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+ All comments except fills should be posted anonymously.
+ All prompts should focus on TFA characters. You can't post OT or PT-only prompts.
+ One prompt per comment please.
+ You can request both kink and non-kink content
+ Crossovers, characters from the other media are allowed, but must relate to the 2015 movie in some way.
+ All prompt comments should begin with a pairing tag (eg Rey/Finn) or Gen for no pairing.
+ Use 'Any' when prompting for any pairing at all (eg Kylo/Any or Any/Any)
+ Anyone, everyone, no one? Use "Other." (e.g. Poe/Other)
+ Warn for common triggers, please
+ NO PROMPTS FEATURING CHARACTERS UNDER 18 IN SEXUAL SITUATIONS.
+ don't hijack other people's prompts.
+ prompts should not exceed ~250 words.
+ also, while this is not really a rule I can enforce, please try to limit yourselves to fewer than 5 prompts per page.
+ reposting prompts is currently not allowed.
+ no prompts based on real life tragic events. e.g: 9/11 au, concentration camp au, etc
+ PLAY NICE

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...

These dormitory beds are designed to hold only one person, the mattresses economically narrow and covered in a crackling plastic shell, so Finn and Poe must always twist themselves together in a way that leaves at least one foot or hand tingling-numb by morning. Someone’s elbow also ends, typically, stuck in somebody else's eye or nose. Neither of them minds.

But tonight Finn lies flat on his back, staring at the alusteel bedframe above them after the lights are turned out in Poe’s quarters, and he sets both hands complacently down atop his chest until Poe finally lifts one of them up.

“Come in, Officer Finn,” he says, with his best comm unit articulation. “What’s your 20? Over.”

“Huh?” Finn’s muscles twitch in surprise, and he blinks. “Oh. Sorry. I’m right here.”

“Really? Could’ve fooled me.” After a pause, Poe swipes his thumb across a raised, heavy vein on the back of Finn’s hand. “I’d ask what’s on your mind, but I think I can make a pretty good guess.”

Finn gives a long, emptying sigh as he considers what to say.
Moments such as this – it could be pure imagination on Poe’s part, obviously – seem to close a space of quiet around them both, the kind Poe can remember finding whenever he scrambled up the Force tree’s branches and sat among its moving, green-gold shadows.

But, again, that could just be his imagination.

Finn keeps his eyes on the steel bars.

“I’ve been thinking about my old –” his lips purse around the words “—squad, I guess. I still call them that, you know, in my head. Zero, and Nines, and –”

“– Slip,” Poe finishes.

“Yeah. Mostly him.”

They’ve spoken about this many times before, and so Poe understands more or less what this means – Slip who always fell behind, Slip who Finn always tried to save, Slip who died on Jakku anyway with Poe’s blaster-bolt through his chest.

(“But he says you helped him escape!”)

Ah, Poe thinks.

That makes sense.

He stays quiet so Finn can go on talking. Around them, the base’s extensive pipework and ventilation systems make their usual clanking, groaning, settling-down noises.

“I know they’re not – they weren’t my family, really, because that’s not how they trained us to see each other, but they were what I had. And they weren’t all bad, either.” Finn’s throat goes taut. He shifts his grip so their fingers will link together. “Whatever protocol tries to dictate, every trooper squad still follows its own rules. It’s mostly stupid things, like – don’t laugh if one of your men starts crying, no matter how much of a coward you think he’s being. Or, don’t take more than your share of rations, because everyone’s as hungry as you are. If the guy you’re partnered with you starts, uh, vomiting, or something, all of a sudden, after he’s had to shoot an unarmed protester twice because the first shot wasn’t fatal, you should take off his helmet and hold his head until he’s done because you’d want somebody to do the same for you. They can put all kinds of armor here, obviously – ”

Finn raises his free hand to tap it once against his forehead, about where the visor of a helmet would go, and then lowers that same hand to tap the spot over his heart.

“ – But I don’t think they’ll ever be as good at putting it here.”

For the first time, he turns his head to look over at Poe, and then he tries to laugh.

“That sounds pretty ridiculous, right? I just wish there were something more I could do for, uh – for them. For them all.”

And there are many things Poe could probably say, here, in response, things he may very well have said before he met FN-2187: well, don’t feel too bad for them, because they all have the same choice as you did and they don’t take it, they are not all innocent children or untested young soldiers, they are the enemy and we are at war and how could you ever really trust someone who has been taught to kill with such perfect, exacting precision?

Poe does not say any of that, though, and this is what makes all the difference.

“It does sound ridiculous,” he answers, instead, “but probably not as ridiculous as what I’m about to tell you. Here’s the idea – ”

….

It takes Poe five days to convince General Organa that he is, in fact, still sane. It takes four days more for their communications team to determine how one might go about scrambling and overriding the First Order’s transmission channels for as long as they would need, and three days of Finn drafting and rehearsing and editing down his words to fit the estimated sixty-second window he has been allotted.

Just beforehand, he reads aloud to Iris and Nox and Crash and Eights. They all listen with their eyes shut, and then Finn waits for their opinion.

“Don’t worry,” Iris tells him. “It’s like in training – if you get too scared, you have to hold your breath and count to five before you let it out."

“Yeah,” Crash says. “If you can keep doing that, you’ll get through things all right.”

“Talk like you did when you told us about Tatooine,” Nox adds. There is something peculiar and sidelong about the way she looks at everyone, as though she can see two of them if she holds her head at the right angle. “Or the way you talk about Takodana, and Han Solo, and that girl Jedi you know. That way they’ll feel, um, they’ll know –”

She cannot decide what she means, so Eights rounds off the thought.

“That way, they’ll know you’re really telling the truth.”

Finn thanks them for their counsel.

And when he leans close to the holorecorder, when the light flashes once as his signal to proceed, he speaks with the careful, earnest voice of a storyteller while everyone – standing on the warship bridges, all through the Outer Rim, patrolling polished hallways in masked pairs of two – halts abruptly to listen.

The message goes exactly as follows:

“Hi, everyone. This is FN-2187 speaking. I’m sure you’ve heard about me, one way or another. And I should tell you now that I’m not sending this message because the Resistance has ordered me to – this is just between you guys and me. What I want is to make you all an offer. It might sound unbelievable, but hear me out –”

From the edge of his vision, Poe can see two technicians working furiously over the control panels, but studying this any further would force him to take his eyes off of Finn.

A clock nearby shows how much time he has left, its numbers running down as smoothly and rapidly as sand through the narrowest part of hourglass, but Finn does not seem at all hurried.

“ – Any stormtrooper who comes freely to the Resistance will be given amnesty. If you want to fight alongside us, we could really use you here. If you want to go home, or find a new home for yourself, we can try and help you with that, too. We’ll need peace, first, before I can call that second part a promise, but I think you have the power to make that happen. What I can promise you for now is this – ”

The children have somehow crept past three sets of secured and airlocked doors, have sat themselves down on a bench without detection, and Iris holds Nox tightly in her lap. Crash clenches his jaw. Eights scratches absentmindedly at the scar on his neck.

“—You will not be disciplined. You will not be punished or persecuted. Whatever things you’ve done in the past, or have been made to do, we’re all a lot more interested in what you can do next.”

Now Finn glances up at Poe, during this rhetorical pause, so Poe smiles.

Finn smiles back.

“So, it’s your choice,” he finishes. “Think about it.”

Then the transmission snaps out with a click, the clock stops at zero, and in the radio silence afterwards all they can do is wait.

But they will not, Poe suspects – rightly, as things turns out – have to wait for very long.

…

End Notes: I'd like to have my beta look at this before I put it on AO3, but I've really enjoyed writing it. I'm sorry if it veered in a serious direction, but I do so love Finn being the match that ignites the stormtrooper rebellion.

Oh lord, I can't stop sobbing. This is lovely and perfect.

OP here. OH, that was amazing. I love the direction you took it in, seeing the kids as individuals, seeing how Finn interacts with them through Poe's eyes. This is everything I had hoped for and more. Thank you!!

*trips over this fic and falls even more in love with Finn*

BRB, crying.

PROMPT POST #5 - CLOSED

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