Force Destiny

The ship shuddered around them as Finn interlocked his fingers with Rose. In his other hand, he held the heavy, vibrating hilt of Ben's lightsaber, its red hue lighting their path to freedom. He had seen it up close before, of course, but never appreciated it for what it was. It was wild and volatile, difficult to wield, and unstable even in comparison with Rey's lightsaber—but a magnificent weapon in its own right. Finn respected its power, how easily it had pierced through the clone...Snoke...Sidious...whoever he was. The man was nothing more than a macabre statue as the other stormtroopers pushed the hovering slab to their ship. The weapon in Finn's hand should have made him feel safe, but he couldn't escape a growing dread building in the pit of his stomach. The Millennium Falcon was within sight, but the exhilaration and relief he expected to feel seemed to dissipate with each step.

Rose had asked him something, but he hadn't realized he had been so engrossed by his thoughts until she turned to him expectantly. Her smile faltered as she studied his face, but he wouldn't have hidden his fears from her even if he could.

"Rey will be okay," she said. "You saw what Ben looked like on that skyway; we have time."

It should have eased his fears, because she was right. But that uneasy feeling inside him wouldn't be silenced. "Rose...." he couldn't put into the words the strange anxiety he felt, so he focused on what he could. "Do you think anyone can feel the Force?"

She shrugged. "Rey says it's inside everyone and everything, so I suppose to an extent. Why?"

Finn stared at the crackling weapon in his hand. He had watched it cut down a man on Tuanul. It was the weapon that nearly delivered his fate on Starkiller—burning his shoulder and nearly severing his spine. He had watched it slice through the apparition of Luke Skywalker. Rey had stood between it and Finn's blaster in her temple room. It had illuminated the darkness of a cave on Ilum. Rey had used it to slaughter an army. It sliced through Finn's binders in a prison cell on the Finalizer. In Finn's hand, it cut through their greatest adversary. This symbol of the path their lives had taken through the war vibrated unstably in his hands, and he feared this wasn't the end of its story. What if the unease he felt was forged from this lightsaber? He had felt the strange heaviness in the crystal cavern. What if it knew the role it would play next? Or the role he would?

What if it wasn't the lightsaber? What if there was something in the Force that he couldn't quite perceive, something he wouldn't be capable of preventing, a destiny just beyond the horizon that was as consequential as the strange feeling stirring inside him. "Ben told me I would know when to kill Sidious, because of the Force inside me," he said softly, "and I did."

Rose studied him closer, her words careful. "Well, then you did."

Do you think we can feel other people in the Force, like they can?" he asked as his eyes returned to the lightsaber in his hand.

"Sometimes, when Rey was upset, I could almost feel it, like her emotions were affecting mine. I would feel sad when I hadn't before or something like that." Rose grasped his free hand in support, grounding him with the soothing tightness of her hand. "Why?"

"I feel...I can't explain it, but I think something bad is going to happen," he said, refusing to look at her. "Or maybe something already did."

Rose stopped, dragging his focus to her by jerking his hand. He turned and stared deep into her reassuring eyes. "Do you want to go back?" she asked. "I'll go with you."

If there was one certainty, it was that Rose was sincere. He knew she would go back with him, but he had already risked her life enough. They had defeated Sidious, Hux, and Phasma, and started the avalanche of events that would culminate in the fall of the First Order. They had won. Rey had her lightsaber and the Force; there was nothing in the galaxy that she couldn't defeat. She had proven time and again that she did not require rescuing, and though it had been a steep learning curve, he trusted in that knowledge. If something went wrong, Ben was there. It was a fairly recent concept, but Finn trusted Ben with Rey's life, with all of their lives. Without a doubt, Finn knew the former Supreme Leader and Knight of Ren loved her; he would die before he allowed anything to happen to her. There was a distinct comfort he found in that. The uneasiness, he convinced himself, would fade when they were all together again.

"No," he said with resolution. "Let's get on the ship and go pick them up. I think it just hasn't sunken in yet that this is finally over." They stepped out of the corridor into the main hangar. It looked like he imagined the apocalypse might. Though he had seen hangars on the Supremacy and Finalizer in the chaos of battle, he had never seen how it looked after.

The floor was littered with blasters, bodies, and discarded equipment. Stations had been abandoned, there was not a soul in sight, and the silence only served to increase his agitation. He felt like a ghost exploring an unknown underworld. It felt nothing like the destroyer to which he had once been assigned. Most of the hangar had been cleared of fighters, save for the ones cracking with the remnants of a fire, but the Millennium Falcon was safe where they had left it. It was salvation, beckoning them. He should have felt relieved. Finn cast one last glance to the dark corridor behind them.

When he turned back, Rose was watching him. "It's over," she said. He nodded, forcing himself to move forward. "Do you know what that means?" He shook his head as she guided him up the boarding ramp. She smiled. "We can get married."

"You still want to marry me?"

She turned and stared at him like he was her entire galaxy, and for one moment, he forgot his worries. "Yes, my big dummy, I do," she said.

When Finn had asked Rose, he wanted it more than anything, but part of him feared they would never make it through the end of the war. Though she had always held an unwavering hope that everything would turn out okay in the end, he had never been able to maintain that steadfast belief. Part of him believed it was too good to be true. Was their suffering finally over? Could he live a happy, boring life for the rest of his days? Nothing had ever sounded better. "I do, too. Want to marry you, I mean."

"Then we will," she said, beaming. The stormtroopers pushed the Carbonite slab on board the Falcon, and they both watched as the hatch closed behind them. "Do you think Rey and Ben will get married?"

Finn couldn't help but smile at the thought of Rey—after a life of suffering and loneliness—content and happy with someone who could give her everything she deserved. And they would still be a family, of course. They could visit each other often and talk via holoprojectors and comlinks in between, and he wouldn't have to worry about her as she traveled the galaxy. It would all be okay. "Why wouldn't they?"

It was strange to be back inside the Millennium Falcon. As they passed one room, he saw the discarded stormtrooper armor. In another was the debris of medical wrappers and a balled-up black tunic. In one corner was the blanket they had wrapped around an unconscious Rey. There were discarded lightsaber pieces on a workbench. A drawer containing Rey's Jedi texts stood open. They passed by the room that held the body of the Wookiee. In the cockpit, they found the pre-launch procedure finished. In a way, it represented the timeline of their journey from Ilum to the Finalizer. It was an incredible journey that had changed them all, and now all that remained as proof that they had experienced it were the remnants left behind.

Rose lowered herself into the co-pilot's seat. "Do you think they'll bother with marriage, I mean?" she asked, refocusing his attention on their previous conversation. "Because they already have that Force bond?"

"I honestly don't know," Finn answered as he lowered himself before the controls. "I can't imagine them having kids. They're both a little...intense."

Rose snorted. "It wouldn't be easy with their lifestyle."

"What, the Force thing?" He wasn't focused on her as he fired up the sublight engines, otherwise he would have understood that her silence was not due to her preoccupation with the controls.

"No, because Ben is still a war criminal," she said after a moment, her tone more serious than before. "They'll have to constantly be on the run. Unless you plan on turning him over to the allies and let him face, at best, a lifetime in prison." He hadn't thought about that. Finn had been so concerned with winning the war that he hadn't thought about the consequences after. Without Ben—he thought back to Ilum, the detainment cell, the bridge, the skyway, Force Destiny, the Carbonite—without Ben they would have lost the war. That had to count for something.

"No, that's not good enough," he said, running from the cockpit and down the corridor in search of his comlink.

"Finn?"

"Start the launch procedure without me," he shouted over his shoulder, "I have to talk to Poe." As he ran down the hallway, he crashed into something solid and stumbled back. From where he had landed on the floor, Finn looked up to find a stranger in a flightsuit.