Work Text
The problem with having the First Order always on the Resistance’s tail was that getting a moment of peace and relaxation seemed nearly impossible. Sometimes it felt like every other day an evacuation order was issued and the Resistance was packed into transports like a tin of flutterers and sent to inhabit more claustrophobic abandoned mines and makeshift shelters.But perhaps what was even more tiring was how often battle was made between the two forces. It seemed like warfare came too soon and created a whole different sense of claustrophobia. The approaching scream of TIE fighters became all-too familiar and the smell of blaster fire and burning and fear became a stench that quickly brought back too painful of memories and the sinking feeling of high anxiety levels and terror. The Resistance was brave, yes; they were not cowards, but all sentients had an instinct that willed them to survive another day rather than to stand and fight. To not feel a little fear would be impossible in such a situation.Rey rushed head on in the face of her own fears, lightsaber ignited as she hissed at her enemies like a predator waiting to pounce. Lightsabers, she had learned with practice and with trust in the Force, are spectacularly handy when deflecting blaster bolts but even she could be overwhelmed when it’s plainly obvious that the First Order has been ordered to target her specifically. She knew when she left the Supremacy that fateful day that Kylo Ren – for Ben Solo had ceased to exist the moment he betrayed his uncle and murder his classmates – would always lurk just around the corner, out for her blood and knowledge that the last person that could bring the Jedi was finally dead. Neither of them could know peace for as long as the other was still living.This lightsaber was borrowed and all wrong. It felt wrong in her hands and the yellow glow of the blade looked wrong to her eyes. Not knowing what to do about the broken Skywalker lightsaber, Leia had scouted out one on her own on the black market – a leftover from after the first Jedi Order fell all those decades ago – and she got help in the form of an old friend that knew smugglers and traders. While Rey appreciated the effort that Leia and Lando had made for her sake, she wanted to figure out how to either fix the old lightsaber or build a new one; one that didn’t seem to say to her, “I am not yours,” and refuse to ignite at the worst possible time.Today was unfortunately a battle that brought in not just the typical stream of soldiers and TIEs. The flat terrain of the fields of this uninhabited world was perfect for walkers of all shapes and sizes and the First Order knew exactly how to work this to their advantage.Fortunately for the Resistance, they had Finn on their side and while he might not have gotten quite the amount of experience in the First Order’s ranks that would be ideal to intel; he did have a far better understanding of their tactics and their weapons than any of them even had a grasp on.Unfortunately for Rey, she knew Finn sometimes used his knowledge in ways that got him into danger. She loved Finn’s compassion for others, but sometimes his insistence to offer stormtroopers a chance to defect drove her over the edge. No, he didn’t ask a ‘trooper to defect when they were firing at him, but any time hesitation was shown, he’d ask. Rey could not blame him for needing to do so - she knew that no one in the Resistance would have done the same for him had he been the one in the white armor behind enemy lines – but sometimes she wished that he exercised just a bit more caution.Like right now, for instance.She couldn’t always keep track of Finn in these situations because she needed to put her thoughts into keeping herself alive first and foremost. Even without all the years of Jakku influencing her, instinct told her to make sure that her survival was her own and only priority. Everyone else came second. She had asked Luke one night, appearing to her in a dream, if this was the right thing to be thinking.“Following your instincts isn’t a bad thing,” he had told her.“But shouldn’t I be trusting the Force?” she had asked.Luke had smiled. “Who says they’re not one and the same?”She had woken up after that and spent the rest of the day wondering if Luke had really appeared to her or if her brain was giving her advice which she had already known and just needed to be reminded of.Still, Rey occasionally looked around the battlefield during a rare moment of respite from waves of soldiers and weapon fire, hoping that she could glimpse Finn for just a second through the smoke and dust kicked up from the heavy machinery. Just the relief of knowing he was still alive gave her a little more strength to keep going.But this time she spotted the outline of Finn’s strong figure, blending in now that he wore a dark shirt and vest like all the other Resistance fighters, and felt her heart nearly drop into her stomach.Finn faced a two-legged walker alone, staring up and yelling at the trooper controlling it to surrender. The walker was in a moment of pause in its fire to avoid overheating but its weapons were still aimed directly at Finn. Even with a shot as accurate as his, a blaster rifle was nothing compared to the weapons of a walker.It was almost like she could sense the walker reloading and readying to fire. The world around her grew still as her vision focused only ahead of her.“Finn!”The scream made her throat feel raw. She didn’t even realize that it came from her until the world around her shook and she wobbled while trying to keep herself upright. Desperation growing, she reached out as if she could touch her friend from where she stood. She kept walking forward. Turning around as the rumbling grew nearer to him, Finn looked at her in shock as the world seemed to try to tear itself apart at the seams. As if having a slight understanding of what was going on, he sprinted back towards Rey and barely dodged the blasts of the walker. Then he fell forward as the ground swallowed up his enemy.Rey realized that this unnatural act of power was from her own doing and that by realizing this too late, she allowed herself to get caught up in its force. Dirt kicked up around her and she fell to the ground close to where Finn had landed. The world spun again and after taking a deep breath, her vision spotted until it went completely black.She wasn’t sure how long it was before she came to, but she heard Finn’s voice calling her name before she registered that she was on the ground. The unpleasant feeling of mud and damp soil against her face was the next thing she was aware of before she managed to open her eyes and wait out the moments while her eyes and head re-balanced and the world finally stopped spinning.It was Finn’s hand frantically shaking her shoulder that really brought her back to her senses.“Rey! Rey? Can you hear me?”At his urging, she sat herself up and looked around their immediate area. They looked to be situated in a shallow crater of an impact site. The dirt underneath them had been kicked up and blown away. Knowing that she was the one to do this, Rey briefly found herself amazed that the Force had allowed herself to become a weapon akin to a small explosive.But Finn was still urging her to get up, and she struggled to balance herself on her feet. Suddenly it felt like the gravity on this world had been altered to make it feel like more weight against her. She looked at Finn’s face to see that mud and dirt was caked on his face and in his hair, which he had been growing out in the last few months. Rey guessed by the heaviness of her hair that she probably had dirt and mud collected into the ponytail she had hastily pulled her hair back into when the alarm had sounded.The screech of TIEs overhead was enough of a startle to break them both out of their daze and cause them to search for their weapons. Rey had dropped the lightsaber when she fell over, but it landed only a few feet from her. Finn’s blaster however, was nowhere to be found. She guessed that during the blast he had dropped it or it had went flying out of sight.“We’ve gotta get to cover.” Finn reached out for her hand and grasped it tightly in his. He would scout for safety; she would fight anyone that came in their way.And for the first time in her life, Rey’s instinct wanted her to protect someone else instead of only prioritizing herself.Just like back when they first met on Jakku, Finn and Rey found themselves dodging the attacks of TIEs overhead as they searched for a means to escape.Finn pointed out the small entrance of a trench that he knew would lead to a tunnel back to the Resistance base. He needed a weapon to be of any real use, but if they jumped in, one of the TIEs might spot them and shoot at the trench and cause the tunnels to cave in.No, they would have to find a spot to lie low until they could get in without being spotted.Rey kept watch for any incoming ground troops while Finn skimmed the landscape, their hands still grasped together. For Rey, it was comforting to feel him so close to her when just a few minutes ago she feared that she was about to lose him forever.A tug on her hand told her that he had an idea.He nudged his head upwards. “There’s a ditch just ahead. It should provide enough cover.”“They won’t see us?”“Unless they spot us overhead or come from a direction other than west we should be safe,” he affirmed. “Just until they pass.” He looked around once more. “All the fighting seems to be piling up in a couple of location pockets. No one else is around.”“Ditch it is,” Rey agreed.They made a sprint for it and lunged to crawl into the ditch, rounded into a small incline in the landscape. It provided some cover over them, but to be safe, they would have to keep as still and unnoticeable as possible if any fighters passed overhead.After a moment of quiet taken for them to catch their breaths, Rey looked over at Finn again and finally a little relief set in. They were alive. For now. Both of them.Still, she came too close to losing him just a few minutes ago. She kept seeing the walker aiming for him in her memory, ready to strike. If she hadn’t been there, Finn likely wouldn’t have had time to get out of range. Her emotions were running haywire again as she realized just how real one of the worst possible scenarios she could imagine on the battlefield almost became.Even if Finn hadn’t told her, Rey knew she had almost lost him back on Crait before they even got the chance to reunite. Rose had blabbed, explaining the situation of how she got injured during the battle and Rey recalled how she sat next to the bunk in silence, too shocked to make a sound. It hurt her that Finn had almost thrown his life away over a slight chance that the Resistance could have escaped unscathed. Rey would have returned to the Resistance for the one reason why she wanted to go back only to find that he had already made the ultimate sacrifice. She wouldn’t have gotten a chance to say goodbye, and she didn’t know what she would have done after that.It also hurt that Finn hadn’t told her about this yet, even though she had fessed up to her own poor choices by thinking she could be as lucky as Luke had been with Darth Vader by convincing Kylo Ren to turn back to the light. And they still weren’t safe.She wished all of this would stop. Rey was tired of running and fighting all the time. Even the insecure life she led on Jakku was more stable than the life she was living now.For a reason that Rey could not explain, she cried and she curled up with her knees against her chest as she tried to keep quiet. She hated crying in front of others. Unkar Plutt would have ridiculed her if he saw her now, like he did when she was a scared and hungry child.And she could sense just how panicked it made Finn feel.“Woah, Rey. Is something wrong?” He placed his hand against her arm, warm against her exposed skin. The feeling of being comforted, of someone trying to comfort her, made her only cry harder.“Don’t do that. Ever again,” she sobbed.Confused, he knitted his brows together.Unable to control herself, Rey launched herself to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She felt his hands against her back as his arms wrapped around her in return.“I don’t want to live in a galaxy where you don’t exist. Not now. Not after all this…” Her voice was a whisper. She wasn’t sure what she was trying to say, either, to be honest. A life where Finn didn’t exist seemed like an unlivable future. There weren’t many people in the galaxy that she felt bonded to and there was certainly no one else she trusted the way she trusted Finn. If he were to suddenly vanish while they were in the middle of a war, Rey was not sure if she would be able to convince herself to keep going. Perhaps she could with a lot of self-convincing, but she believed any attempts would easily feel half-hearted with her dragging along through life again.She could feel Finn take a deep breath and stroke a hand against her hair. The gesture was soothing but she could tell that he was at loss for words.Then he finally spoke. “I don’t want to leave you alone either. Not during all this.”Rey was starting to feel a lot better but the drain from the anxiety and the panic was now replacing her fear with fatigue. She drifted apart from him and reached into her pocket for her comm link.“Poe? Rose? General Organa? Anyone?” She leaned against Finn and waited.After a few moments of static, the comm crackled. “This is General Calrissian. Responding, Rey.”“Finn and I are in a ditch away from the fighting. We were chased by TIEs and are too far away to see anyone. Can I get a status update?”“We’ve taken out most of the ATs,” Lando replied. “But the TIEs are still a problem and there might be another wave coming. We’re evacuating now.”Finn sighed at the mention of evacuation. They’ve gone through so many already.“Where should we go?” she asked.Another moment of quiet, then:“You’re still out in the field, right? There are a few transports and Y-wings that don’t have pilots anymore. You can get to the platform and take one. Will be a tight squeeze, though.”“Right,” she affirmed. “We can manage that. Thank you, general. We’re on our way.”They looked to each other as the comm link was disconnected and then peeked their heads out briefly to survey the area. Like what Lando had said, the walkers were almost all downed, but the TIEs definitely posed a threat. Those weren’t coming anywhere near their area, favoring the spots where more of the action was happening, which meant that Finn and Rey had space to make a run for the platforms without being spotted.“Rey?” said Finn.Her gaze found his.“Let’s stick together from now on, OK?”That was the best idea she heard all day.