**for previous chapters, please refer to our Table of Contents**
The skies above Coruscant blaze furiously with technicolor flashes of fire. The hundreds of billions of residents of the planet-that-is-a-city each respond in their own ways to the terror of uncertainty. Many, be they rich or poor, huddle in their homes and pray to whatever Gods they follow that the battle will be over soon, that the planetary shields hold and a disentigrating frigate doesn't come down on their heads. Many simply stand where they are, be it on the streets or from their own balconies and windows, transfixed by the hypnotizing array of color and light above. And some- quite a few, actually- simply go on as usual, no longer able to feel invested in such grand questions as what galactic government was coming next. First the destruction of the New Republic, then the new wave of oppression that the First Order brought with it, and now....well, no one knew what was coming now. Best, some figured, to hedge their bets and not get their hopes up either way. One way or another, the battle would end, and a victor would emerge.
****
Within the maelstrom, Poe fought for control over his craft as the explosion of another TIE fighter sent shockwaves over his craft, jittering the controls ever so slightly as he tried to veer away from the spray of debris. Since he and Lando had rushed in to help Leia keep Hux's ship in place, he'd only had time to focus on one enemy at a time as hordes of fighters continued to swarm out of the bays of the capital ships. A healthy number of allies kept joining the fight, but the primary Fleet of the First Order was there in full force as well, and by now they'd brought everything that had around to where the battle was raging. It was a full-blown, no-holds-barred slugfest to the bitter end, and Poe could no longer afford to look at the big picture. He had to trust that Leia knew what she was doing, that she and the other commanders were looking for every advantage they could pull out of the storm. And he had to hope that Rey, Finn, and Rose were all safe planetside, hopefully stowed away somewhere where collatoral damage from the battle couldn't get them.
Wait, who am I kidding, he though, catching himself, if they can so much as walk, they aren't hiding; they'll be doing whatever they can to give Kylo Ren the biggest migraine his bloated head can take without overheating into plasma.
Grinning in satisfaction at the image this conjured, and with the virbations from the last explosion having faded, he turned around for another approach at the Star Destroyer below him.
As far as Poe was concerned, this ruckus was just getting started.
***
Finn could hear the faint echoes of the battle raging above, but with several dozen stormtroopers around them and that damned Knight keeping watch, he didn't dare try to provoke anything by looking up. Alongside him, Rose simply looked straight ahead; rather than looking worried, there was a hard set to her eyes that made her seem almost taller, as if the pressure of the moment merely served to turn her to steel. She really was unbelievable, and just knowing she was in his corner returned some of the feeling to his legs. BB8, which had immediately been shut down with a restraining bolt by their captors, was being carried behind them by one of the troopers.
They were hurried along the plaza outside of the temple to a building a few blocks away, its looming, gray appearance immediately giving off the vibe of a particularly depressing prison. In his periphereal vision, he caught glimpses of other battalions racing to and fro, seemingly responding to rising tides of noise coming from every direction. He had no idea how many boots the First Order had on the ground here, but it felt like things were just short of tipping into full-blown chaos.
They were marched through the entrance and immediately down a set of stairs that periodically branched off into floors that seemed full of holding cells. Well, he thought, trying to cheer himself up, at least they aren't taking us straight to the torture chambers. Probably.
Finn had never been that good at cheering himself up.
After descending maybe four or five levels they finally turned into one such floor, parallel rows of cells stretching out before them. To the left was a side door with several guards in front, through which Finn briefly glanced a wide range of items, including weapons. Most likely storage of whatever happened to be confiscated from anyone unlucky enough to be brought here. Finn ground his teeth together furiously as they were led past a number of cells already filled, mostly with humans, to an empty one about halfway down the room. Could this day possibly get any worse?
When they were over the threshold of the empty cell, the trooper escorting them tapped the control panel to the right and the glimmering sheen of a force field descended from the top of the frame to the bottom. He then turned back sharply and marched back the way they'd come, back to the foreroom leading to the stairs that wound back upwards, towards the light. Across the well-lit hallway, occupants of the other cells watched them impassively.
For a moment, the room was silent. Then, Finn slammed his fist into the force field, feeling its electromagnetic weight freeze his hand and arm, a single ripple of expended energy expanding across the field from the point of impact.
"DAMN IT!" Despite the small size of the room and the anger fueling his voice, his shout sounded somewhat muted, as if the energy of the force field dampened sound as well as physical force. He repeated several more blows into the field, sending one ripple of blue neon light after another radiating away. "DAMN. IT. DAMN. IT. DAMN. IT."
Through the haze of his anger, he saw as those who had been looking at him and Rose started to turn their attention elsewhere, some chuckling at the amusing spector of another fellow prisoner clearly not able to accept his fate. However, he was dimly aware that one person- a tall, well-built woman with chestnut-brown skin and an untidy shock of long, curly black hair thrown back down her shoulders- continued to watch him as if she was studying an exhibit at a museum. But at this point, Finn was far too worked up to care.
After maybe half a minute of futile pounding at the field, Finn finally gave up and turned around. Rose wore the same expression she'd had since the temple and looked like she hadn't budged since they'd entered, unmoved even by Finn's outburst.
"Finn," When she finally spoke, her voice was set, determined. "We need to talk."
"Yeah," his mind was already racing with half-baked ideas, "There's gotta be some way we can break out of here and make contact..."
"HA!" A bark of laughter erupted at that from one of the occupants in a cell across from them. Finn realized that, dampened sound notwithstanding, the entire block must be able to him, but at this point he was far too wound up to care.
"Not that, dummy," Rose responded, her voice much quieter than Finn felt it had any right to be. "We need to talk about what just happened. We need to talk about you."
"Wha....wha? Huh?" This was so far away from what he'd expected that Finn's brain was having a time trying to process it. "Rose, we have to get out of here. We have NO IDEA if the message actually worked. Poe and the others could be on their own up there, and..."just trying to wrap his mind around this last part made him start to choke up and his voice to crack, "and.....Rey's gone, and...." and suddenly there was nothing else he could say. Just the gaping hole of despair and profound sense of failure that once again threatened to fill his brain to bursting.
Rose's eyes and tone softenened a bit at this, but her voice remained steady and convincing. Gently, tenderly, she took his hands in hers. "I'm worried too. I have no idea what's happening out there. But Rey's tough, and she's also a Jedi. So right now, the person I'm most concerned about is you."
Finn's brain still couldn't grasp this whole situation enough to formulate a response, so he jut continued to look at Rose, tilting his head slightly as if begging for an answer to the question he couldn't ask.
Rose continued, "You've been acting stranger and stranger ever since Kuat. I keep asking you and you've never been able to tell me why. I thought it was maybe nerves, or fear, or depression, or....I don't know, something I could make sense of. But then...I saw how you reacted when Rey disappeared."
Now slightly worried at where this thread might be going, Finn finally found his voice. "Oh, Rose, I'm....I'm not in love with Rey or anything."
Rose cut him off, "I know that. I thought after she...for a second, maybe, but no. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when we tried to get out."
Somehow, hearing this only deepened the unease Finn was feeling.
"You somehow knew, several times, that soldiers were around corners when we haven't even heard them yet. You grabbed us and led us down hallways and through doors we definitely didn't use with Rey. You were running like....like someone who knew where to go. Even though before today you'd spent just as much time in the Jedi Temple as I had. And now, suddenly, it all makes sense to me."
Finn felt like he was about to have a full-blown panic attack. "....what does?"
"Finn," Rose's voice grew quiet, "You can use the Force, can't you?"
Upon hearing that sentence- so short, and so simple- rather than the outbreak of the storm Finn had felt building within him, it suddenly felt as if he was standing on a quiet oasis in the middle of the vast ocean. His head stopped buzzing for the first time in forever. Could it be true? He had never, in a million years, even as a child, permitted himself the wildest of fantasies that he could have the sort of power the Jedis of legend had. "Rebel scum," Phantasma had called him, and he'd especially never felt a reason to dispute the "scum" part but....could it be true? Had Rose seen something in him even he didn't know was there? Sure wouldn't have been the first time.
"I..." he once again found it exceedingly difficult to locate his voice, "I....don't know. I never thought..." he shook his head, unable to get over just how much sense it made.
"Finn, think about it," Rose continued. "You've told me about feeling something inside you you can't understand. On Kuat, you felt danger before you knew the stormtroopers had found you and Poe. And when we needed it most, you found ways though the Temple we'd have never found otherwise."
"Yeah. Fat lot of good it did us," Finn responded, some of the bitterness returning. "We're now stuck here while our friends up there are fighting and dying and we won't even know the difference until it's all over."
"Are we stuck?" Now Rose's voice took on almost playful tone, as if she had thought of a joke she couldn't wait to share. "See, I don't think we are."
For a moment, Finn was even more confused, "What do you....oh...oh! No no no no. Rose, even if I did have Force powers..."
She cut him off, "I think we were captured for a reason! We're still right in the heart of Coruscant. You can get us out of here and we can kick up one hell of a fight to keep the First Order distracted."
"How?? I have no training! I'm not Rey! I'd have no clue what I'm doing!"
"Rey barely knew what she was doing when she first stared down Kylo Ren. You had no clue what you were doing when you decided to help Poe and desert the First Order..."
"So it's true then." A loud voice cut across them, causing them both to snap their heads in its direction simultaneously. The tall, dark woman seemed to have never budged this whole time, still looking intently at the two of them. "You are a First Order deserter."
"Um...." Finn wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing in her eyes, "yes, but...how..."
Her gaze remained level and cool, "I saw it in your eyes. There's a special anger that comes from being forced back to something you'd hoped to leave behind forever. We all know it."
"We...you mean, you too? You used to be First Order?" As if this day hadn't thrown him for enough loops. He'd somehow always assumed defections from the First Order were so insanely rare that he'd never meet another one in this lifetime.
"We all were." She gestured with her head to indicate the entire block of cells beside them. "Whole company under my command. We were ordered to fire on civilians during the Battle of Ansett Island." She turned back towards them, her eyes burning with fierce pride. "We laid down our weapons. To a person. We're warriors, not monsters."
Finn took a step forward towards the energy shield. "I used to be FN-2187."
The woman smirked at this. "And your real name?"
"Finn."
For the first time, she fully smiled. "Pleasure, Finn. I'm Jannah. Now...." at this she turned her gaze towards Rose, "I believe your girlfriend was mentioning a way to escape. I promise you, if it's possible," and here she leaned towards them as far as the energy screen let her, "if you really do have those Jedi powers, you'll have every one of us here backing you up." She then jerked her head back towards the staircase they'd been led down. "There's an awful lot of confiscated weapons stored here. I reckon enough to arm ourselves and anyone off the streets who'd care to join us."
"Well, I..." Finn glanced back at Rose, smiling encouragingly at him, "I mean...look, like I said, I really have no idea if I am a...a Jedi, or...I can't guarantee anything."
"Oh I think you can do it." Though they'd only just met, Jannah already seem to feel as assured about Finn and Rose. "Not sure why, but I can feel that right certain. But hey, if you can't it's not like things could get any worse." Now that was something Finn could certainly agree with.
He looked back at Rose. The serene confidence was still there. "Just try Finn. I'm here no matter what." Finn suddenly felt like his heart would burst. He nodded slowly, "Ok."
He still had to idea what, exactly, he was about to try, but he may as well calm down a bit first. Finn closed his eyes and tried to slow his breath first. His heart, pounding fiercely within his chest, started to slow down, just a bit. Breath for breath, he centered himself, a trick he still used from his training days that had proven too useful to abandon.
Unlike every time before when he'd done this, though, he noticed....something different. A pressure of sorts, emanating from the world around him, coming from every direction. Was this the Force? He'd have to talk to Rey first thing after all this. In his mind, it felt like he was suspended, almost like he was floating in a sort of warm, thick liquid. Not really knowing if he was doing anything the "right way," he tried to just....reach out...
....and suddenly, a terrifying sense of openness flooded his brain. It shocked his consciousness, like a wave of ice-cold water crashing on his shoulders, so much that he nearly pulled away. NO! He thought to himself, Not yet! They're counting on me! And he reached through the cold feeling. There. Rose, standing next to him. Jannah, across the walkway. Other minds, unknown. The materials of the cells, walls, floor, stairs. The energy of the shields holding him in their cells. And next to each door.....yes, a control panel. Finn had never used this particular interface, but with the aching clarity that now formed his being, it didn't matter. He just had to stretch out his hand, and...
A whooshing sound filled the air and the cold dissipated. Finn suddenly found himself struggling to breath, sweat pouring down his face, his outstretched arm trembling from exertion. For a moment, Finn felt more tired than he'd ever felt before in his life. Then, a pressure around his upper body; Rose, hugging him so hard he almost heard a rib crack.
"FINN! You do it!" She beamed up to him. He turned, and instead of the blue-green glow that had separated them, Jannah, and the others from the rest of the corridor, there was only open air. Already, yells and shouts and cracking sounds from the entryway they'd come from were filling the air, indicating that Jannah's comrades were already immobilizing the guards and seizing weapons caches. Jannah, though, had not joined them. She was still looking at Finn, with a confident triumph now visible in her eyes
She nodded in gratitude. Finn nodded back, then looked at Rose as she helped him find his feet again.
There was nothing more to say now. Now they just had to do whatever they could to make the First Order hurt. And hope they weren't too late.
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