up a hand to stall him. "What did it feel like?"

"Feel like?" Finn pulls a face. "I don't really...it all happened so fast. Lando had just saved Jannah and I from the falling command ship. We were running through the Falcon when all of a sudden it just seemed like everything stopped. Even with the battle still raging around us, I just stopped. I don't…" He trails off, seemingly confused now that he's focusing on it. "I don't understand why I did that."

"Because there was a tentative bond between us that neither of us really knew about," Rey explains, "and when I died and the connection abruptly shattered, you suppressed everything. Your mind wasn't prepared to deal with the pain a bond broken abruptly by death can produce when you'd had no training whatsoever."

Finn blinks for a few moments as this processes. "But you did," he says slowly.

"And it was a hundred times more potent than whatever you briefly experienced," Rey whispers. She sets her cup of caf down by Finn's untouched one and takes his hands in hers. She knows that he's starting to get an idea of what she endured, but she wants him to fully understand. So without much thought of why it might be a bad idea, Rey reaches out for the echo of the bond she knows exists between them. She pours herself into it, waking it up until she hears Finn's startled gasp.

"Rey, what—?"

"This is what it felt like to me when the bond between Ben and I broke," she says softly before dredging up the memory of the aching brokenness she'd lived with. The pain and the longing that constantly haunted her.

Finn makes a wounded noise in the back of his throat as the door to the bedroom flies open and Ben comes barreling in with a wild look in his eyes. He hits his knees beside Rey and gathers her up in his arms, a harsh sob escaping him as he buries his face in her shoulder.

Rey releases Finn's hands, cursing herself for not considering at all that neither she nor Ben have attempted to hide anything from each other, and that that means that they always feel what the other feels. "I lived with all of that constantly in the back of my mind for fifty years, Finn," she chokes out, sending all the love and care she can down the bond between both men. "The only reason you didn't is because Ben gave his life for me on Exogol."

"Someone want to explain why all three of you are crying?" Poe all but demands, dropping onto the bed beside Finn and wrapping an arm around his husband's trembling shoulders.

"I needed Finn to fully understand what I had lived with for the past fifty years because of my broken dyad bond with Ben. The jagged emptiness in my soul, like a piece of myself had been ripped away, a piece of myself I hadn't even known existed until it was suddenly gone, so I opened the bond between us and showed him. I forgot that Ben would feel what I feel, and that he hasn't ever felt the full extent of it," Rey says through her tears, meeting her friend's furious expression as steadily as she can. Her dyad partner shudders against her at the reminder. "It doesn't excuse my actions after Exogol. Nothing does, really. And maybe if I'd stayed and we'd tried to explore the connection between the two of us, it might've soothed that ache. But it was raw and fresh, and too many people would've scorned me for mourning a man they all despised." She shifts her gaze to her other friend. "Even you, Finn, and at the time I couldn't handle that. It would've shattered me utterly. So I'm sorry for running like I did, but at the time I felt as though I had no other option."

Poe exhales explosively. "I really wish you'd waited to do that, but alright. Just, you and Ben go into the other room for a little bit, please. We'll join you once I've calmed my husband down."

"Of course," Rey agrees hoarsely, bringing Ben with her as she stands and leaves the bedroom. He collapses into the chair she steers him to, and she clambers into his lap, needing to feel surrounded by him. "I messed up," she whispers despairingly, blocking the connection between her and Finn as best she can because he doesn't deserve her turmoil right now. Not when she's the reason he's so shaken right now. This is what she gets for rushing things.

Ben chokes out a watery sounding laugh even as his arms tighten around her. "I think we're going to be doing that a lot, unfortunately."

"But I keep hurting them!"

"They'll forgive you. You haven't killed anyone important to them, so you're already doing better than me."

Rey rears upright so she can glare at Ben even through her tears. "Ben Solo, do not turn this into a competition of who's hurt who more!"

He merely offers her a self-deprecating smile. "It's true, though."

She huffs indignantly at him. "Only because of Snoke and Palpatine." She feels his half-hearted acceptance of that, but decides to let it go for now. She's made enough bad decisions this morning already. No need to press her luck any further.