At first Ben was just running with Snoke's gang because they gave him the attention his Senator mom and trucker dad weren't around to, but with time he started to get attached to the others - Finn, whose parents walked out on him and who was abused in the foster system until he ran away. Hux, whose father is brutal and cold in equal measures and would hit him as soon as look at him. Phasma, who ran away from a home so bad she doesn't even talk about it but has worked her way up to being both muscle and mother. And Poe, the Air Force kid whose father was just never there. Ben loves them all like a family, united by Snoke's guidance to get money and have a good time and generally waste their lives.
Time goes by and one day, while out committing a standard evening's worth of crimes - dealing drugs, getting fucked up on some illegal substance, whatever - Leia sees her son and co. and is horrified at how she's failed him. He's eighteen though and just moves out to live with Snoke. The degree of crime he gets into goes up a notch when he does and he's bound to get killed sooner rather than later.
So she enlists Finn and Poe, easily the nicest and least awful people in the group, to try to get her son back before that happens.
Bonus points if along the way she ends up emotionally adopting the two.
Modern AU: the First Order is a gang, Finn and Poe are bad at being gangsters
At first Ben was just running with Snoke's gang because they gave him the attention his Senator mom and trucker dad weren't around to, but with time he started to get attached to the others - Finn, whose parents walked out on him and who was abused in the foster system until he ran away. Hux, whose father is brutal and cold in equal measures and would hit him as soon as look at him. Phasma, who ran away from a home so bad she doesn't even talk about it but has worked her way up to being both muscle and mother. And Poe, the Air Force kid whose father was just never there. Ben loves them all like a family, united by Snoke's guidance to get money and have a good time and generally waste their lives.
Time goes by and one day, while out committing a standard evening's worth of crimes - dealing drugs, getting fucked up on some illegal substance, whatever - Leia sees her son and co. and is horrified at how she's failed him. He's eighteen though and just moves out to live with Snoke. The degree of crime he gets into goes up a notch when he does and he's bound to get killed sooner rather than later.
So she enlists Finn and Poe, easily the nicest and least awful people in the group, to try to get her son back before that happens.
Bonus points if along the way she ends up emotionally adopting the two.