[ she's the one who makes that choice. none of her friends need to trust him with her. she chokes down the bristling defensiveness she feels — i can take care of myself.
she's doing this because she doesn't want to lose finn. the last thing she needs is to bite his head off because she's defensive. there's a reason she did this as text. ]
I put in our contract that he can't hurt anyone I'm spending time with.
Which will keep me out of the zoo for turning my lightsaber against a Dominant.
[ that's a good thing. she needs finn to understand why that might be a good thing, even if he can't understand her feelings. ]
[ if it sounds a little more sarcastic, that's because it is; he's not exactly feeling very friendly toward the guy who tried to kill him once and left him unconscious for weeks as a result.
either way, the shock of the moment has worn off and now he's just... confused. hurt. angry. mostly hurt. ]
I know you don't need me to point out that if you've even thought about turning your lightsaber on him, a contract doesn't seem like the way to go here.
[ but for whatever reason, reasons he can't hope to parse through and isn't even sure he wants to try right now, she's made this choice. ]
[ she's tried so hard to fight against those gunshy instincts to avoid vulnerability, to be honest and present him with the messiest parts of herself because she wants to trust him to not reject them, and —
and it feels like he has. his snappish reply, aware of its own patronizing tone, feels to rey like an oversimplification. she loses the thread of her patience. ]
I want you to trust me.
[ to look out for herself, to know what kind of contract is the kind she wants to make (what does that even mean, she wonders, when the entire system seems more dysfunctional than ever her own choice — is there a better one?). to make the right choices.
but it's not just finn. she feels like she's defending herself against the reality of that vision, against rey palpatine, and right now she's acting out of absolute fear that he sees her as that instead of as she wants to be. if he saw that in her, it'd destroy her. ]
[ how does he make it clear that his trusting her in the first place is why this hurts so much? that learning that she'd been withholding the truth from him, paired with everything else that's happened — her refusal to let him help her in some way, to let poe help her — is making him start to question whether the same holds true for her anymore. ]
But I don't think you trust me.
[ even her coming to him now feels like more of an attempt at damage control, a way to head off the situation before he would have seen her with him. nothing extended because she wants to finally give him the truth, but because he would have found out anyway.
there are things he could tell her, things he could say. he could confess that he knows the end of what happens, that he's gone back and lived through all of it — the end of the order, the rest of the galaxy coming to help the resistance in their hour of need, the relief of seeing her again and knowing she'd made it through.
maybe it would help.
or maybe it wouldn't make one bit of difference. ]
But if I'd come to you before, you would have just told me not to. And you still would have been confused when I did it anyway because you don't understand and I don't expect you to because I barely understand. So what's the point of saying it?
I don't want you to look at me differently.
[ that's what it really comes down to. she thinks so poorly of herself, and finn thinks so highly, and she would hate to lose him and she would hate for him to see in her what she sees, what her parents saw. but anakin hadn't been repulsed that she was the child of palpatine, nor obi wan kenobi, so maybe finn won't be repulsed by what feels to rey like it follows from that. ]
[ she'd said something almost like that to him before — not here, but at home. and for a second he doesn't know if that's in reference to this or something else, like she's worried about where she comes from. he'd told her then that it wouldn't make a difference to him, and it still doesn't. ]
That's the problem. I don't.
[ which is why learning she's been contracted to someone who's tried to hurt — who has hurt — so many people is the piece of it that stings. maybe some part of him had still been hoping that eventually, they'd be able to have something like what they had before.
and now he's pretty certain that possibility is gone. ]
[ it feels vaguely ominous — like he is changing the way he sees her, or deciding that he needs to. and the fear of what that might mean threatens to choke her. ]
To think that things could just be like that again.
[ it's why he'd been reluctant to even say anything about what had happened before, not just between the two of them but with poe too. like it'd be weighing her down under expectation when she deserved to figure out what she wanted on her own. ]
[ anything else she wants feels too muddy. but she knows that everything she's done, she's done to try to avoid jeopardizing that or risking harm coming to him — physical, emotional. he's too important to her. and now it feels like somehow he's slipping away from her.
and she'd thought ... well, now she feels stupid for it, a bit. the way he'd looked at her, she thought it was because of the same. there's something intense about her friendships — beyond what most people would regard as strictly platonic because she's never categorized. she'd never thought it was just because finn had always felt this way for her, wanted something different. she'd thought that was a development in duplicity. ]
[ but now things are complicated. he'd tried to convince himself that he could compartmentalize his feelings for her, tuck them away and just let this time happen however it would.
some of it's a product of duplicity and how long he's been here, sure, because they wouldn't have been put in half the situations they have back home, situations that forced intimacy when otherwise they might not have been involved. but some of it is just her. maybe he wouldn't have realized it as soon without being brought here, but it doesn't change the existence or the nature of those feelings. ]
[ and he's not just talking about this conversation, or being present for her, although that's part of it. he has been here — for years, since the first day he woke up in one of those paper gowns. her arriving, poe arriving. her disappearing, poe disappearing. both of them coming back again. disappearing again. coming back.
How can you be around me if you can't accept my choices?
It's not rhetorical, Finn. I don't I haven't done this. I don't understand. I don't know how to do this.
[ where 'do this' is 'have friends.' and she feels nauseous even saying it because she knows that she's the problem because she has never had people and she doesn't know how to weather real interpersonal conflict with them without being afraid that everything and anything could be abandonment. ]
[ it's a long time before he even says anything in response. ]
Maybe I can't.
[ because he doesn't know how to make her see how this isn't just about them. it's picking someone who hurt him, who's hurt poe. and he knows if he even so much as mentions han or leia it might be going one step too far, but it doesn't make that less true either. ]
You want Rey Skywalker back. You want someone that I can't be.
[ she wishes that she could. she wishes there were space in her to be everything finn believes her to be and also reconcile this connection she has to ben solo.
but it doesn't feel like she has a choice. they're stuck together. that connection exists whether she wants it or not — and the lonely child on jakku who just wanted someone to love her does want it, that impossible connection. she may not be able to get free of the force bond's implications, but neither can ben leave her like it feels like finn is doing now.
she'd never have said she wanted it more. it still doesn't feel like she does. it just feels like being torn apart. and she understands, then, ben's conflict. he could neither be everything his family wanted for him and true to his nature. finn is her family, and she doesn't feel like she can either.
shutting him out wouldn't change that she had been drawn to him, that it had been true since ahch-to. it wouldn't make her into the shape that she thinks finn wants. she entertains it for a moment anyway, but it's just regressing to the mean. denial. if she wants to make finn understand, then she needs to understand in a way that makes it possible to explain at all. she can't keep avoiding the truth of that pull. she has to confront it. ]
Rey, I know the truth. About your past, about who your parents were. You told me. Or... you will tell me. I'm not sure how much of it aligns with what you remember, but who you are has nothing to do with this.
I care about you. [ he almost types something else and then backspaces at the last second. ] I always will. But what you're doing, what you're choosing to do, I can't support that. I'm sorry.
[ it's as close as he can get to admitting right now that he's from a certain point in their lives. he's already had doubts over whether he should have told her anything about what transpired from when she — the other rey, still her in a sense — had been here before. still questioning whether it was even the right thing to do. to fill her head with thoughts about a life she'd technically never lived herself. it's like he'd told her — he hadn't wanted to be unfair to her, make her feel any kind of weight of expectation pressing down on her. like she had to fit herself into the situation they'd all had before.
he hasn't talked to poe much about it, but he knows he's hurting too — just more quietly, shoving it down and trying not to think about it much rather than expressing anything out loud.
but it's hard. it's hard for finn to sit here, holding onto the last memory he has from home, the three of them clutching onto each other, the heat of tears pinpricking in his vision, and weighing it against... this. ]
I'm not asking you to support it, Finn. I'm asking you to believe that I need to I need to figure this out.
[ isn't that different? she wouldn't say she supports it either. if she did, she wouldn't have hidden it, wouldn't feel so conflicted. but it hardly feels like a choice when she is thus compelled by it, and when it's inescapable, and so deeply tied up in her history.
but even as she makes her plea — and it is a plea, because she can feel him slipping through her fingers and her defensive outburst was only fear of this exact situation — she already knows it's going to fall on deaf ears.
he can't be around her if she can't explain herself. and she can't let go of this. ]
[ he's fully cognizant of the fact that whatever relationship she and kylo ren have, his understanding is never going to be able to scratch the surface of that. he's felt that, he's always felt that to a deeper extent, even if maybe part of him didn't want to admit it. and it's something he feels uniquely attuned to just be the very nature of what he is able to sense, on a level different from most.
but he also remembers the one and only time his path had crossed with kylo ren's in this city. and he doesn't have to reach very far to guess about what would happen if their paths crossed again. ]
[ while she doesn't quite say 'he's your friend, not mine,' the sentiment seems to linger there. poe has been kind to her and she understands they have some history too. but it's so distinct from the reluctant cooperation that she's used to, while finn tugs between the two of them, that it honestly hadn't occurred to her.
that, and he'd barely spoken to her here. there's probably a connection. she had chosen not to think too hard on it. ]
[ which means it's up to him, although for once he's not only thinking about it from a contract standpoint. if anyone out of the group deserves to know that kylo ren is in duplicity, it's poe. finn's still not sure the extent of what had happened when he'd been captured; he just knows there's no love lost there. ]
[ she can't do another one of these. she really can't. she feels fragile, on the cusp of breaking, because her vision is tunneling from the surreality of knowing that there's this divide between her and finn. the lonely feeling left behind in it scares her. ]
I'll steer clear, if that's what you need. I'm so sorry.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[ she's the one who makes that choice. none of her friends need to trust him with her. she chokes down the bristling defensiveness she feels — i can take care of myself.
she's doing this because she doesn't want to lose finn. the last thing she needs is to bite his head off because she's defensive. there's a reason she did this as text. ]
I put in our contract that he can't hurt anyone I'm spending time with.
Which will keep me out of the zoo for turning my lightsaber against a Dominant.
[ that's a good thing. she needs finn to understand why that might be a good thing, even if he can't understand her feelings. ]
no subject
[ if it sounds a little more sarcastic, that's because it is; he's not exactly feeling very friendly toward the guy who tried to kill him once and left him unconscious for weeks as a result.
either way, the shock of the moment has worn off and now he's just... confused. hurt. angry. mostly hurt. ]
I know you don't need me to point out that if you've even thought about turning your lightsaber on him, a contract doesn't seem like the way to go here.
[ but for whatever reason, reasons he can't hope to parse through and isn't even sure he wants to try right now, she's made this choice. ]
I don't know what you want me to say.
no subject
and it feels like he has. his snappish reply, aware of its own patronizing tone, feels to rey like an oversimplification. she loses the thread of her patience. ]
I want you to trust me.
[ to look out for herself, to know what kind of contract is the kind she wants to make (what does that even mean, she wonders, when the entire system seems more dysfunctional than ever her own choice — is there a better one?). to make the right choices.
but it's not just finn. she feels like she's defending herself against the reality of that vision, against rey palpatine, and right now she's acting out of absolute fear that he sees her as that instead of as she wants to be. if he saw that in her, it'd destroy her. ]
no subject
[ how does he make it clear that his trusting her in the first place is why this hurts so much? that learning that she'd been withholding the truth from him, paired with everything else that's happened — her refusal to let him help her in some way, to let poe help her — is making him start to question whether the same holds true for her anymore. ]
But I don't think you trust me.
[ even her coming to him now feels like more of an attempt at damage control, a way to head off the situation before he would have seen her with him. nothing extended because she wants to finally give him the truth, but because he would have found out anyway.
there are things he could tell her, things he could say. he could confess that he knows the end of what happens, that he's gone back and lived through all of it — the end of the order, the rest of the galaxy coming to help the resistance in their hour of need, the relief of seeing her again and knowing she'd made it through.
maybe it would help.
or maybe it wouldn't make one bit of difference. ]
no subject
But if I'd come to you before, you would have just told me not to. And you still would have been confused when I did it anyway because you don't understand and I don't expect you to because I barely understand. So what's the point of saying it?
I don't want you to look at me differently.
[ that's what it really comes down to. she thinks so poorly of herself, and finn thinks so highly, and she would hate to lose him and she would hate for him to see in her what she sees, what her parents saw. but anakin hadn't been repulsed that she was the child of palpatine, nor obi wan kenobi, so maybe finn won't be repulsed by what feels to rey like it follows from that. ]
no subject
That's the problem. I don't.
[ which is why learning she's been contracted to someone who's tried to hurt — who has hurt — so many people is the piece of it that stings. maybe some part of him had still been hoping that eventually, they'd be able to have something like what they had before.
and now he's pretty certain that possibility is gone. ]
But how I look at you isn't fair either.
no subject
[ it feels vaguely ominous — like he is changing the way he sees her, or deciding that he needs to. and the fear of what that might mean threatens to choke her. ]
no subject
To think that things could just be like that again.
[ it's why he'd been reluctant to even say anything about what had happened before, not just between the two of them but with poe too. like it'd be weighing her down under expectation when she deserved to figure out what she wanted on her own. ]
Not if you want something else.
no subject
[ anything else she wants feels too muddy. but she knows that everything she's done, she's done to try to avoid jeopardizing that or risking harm coming to him — physical, emotional. he's too important to her. and now it feels like somehow he's slipping away from her.
and she'd thought ... well, now she feels stupid for it, a bit. the way he'd looked at her, she thought it was because of the same. there's something intense about her friendships — beyond what most people would regard as strictly platonic because she's never categorized. she'd never thought it was just because finn had always felt this way for her, wanted something different. she'd thought that was a development in duplicity. ]
no subject
[ but now things are complicated. he'd tried to convince himself that he could compartmentalize his feelings for her, tuck them away and just let this time happen however it would.
some of it's a product of duplicity and how long he's been here, sure, because they wouldn't have been put in half the situations they have back home, situations that forced intimacy when otherwise they might not have been involved. but some of it is just her. maybe he wouldn't have realized it as soon without being brought here, but it doesn't change the existence or the nature of those feelings. ]
I think I just need some time.
no subject
It feels like you're leaving.
[ which makes her feel like she's suffocating because it's just like her parents. ]
no subject
[ and he's not just talking about this conversation, or being present for her, although that's part of it. he has been here — for years, since the first day he woke up in one of those paper gowns. her arriving, poe arriving. her disappearing, poe disappearing. both of them coming back again. disappearing again. coming back.
he's been here for all of it. ]
no subject
Time.
no subject
About the contract. About... what it means.
It's just a lot to think about.
no subject
[ she can't force him to spend time with her. she can't force him to look at her like he used to. all she can do is hurt. ]
no subject
But I can't be okay with you choosing to do this with him. I'm not... there, right now.
no subject
It's not rhetorical, Finn. I don't
I haven't done this. I don't understand. I don't know how to do this.
[ where 'do this' is 'have friends.' and she feels nauseous even saying it because she knows that she's the problem because she has never had people and she doesn't know how to weather real interpersonal conflict with them without being afraid that everything and anything could be abandonment. ]
no subject
Maybe I can't.
[ because he doesn't know how to make her see how this isn't just about them. it's picking someone who hurt him, who's hurt poe. and he knows if he even so much as mentions han or leia it might be going one step too far, but it doesn't make that less true either. ]
no subject
You want Rey Skywalker back. You want someone that I can't be.
[ she wishes that she could. she wishes there were space in her to be everything finn believes her to be and also reconcile this connection she has to ben solo.
but it doesn't feel like she has a choice. they're stuck together. that connection exists whether she wants it or not — and the lonely child on jakku who just wanted someone to love her does want it, that impossible connection. she may not be able to get free of the force bond's implications, but neither can ben leave her like it feels like finn is doing now.
she'd never have said she wanted it more. it still doesn't feel like she does. it just feels like being torn apart. and she understands, then, ben's conflict. he could neither be everything his family wanted for him and true to his nature. finn is her family, and she doesn't feel like she can either.
shutting him out wouldn't change that she had been drawn to him, that it had been true since ahch-to. it wouldn't make her into the shape that she thinks finn wants. she entertains it for a moment anyway, but it's just regressing to the mean. denial. if she wants to make finn understand, then she needs to understand in a way that makes it possible to explain at all. she can't keep avoiding the truth of that pull. she has to confront it. ]
no subject
Rey, I know the truth. About your past, about who your parents were. You told me. Or... you will tell me. I'm not sure how much of it aligns with what you remember, but who you are has nothing to do with this.
I care about you. [ he almost types something else and then backspaces at the last second. ] I always will. But what you're doing, what you're choosing to do, I can't support that. I'm sorry.
[ it's as close as he can get to admitting right now that he's from a certain point in their lives. he's already had doubts over whether he should have told her anything about what transpired from when she — the other rey, still her in a sense — had been here before. still questioning whether it was even the right thing to do. to fill her head with thoughts about a life she'd technically never lived herself. it's like he'd told her — he hadn't wanted to be unfair to her, make her feel any kind of weight of expectation pressing down on her. like she had to fit herself into the situation they'd all had before.
he hasn't talked to poe much about it, but he knows he's hurting too — just more quietly, shoving it down and trying not to think about it much rather than expressing anything out loud.
but it's hard. it's hard for finn to sit here, holding onto the last memory he has from home, the three of them clutching onto each other, the heat of tears pinpricking in his vision, and weighing it against... this. ]
no subject
I'm asking you to believe that I need to
I need to figure this out.
[ isn't that different? she wouldn't say she supports it either. if she did, she wouldn't have hidden it, wouldn't feel so conflicted. but it hardly feels like a choice when she is thus compelled by it, and when it's inescapable, and so deeply tied up in her history.
but even as she makes her plea — and it is a plea, because she can feel him slipping through her fingers and her defensive outburst was only fear of this exact situation — she already knows it's going to fall on deaf ears.
he can't be around her if she can't explain herself. and she can't let go of this. ]
I wish I could make you understand.
no subject
[ he's fully cognizant of the fact that whatever relationship she and kylo ren have, his understanding is never going to be able to scratch the surface of that. he's felt that, he's always felt that to a deeper extent, even if maybe part of him didn't want to admit it. and it's something he feels uniquely attuned to just be the very nature of what he is able to sense, on a level different from most.
but he also remembers the one and only time his path had crossed with kylo ren's in this city. and he doesn't have to reach very far to guess about what would happen if their paths crossed again. ]
Are you going to tell Poe?
no subject
[ while she doesn't quite say 'he's your friend, not mine,' the sentiment seems to linger there. poe has been kind to her and she understands they have some history too. but it's so distinct from the reluctant cooperation that she's used to, while finn tugs between the two of them, that it honestly hadn't occurred to her.
that, and he'd barely spoken to her here. there's probably a connection. she had chosen not to think too hard on it. ]
no subject
[ which means it's up to him, although for once he's not only thinking about it from a contract standpoint. if anyone out of the group deserves to know that kylo ren is in duplicity, it's poe. finn's still not sure the extent of what had happened when he'd been captured; he just knows there's no love lost there. ]
I'll do it.
no subject
[ she can't do another one of these. she really can't. she feels fragile, on the cusp of breaking, because her vision is tunneling from the surreality of knowing that there's this divide between her and finn. the lonely feeling left behind in it scares her. ]
I'll steer clear, if that's what you need.
I'm so sorry.