The House Ilirious

by stitchy

Summary:

Nearly a year out of the FO, Finn begins having vivid dreams about his mother. His friends help him follow the clues to his homeworld, where he is welcomed as a long lost prince. Poe will do anything to help Finn reclaim the life he was supposed to have, even if it hurts.

Notes:

Beta'ed by StarMaple, my partner in crime!
PSA: Betas are great! If you don't have one when you write, solicit one on your blog! If you don't write/aren't too busy writing at the moment, offer to beta for others! It makes a good community and great fic :)

art by me! stitchyarts on tumblr
Baby Finn and Velle

5 ABE

Two shrill beeps followed by a long tone, and then two more sharp beeps pierce the quiet bunkroom of the Moonwarden. The song of the alert is designed to wake any human with healthy hearing, and it does just that. One of the two drowsy figures that had been sleeping grumbles, then shuts her eyes tighter, willing the comm to silence itself.

“If you answer it I’ll do the proofread you’ve been putting off.”

 She bargains like this with her husband often, but he’s wiser than that.

“That’s the Resh Nen line, Velle.”

“They know what time it is!” The local year on Resh Nen is about two hundred days longer than the galactic standard observed by their temporary residence on Hosnia III, but the two planets’ hours of daylight are nearly identical, even half a galaxy away.

 “It’s because you’re so very important, my dear,” Bram teases. Velle can hear the grin. He wriggles closer behind her to press a kiss to the back of her shoulder and a gives her an encouraging pat on the behind. “I can always push you out of bed, if necessary.”

 “Pfft. Might take you up on that in a few months.”

 Two more shrill beeps. A long tone. Two beeps. It’s the Resh Nen line, for sure.

 Velle considers leaving it until morning, but when she wracks her sleepy brain, she can’t remember a time when a contact from her homeworld bothered her in the middle of the night. Ordinarily they are as respectful of her time as possible, so if they’re after her at this hour, it may be an emergency. With a fortifying groan, Velle heaves herself into a sitting position at the edge of the bed. Her ill-fitting basics will certainly be deemed as ‘underdressed’ by the standards of the straightlaced minister likely to be on the other end of the comm, so she drags the sheet off the bunk as she gets up. Bram whimpers in protest.

 Well, we’re both going to have to get used to losing sleep, she thinks, wrapping the sheet around her belly. “Don’t look like I’m hiding a BB unit, do I?”

  Bram squints at her in the dim light. “The jig is up,” he supposes.

 The conversation at the main comm in the cockpit doesn’t take long- or maybe it just doesn’t seem to, since she manages to remain composed throughout. Velle has heard how the Jedi can trick weak minds into sleepwalking through actions with their uncanny power of suggestion, but there aren’t any Force users on hand to account for the temporary haze that kept her from bursting into tears before Minister Safid bid her goodbye.

 When she returns to bed, Velle lets Bram playfully unwrap her from the sheet again, until he suddenly notices she’s not playing along.

 “Velle, love. What’s-”

 “There was an accident...Bad dual-drive on a transport, or something. Anyone else would have caught it but he... he-”

 All at once the grief of the news catches up with her, and she chokes out a sob.

 What could of possessed her brother to fly for himself when they had dozens of pilots at their disposal? He’d never been a very good helmsman, even when they had been children, sledding in the mountains. The number of times she’d had to dig his sorry behind out of a snowbank...

 Bram stops, still as a statue. “Your brother?”

 “Elix and Ratha-”

 She doesn’t actually say the words, but Bram doesn’t need her to. He just pulls Velle into his arms, muttering apologies. Her face is wet, her nose is beginning to run, and she can’t do anything more coherent than blubber. Shuddering against his chest, Velle struggles get a grip so she can keep explaining. It’s not just the loss of her brother and sister-in-law’s lives, the last bit of her family that had survived the war- it’s the loss of the life she had intended for herself as well.

 How could this be happening? This was never the plan. When she left home, Elix promised she would never have to worry about succession.

“It sounds like I’m getting the easier job. I just have to keep an eye on Resh Nen, and you’re taking responsibility for the rest of the galaxy.”

 Velle wipes her face on the pillows, streaking them with the makeup she neglected to take off after an exhausting day with the senate committee. “I have to go home.” Her voice sounds raw and monotone in her ears.

“Of course you do,” Bram says gently. “I’d go with you if I could, you know.” The work they're doing here is too important for both of them to take a leave of absence.

“There’s so much left to be done.”

 “You take all the time you need. I can see through the ratification of the accords, and when you come back-”

 Velle shakes her head. Looking up at Bram’s worried face, she finally gets out the worst of it. “I have to stay, and assume the viceroyalty.”

 She doesn’t get to come back to the quaint little life they’ve carved out, making the best difference they knew how out of the ruins of the Empire; Founding Fathers For Hire, Have Datapad, Will Travel!

 For a minute, he says nothing, jaw dropped. “But what about Ellis?”

 Elix had always intended that his daughter Ellis would inherit the title someday, despite having been mothered by his mistress. Velle, who had never wanted to be viceroy herself, counted on it. Not long after Ellis was born, Velle left court and Resh Nen. She shared Elix’s assumption that he had years and years of his life to talk his wife into making Ellis heir over Velle, and was confident that her absence would expedite the matter. Now that confidence was shattered along with her heart.

 She shakes her head. “Ratha still contested her legitimacy- and Ellis is just a child, Bram!”

 Trouble creases Bram’s brow, and he tuts. “Poor kid. She must be so upset.”

 The professional politician voice always in the back of Velle’s head reminds her, it could have been worse. Maybe it was for the best Ellis hadn’t been roped into the ascendancy just yet. A thirteen year old was a candidate for monarchy in some systems, but that wasn’t how things were done on Resh Nen, if they could help it. This was the sort of mire Velle and Bram tried to discourage while advising the writing of brand new planetary constitutions. Once a stupid rule was on the books for enough time to become ‘traditional’ it was infinitely more difficult to amend. But they aren’t legal experts on founding governments for nothing.

“Maybe I could serve as viceroy just until Ellis comes of age? Once you make it to court, we can overrule her illegitimacy by the Two Crown Rule and remain as regents until she’s ready.”

Bram squeezes his arms tight around Velle. “See? We’ll work it out, love. And you’ll get to go home for the first time since the end of the war, right?”

 She nods weakly and tries to sink herself into the comfort of Bram stroking up and down her back. “I do miss the mountains. It’s too flat here.”

 Bram scoffs. “There are skyscrapers!” He’s always been a city boy, at heart. His hand at her back slips to her belly. “Won’t it be nice to have the baby in the same place you were born?”

 “But you might not be there,” Velle pouts.

“Maybe, maybe not. I’ll come join you two as soon as I can.” Bram smiles easily. “Just have to finish writing the accords for you first. Slacker.”

“Hey!”

 Bram appeases her with a kiss, then lays back down beside her with a yawn. “You’ll be a good viceroy, you know.”

 She may never have aspired to the office, but Velle can appreciate the vote of confidence.

 

32 ABE

 When Finn awakes two hours before dawn he grumbles loud enough to stir BB-8, docked close by. She hoots sympathetically, fixing him with curious look while he scrubs his face and growls into his hands.

 “Lucky little metal ball,” he sighs, and shushes her. No reason to wake up the whole bunk.

 Maybe it’s a new detergent that the quartermaster is using, or maybe some unfamiliar plant is blooming, or a xeno is molting- whatever. Whenever his mind isn’t occupied by crisis, he’s been itchy non-stop for nearly a week. He only made it through yesterday’s debriefing by cramming his hands in his pockets so that he didn’t claw himself to shreds (which would be very unbecoming for a newly minted captain of the Resistance). Even after a scalding shower, it had taken hours longer than usual to fall asleep. Last night he really only managed to get a hold of himself and stop squirming out of a desire to let Poe sleep after a grueling mission.

 Feverishly scratching under his chin, Finn thinks that just this once he is thankful for the annoyance. This time the itching was persistent enough to wake him from a dream.

 It had not been a good one. There was choked crying and fire and confusion- and Finn was too weak to stop any of it. The smoke nearly blinded him and he couldn’t even call out for help, be it from the strangers around him, the Resistance, or even his old squad.

 He wonders while he itches. Unlike most of his dreams, he can’t place the setting, or who the faces around him might be. It wasn’t any place he remembers being in the past or anywhere he anticipates going in the future. But he also understands it's all just random neurons in his brain firing off while they square things away- so it doesn’t really matter.

 Finn rolls onto his back and calls upon his Order-instilled discipline to tuck his hands firmly behind his head. He focuses on being still and getting back to sleep.

 No. More. Itching.

 He makes it two minutes, tops.

 “Ah, hell.”

 Poe rolls over and flops an arm across Finn’s middle, eyes still shut. “S’not morning, is it?”

 “Nah, just dreamy and itchy and unfortunately awake.” Finn pats Poe’s arm apologetically, then clings to it to keep his hands occupied.

 Snuggling closer, Poe rests his head on Finn’s shoulder. Even in the low light of the not-quite-morning the curl of his grin is evident. Having gotten more sleep than Finn, he is much less grumpy.

 “I hope it was good dreamy not bad dreamy,” he says, scraping his stubbled cheek over Finn’s chest.

 “Really good,” Finn hums, enjoying the gentle rasp. “Wait, no I mean. It was a bad dream. That just- mmm. You just--” Poe rubs his beard again, purposely. Finn gulps. “Feels good.”

 Poe snickers and kisses Finn’s neck, getting another contented hum out of him. He drops another few nips there, pleasantly scrubbing Finn’s throat and jaw in a way that both satisfies and entices. Finn angles himself to sneak a kiss on the top of Poe’s head, but unrested at pre-dawn his talent for stealth is non-existent and Poe catches him, climbing on all fours and pinning Finn in place with a proper kiss. Finn reaches up to Poe, digging his fingers into the curling hair at his nape and scratching there instead. When they break apart he smiles up at Poe in relief.

 “Bad dream definitely gone.”

 Poe slips lower on his knees, blanketing Finn suggestively with his body. “Think you’ll get back to sleep?”

 "Oh, I dunno, I might go meditate for a bit instead," Finn jokes.

 "Good idea. Handstands always cheer you up," Poe muses.

 Poe rolls himself off to one side of him, but his hands wander Finn’s body with an insistence that indicates they will not be adjourning to the gym.

 “Cool, let’s go.” Finn doesn’t move a muscle.

 "Yup. Whatever you need, buddy. Handstands, hand holding... handjobs!"

 -

 By dawn Finn feels pretty optimistic that whatever’s been irritating him will go away on its own and talks himself out of stopping by medbay. He even forgets about the troubled, unfamiliar dream, and makes it through most of the day undistracted from what needs doing. He volunteers to accompany a quick extraction mission in a nearby system, and gets the Iktotchi agent back on a Resistance craft without a scrape.

 “Grab yourself a piece of wall, at least.” Finn thumps Tidhir on the back as he hurries through the main compartment of the freighter to the cockpit.

It took quite a bit of fancy flying to land them at the drop point in the first place, and that was before they picked up some fire on their tail. Navigating the twisty caves back to the surface would be best done with a seatbelt, if not a helmet and full body crash bag.

 When Finn drops onto a flight couch next to the pilot he’s embarrassingly sweaty and starting to tingle again.

 She smirks at him. “I’d ask if this was your first time flying subterranean if I hadn’t brought you here.”

 Though she isn’t much older than the other human ‘Victory Baby’ pilots, Greer has been with the Resistance as long as it’s existed and has a reputation as a daredevil. While Finn gets more and more uncomfortable, she expertly threads them back the way they came, dodging between crag and crevice to lose their pursuers without so much as furrowing her brow.

 In an effort to ignore the way his biology is turning against him, Finn casts about for conversation.

“You’re a crazy good pilot, is there a reason you run freighters instead of fighters?”

“We all have our limits.” Greer shrugs.

 Finn nods. He’s certain there’s no lack of skill on Greer’s part, but that has been his experience in the Resistance. There are people who abstain from advancing their rank in all sections of the operation, and Jess and Otat have made it pretty clear that they can’t cope with sublight runs. No one gives them any grief about it. There isn’t the same push to max out in the Resistance as there was in the First Order.

 When they break out of the tunnels to the surface, Finn’s body flushes cold as though they just retracted the canopy on an ice world. Greer confirms the navigation for the jump out, and punches it.

 “I hope Tidhir is buckled in back there!”

 Finn turns his head to check on their new Iktotchi friend, and instead is sick all over the left side of his seat.

 “Woah!” Greer starts turning over the controls to the computer. “Finn, sit tight a minute!”

 As soon as it’s safe to, she pops out of her seat and wrestles with a console behind him, retrieving a medkit.

 Finn coughs and wipes his face on his shirt. “I’m fine, I just-” He hurls again.

 Okay, maybe he’s not fine.

 Greer jabs him with a hypospray. “If it’s just spacesickness that’ll calm down the gag reflex, if it’s not- well... Let’s just hope it’s spacesickness.” Before she goes back to her seat, Greer tosses him a bottle of water.

 With dread Finn realizes that he’s never had spacesickness before in a lifetime of living on star destroyers, why should it start now? He slumps into his seat. What if something is really wrong with him? Didn’t he already spend enough time in medbay when he first joined the Resistance? Enough for a lifetime, he’d have thought.

 “Better just be spacesickness,” he groans.

 “You’ll go to medbay when we get back to base. It’s better to be sure,” Greer says decidedly.

 -

 “I suspected something like this, Finn. I’m just sorry you had to be the one to prove it. I hope you didn’t wait too long to tell me.” Major Kalonia’s hands flutter along a machine that appears to be made entirely of buttons. She presses several of them and colorful liquid begins to flow down from the vials each represents, winding through the thin, clear tubes and meeting at the bottom in a hub.

 Finn grimaces. “Is it very serious?”

He sort of wishes he hadn’t brushed off Greer’s offer to stick around. No one is here to hold his hand through the bad news. He had such a violent reaction to the flight- what if he was never able to fly again with his friends?

 “I’m not grounded am I?”

 “What? Oh, I just mean there’s no reason for you to have suffered! This is manageable.” With a flourish, Kalonia slips a hypospray cartridge from the hub and loads it into the injector. “The itchiness, the cold sweats, what happened today... they’re all pretty common indicators that you’re coming off military grade inhibitors. The Empire used to dose their troops with a subdermal implant. It would suppress beard growth, regulate metabolism and sleep cycle, and curb spacesickness,” she explains kindly. “It looks like the First Order continued the practice.”

 “I had one of these implants?” Finn shudders.

 “It was probably microscopic, administered into your arm,” Kalonia reassures him. “When was the last time you had a physical in the Order?”

“Maybe three standard-months before I defected?”

 The doctor nods. “So it’s been just over a year, and your annual implant has run its course and dissolved. You’re probably noticing a few shifts.”

 In Finn’s early life with the First Order it had been accepted that he did not have ownership of his body. Resigned to that, he may not have registered the implant or the difference it made in his natural biology at all. Since leaving the Order, he never really questioned why he didn’t shave like Poe, or get queasy on ships now and then like Rey. The inhibitors had just always been there, and now they’re like the lingering fumes of some strange oil he had once burned in his engine.

 Finn starts to offer his arm for the injection, then pulls back again. Maybe he’s still being a little too oblivious. “So, wait a minute. What’s this?”

 Kalonia holds her hand over her heart in oath. “All this will do is stabilize the nausea, and take the sting out of those new follicles. I’ll synthesize capsules you can self administer any time you expect to fly. If you want to revisit the idea of a sleep aid or anything else, we can talk about it in a month when you’ve evened out.”

 Finn considers mentioning the strange dream, but shrugs it off and offers his arm again. He watches the injection with newfound appreciation for the chemistry behind it.

“That’s it?” He rubs the site, surprised it could be so quick and painless to change someone’s hardwiring.

“That’s it,” Kalonia confirms. With a second thought, she gestures at her mouth. “You may want to have someone teach you to shave, though.”

 “Finn? Major?”

 Breathless and grimey with hair still askew from a helmet, Poe appears in the door of the medbay.

 Kalonia raises her brow at Finn.

 “Greer said?! I came as soon as...” Catching his breath, Poe frowns in confusion at the unexpectedly upbeat mood in the medbay.

 -

At the major’s suggestion, Finn and Poe head to the mess hall so Finn can tank up again after his ordeal. While the dose of stabilizers takes effect, Finn walks through the base carefully with a floaty feeling head, very glad for Poe’s arm to lean on. He insists that Finn sit and take it easy, and loads up a platter full of protein rich food, and comes back to the table with extra bottles of water tucked under his arm. Poe sets them all before Finn, worry still plain on his face.

 “So you’re definitely fine? I don’t need to go liberate stolen Thyferran stockpiles to make sure you get the treatment you need, right?” Poe fixes Finn with an examining eye, on the lookout for signs of an emergency.

 Even if this is the least dire ailment Finn has ever experienced, it’s hard to laugh off Poe’s concern. His debut at Resistance medbay was the first lightsaber wound anyone there had seen in a lifetime.

 “Not this time, buddy.”

 “Good. I like it better when we’re not in mortal peril, you know. Don’t know where I got this thrill seeking reputation from.” Poe rolls his eyes.

 Finn grins back at him. “It can’t be the flying, or the joining a renegade army.”

 “Nah, it’s probably the bottle cap collecting.”

 “Thrilling,” Finn agrees.

For the rest of the month, Finn goes about his business as usual. He advises on tactics, trains with General Organa, pops a pill, jumps in a U-Wing with Poe, and leads a manhunt for a runaway First Order battalion. He doesn’t really think much of the fading effects of the suppressants. He feels totally okay- sometimes even way better than okay (particularly when Poe is crowded up behind him in the ‘fresher to ‘supervise’ Finn’s shaving). When he’s planetside for more than a standard day he returns to his typical sleep habits, too. If he feels an inexplicable bone-deep sadness one night when he glances at the mountains outside his bunkroom window, he doesn’t connect it to anything.

 It’s merely a feeling.

 Like the feeling of wind that sweeps through his dreams that night, warning a storm. First it surrounds him with the sweet smell of growth- it’s nighttime and he is outdoors, but it’s warm and he is happy. He looks up at the face of a woman whose dark, curly hair whips in the breeze. Smiling.

 Then the wind isn’t wind at all.

 Explosions, then a dropping feeling in his stomach, and a different woman with glittering eyes. She pulls him away and the smell, the heat of something burning fills his senses.

“Mama!”

 But she covers his face, covers his eyes, wraps him up tight and tells him it’s time to sleep. Time to be quiet. It’s almost warm like bed.

 He’s quiet for Mama, until it’s too hot.

 Finn bolts upright in bed, panting and confused. The night around him is chilly and clear, in stark contrast with the dream that had played out around him. In instinct, he fumbles to the edge of the bed, ready to bolt, but a firm hand lands on his shoulder. It instantly stills him.

 “Finn, c’mere.” Poe gently turns him back and pulls him close. “Was it Ren again?”

 “I don’t know...who exactly.” Finn lets Poe wrap him in his arms and brings his own shaking hand to rest in his hair. He combs his fingers through it, and remembers. “There were women there.”

Poe smirks at him. “Should I be jealous?”

“Oh please,” Finn scoffs fondly. “They were nearly as pretty as you, but-”

“But?”

 “They’re probably dead.” Finn gulps. “One was my mother.”

 Stone faced, Poe just stares at Finn for a long moment.

 “How do you know?”

 Finn shakes his head and rolls onto his back. “I don’t,” he sighs. “I dunno why I said that. It’s just a dream anyway.”

 He has the same dream again and again in the following weeks. Sometimes sharper and sometimes foggier- sometimes out of the blue in the middle of a completely different dream. He figures it’s a result of the suppressants leaving his system, that now he’s just dreaming like real people do, instead of the colorless, shallow way he used to dream in the First Order. He usually plays it off, but when he finally admits to this particular dream’s recurrence one night, Poe is adamant.

 “It kinda sounds like a Force thing, like something impossible that you shouldn’t know, and you just do, Finn.”

“Yeah?”

 Poe’s eyes light up. “Maybe this is real. A clue about where you come from, what family you belong to, and you just have to work at understanding it.”

 Real. His real family.

 Finn turns the notion over in his mind to see if it fits.

 “They were...very familiar. Somehow,” he admits. Frighteningly familiar. “But I like the family I know,” he quickly amends. He doesn’t need to find a new one. He’s not about to throw over Poe or Rey or the Resistance just because someone he hasn’t seen in over twenty years has his nose.

 And knows his mother’s name.

 And where she came from.

 Why she wasn’t able to keep him for herself.

Very gently, Poe takes his hand. “I know you think about it.”

 “Just because I have questions doesn’t mean the Force plops the answers in my lap, though.”

“Doesn’t it?”

 While Finn considers this Poe looks at him as wondrously as he always does. It’s very persuasive- Finn always believes in himself a little more thoroughly when Poe looks at him like that. Why shouldn’t the Force tell him things? He studies it, devotes himself to it as often as possible. Maybe it can give him something back, and lead him to his family like it had done for Rey.

 Finn thinks back on the woman’s face, so like his own. He tries to hold it still in his mind, but it’s all fuzzy. It won’t stay put and be clear. It won’t tell him exactly what to do.

“I need to look at it again. And I’ll need help.” Finn pauses. “And this isn’t like- galaxy saving stuff. I don’t want to bother the General while she’s running the Resistance.”

 “Rey then! She’d get it, she could help you focus.” Poe squeezes Finn’s hand, then pulls him back into his arms. “And don’t think just ‘cause there’s a war on that I’ll be too busy.”

 

6 ABE

 Viceroy Velle Ilirious, Protector and Chairman of the Resh Nen grew up in a culture that valued standing truthfully beside one’s actions. Even at the lowest level of society, petty criminals would turn themselves in more often than not, and the honorable action of an individual was shared by their entire household. Offworld this often earned Resh Nen the reputation of being unapologetic and boastful- but it was also true that it was impossible to cite an example of infamous Resh Nen spies or cheats. No one has ever heard of a Resh Nen traitor.

 As she holds her son Velle is no stranger to pride, but even after a winning a war against tyranny and a famed career rebuilding the galaxy she has never before felt it so fiercely. At just over half of a Resh Nen year, he is starting to crawl and babble nonstop. A little person, new and unfettered by the struggle it has taken to arrive at this perfect moment.

 With her nose never more than an inch from his sweet smelling head, Velle walks with him in the palace garden at dawn. He’s just old enough to track her finger when she points, even if the landscape in the distance is meaningless to him. Baby Elix is much more entranced by the orange blossoms that line the path- something that he might manage to reach out and touch. Sometimes the tendrils even seem to reach back for him.

 “See those white peaks of the Fhesta Ridge? That’s where the river water comes from,” she explains. He looks back at her wide eyed. “Like your bath.”

“Ba!” He swipes an uncoordinated arm at a nearby vine.

“And past the mountains there’s even more water. An ocean. You can’t see it, but it’s important.”

 It’s been weighing on her mind, recently. Ever since Queen Ratha’s demise, the crown’s relationship to the Garro coastal district has soured. As a native of the largest port city on the planet, her marriage to the viceroy and presence at court gave the district’s ministers a feeling of special appreciation. There are rumblings about making a new arrangement to secure their interests- rumblings that Velle refuses to acknowledge. Betrothing her infant son to some other child isn’t an actual solution to any of their grievances, merely a bit of pageantry. A political marriage didn’t do her elder brother any favors in the long run, after all.

 Monarchies. Velle sighs. This is why she tends to advise parliamentary systems.

 It’s no matter. This trouble with the coast is nothing that she and Bram can’t navigate together.

 Whenever he arrives, that is.

 “Can you still see the morning stars, Elix? Your daddy is up there, somewhere,” Velle tells her son. “He can’t wait to meet you.”

 Since finishing the accords on Hosnia III, Bram had been roped into touring locations originally secured by the former Rebel Alliance as potential bases. He and Major Ematt endeavor to negotiate their use by refugees, but the mission has delayed his homecoming on Resh Nen by several months.

 “Maybe by your first name day,” Velle hopes, dropping a kiss on Elix’s chubby cheek.

 Lately, instead of regular transmissions from her husband, all she’s had are second hand reports of shadowy happenings on the Outer Rim. Her old Alliance contacts don’t know if it’s to do with the death throes of one of the fragmented Imperial holdouts, or something else. With the hard won Galactic Concordance set in stone, the New Republic seems determined not to wonder at all.

 “Aunt Velle?” The wiry figure of her niece Ellis steps out from behind a tall and heavily berried shrub. The tips of her fingers are stained purple from its fruit, and when baby Elix smiles at her she offers him one of her fattest berries.

 Velle laughs. “Couldn’t wait for breakfast, huh?”

 Ellis shrugs innocently and shovels the rest into her mouth. She’s shot up like a weed in the the months Velle has been home, quickly gaining a height to match her maturity. Always attentive and personable, she’s been an unexpectedly valuable ally at court now that the disdainful Queen Ratha no longer looms over her.

 Elix bursts the berry in his little fist and sucks on his hand. The smear on his face reminds Velle of how she used to use the berries to stain her lips and cheeks before her mother would allow her to wear make up. She’ll have to show Ellis that trick, for old time’s sake.

  

32 ABE

 Rey walks through the dream with him.

 At first it’s as empty and gray as a holoroom. Seamless. Nothing but air.

 Wasn’t there wind?

 The pressure of the environment changes, yes. Finn gives it something to stir. He forms leaves, close to the ground. Some are elliptical in shape and faintly pink, other are long and thin and gradiated like a finger dipped in ink. They take life and float gently into the air, cruising upward in curling cyclones. They multiply and fix themselves into a canopy and starlight begins to shimmer between their clusters.

 Finn and Rey marvel at the sight as they follow a path enclosed by flower laden branches and clinging vines. It’s not entirely organic, Finn realizes. Everything is clipped and ordered so that the width of the path never varies, and the flat, polished stones that lead them along were shaped and placed by humans, not nature.

 “A garden,” says Rey.

 Overhead, the branches bend apart in the breeze, revealing a towered building made of stone that glitters despite it’s dark blue shade. It matches the starlight that fills the sky. Finn makes note of the triple moon cluster framed beneath a monumental arch, and the distant mountains they bathe in yellow.

 “Who else is here?” Rey asks. He can feel her steadiness at the edge of his awareness, helping him to focus.

 Finn summons to mind the women from before, and when they take a turn in the garden path, they materialize a few paces ahead.

 The one wearing a jacket and trousers typical of late Alliance/early Republic military carries a baby on her hip that Finn recognizes as himself. When he tugs on her hair, the woman takes it in stride. Somehow Finn knows she is used to this sort of thing.

 The second woman is a masterpiece of color and softly draped clothes. Ropes of her artfully colored hair twine around her head in a day-in-day-out crown. Her every movement fascinates, and the wordless sound of her voice plucks at some long dormant nerve with him. She pats the baby’s cheek, and they smile identical smiles at each other.

 In the nature of a dream, it’s hard to pin down the exact words the women speak- but Finn understands enough. It’s familiar. They are friends. They give each other reassurance.

 The peaceful scene is ripped in half by the overhead swoop of a shuttle. It’s arrival alarms the women as well as Finn and Rey. They all turn to see it loop back and batter through a wall of the glittering building with its canons, torching the trees and filling the air with debris. Several more malevolent lights shine in the night sky above.

 Despite the smoke, Finn can see the women's faces so clearly. There is unmistakable horror in their eyes that arrests Finn. Their gasps catch in his own throat. In the panic, another figure appears, a young girl. She cowers behind the older women. The first woman hands the baby to the second, then draws her weapon and charges past Finn and Rey to meet the assault.

 When Finn tries to dart after her and help, she fades into nothingness.

 “These are your memories. You didn’t see what happened after that, Finn. You can’t,” Rey says, pulling him by the hand.

 They turn back, and the young girl is already running off to hide while the other woman stands her ground, deciding what to do- how she’s going to save her son’s life.

 “My mother,” Finn cries, rushing forward and reaching out.

 He feels nothing. Not the whisper of the light silk she wears or the warmth of her skin. He can’t even properly feel the heat of the flames that creep closer and closer as she-

 “That’s enough! I don’t...”

 He doesn’t want to actually see it.

 Finn spins on his heel, refusing to watch her last moments play out. He comes face to face with a squad of indistinct figures, blotting a shadow in the angry firelight, their blasters held high. Heels planted firmly, Finn readies himself to stand between them and the woman and children behind him, but they rush through as though he were a mere holo projection.

 He blinks hard, but everything starts to fade again, the garden coming undone in the same way it had gradually detailed itself to begin with. Leaves and blossoms vanish in patches until nothing remains but Rey’s hand in his and the miserable wail of a crying baby.

 Then nothing.

 Rey sits opposite him on the floor in his quarters, both cross legged with their hands joined. Finn dips his head and is surprised to notice the stain of several teardrops on his chest.

“Go ahead and take a minute. I’ll get the others.”

 Finn concentrates on steadying himself, turning over and examining the emotions of the experience so he can put them aside and focus on the facts as General Organa has taught him.

 When Poe and BB-8 and Rey discover him again, the heat is gone from his face. They join him on the floor, circling in a committee. Rey folds her hands peacefully while Poe poises over a datapad. BB-8 toodles apprehensively, rocking as close to Finn as she can without bowling him over.

 “Bee’s added astrographical data for over seven thousand systems to her banks,” Poe translates. BB-8 blats. “Excuse me- her already considerable banks. If she can’t figure out where your homeworld is, we can talk to someone in Intel, too.”

Finn circles one arm around the droid, like a pat on the back- though all points of her body are simultaneously potential backs/fronts/shoulders/etc. “Thanks, buddy.”

 Rey squints in determination. “Let’s go through what we saw, that we can use.”

 “The climate was temperate- enough for a garden. Mountains. Lots of mountains,” Finn says, starting with the general facts. “And there were three moons up- all yellow, similar size.”

 BB-8 chirps and rolls around her head in question. Poe speaks up. “She wants to know if-”

“-no visible bodies of water, but I wouldn’t rule it out,” Rey answers. “The air tasted like a world that might have seas. And cities. It was a garden inside of a city.”

 Next to Finn on his data pad, Poe confers with the ever narrowing but still vast list of worlds BB-8 produces. He glances at Finn, with a hopeful look. “What’s the architecture like?”

 “Stone,” Finn reports. “Deep dark blue, with lots of mineral that sparkled in it. The- the building had towers that matched the night. And there was an arch, too.”

Rey nods. “It had to have been a landmark, it was massive. Maybe four hundred meters?”

“Made of transparisteel,” Finn adds.

 “Good, good,” Poe mutters, still monitoring BB-8’s list. “Were their any recognizable craft? Might give us a hint at the neighborhood.”

 The shuttle’s unexpected attack pops into the fore of Finn’s mind again, shattering the serenity of his recollection. He glances at Rey and gulps- she returns a merciful look before replying for him.

 “There was an LAAT, maybe even S-class, definitely Rothana made.”

“That’s consistent with activity we retroactively identified as First Order assault harvests, for sure. If you ID’ed it, other civilians in the city must have too. We’ll cross reference the list of possibles with reported targets that standard year,” Poe explains. Again, BB-8 chimes in with a follow up that he translates. “How old were you, little you in the dream, Finn? We’ll compile it with Major Kalonia’s estimation of your age for a date.”

 “Uhhm??” Cluelessly, Finn shrugs. Growing up as a cadet his experience with child development was pretty limited.

 “Too little to walk, or too big to carry?” Poe sizes up approximate heights with his hands in illustration.

 “Maybe this big?” Finn gestures as articulately as he can. “The women carried me.”

 “What about them, did they wear anything really unique or identifiable?”

 “I’m pretty sure one of the women was an old rebel?”

 Poe hmms a moment. “If she died there, there’s likely a military footnote on the record we can use to distinguish a likely world.”

 “How many are we down to?” Rey asks.

 “276 highly probables, dozens of these I bet we could firm up one way or the other.” Poe flips around the datapad so they can see the list of possibles. The text glows a promising green, but it’s still too many worlds to visit one by one, that’s for sure. “Was she human? Did you notice her rank?”

 Finn nods. “She had coloring like you, I think. Long, dark crazy hair. And a little scar right here,” he notes, pointing to one brow.

 Poe’s face falls.

 “Sorry,” Finn says. “That’s not much to go on. I didn’t see a rank badge before she-” He gulps again. “Before she died.”

 Saying nothing, Poe nods and saves his list before closing out the datapad.

 “I’m sure Resistance Intel will have some thoughts, Finn,” Rey says brightly. “Tomorrow we’ll find someone’s brain to pick. If we talk to PillaatinNerro, two brains.”

 With that, Rey crawls over on her knees to give both Finn and Poe a quick hug before she rises to her feet.

 “Goodnight, Rey,” Finn calls after her.

 Before she can close the door behind herself, Poe stands up abruptly. He doesn’t offer Finn a hand to pull him off the floor, he just turns to BB-8 and beckons her with a tilt of his head.

 “I’m gonna go check something out on a full console,” he says hurriedly, meeting Rey at the door.

 “Want me to come with?” Having just bared his dreams and earliest memories to his friends, Finn feels a little too vulnerable to be left alone so suddenly.

 “Don’t wait up,” Poe says, exiting.

 By the time Finn gets to his bewildered feet, they are gone. Plenty exhausted from the dreamwalking process, Finn grudgingly decides to turn in for the night. At least now with the whole scene having been worked out by his subconscious, his mind doesn’t insist on looping pieces of it like a corrupted holofile, and he sleeps without interruption. If Poe and BB-8 come back and go out again before he wakes, Finn doesn’t know about it.

 -

 The next day Rey takes off again with her master while Poe remains scarce. Finn finally tracks him down coming out of General Organa’s office. By that point, he has a bone to pick.

 “There you are! What the hell, man?” Finn crosses his arms.

 Poe has the good grace to look apologetic but he doesn’t back down, even as an unsuspecting Resistance tech tries to scurry between them to get through the hallway.

 “I shoulda come back last night, Finn,” Poe admits. His frown looks especially pronounced and prickly, since he missed their now-customary shaving date this morning.

 Foot tapping in impatience, Finn nods sharply. “That was kind of a big deal for me, and you knew it, and you just took off!”

 “I’m sorry,” Poe says sincerely. Without making it sound like an excuse, he adds: “I had a hunch... and now I know your homeworld.”

 Finn’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead, and he crowds closer to Poe like it’s a secret. “Already?” he whispers.

 “General Organa put me in touch with someone who can give us full access to records and profiling, too.” Poe grins. “And I’ve got permission to take you myself. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for last night, but I promise I’m by your side for this.”

 Finn jumps on him in a hug, because as far as apologies go, offering someone a whole world is pretty damn good.

  

6 ABE

 “Thanks for getting back to me.”

 From his spot on the floor beside his mother, Elix looks up in interest when the holo appears above the console. Determined to have a better look, he drops his blocks and uses her knees to pull himself to a standing position and clutches his hands at her.

 “What is it, Elly Belly? Up?” Elix levers onto his tippy toes in enthusiasm.

“Mama!”

 A ‘Mama!’ is pretty much as good as a ‘Yes!’, so Velle hoists him onto her lap. “Say hello,” she prompts, but he takes one look at the blue light image of her friend and then hides his face in her chest.

 “Hello, shy boy.” Shara Bey smiles fondly and waves her hand within range of the holo transmitter’s pick up.

 “I think he expected Bram,” Velle explains. Shara’s brow pinches.

“Aww. Is he still out of touch?”

 Velle nods. It’s been long enough that it would be more sensible to count his silence in months than in weeks. To keep Elix interested in a father he’s never met in person, she plays him stored holo messages just about every day. She hadn’t meant to convey any of her worry about Bram into her message to Shara, but it must have been evident. Without Bram, her usual confidante on hand to discuss parenting concerns, Velle had turned to the wisdom of the crowd.

 Her son was unusually jumpy about things falling or making loud noises, which in and of itself wasn’t much- but he reacted a little too soon.

 Before it actually happened at all too soon.

 It was always impossible to fool Elix with peekaboo, and he was far too lucky at guessing games. And then there was the time he had tumbled out of her arms, missed the table edge, the arm of the chair, and had landed happily on cushion that was scattered an impossible distance away on the hard tiled floor.

 It might be nothing- just the tunnel-like focus of a first-time mother who fancies that her child is somehow more special than any other in the galaxy. Velle almost didn’t send out the message... but then again it might be something.

 There was really only one person she could think of that could say for sure. Though she had met his sister, the notable Senator Organa, Velle had never met Luke Skywalker for herself, and if anyone was an authority on the possibility of Force sensitivity, it would be him. Velle had put out the word to several of her old Rebellion contacts, hoping someone could put her touch, but mostly the responses were some variation of ‘From the desk of “Viceroy” Velle Ilirious? Who’d put a crown on a crazy spacer like you? But seriously, I have no idea where Skywalker’s got to.’

 Shara is the first to arrange a real-time comm in response, which is promising. Pushing back some of her wild hair behind her ears and out of her face, Shara looks like she’s determined to come up with an actual response.

“So, I haven’t heard from Skywalker in awhile- but he checks in from time to time to visit my tree.”

 Velle wonders if there’s such a thing as a Jedi tree, but keeps it to herself. “He visits? You’ve seen him?”

 “With some regularity. He likes a structured schedule, near as I can tell,” Shara shrugs. No one really has his personal character pinned down- the man is mostly a myth.

 “Well, I like a man who knows how to keep an appointment,” Velle laughs. For the first time, optimism that she could actually track down Skywalker creeps in.

 Elix tugs at her scarf for attention. His toothless grin is infectious.

 Shara raises her hand to excuse herself a moment and calls to someone out of view. “Hey, buddy, would you bring me the datapad from by the door? Thank you.”

 A few moments later the datapad is delivered by a little boy who runs back off as quickly as he had arrived, and Shara checks the logs, muttering dates and counting off the months.

Velle lifts an eyebrow. “Is he due back anytime soon?”

 “He almost always avoids the dry season,” Shara frowns. “I don’t think we’re likely to see him again for another five months. What is this about? Is there anyway I can help?

  

32 ABE

 With clearance from the General as well as her blessing, as soon as they brief their subordinates for their absence, Finn and Poe depart for Resh Nen.

 The entire journey through hyperspace, Finn second guesses himself. What right do they have to drop in on a planet that’s managed to keep its nose clean for the past two decades and pester it with an investigation? By all accounts, Resh Nen had been the victim of a massacre the memory of which was better left undisturbed. Besides the women in his dream, the nascent First Order’s attack had cost the planet nearly three thousand casualties and disappearances. Who would want to be reminded of that? Poe and BB-8 take turns talking him down.

 “Maybe we should just forget it,” Finn grumps. “I mean, she’s gone, right? No one’s gonna even want some ex-stormtrooper showing up, if not his own mother.”

 “Don’t say that, Finn,” says Poe. He never puts up with that sort of talk from others, and has had to ice his knuckles a few times because of it.

 In Finn’s experience, people are usually skittish about the trooper thing. It doesn’t always come up, which is fine by him- but in this instance how could it not? With a sigh, Finn props his feet up on the console next to where BB-8 is plugged into astrogation, to which she sharply objects.

 Poe just shrugs while he watches for their cue to drop out of the hyperlane. “You could have a grandparent or a cousin or even a dad, right? If not, there are nosy people in every corner of the galaxy. I’m sure somebody from your hometown’s gotta be curious enough to meet a guy as handsome as you.” Poe winks.

 The planet comes into sight through their viewport as they descend into Resh Nen’s orbit. Below, the planet is wrapped in blotchy continents and light, shallow oceans. On the coasts there are cities built on island clusters, because just about every inch of land on Resh Nen is either mountain or valley. A sharp, wide crest rises and falls as they come in toward the capital, a towering city built into a enormous crater nestled in the middle of the continent. As the only relatively flat land, it must have been a natural starting point for Resh Nen’s first colonists, eons ago. Since then, society seems to have spilled out and splattered onto the surrounding peaks like an overflowing bowl.

 After communicating with air traffic control, Poe gets refined coordinates to their destination. The low flight across the capital brings them close enough for Finn to observe the grandeur of the buildings. Each block of city seems to get fancier and fancier as they draw closer.

 “This is pretty ritzy, who’s our contact again?” Finn asks. His nose is practically pressed against the glass as he takes it all in.

 “Steward Task, Uncrowned Protector and Chairman of the Resh Nen,” Poe recites primly.

Finn chuckles. “I figured we’d be meeting some overworked genealogical librarian, that sounds pretty high up.”

“The highest. General Organa has quite a bit of cache, you know. And remote as they are, the monarchy of Resh Nen has always been a friend to New Republic, and the Alliance before it.”

 “Just don’t let them toss me in jail for using the wrong fork, will ya?”

 Poe scoffs. “A backwater boy like me? We’ll be cellmates, don’t worry.”

 A glinting sliver of light in the distance catches Finn’s eye that he recognizes as the transparisteel arch, viewed from the sky instead of the ground. He sucks in a breath, surprised by how soon he’s getting confirmation that his dream was really a memory- a reality that he can soon touch. Poe flies them right under its lofty curve.

 BB-8 whistles an awed remark.

 “Yeah, I get the feeling there will be a lot of stairs, buddy.”

 Just beyond the arch, they arrive to their designated landing pad. It is one of many, small and cantilevered off of a very dignified, very towery complex made of the same deep blue stone that features in several of the finer buildings across the city. When they exit the ship, Finn hooks his fingers into Poe’s like a tether so they can peer over the platform, the edges of which are overgrown with vines.

“Oh!” Finn doesn’t expect the the pocket of flowery color below amidst the bustling city. A fountained pool burbles, surrounded by trees that creep as high as the bottom of the landing pad. He squeezes Poe’s hand.

 “If you think that’s neat, then I’m sorry I never got the chance to take you to the Hanging Gardens on Hosnian Prime,” says Poe, a bit solemn. BB-8 too, gives a mournful hoot.

“Back when I was NR I had always hoped to take a date there-”

Finn lifts a supercilious eyebrow. “Romantic setting, huh?”

“That too,” Poe laughs. “But it was closest I could get to Yavin 4 while I was stationed in the Core.”

 “Homey,” Finn concludes. It’s been hard for Poe to get the free time to step foot on his own planet.

 “Exactly. Speaking of which... Let’s find yours.”

 With a little tug, Poe leads him away to the elevator.

 -

 The way Poe flies, they arrive to their meeting with the steward several hours earlier than expected. A silver droid attendant named 2Z-9 has them wait outside the assembly hall while Steward Task and her ministers wrap up a Committee for Ways and Means. Finn looks up anxiously at the imposing columns that line the entry hall, stiffening his spine but failing to feel like he belongs.

 “We don’t want to intrude on the steward’s time. We could come back at the agreed hour,” he offers, but the droid rotates their mechanical head in a stiff approximation of a shake.

 “Steward Task has already welcomed the excuse to end this session prematurely,” 2Z-9 says testily.

 “Bureaucratic nonsense,” Poe whispers knowingly in Finn’s ear. He has to bite his tongue to keep from barking a laugh right in the steward’s face as she appears behind the suddenly open door.

 Steward Task scowls as dozens of ministers file out of the chamber, several muttering stuffy comments about how they hope next week’s Ways and Means session will be thirteen standard-minutes longer to make up for this week. Poe shoots Finn an ‘I told you so,’ glance, and Finn is relieved the sour expression on Task’s face was not intended for him, personally. Not yet anyway.

 Each minister is immaculately dressed and coifed, with stiff, sculptural collars and necklines. None of them seem particularly interested in Finn or Poe’s presence, and pass without making eye contact. Their stern faces peering out from within these fashionable structures reminds Finn a little bit of the crater the city is built in, or the cupped petals of a flower. Task herself is shelled within a deep brown dress that lips up higher in the back than the front, and is filled with a puddle of frothy green scarf. Finn notes that she’s older then either he or Poe, but not by entire generations like most of the ministers.

 “Captain Finn and Commander Poe Dameron from the Resistance, Steward Ellis Task,” 2Z-9 introduces.

 Finn tugs at the collar of his uniform, keenly aware that this is the first time someone outside of the Resistance has made reference to his new rank.

 “Thank you, Toosie. Gentlemen, please,” she says, quickly ushering them into the chamber without really looking at them, and signalling that Toosie shut the door before any of the ministers can think to return with Just One More Thought Of The Most Extreme Importance.

 They follow Task into a magnificent room the size of a squadron hangar, and around a wide, recessed circle in the middle of the room, lined with terraced seats that undoubtedly belong to the ministers. Finn takes special care not to accidentally edge BB-8 down the steps to the middle of the amphitheater as they pass. At the back of the room, they approach a small setting of seats at a busy looking desk. Several stacks of datapads perch precariously on one end, rivaling the height of a bouquet that sits in a vase on the other.

 With an airy sigh, Task takes a seat behind the desk and gestures to two empty chairs across from her before folding her hands pleasantly and smiling. The meeting of the rings on each of her thumbs makes a sharp little tink.

 “Uhm. Thank you for agreeing to meet with us, Steward Task,” Finn says nervously before he realizes he’s the only one still standing. He quickly takes the seat by the bouquet.

 “General Organa sends her warmest regards,” Poe nods.

 “I’m glad to make your acquaintance,” Task says graciously. “Any friend of the General’s is a friend of mine. Although I’m not certain what I can do for you. While I would be proud to contribute ranks to the Resistance, the Resh Nen military is traditionally voluntary. As our people haven’t seen an attack on the homeworld in half a lifetime, recruitment figures are very low.” Evidently displeased to be of so little use, Task clicks her thumb rings together in irritation.

 Poe leans in and smiles in his endearing way that tends to put people at ease, working it’s magic on both Finn and Steward Task. “You’re very thoughtful, but General Organa put us in touch on a personal matter, not a professional one. Finn?”

Task settles in, regarding Finn as though she is trying memorize something. Her long eyelashes emphasise just how little she blinks.

 Fixed with such an attentive look, Finn leans in too. “I believe I was born here, and I’d like to find out if I still have any family- if it’s not too much trouble. I’m ready to submit to genetic analysis, of course.”

 It might just be his nervous imagination, but out of the corner of his eye, he could swear that the the bouquet-

 "I don’t think that will be necessary,” Task says curiously, her attention also caught.

 The willowy branches amidst the flower blossoms crackle with a tempting, tantalizing glow of blue.

 Something speaks to Finn, telling him to touch.

 Poe turns in his seat. “What the-”

 When Finn reaches for it the light intensifies, sizzling and snapping like an overloaded circuit. BB-8 sounds a warning noise before his hand makes contact- but it doesn’t hurt at all. Finn plucks a branch from the arrangement, and now that it’s in his hand, he can feel the the Force within it, like a heat with no burn.

 “Finn?”

 He just continues to stare. He listens to the will of the Force inside the branch- lets the branch go, lets it repel it’s energy off of his own so that the branch floats above his hand, swirling slowly. He’s been Force training with General Organa, yes- but mostly as a tool for focus. He has never attempted to manipulate an object like this.

 Task stands up. “I’ve only ever seen cuttings of this tree behave in such a way around one person, long ago. I believe, Captain Finn of the Resistance, that you are, in fact, Elix Ilirious, Third of His Name, Heir Protector of Resh Nen.”

 The only being in attendance without a tongue to get tied, BB-8 shrills a series of confused beeps as the steward bows deeply.

 “You are the image of your mother, my aunt Velle,” Task says, coming around her desk. She blinks rapidly, loosing a tear or two in the flutter. “I never thought I’d see either of you again. Oh, Elix!”

 Finn rises from his seat just in time to catch Task in his arms as she collapses around his neck in an embrace.

 Task sobs unceremoniously, and over her quaking shoulder Finn can see Poe’s stunned expression, no doubt mirroring his own. Toosie jolts as they start to register this information and Poe shakes his head like a wookiee getting in from the rain. “Heir what?”

 Still sniffling, the steward pulls back and smooths her robes. “You were born the last prince of the House Ilirious. This world is yours to rule.”

 

 6 ABE

 The second night of Shara’s visit to Resh Nen, she and Velle stroll together in the garden with baby Elix taking a turn on the hip of their visitor. Wind from the mountains rustles the thick, leafy canopy in this corner of the garden, sounding like rain. Nearby Ellis sits on the lip of a fountain, twining together a little wreath of flowers. They pass through a grove of sharp smelling citrus plants, numerous water features, and find themselves again in front of the cutting Shara had brought with her from the Force-sensitive tree.

During his visits to the mother tree on Yavin 4, Skywalker had nurtured the power of it’s life force, that it might strengthen and in turn give energy and focus to other Force-sensitives who came into contact with it. Even though Shara could not produce Skywalker himself, she knew the unusual characteristics of the tree and she could use it to answer this one question for Velle. In the presence of Elix, as it did with Skywalker itself, the tree shone in a halo of wintry blue light that crackled like static when touched.

 Now that she knows for certain, the prospect terrifies Velle. When she was young, the Imperial propaganda of the day painted the Jedi as baby snatchers- a scum they had hunted to extinction and that the galaxy was now well rid of. As an adult, Velle knew this was a deliberate misconstrual of the facts, but that didn’t quite put her at ease.

 She wants what is best for her son- of course she does! And she knows that rising to meet one’s potential counts for quite a bit. But if it was certain that a life in the Force was within Elix’s potential, whose choice should it be that he pursue it? He was so little, still. Velle herself had been raised with the potential to rule- but it had never been her ambition. Instead she had taken her gifts and privilege and used them to mend the galaxy at large. If her parents had had their way she might never have left Resh Nen, and she certainly wouldn’t have embarked on her career or married Bram.

 Wherever he is. Whatever he’d think of this.

Velle sighs heavily. “I’m not certain I could give him up.” Prince or Jedi, she will always want her son close by.

“Yabosed, peyebso,” Shara says nonchalantly, bouncing Elix in her arms and scrunching her face for him to imitate. For a moment Velle imagines it must be babytalk.

 “What’s that?”

 “Yavinese. It pretty much means if you can think it, you can do it,” Shara explains. “I think if it was beyond what you could handle, Velle- you would have convinced yourself not to see the signs in the first place.”

 Before she can reply I think you’re right, the words are ripped out of Velle’s mouth by a wake of rushing air. Irritated, she assumes that someone is flying too low over the city and much too close to the capital palace.

 When they look up, a streak of laserfire lights the night sky, originating behind them and shattering the nearest tower of the residence where it meets the garden wall.

 Velle’s heart lurches in her chest as a group of masked but otherwise uniformless soldiers begin to spill in through the rupture several meters away Ellis shrieks.

“What’s happening?!”

 She rushes up to them from behind, catching Velle’s hand and gripping hard enough Velle might worry for her bones if she weren't more concerned with the invaders that have landed their ship on palace grounds. With her other hand she slaps around uselessly for the holster she gave up wearing once she had a curious baby.

 “I don’t have a-”

“Blaster!” Shara quickly offers Elix back into Velle’s arms and draws her weapon.

 Alarm flooding her senses, Velle watches Shara run toward danger. She folds her son tight in her arms and then turns on her heel and pushes Ellis back toward the fountain, looking over her shoulder at the advance of the soldiers. It seems that they haven’t been spotted in the shadowy copse just yet. She points to an area where the tree branches dip low and obscure the surface of the fountain’s deep pool.

“Under the floating lilies! Ellis, go!” The girl obeys with a stiff nod, then turns and wades into the water.

 Velle rushes around the edge of the fountain into a treacherous bramble dotted with the big orange blossoms Elix so loves, and checks to see that Ellis is diving below.

 She can no longer hear the opposing fire of Shara’s blaster.

“Mama,” Elix cries, his big dark eyes turning watery. Velle kisses his head.

 “Shh, we’re going to go to sleep. Be very quiet. We’re going to sleep in the garden- won’t that be nice?”

To protect him from the branches, Velle shrugs off one of her scarves and wraps his head, then lays him carefully beneath the bush. She pulls at the foliage to create as much cover for him as she can, her desperate hands tearing at gentle flowers and thorns alike.

“Shh baby, time to sleep. Quiet now, shhh.”

She cries.

  

32 ABE

 Task explains how her beloved aunt had come to be viceroy after the death of her elder brother, Task’s father. With a patience worthy of a Gatalentan monk, she answers Finn’s questions about her own history at court, and tearfully remembers the impact Velle Ilirious’s short reign had on her life. Finally, she recounts how her aunt and a friend had perished protecting Task during what was later known to be be a First Order attack.

 Finn looks around at the stately chamber, still trying to piece it all together. Poe silently clutches his hand, his face drained.

 “Do you remember the other woman’s name?”

 With an apologetic sigh, Task shakes her head. “She was barely here for a standard-day, I’m afraid I don’t remember. It’s inscribed on a memorial in the garden, of course- but I...” Task swallows hard, and looks ashamed. “I can’t go back in there. I have Toosie bring me cuttings,” she says, gesturing to the vase filled with the Force sensitive branches and velvety orange blossoms.

 As if summoned by the mention of their name, Toosie toddles into the chamber again.

 “Steward Task, will the captain and commander be joining us for refreshment this evening?”

 Pulling herself together, Task turns to her droid, smiling as diplomatically as she did when she first greeted her guests. “I certainly hope so, Toosie.”

 Both Finn and Poe nod. “Yes, thank you.”

 Task holds up a finger. “While you’re at it, Toosie, would you please make certain there are accommodations for two in the Ilirious chambers-”

“The Ilirious chambers, madame?” The droid objects, plainly scandalized. “Surely two dignitary suites would be more suitable for our guests.”

“One room is fine!” Finn chimes in, trying to minimize the bother. Toosie looks back and forth between Finn and Task’s polite smiles, trying to understand the requests.

 “Captain Finn is family, and is to be treated as such,” Task insists.

 Toosie tilts their head. “One Ilirious chamber for the captain and commander?”

 Task glances at Finn and Poe for confirmation then nods, and the droid begins to turn away to make arrangements before she calls after them one last time: “And please call a special session with the court of ministers for the morning! Thank you!”

 “Steward Task-”

“Please, both of you, call me Ellis.”

 “Ellis,” Poe smiles, “Thank you. But it really can’t be that simple. We just wing in from Force knows what sector a few hours ago and you’re ready to confirm him as a prince?”

 She examines both of them in turn for a long moment. “Commander-”

 “Poe,” he reciprocates.

 “Poe, have you ever met someone you’d never met before and recognized them instantly?”

 The corner of Poe’s eyes crinkle, and he bites his lip. “Yeah, yeah I have.”

 Finn beams.

“Well that feeling is enough for me,” Ellis concludes. “I know my own cousin when I see him. I’m sure the court will require testing, and they make the rules of ascendancy,” she sighs. “-but they don’t make the rules of who sleeps where- or else I wouldn’t exist.”

 The steward chuckles and Finn and Poe squint at each other, neither certain if it’s appropriate to laugh along.

 “Now, are you two married? ‘One room’? I’ll need to contact your world of birth for records, Poe, or the Heritage Minister will have my head.” Ellis begins to tear into the drawers in her desk, apparently searching for something that isn’t one of the dozens of the datapads already on top of it.

 “Uh, not yet.” Finn grins.

 Ellis ceases her search, visibly relieved.

 -

 After a tea service in the solarium (and a stern lecture from Toosie on the etiquette of standing and sitting at the respectful moments) Finn and Poe are given the opportunity to stop by their room. Toosie operates a grav sled full of their luggage on the way, alternately careening into BB-8, or stopping to point out the billionth frilly detail of the decor. It’s never taken Finn so long to walk a hundred meters in his entire life.

 Finally they arrive at the chamber appointed for their use, and discover that it must be The chamber.

 This time, Poe is the one to slam into BB-8. She topples over and is so stunned that she stays that way for several moments before correcting her domed head.

 Inside, the room is shaped like an R2 unit on its side, with a main living space full of ornate furnishings and an apse made entirely of windows. By the windows stands an important looking desk, overlooking the city. Above it, strings of ornaments and lights hang from the vault in a variety of lengths, looking like an antiquated map of a solar system. In the middle of the room, much like the assembly hall and the portrait gallery there is a sunken, circular space. While other rooms in the palace had used this area for seating, this one features a bed. It’s piled with immense glittering pillows and puffy blankets that look like a nest, rich with earth tones and embroidered with flowers. In one corner of the room, there’s a gathering of wooden carved, high backed chairs, with lush cushioned seats around a table set with a pitcher and bowl of fruit- and in another corner there is a tub nearly big enough for a Hutt partitioned behind several swoops of gauzy cloth. All along the walls there are mosaic patterns inlaid with pearly gems, interrupted here and there by sconces or stone carved busts.

 Eyes still fixed on the wonders before him, Finn fishes his hand around blindly, trying to pick up his bag. “Should we ask Toosie to direct us to the dungeon, after all?” he asks Poe, who is equally struck.

 Blaring in excitement, BB-8 flies past, headed for the desk. She finds a UES to plug into for a recharge and positions herself with a prime view of the garden out the window, buzzing contentedly.

 “I think BB-8 has staked a claim for us,” Poe points out.

 She swivels her head around to look at them and nods up, appealingly.

Finn sighs. “I can’t say no to that face.”

 Bag in hand, he goes to join BB-8 so that he can set up their transponder in case of any contact from the Resistance. They should probably give the general a heads up that they ran into... How exactly would one describe this?

 Something of a complication, anyway.

 Hesitant to scuff the pristine finish of the wood, Finn places his bag down with care and is surprised to discover that there are lamps embedded in the surface of the desk, transforming it into a holosuite when necessary. It’s not every day that he runs into a piece that marries together natural materials with technology quite like this. It’s not every day he finds a long lost relative either, or discovers that he’s apparently responsible for a planet full of millions of people. And he was just getting used to the idea of having half a dozen direct reports with his latest promotion to captain.

 “Huh.”

 He really needs to sit down a minute and clear his head.

 Finn feels blank, like he has walked into a room for a reason and forgotten precisely what it was now that he’s arrived. There are elements of Resh Nen that he recognizes from his dream quoting them- certainly, but but even the strange new details weave together into something that feels recognizable. It frightens him, a bit- that it could be this easy. His doubt that this was actually his home had given him a sense of security he hadn’t realized until now.

 With no doubt to hold him back, he’s completely vulnerable.

 Remembering his studies, Finn lets these apprehensions be acknowledged, learned from, and dismissed. He breathes out, finally, and sets back to his task.

 While he gropes around for button that will activate the system, Poe comes up behind him, slipping his arms around his shoulders and brushing a kiss on his cheek.

 “You okay, buddy?”

 “This is definitely a whole lot of information,” says Finn. “And responsibility.”

 Poe gives him a squeeze and makes a noise of agreement. “I know the feeling. Maybe not this completely mad fairy tale version of it, but... It’s heavy.”

 Finn turns on his seat so he can throw his arms around Poe, too. “Tell me I don’t have to really do this,” he mutters. “Please.”

Poe chuckles into his neck. “I don’t think my permission means much, Your Highness.”

 Finn groans. “So, I’m supposed to just drop everything and be a prince?”

 “A viceroy, technically.”

 Right. He’d already been unwittingly born a prince, it was just a matter of intentionally assuming the higher station his mother had left empty with the steward filling in the gap, meanwhile.

 He was merely being called upon to fill in the gap forever.

 “It’s just that I finally got control of my life when I left the First Order,” Finn explains. “And I’m happy working for the Resistance, and I’m happy to have the freedom to do my own thing, whatever it is. Make my own plans!”

 Not that he’s had the chance to make many plans yet. Just the one where he and Poe get to grow old together- and he hasn’t actually cleared that with Poe yet. Finn’s heart squeezes. How could he ask after this, when binding himself to Finn would take Poe away from his own career, his own plans?

 Poe lets go of Finn and and begins to pace. His brow pinches in contemplation.

 “Look at it this way,” he says, stopping in front of Finn. “If we had arrived and Ellis had put us in touch with someone at town records who said your only living relative was Heezdok the Nerfherder- what would you do?”

 Finn squints. “I don’t think I’d become a nerfherder, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 “No, but you’d stick around for a few days to hear what they had to say, right?” Poe strokes his chin thoughtfully. “You’d find out what your life might have been like. You’d have the freedom to do your own thing with that information.”

 That’s sensible. A realistic way to handle an unrealistic situation.

 “Yeah,” Finn agrees. “Play it cool for a few days.”

 How quickly can they arrange a coronation anyway? Ellis assured him that the ministers will require proof of his identity, and there’ll be all kinds of paperwork and formalities if it’s anything like getting a rank in the military. The pressure won’t really be on for a week, maybe. He can be polite and open minded for a week.

 “Now, where do good little Resh Nen pilots hide their smelly boots if not under the bunk?” Poe wonders, hands on hips.

 He finishes squaring away their luggage and then comes back over to the desk just in time for Finn to find the button he’d been looking for earlier. A field of blue-green light appears in midair, crowded with shining white aurebesh letters. It’s so similar to the format used by the Resistance, Finn automatically moves to select the outgoing presets and feeds in the long range access code to get in touch with base. They don’t manage to get a hold of General Organa due to the late local hour, but they leave a message with a very skeptical Kaydel Ko explaining the situation.

 When they close out the transmission, Poe grins at Finn. “Bet you anything Organa calls back at the Hutt’s crack of dawn.”

“Anything?” Finn leans in until their noses are a breath away from touching.

 “Mhmm.” Poe’s lips part, perfect and close.

 They dangle like that for a hot moment, then quick as a flash, Finn pulls back and fixes his attention on the holoscreen again, smirking.

 “Good! Because I bet Kaydel will gossip to Threepio and he’ll call back even sooner. And I could use a decent back rub.”

 Always a good sport, Poe puts a hand on the small of his back, promisingly. Finn will get that back rub either way, of course.

 “Wait a minute. Finn, are you seeing-”

 “The dates on these files? Yeah.”

 The record of most recent activity is filled with communications from the year after Finn was born. Most of the file names seem pretty mundane, to Minister So-and-So or Registrar of This And That, and nearly all are encrypted. BB-8 could probably break her way into any of them with a little time, but the particular file that catches Finn’s eye as they scroll through is free and clear.

 For Baby Elix (and Velle)

 Without thinking, Finn accesses the file.

 The form of a man from the waist up fills the holofield, frozen from over twenty years ago. He’s not much older than Finn is now, and is strikingly similar in bearing. In fact, Finn thinks, it would be a bit like looking in the mirror, if it weren’t for the beard. Maybe he should grow one out after all. It’s a good look. Whatever the small differences, it is undeniable- this is Bram Tristell, Finn’s father.

 He activates the playback.

 “Hello Elix,” Bram says in a sing-song voice. “And my Velle. I hope you’ve got my package by now, Mama, but if not, I won’t spoil the surprise. I think you’ll like it too, Elix. Wait- Velle, turn around and don’t listen. I’m telling Elix,” he declares, shooing his invisible wife.

Finn covers his mouth so that he doesn’t laugh aloud. He wants to hear every word.

 Leaning in conspiratorially toward his intended audience, Bram whispers loudly. “Can you keep a secret, son? Shh. Don’t tell Mama. I’m sending you bottles of bubble bath from Ryloth,” he confides. “The bubbles change color, Elly Belly!”

 Beside Finn, Poe whimpers a little and turns to him, completely charmed. He silently mouths “Elly Belly!” and covers his heart with both hands.

 “If you use it all up before I can get home, well! I’ll just have to bring some more with me,” his father decides. Bram’s playfulness begins to wind down. “I’ll bring anything you like, but especially myself. I’m sorry it’s been so long getting there.” He bites his lip and his bearded chin trembles like it's a struggle to keep smiling. “Love you both!”

 With a final wave of his hand, Bram Tristell vanishes, replaced by the text of the file name and its options.

 For Baby Elix (and Velle)

 Log / Activate / Discard

 Finn doesn’t move to return to the activity log or to reactivate the playback, he simply stands very still, like flinching might cause the moment to unfix itself from his memory. You can only hear someone say they love you for the first time once, after all.

 “He’ll still be here when we get back,” Finn promises himself outloud. Inwardly, he wonders. Will he? According to Ellis, his father arrived to Resh Nen some time after the attack and didn’t stay for long. She said no one was sure where he had gone or what had become of him after that. Most assumed he had been killed somewhere unfriendly to the Republic.

 This might be the only piece of him left.

Finn finally shuts down the suite. He might have played the holo over and over if not for the how the sky outside the windows was fading into the cool washes of dusk. Two of the three moons are on the rise, climbing their way to night. Ellis had said something about a small dinner party at third moonrise and they’ll be late if they don’t shake a leg.

 “Now I know where the sweetness came from.” Poe offers his arm to Finn so that he might escort him to dinner. Finn takes it. “And the drop dead gorgeousness,” Poe adds with a smirk.

 “I could probably have you arrested for such impertinence, now. Watch it,” Finn warns.

 “Arrested’s not so bad,” Poe winks. “Getting arrested is how I ran into you after all.”

 -

Dinner is a mercifully quiet affair, though seeing the capacity of the dining room fills Finn with a dread of the inevitable crowd. At some point, there is going to to be pomp and circumstance, and he has no clue how to behave.

 Toosie briefly introduces them to the small gathering as visitors from the Resistance, and directs Finn and Poe to take a seat at a smaller table, situated between two massive, half-ring shaped tables. The room must be positioned just below where they had landed earlier, because it, too, overlooks the garden through ornately traced clari-crystalline windows. Shifting holographic statues echo the organic shapes in the window design, creating a seamless blend into painted murals.

 Surrounded by impressive decor and amongst half a dozen complexly tailored Resh Nen locals, Finn’s uniform jacket feels simple and small. He glances at Poe, proudly wearing the same uniform and looking no less divine than usual. Poe is comfortable and confident, so Finn squares his shoulders, too. Maybe they don’t look completely ridiculous.

A second protocol droid with a glossy white finish leans in between them, head swinging back and forth like an over-attentive starvolley spectator.

“May I bring you something to drink? We have nearly three hundred beverages from dozens of refineries throughout the capital city, as well as several popular distillations from the mountain country and coastal districts.”

 “Could I have water please?” Finn asks, lacking familiarity with any of these.

 The droid jerks upright, making a small beep of computation. “Very good Captain. And would Sir prefer a distillation from the Garro Sea or the Fhesta Ridge snowcaps?”

“The first one is fine. Thank you.”

“And Commander Dameron?” The droid turns to Poe.

 “Tea? Caf? Something served hot?” Poe grins. “Surprise me.”

 Once again the droid stands up straight, beeps, and takes off to tend to the others. Across the table Ellis Task chimes her ring against a glass and the polite mumble of those gathered quiets.

 “Tonight with us we have special guests to Resh Nen, whom I expect each of you to help welcome and make at home.” Ellis turns to each and introduces them for Finn and Poe’s benefit. “Meet Custodian of the Constitution and esteemed professor of law, Sedge Frell,” she nods to a wizened old man. “Ambassador to the Xenian Reach Conference, Mallor E’Stoll,” a middle aged woman in gray. “Lillin Wess, Heritage Minister,” a much older woman with a sharp chin. “Knell Hashta, author and foremost historian of modern Resh Nen,” a stuffy, bespectacled man. “-And lastly my chief tailor, Pelder Dello.”

 The other Resh Nen turn to glance at Dello, no doubt wondering why a glorified tradesman is at a table full of scholars and influencers. Ellis brings back their attention with another clink of her ring against a glass, and deepens her voice seriously so that they hang on her every word.

“I’ve selected this group to be the first to know that our lost hope and heir, Elix III, son of the late Viceroy Velle Ilirious and honored Bram Tristell has returned to us.” She gestures to Finn with upturned palms.

 “The prince!” Hashta exclaims, pinching his spectacles.

 Finn barely stops himself from looking over his shoulder to see if they’re referring to someone else standing behind him. Heat rushes to his face.

“Apparently.”

 On the other side of Poe, Dello strokes his neat little beard, giving Finn an appraising look. “And won’t he wear it well!” he remarks. Poe grins.

More exclamations are made.

 “I can’t believe it!”

“The Ministry doesn’t know!?” Minister Wess and Ambassador E’Stoll turn to each other in squawks of shock.

 “Elix Ilirious,” gasps the younger lady.

 It still hasn’t connected as a name that someone might call him, in Finn’s brain. He shrugs apologetically, unable to tell if they are displeased at the prospect.

 Seated next to Finn, Professor Frell leans in and examines him closely until a smile blooms beneath his snowy moustache. “Velle Ilirious was my best student,” he confides quitely.

 Above the muttering, Ellis continues, orderly. “Toosie has devised a timetable that should allow for each of you to prepare and meet with him in the coming days, so that he may claim his birthright.”

 Finn shifts in his seat, noting the way she does not refer to him by name conversationally. He wonders if that’s for his comfort or theirs, but they don’t leave him wondering long.

 “Your Grace, if I may- what happened to you?” asks Ambassador E’Stoll. “Were you smuggled off of the planet by the New Republic?”

 Too stung by the form of address, Finn gapes.

 “Though popular, that was never a very likely theory, Ambassador,” chimes in Hashta. “We now know the attack in which His Grace went missing was a harvest for the First Order.”

 Several people at the table stiffen at the mention, and Hashta grimaces apologetically. All of Finn’s apprehensions about revealing his background resurface, and his palms get clammy in his lap. The possibility of rejection stings him, as sudden as a vibroblade. He hasn’t even told Ellis about being raised as a stormtrooper yet for fear of her reaction, and she’s family. These people have no such blood loyalty and might be so disgusted, they’ll run him out of town before he even knows what he’s been missing.

 Wait, wouldn’t that be good? He never signed up to be a prince in the first place!

 The ambassador persists. “Sir? Where have you been all this time?”

 Everyone turns to Finn expectantly in a hush, curious for him to lay the mystery to rest once and for all. Even Poe glances at him warily, with a look that says ‘I’m following your lead, so be sure this is the direction you wanna go, buddy.’

 “It’s quite a long story...” Finn trails off.

 From across the table Ellis holds his gaze for a moment, a sudden light of understanding in her eyes.

 “It is! I think we’ll have to sit you down with Hashta tomorrow so that we can make an official record of your history to satisfy everyone’s interest, won’t we?” Ellis smiles kindly, having delivered a diplomatic answer and bought Finn a little time to collect himself. Somehow, he knows she’ll make the time to confer with him privately.

 Hashta brightens. “It would be my honor!”

 “I’m most interested to hear about your recent work with General Organa,” Ellis adds, arching an impressed eyebrow.

 Everyone oohs and ahhs politely and then is promptly distracted by the arrival of the first course.

 Poe squeezes Finn’s knee under the table. “She’s good.”

 “She’s something else,” Finn agrees.

 The serving droid places a berry strewn salad in front of him and presents a small, fancy looking bottle with a silver filigreed neck and base. The liquid inside has been color-treated a crystal blue. With a flourish, the droid uncorks the bottle and empties its contents into the goblet already set before him.

 “A rare import from the Garro Sea,” reports the droid.

“Rare? Water?” Finn frowns. He hadn’t meant to put anyone out.

“The capital city is supplied by mountain springs primarily, sir.”

 Minister Wess, who is also being served overly fancy water, laughs a musical little giggle that sounds a bit rehearsed. “Many senior members of the court prefer Garro distillations. We became accustomed to them when Queen Ratha hosted.”

 Finn nods politely, and Professor Frell scoffs, unnoticed by the minister. “It’s economically indefensible to import, but that’s royalists for you.”

 “Oh! I didn’t know.”

 “Relax, my dear boy,” laughs the professor.

 The serving droid whirrs in diligence. “Is everything to your liking, sir?”

 “Thank you, yes,” Finn says brightly. “Maybe after this I’ll try the mountain springs?” While Poe’s attention is held by his own steaming cup topped with purple foam, Finn adds in a whisper to the droid, “-and can I keep the bottle cap?”

 “Very good, sir.”

 Each place setting is then furnished with an additional, smaller glass full of a bubbly pink liquid. Raising her own, Ellis suggests a toast. “To House Ilirious!” “House Ilirious,” the party choruses.

 Over the course of dinner, Hashta regales them with the history of some famed poet that Ambassador E’Stoll had quoted, which leads to a cavalcade of trivia that Finn has very little context to piece together. Even so, he appreciates the color it gives to the world around him, and reassures him that people are people no matter where in the galaxy you go. Everybody’s got a hobby they bore others with at parties.

 Since there’s no crowd he can’t find a gearhead in, Poe gets into a lively discussion of speeders with Dello. “The Caridan F series is more common down here. I think it’s because Carida has such a similar terrain, you don’t need to tweak the factory settings at all,” he explains. “But the G series is popular with the colony up on Nen 2.”

“Nen 2, is that one of the moons?”

“Yep!”

 Ellis perks up. “Actually, as of the New Year the colony will be it’s own district, with a minister to represent its interests at court.”

 There are some murmurs of surprise, and it’s easy to see this is news that makes his cousin very proud, so Finn ventures a guess. “Has Nen 2’s representation at court been a long time coming?”

 “I was born there the year it was founded, if that gives you any idea,” says Professor Frell. Finn can’t think of any humans he’s met who look older than the wrinkled man sitting next to him, so it does. “It was just an outpost then,” Frell smiles fondly. The professor’s understated manner reminds Finn a bit of Master Luke, which he likes.

 “I grew up on a tiny little moon colony myself,” says Poe. “Congratulations to Nen 2, then!” He raises a glass, and everyone around the table toasts to its future.

 “Perhaps if you’re staying a while you’d be interested in touring the colony, Commander,” suggests Ambassador E’Stoll.

 “I’ll check with Toosie for details, thank you.” Poe turns to Finn with a devilish grin. “What do you think? Maybe we can get our hands on a G series speeder and I’ll show you what I can do without a canopy.”

Force have mercy. If it’s any better than the thrills Poe can deliver in a more confined two-seater, Finn’s heart might give out entirely and then they won’t have to worry about this prince business at all!

 Minister Wess waves her fork as though to shake her finger, sending a berry flying off her dessert. “Oh, I think His Grace will be much too busy preparing for coronation to go joyriding, Commander.”

 They make it through the rest of dinner without any dungeon-worthy incidents, much to Finn’s relief. Finn bids goodnight to his new acquaintances, and even finds himself looking forward to meeting with most them again.

 Except for Ellis and some of the serving droids, Finn and Poe are last to leave the dining room. Before they do, she comes around the table and takes Finn’s hand, drawing him to sit with her for just a moment longer. Poe stands by, uncertain.

 “I’m very glad to have you home,” says Ellis. Her voice is watery. “It will do so much good for the people of Resh Nen to to hear of your return, and you’ll have the power to do much more for them than I ever could.”

 Finn protests. “I barely know about these kinds of things. I don’t know about poets or parliaments or commerce or what the purpose of a Heritage Minister even is!”

 “Ah, well. If I ever figure out what we keep Wess around for, I’ll let you know,” smirks Ellis. “Meanwhile, we’ll get you schooled up on the Resh Nen world, and how you fit into it. I want you to feel like you belong here.”

 “I... I appreciate that.” He does- but Finn can’t help feeling like he’s holding back. He’s gotta come clean about who it is these people have welcomed with open arms. Clearly Ellis is very fond of whoever it is she imagines him to be. Probably some innocent, plucky orphan like Rey, who managed to get by all these years by sheer goodness. She couldn’t possibly be expecting a top ranked stormtrooper cadet. It might have been better if Finn had spat all this out when they first met. He might have been able to spare her feelings.

 “If you want me to belong here, you ought to know who I really am besides Elix. Aside from Finn, too.”

 He tells her the story of stormtrooper FN-2187 and how he left behind everything he knew, recognizing it was so little and so wrong. Ellis, who had watched the First Order slay her family and throw her world into chaos, takes it all in, barely blinking. She doesn’t make a noise, or raise her hand to cover a gasp, even. Her face is as expressionless as a stormtrooper’s mask.

 She’ll throw him out, he’s sure of it.

 “I get it, if that changes things. People don’t want a prince or even a cousin like me.” Finn hangs his head, unwilling to defend himself against Ellis’ anger. Behind him, he senses Poe drawing close even before his hand drops on his shoulder.

 “Finn, that’s not...” But Poe sighs and stops himself.

 When Finn looks back up, a tear is falling down Ellis’s face. “This will shock the public, it’s true. It’s a terrible thing to have happened,” she admits. “But if the worst thing anyone can say about you is that you overcame adversity so that you could dedicate yourself to doing some good... Resh Nen would be foolish not to want a prince like you.”

 The weight on Finn’s heart unburdens itself, and he breathes a sigh of relief. This is a place he could belong, if it's a place where people can be so understanding and kind.

 Again the picture of composure, Ellis stands up and smoothes out her robes.

 “Thank you!” Without really thinking about it Finn launches from his seat and reaches out to wrap her in a hug, crushing her delicate arrangement of collar and scarves.

 Ellis laughs and when he lets go she tilts her head. “Don’t thank me- that’s all you.”

In the uncanny way of protocol droids throughout the galaxy, Toosie toddles over to them then, in the midst of their moment. “Steward Task, for optimization of tomorrow’s itinerary it would be best if-”

 Ellis cuts Toosie off. “I suppose I should let Toosie tuck you into bed. You’ve got a big day tomorrow. You’ll need to meet with Hashta and tell him what you told me so we can put aside your past and get to your potential.”

Finn breathes in, deep and sharp. “Right! Goodnight Ellis.”

 Poe bows and bids her goodnight as well, then shoos off Toosie. “No really, I can take it from here,” he assures the droid, taking Finn’s hand.

 He lets himself be lead away down the corridor back to their chamber, his feelings in a jumble. It was load off his mind to talk with Ellis, of course, but eventually they’ll come up against the collective reaction of the other 53 million people on Resh Nen. He knocks his shoulder into Poe’s as they walk, hoping to fully lighten the mood. “Is it just me, or did that actually go pretty well?”

 “Hmm? Oh, I knew it would.” Poe stops gazing outside to the garden below and nudges Finn back, starting an impromptu game of bumpershuttles. If they’d come along, Toosie would have had to run a mortification subroutine.

 They bump each other back and forth, always tethered by the hand, fingers hooked together. Through some miracle they manage not to disturb any of the fancy artefacts on display throughout the palace as they half drag, half stumble their way to just outside their door. Giggling, Finn pulls Poe in to hipcheck him one last time, but Poe plants himself and Finn bounces right off him instead.

 “I don’t know how you’re always so sure,” Finn pants, his back to the wall.

 With a grin, Poe steps up to him and fences him in place with his arms. “Yabosed, peyebso- as they say.”

 Finn puzzles, not recognizing this bit of Yavinese as one of Poe’s ample stock of swears and exclamations. He lets Poe lean in and kiss him there in the middle of the hall and presses back into it, trying to borrow his confidence. It works a little bit.

 “Do you think it will go okay with Hashta and...” Finn gulps. “-everyone else?”

 A look of determination sparks in Poe’s eyes. “Yes.”

 “Really? No dungeons, no firing squad or getting spaced?”

 If he and Poe had to battle their way out of the palace against a handful of ministers and security droids that was one thing- but two versus an entire enraged planet is rotten odds. Strategically oriented as Finn is, it sets his teeth on edge.

 “I saw you, Finn,” Poe says. He reaches out to cradle Finn’s face in his hands and speaks, urgent. “I actually saw you dressed in stormtrooper armor. With a blaster. On a star destroyer. One look I knew you weren’t one of them, though. Not really.” Poe shakes his head and bites his lip, considering. “You are good, you never belonged there, and after what we went through I hope to the Stars you see it.”

 Finn’s throat catches. Good. Finn is good- wants to do good. Poe could see that, and Poe could love him.

 He finally realizes that compared to Poe, the people of Resh Nen will have the benefit of meeting him without handcuffs, hours of torture, and the murder of a village still spattered on their clothes. If Poe could give that terrifying version of Finn a chance- well then, he owed it to put his best foot forward and give the people of his homeworld the opportunity to love him too. It couldn’t possibly go worse than crash landing while being chased by the First Order.

 “You’ve convinced me,” smiles Finn.

 “All better?”

 Finn nods, catching Poe’s hands in his own as they drift down to his chest. They kiss again, and when hands start to wander, Finn remembers and suddenly reaches for his pocket.

 “I’ve got something for you.”

 Poe cocks an eyebrow. “You usually do.”

“From dinner!” Finn chuckles, his face overheating at the suggestion. “A bottlecap for your collection.” He retrieves it and drops it in Poe’s palm.

 Flipping it over between thumb and finger, Poe grins as it glints in the light. “Though I admit I am worth it, you can’t buy me with riches, Your Highness.”

 “No?”

Poe shrugs and then gives Finn another quick kiss and then lingers, nose to nose. “Can’t sell what doesn’t belong to you.”

 “I see,” says Finn. He moves to finally open their chamber door, and ushers Poe inside. “I wonder what I could trade you to Chewbacca for.”

 -

 Toosie returns the early next morning, knocking at their door for permission to deliver breakfast and the day’s itinerary. As Finn and Poe had only just gotten back into bed after answering General Organa’s predictably surprised response to their comm, neither is in a hurry to budge from their comfortable tangle. BB-8 whistles suspiciously at the door, still wary from having been run over the day before. She blats at the flustered protocol droid outside, refusing to open up.

 “One night in a palace and she’s already getting airs,” Poe sighs, rolling to the edge of the bed. He doubletakes when he remembers he has to climb up out of it, instead of down off it.

 Curious to see what the day holds, Finn follows after him. “And she didn’t even sleep in a nest of ruby encrusted pillows. I feel like I might buy a solar system later today on a whim.”

 Poe beats him to the access panel and jumps back as Toosie barges past. “Come on in, why don’t ya. Mmm... Is that Jekka tea I smell?”

 “Yes sir, Commander.” Toosie crosses the room to the table and sets down a tray full of fruits, breads, and fiddly little cups. BB-8 chases their heels, on guard. Turning back to Finn and Poe, Toosie starts. “Oh! Has the tailor arrived? Your Grace is already disrobed.”

 “Uh, not exactly.” Finn sheepishly grabs a discarded shirt and pulls it over his head while Poe snickers over his tea. “I take it Dello’s my first appointment today?”

 “Yes sir, within the hour,” Toosie confirms, glancing at the still barechested Poe. If droids could scowl, this would be an occasion for it. “You will need appropriate attire for your holo recorded interview with Knell Hashta this afternoon.”

“I’ll be dressed by then, for sure,” Poe smirks. He points to the window with his cup, the floating Jekka seeds in his tea sloshing perilously. It’s barely sunrise.

Finn gulps, reminded of the interview. “Any chance I can meet with Ellis- er, Steward Task before then?”

 “Steward Task will be entirely consumed by her agenda in preparation for the global announcement of your return and eventual coronation. The Steward sends her support in spirit. May the Force be with you,” the droid says without passion.

 “Oh. All right.” Finn glances at Poe, who correctly interprets his apprehension and mouths an encouragement.

 Toosie rattles on, undeterred. “Then, the interview at 0100, and directly from there at 0300 you’ll report to Minister Wess for an evening of vital instruction.”

 “Instruction?” asks Finn. The grave way Toosie puts it, it sounds ominously like being sent to conditioning in the First Order.

 Toosie whirrs and lifts their hands in exclamation. “For executing the exclusive privileges of Your Grace’s station! There are a number of matters that have gone unattended since last a crown member of the House Ilirious resided on Resh Nen.”

 This again, Finn thinks. It doesn’t seem to him that there’s such a difference between he and Ellis and how much they belong to the same family. They’re cousins! He ought to know they have some of the same grandparents and great grandparents and so on- because he’d been trotted past every single last portrait of them yesterday! Finn resolves to ask someone less exhausting than Toosie about it when he has the chance. Meanwhile, he nods politely and starts tucking into breakfast just incase they run him ragged with duties today and forget to feed him.

 “I think we’re willing to take our chances with the tailor without your assistance, Toosie.”

 “If you are certain, Commander.”

 BB-8 burbles triumphantly.

 “Thank you for breakfast,” says Poe, ushering them out. As soon as the door is shut behind him, he mimes tugging at his collar. “Sheesh,” he breathes. “Uptight, even for a protocol droid. I suppose I should put on my uniform before I scandalize anyone else.”

 “I don’t mind!” says Finn, sitting at the table and licking drippy fruit juice off his fingers. He hums contentedly when Poe comes over to kiss his forehead.

 As soon as Poe manages to locate and pull on his trousers there’s another knock at the door. This time BB-8 goes to answer it enthusiastically, chirping a friendly greeting to Pelder Dello and the staff he brought with him.

 “Good morning Your Grace. Commander,” he says, nodding to each. Behind him follow two assistants, pulling along several racks of clothes. “I was able to size you both up last night, though I would like to double check the sleeves...”

 Bewildered, Finn peers down at his shirt. Most of his life had been spent in issued or borrowed clothes. If he ever needed his sleeves to be shorter, he just rolled them. He steps out of the way of the visitors, so that they can haul in more types of garment than he is sure he’s ever seen.

 One of the two assistants crosses to a mosaiced wall of the chamber and pulls on two cylinders Finn had taken for lamps. Apparently they are handles of a closet, as the ornate surface of the wall pulls open by each, revealing its capacity. The racks are positioned in front of the closet in a row, and one by one, the assistants activate a mechanism that comes down from inside to install them into a rotating display. The clothes go by in a carousel of color and pattern.

 While Finn stands there gaping, someone takes his arm and raises it out to the side, snapping a little cartridge in their hand that blips lights and then reports tiny holographic numbers. They repeat this for the length of his neck, circumference of his chest, and so on. Not far away, Poe is getting the same treatment, as each assistant verifies measurements.

 “Wait, both of us?” Poe asks, already standing stiff so as not to confuse their instruments.

 “Steward Task thought you should also have some local attire available, Commander,” winks Dello. “Of course, there wasn’t time to make something custom for you last night, but I should have something respectable by tomorrow. Now!” He says, clapping his hands. “Tell me about colors and pet peeves and we’ll get started.”

 The trio of tailors work tirelessly to select suitable pieces from their little boutique for Finn and Poe, and gather up any items that may need alteration or don’t suit their tastes. They supply them with slippers as well as dressy boots neither would dare wear outside on the street, let alone in the dirt or on a greasy tarmac. In addition to essential garments, each is gifted with a dressing gown, several sets of basics made of unimaginably soft cloth, belts, and an arrayment of scarves. The Resh Nen are very big on scarves, as it turns out.

 “Last but not least, Your Grace...”

 Dello offers Finn a small, cushioned box with two dimples. In each peeks slim, silver rings, much like the ones Finn has noticed Ellis and most other Resh Nen wearing.

 “Are these customary?” he asks, unsure of their meaning.

 “A pair of rings are often gifted from parent to child at adulthood, or between spouses,” Dello explains. He then waves his hand and makes a noncommittal noise. “Mostly it’s fashionable- but these particular rings were your mother’s. Steward Task had me resize them last night.”

 Speechless, Finn holds out his hand for the box.

 She wore these. These had been his mother’s when she had risen to the occasion and been the viceroy she hadn’t meant to be. These were on her hands when she last held him. These were with her when they were still a family- and when she had been forced to make the most difficult choice.

 Throughout the fitting Finn had been reminding himself not to get too attached to the trappings of Resh Nen- he’s giving it a week, remember? This might not be permanent, in the end. But he knows, immediately- these. These rings he will take with him, no matter what. He slips them on.

 “I always wanted a cape,” says Poe, swirling into his line of vision.

 Finn had been so caught up in getting pushed and prodded around for the fitting, this is the first time he gets to appreciate the the full effect. Poe may not be as stern looking as the ministers that paraded out of the assembly hall, but he’s just as striking, wrapped in a lustrous red with a flash of silver at the interior of his collar and edge of his cape. He steps about lightly in his delicate shoes, almost like he’s on a planet with a fractional gravity.

 “Wow,” Finn breathes. “You look incredible. Very handsome. This is only my second day on this planet, but I’m pretty sure you’re the best dressed man on it.”

 BB-8 hoots from the sidelines and Dello preens. “Your Grace should look in the mirror,” he laughs. “I’ll leave you to it.” With another commanding clap of his hands he and his assistants file out, arms full of rejected clothes and things that need adjustments.

 Finn crosses to the mirror with Poe just behind him. Their ornately framed reflection looks like a portrait that ought to hang in a museum, with brushstrokes in every color. Well, Poe does anyway, with his confident, yet dignified smile. Finn is all grinning teeth, more suited to a casual holo. He schools his expression and tilts up his chin. Princely, he thinks.

 Poe gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Finn, you look-”

 “Like I’m playing dress up?” Finn snorts.

“You look like you were meant to, I think,” Poe says quietly. “The way your parents imagined you would.”

 The somewhat unpracticed feeling of familial pride fills Finn the same way it does when General Organa thanks him, or Admiral Ackbar compliments him and calls him ‘Son’. He hasn’t actually done anything for Resh Nen that his parents could be proud of, not yet anyway- but at least now he’s dressed for the part. Still, it’s a shame they can’t see it.

 “I wish-” Finn shrugs. “I wish my mom was here.”

 In the reflection, Poe frowns. “Yeah, I know that feeling buddy.”

 Distantly, Finn remembers hearing that Poe had lost his mother at a young age too, and sighs. What has the galaxy got against moms, anyway?

 BB-8 bumps into his leg, chattering in concern and swinging her head back and forth to look at the two of them.

 “Bee? I didn’t mean to bum you out.” Finn pats her domed head and reassures her with a smile.

 “Eh, that’s her primary function. Don’t worry about it.” Poe takes Finn’s hand and begins dragging him back over to the middle of the room. With an unceremonious whumph of his fancy new cape, Poe drops into the bed and pulls Finn down to sit with him. “Come on, we’ll go over your interview one more time before Toosie comes to collect you.”

 Before long they are taken to meet with Hashta and his cameraman in the portrait gallery. Ellis had arranged for the exhibit of House Illirious portraits to be flooded with flowers- so many in fact, Finn wonders if it might have been more practical to move the sculptures into the garden instead. Given the opportunity to place his seat wherever he prefers, Finn passes the likeness of his grandparents, the former monarchs Edell and Mavatha and his namesake Elix II. Fending off the insistence of Hashta’s cameraman to move the chair for him, Finn positions himself beside his mother, Velle.

 Maybe she can be here for this after all, he thinks.

 Hashta waits for Finn to take his seat first, and then they begin. Throughout the interview, Poe stands at parade rest just beside Finn’s chair, daring any inconsiderate comments or questions. Drawing on the generous acceptance of his cousin and Poe’s steady presence, Finn calmly details his life in the First Order and how he had come to defect. For his part, Hashta is rather genial, more interested and intrigued by facts and circumstances than in projecting judgement on to them. He diligently verifies which campaigns of the Second Galactic Civil War had been part of Finn’s career to date, and only once does he offer anything like an opinion.

 “You must feel a great loyalty to Commander Dameron and the Resistance, then?”

 Finn tilts his head and only just stops himself from looking over to Poe. It’s not one of the questions they had practiced. “I feel...”

 He feels a great many things about Poe, and sure, loyalty is mixed in there- but it’s not the top of the heap. He feels lucky, honored, and in love, most days. Sometimes he crams Gotta Be Really Heroic, The Actual Best Human (Sentient?) In The Galaxy For This Man in there too. His gratitude to the Resistance is another animal entirely- a political one, he knows. He is well aware that his resume of allegiance to two extremes is a lot of baggage to drag across Resh Nen’s threshold while they’re just getting to know him.

 “I feel like they gave me back my determination,” Finn answers carefully. “Now I’m free to be loyal to the value of life, and not just my own or my friends in the Resistance- but Resh Nen and galaxy at large.”

 “Well put,” says Hashta. He and his cameraman both smile at that, and when Finn glances over his shoulder at the statue of his mother he’s tempted to think that she’s smiling too.

 -

 BB-8, now bursting with curiosity, admonishes Finn and Poe for excluding her from what she is certain had been a very fabulous dinner the previous night, and now a real live holonet broadcast. She shrills appealingly while they change clothes and gear up for the remainder of the day. Finn sweat through his impressive interview outfit, and Poe needs something suitable for the rough terrain of Nen 2.

 “Yes, you can come with either one of us,” Poe moans back at BB-8. “It’s up to you.”

Finn snickers. “Probably be more fun going with Poe than me, though. An ‘Evening of Vital Instruction’ doesn’t sound very exciting.”

 With an objecting chirp, BB-8 nudges Finn.

 “Of course, you would make it more interesting,” he amends.

 That seems to make up her mind, because BB-8 whizzes about in a celebratory dance.

 Indignant, Poe teases her. “What am I, chopped synth-liver?”

BB-8 dips her head to each side in her customary shrug, toodling.

 “Behave yourself,” Poe grins.

 Having traded his heavy collared mantle for a lighter jacket, Finn breathes a sigh of relief and wraps his arms around Poe’s neck before they part ways for the evening. “Not a chance.”

 “I was talking to BB-8, but now I’ll have to worry about you too!” Poe laughs and then kisses him quick and playful. Then something occurs to him suddenly and his demeanor shifts and he holds Finn tight. “Wait- I don’t actually need to worry do I?”

Finn squeezes him back. “I’m not gonna sabotage my coronation or anything. I’m taking it seriously.” He kisses Poe apologetically. Then tenderly. Then deep.

 They are accustomed to the meaning of a kiss like this, they’ve shared many just like it before a battle, so neither puts the words to it, confidant that the other already knows.

 We can survive this. We can survive anything.

 -

 Finn’s appointment with Minister Wess is his first reason to venture into one of the towers that rises up from the capital palace. He, Toosie, and BB-8 take an elevator to her office, and arrive just in time for the first moonrise. The walls of the tower are the same glittering deep blue as the exterior, punctuated by single, tall window that lines up behind the minister’s chair, making it look like an illuminated throne. Wess stands at her desk with hands clasped, expecting him.

 “Welcome, Your Grace,” she says, bowing slightly. “Please have a seat.”

 “Good evening,” Finn says and sits. “I’m interested to meet with you, thank you for taking the time to get me up to speed.”

 Wess clears her throat pointedly. “I think you’ll be getting the Ministry up to speed as much as the other way around, sir. You see how tedious it can be to get things done in our current government- Steward Task hasn’t yet set the date for your coronation!”

 As he’s not especially interested in ganging up on Ellis or rushing to his coronation, Finn reserves comment. “What can I do for you?”

 “Toosie, do you have the letters of writ?” Wess holds out a hand, and the droid complies. Laying the stack of documents as thick as a computer core before Finn, she taps them into neat order, perfectly square with the edge of her desk.

 The head of the plasti page on top is elegantly scripted, reading ‘Act Of Peer’. Just below is a formally written declaration of some Resh Nen person or another being awarded some stuffy sounding rank that neither the FO or the Resistance had ever bothered with. At the bottom of the page beneath Ellis’ tidy signature there is a blank line with his own rather stuffy name and title printed beneath it.

 “You see, sir- there are a number of executive privileges and entitlements that can only be mandated by the crown, and as there has only been a steward at the head of the government for two decades, there is a backlog,” Minister Wess explains. “There are honors to be awarded, extinct laws to officially abolish, de facto ordinances to ratify...That sort of thing.”

“Paperwork?” Finn laughs, unable to help himself.

 It’s a bit more like the Resistance than he imagined. There was always a stack of reports that needed signing, though they were generally in datapads, not plasti. He picks up the stack and thumbs through it, checking that Ellis has approved of everything, because he trusts her. Farther down the stack the Act of Peers switch to Writs of Law and Orders By Crown, and so on, but everything seems to be in order, so Finn takes the stylus offered to him by Toosie and prepares his hand for the mother of all cramps with a bit of knuckle cracking.

 BB-8 whistles, unimpressed.

 “These matters of state are very prestigious!” Toosie retorts.

 “You could have gone to the moon, remember,” tuts Finn, digging into the pile to start. “Minister Wess, what other ‘executive privileges and entitlements’ have been getting dusty?”

 Minister Wess lights up. “Well of course there’s the coronation, sir. Seasonal galas and state dinners...”

 On and on while Finn pages through documents, Minister Wess rattles off the specifics of several events that sound like pure pageantry. There’s some cultural interest to the recitations of historic speeches and conducting an Equinox parade, certainly, but mostly it was social occasions for the elite that were going uncelebrated. The common people of Resh Nen seem to have been missing out on very little for lack of a crowned monarch.

 Hoping that it will speed along the evening, Finn suggests they take a working dinner, since he can easily munch on something in one hand while signing with the other. Initially Minister Wess is a bit perplexed by the concept, but when Finn confides that he and General Organa do some of their best strategizing while breaking bread the idea catches on. Toosie brings them a tray of morsels that sandwich nicely and make the most surprising combinations of flavor, as he would never have thought to take fruit and meat in the same bite. Again, Minister Wess requests her luxuriously imported Garro distillation she’d become so accustomed to before he was ever born. Old habits die hard, Finn supposes.

 While they eat, he notes Wess’ age and the meticulous design of everything from the plate presentation to the ministry office itself, the fussy style of her hair and gown- and he realizes it. Not having a crowned head of state is an aesthetic problem for the Heritage Minister, isn’t it? She probably worked for twenty years under the late Viceroy Elix and Queen Ratha to achieve a once proud position that was since rendered superfluous. He’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t such a hassle to Ellis.

 After dinner, towards the bottom the pile, Minister Wess says something about one more of his entitlements that catches his ear.

 “Sanctuary founding?”

 That sounds productive. More productive than pardoning a ghilla bird for the Colony Day Festival, anyway.

 Wess startles, perhaps having forgotten she was talking to another person, since Finn had stopped reacting when BB-8 powered down an hour or two ago. “Ah! Yes, sir. For each anniversary of a crown’s birthday- by the Resh Nen calendar, of course- there is a sanctuary founded somewhere in the districts.”

 “And what makes a sanctuary?”

 Tapping on her datapad to pull up an example, Wess explains. “Whatever His Grace would like! It’s dedicated to the crown name, and is maintained for all to come and pay their respects. Sometimes it’s a library, or a public orchard. Where I grew up in the Rella Valley there was a very popular campground with a well named for your great-grandfather, Prince Sellodo III.”

 Wess holds up her datapad, displaying an image of a quaint green oasis nestled in between bits of city. There are picnickers, children playing, the elderly relaxing on benches, and not a one of them as lavishly dressed as the Resh Nen Finn had met so far in the palace. This was the lower and middle class, in fact. Finn takes the tablet so he can see for himself.

 It sounds like a very civic-minded tradition, that’s for certain. He might have liked to plant a few orchards where families on hard times could get a bit of food. Mothers who were just trying to do their best by their children. As he scrolls through, Finn wonders what the sanctuaries his mother must have built are like. Would she have appointed a few for him as a child before he was grown enough to choose for himself? Finn squints and runs the figures in his head. With the much longer local year, he’d be due what? Sixteen birthdays? If he’s ‘entitled’ to doing decades of backlogged bookkeeping...

 “Can I still found the sixteen sanctuaries I would have had if I’d been on Resh Nen all this time?”

 Wess taps her desk thoughtfully, staring off into the distance. “You know what? There might be a precedent for it,” she declares. “Prince Sellado took three years away from Resh Nen to fight in the Bersavos Conflict and founded a sanctuary triple the size upon his return.”

 “Let’s do it,” says Finn. With renewed vigor, he races through signing the last few pages of writs. “Can we get the ball rolling tonight? Put in a request or whatever?”

 “I’ll... assign a panel of city planners to make a profile of suitable locations?” Wess suggests, sounding like this is the first opportunity she’s had to roll up her sleeves in years. A little uncertain, but excited and optimistic. “And Toosie, can you arrange for His Grace to have a tour of various existing sanctuaries, so he can see how they enhance their surroundings?"

 Toosie ceases filing the completed documents and buzzes. “That would be possible. Shall I draw up an order for treasury to release royal assets and a mandate for the construction, Sir?”

 “Absolutely,” grins Finns. He twirls the stylus in his hand. He’s got one or two extra signatures left in him tonight.

 By the time they conclude their evening, the window framing the minister's seat has turned from sunset pink to a velvety darkness occasionally studded by the lights on passing ships. Finn gives BB-8 a tap, waking her from hibernation.

 “Did Poe’s ship get back yet?”

 Instead of answering a recognizable Yes or No, BB-8 blurts something unintelligible to Finn, whose binary is rudimentary at best.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, not really expecting clarification though Toosie swivels, ready to translate. Finn holds up a hand. “I suppose I’ll find out for myself. Thank you for your time, Minister Wess,” he says, standing up.

 The minister hurries to her feet, keeping with custom.

 Finn winces. Toosie had made it clear on multiple occasions that all members of the court were expected to stand while he stood, and that rising from his chair before others would be construed as an expression of contempt.

 “The pleasure was all mine, sir.” Her genuine, crinkly smile catches Finn on the back foot. Did he just manage to make a friend of the uptight bureaucrat he’d been dreading all day?

 Declining Toosie’s offer, he and BB-8 make their way back down the tower to the main spread of the palace, unescorted. In the elevator, Finn leans back against the wall and crosses his arms. BB-8 swivels her head to look up at him and makes an expectant beep.

 “I think I actually like doing this prince stuff.”

 Her head tilts and she trills a question he can’t understand.

 “Sorry if it’s not as fun as you hoped. You and Poe probably could have had a way better time.”

 Another cryptic beep.

 Finn sighs.

 Though he suspects Poe is already back regardless of BB-8’s nonconfirmation, the environmental lights are out when Finn opens the door to the Ilirious chambers.

 “Bee, would you activate the-”

 What? A big, soapy green bubble floats right out the door, followed by a clump of pink. Finn peeks his head into the room.

 “Poe?”

 Inside, the bleary light of several small holoflames trail from the door. The air wafts with a sweet smell. Finn follows his nose and the little path of flickering light and more bubbles to the corner of the room where the tub stands and Poe sits on its edge, pouring in a bottle.

 “Surprise,” grins Poe. He sets down the empty bottle and threads his arm around Finn’s hip. “I thought I’d wash the moon off me, and while I was snooping around...”

 “You’re adorable,” Finn assures him, brushing away a few tiny gold bubbles that had settled in Poe’s hair. “I can’t believe a quarter century old bottle of bubble bath still has kick.”

 “I guess Ryloth cosmetologists don’t mess around.”

Finn chuckles and begins shrugging off his jacket. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until he tries to make sense of it’s clasp. He wobbles a bit.

 “Speaking of ‘messing around’. Can you help me take these fancy duds off before I collapse into this tub fully dressed, or-”

 “I’ll do you one better,” says Poe. He helps Finn off with his jacket and slips his fingers into the back of his pants to pull out his shirttails. “I’ll get us both undressed and go in with you.”

 “Oh, thank the Force,” breathes Finn.

 “Long day, huh?”

 Up before dawn, on his feet for a fitting all morning, sweating his way through a two hour interview, then toiling away the evening with Wess- yes. Finn has deserved the chance to sit and soak his tired, bubble-covered self in Poe’s arms. He nods and slumps to edge of the tub, prying off his boots with Poe’s help and slipping off the rest of his clothes.

 They climb in and immediately the heat of the bath starts to release Finn from the anxieties of his day. Was he going to embarrass himself? Was he going to shame the memory of his mother? What if he didn’t want to be a prince or a viceroy?

 What if he did?

 All that melts away for a few moments as Finn cozies up with Poe in one corner of the tub, head resting back against Poe’s chest.

 He decides.

 “It was a good day.”

Poe draws his arms tight around Finn and nuzzles his ear. “That’s good. What’d Wess have you doing?”

 “Paperwork, mostly.”

 “Even princes have to do paperwork?” Poe groans. “Here I was thinking things were cushy at the top.”

 Finn shakes his head and folds his hands over Poe’s. The movement ripples the water and launches more of the rainbow colored bubbles into the air. “I got to commission a ton of parks and libraries though.”

 “That’s fantastic!”

“Isn’t it? Isn’t it totally amazing that I could do something so constructive after all the shit I’ve done?”

 All the things he’s destroyed, he thinks. People have died on his watch. Entire planets have ceased to exist. Even if when he runs the math it’s all so that the light wins out over the dark- it’s a lot of destruction to make up for, isn’t it?

 Behind him, Poe goes still as stone, but his voice shakes. “Finn, you could always do good, you have done good, you just needed to be free to do it.”

 “I know. I forget sometimes, but I know,” says Finn. He squeezes Poe’s hands.

 The thing is, he’s not just free to do good now, he’s empowered.

 “I love you.” Poe kisses his neck.

 “Now, I never forget that.” Finn twists to kiss him back. It’s a little soapy and a lot watery, but it’s perfect. “I love you, too.”

 They stay in the tub, kissing and talking and kissing again until all the bubbles evaporate. Poe tells him about the speederways on Nen 2 and Finn describes several newly observed cultural idiosyncrasies.

 Poe laughs. “You know, ‘They’ is You now, Finn.”

 “Damn,” Finn says eloquently.

 It’s true, he’ll always be from here. More than he ever was from the First Order, in some ways- and he’s very grateful for that. Sometimes at night he lies awake and thinks about how old he would have to be to get to a point where he had been out of the Order longer than he had have ever been it. When the best of him will finally outweigh the worst of him. Forty-six standard years. Middleaged for most humans, unheard of from someone raised as a stormtrooper.

 On those nights when he tries to imagine what his life might look like at forty-six, there are some things that are crystal clear. He wants to be with people he loves. He wants to be someone his parents would admire, now that he’s learning how admirable they were. He wants to be on the side of that pushes back at the Empire, the Order, or whatever else the darkness calls itself by then. More than anything he’d like to do that side by side with Poe, and Rey, and all the rest.

 As they wrap themselves in towels, all pruned and stinking of the perfumed bath, Finn realizes it’s possible he could still do it from here on Resh Nen as viceroy.

“I’m not just playing along politely,” he tells Poe. “I could go through with this.”

 Poe takes it in stride, same as always. “Then I’ll do whatever it takes to help,” he says.

 Just like that. He says it like it’s no effort at all, while he towels off his hair.

 Of course.

 Finn smirks at him.

 “What?”

 With a bounce on his heel, Finn tackles Poe over the edge of the bed, towels and all. They land amongst the pillows and the promises between them and Finn thinks, this could be it. This could be the man and bed he comes home to until he’s forty-six or sixty-four or a hundred. The Resistance bases are good and anywhere with his friends is home- but this is where he was born, why couldn’t it also be where he grows old?

 That night in bed, he dreams again. It’s not the attack in the garden, thankfully. This time it’s a sunlit day by a window. No, not quite- there are windows in every direction. Even the floor is a tile made of opaque transparisteel. This is the top of the monumental arch that stands over the capital of Resh Nen, Finn realizes. Two people stand with their back to him, looking out in the direction of the snow peaked mountains. The shorter of the two is his mother, dressed in traveling clothes and younger than he has ever seen her. Her brother, Elix II, wraps an arm behind her and his wide, hanging sleeve folds her close like a chick taken under wing. It’s a parting of ways, Finn knows. The last time they see each other. Velle wipes a tear but she smiles. Her brother smiles, too. It’s the right thing to do.

 Finn wakes on his own the next morning, no droids or comms or upsetting dreams to rouse him. Poe isn’t there, so Finn assumes he has been allowed to sleep in, and reaches out with the Force to bask in Poe’s always warm, always tender presence before really getting out of bed. He stretches out past himself, but what Finn encounters is unrecognizable. Cloudy and conflicted. He shoves up onto his elbows to look around the room, half expecting an intruder- but there he is, already dressed, standing by the window overlooking the garden. Poe leans into it, with his hands and forehead against the glass.

 “Poe. Are you all right?” Finn sits up in bed, his eyes wide.

 “Hey, yeah. You know me,” says Poe, turning on his heel. He clears his throat. “I’m always all right.” He smiles broadly and wanders back around the desk by the window, towards the table set with food and drink. “I intercepted Toosie so you could sleep. There’s breakfast and an appointment with Ambassador E’Stoll in an hour.”

 Unconvinced, Finn eyes Poe steadily. “Are you coming with?”

“I’m not sure it would be appropriate,” Poe laughs. “I don’t hold any official position in your government and it’s a briefing on the state of the sector and its strategic assets.”

 “That sounds pretty dry for first thing in the morning.”

 Finn climbs out of bed and joins Poe seated at the table, taking his face in both hands, silver ringed thumbs framing his cheekbones. He kisses Poe’s forehead and then circles his arms around him and sighs. He would offer Poe an official position right now if it helped whatever unease Poe was feeling- but he probably had better sort out if he’s asking as Finn or as Elix.

 -

 The meeting with the ambassador is as banal as Finn expected, even for a classified briefing. While E’Stoll describes the various players of the Xenian Reach, Finn keeps finding himself drifting off, wondering about Poe who had gone to assist Ellis with preparations for the coronation. He doesn’t need to worry that they’ll get along, (Poe gets along with anyone, anywhere, anytime) but Finn hopes that they’ll get around to the right kind of conversation. If he’s going to stay on Resh Nen and ask Poe to join him, it would be good if Poe found some purposeful work for himself as well.

 Things are drawing to a close with Snoke- he can feel it, Rey and Master Luke and General Organa can feel it, too. Soon the Resistance will be able to end and the Republic will be restored. That tumultuous chapter of Poe’s career will be over and hopefully shut for a long time, but he’ll still have a sense of vocation that Finn desperately hopes can blend with the viceroyalty.

 The afternoon spent with Professor Sedge Frell is much more engaging. For starters, Frell’s office is cluttered with all sorts of artefacts, many of which are not precious or well designed. In contrast the the fastidious, quiet tower office of Minister Wess, there are constantly moving holosculptures and a chrono that chimes on the hour. Positioned much lower in the tower, the window illuminating the room is criss crossed by tree branches.

 Finn is finally able to get an explanation about the practical difference between a stewardship and a viceroyalty from someone who knows the law. Mainly, without a crown viceroy, bills being presented to the court for decision have to be voted to the top of the pile by the majority, so they spend more time arguing over the schedule than on what to actually do on any particular subject. As Steward, Ellis spends a great deal of time individually lobbying the ministers, instead of simply being permitted to set the priorities of the session. Despite being hamstrung by the lopsided balance of powers, Ellis has gotten district status for the moon colony and overseen two decades of peace and prosperity.

 “-And unlike the Garro district or the Sellado, you can bet that they won’t rename Nen 2 in honor of Steward Task,” Frell concludes.

 “So all of the work, none of the thanks, huh?” Finn can’t help but admire his cousin’s tenacity.

 Frell’s laugh is crackly and ancient. “Essentially.”

 “Why didn’t Elix II just marry Ellis’ mother?” Finn asks. He knows there’s such a thing as divorce on Resh Nen, and surely if Ellis had been made a legitimate heir much would have been different. His own mother wouldn’t have been required to assume the viceroyalty, most likely. He would have been raised with his parents somewhere in the Core. He might never have been harvested by the First Order as a child.

 Finn’s blood runs cold. The thought is too big and unnerving to dwell on, and luckily Frell interrupts.

 “I was never close enough to your uncle to discover the answer to that, if there was one,” he says thoughtfully.

 Fair enough. It is a sort of private matter, Finn supposes. “But you said you knew my mother well at dinner the other night.”

 In the long window behind his chair flowered branches tremble in the breeze as the professor considers this, nodding his head. “Ah, Velle.”

 Finn soaks up the fondness in the professor’s voice when he says his mother’s name. It’s personal, and it makes Finn feel like he knows her a little more intimately.

 “We met when she was much younger than you, even. As the second child of her parents with a married older brother, she was never required to prepare for viceroyalty. It was unlikely ever to fall to her,” Frell explains. “Most princes and and princesses in such a position apply themselves to commerce or the arts- something outside the realm of law. But Velle was interested not just in how the constitution of Resh Nen worked, but how the governments of all sorts of worlds had come to be.”

 It had never really occurred to Finn that there were people who made a career out of founding governments before he had discovered the identity of his parents. He had always assumed it just sort of happened with whoever was on hand- and possibly it often did, if the messy state of the galaxy was any proof.

 “And you taught her about all that?”

 “Oh,” Frell laughs. “I got her started on her studies at any rate, but she outgrew my knowledge soon enough. Like any good scholar she went to the Core to expand her influences and seek more points of view. Met your father, liked his point of view enough to partner with him professionally. They assisted the founding of half a dozen worlds after the Civil War. Billions of lives were better for it, I believe.”

 Billions.

 How many more worlds might they have influenced if they had lived? Finn would have to help take down a few more Starkillers before he could match that kind of scope.

 “Did you ever meet my father?”

 Frell frowns. “Not until after your mother had died. She had planned on inheriting Ellis by invoking the Two Crown Rule, but your father didn’t make it home to Resh Nen in time. Bram met with me to design the stewardship position. I regret that we weren’t able to make it easier on her,” he admits, wringing his knobbly old hands.

 “Two Crown Rule?”

 “Any two crowns in agreement, siblings, spouses, a parent and adult child, and so on; may assign an heir. It can save quite a bit of trouble when there’s a reluctant prince or no possibility of a biological heir, you can imagine.”

 “Huh.”

 Frell fixes him with a perceptive look that reminds Finn of some of the old generals in the Resistance who’ve been around since the Clone Wars. This is a man who can map future possibilities with his wealth of past experience the same way Jedi of the old order might have peered ahead with use of the Force. The chrono in the corner chimes the time, underscoring the look with gravity.

 “Well, Your Grace,” groans Frell, beginning to get to his feet before Finn springs up on his much younger knees. “We’ll be missed at dinner if we talk any longer.”

 -

 This time the two half-ring shaped tables are set for dining, not just the smaller table in the center of the room. As the prince had not yet arrived, the dozens of ministers are milling about beyond them, where the clari-crystalline windows have been pulled back to reveal a balcony overlooking the garden. Some of them descend a staircase to the grounds and can be seen among the plants, looking like strange flowers themselves.

 Well away from the balcony Ellis stands with a number of protocol droids making some last minute arrangements. Finn takes his time to cross the room at Professor Frell’s slower pace, seeing him off to the waiting crowd before he approaches.

 “You look wonderful!” Ellis says in greeting, taking his hands and turning him in place a bit to get the full effect of his cape in motion. “I’m sorry I missed you yesterday. There were so many meetings required to do things properly.”

 “Don’t worry about it, I kept busy. I-” Finn looks down at her hands as they let go. “Ellis, you’re not wearing your rings,” he realizes.

 “They were your mother’s. Like the viceroyalty, they were yours by right.”

 It doesn’t seem right to Finn that he should get them by taking them away from his cousin. He had no attachment to them before yesterday, so he starts to pry them off. Ellis stops him.

 “Please,” she says. “Keep them. I can always dig out a pair of my mother’s. I just haven’t had the chance.”

 Finn frowns, but he can’t really say any more as just then, as another protocol droid comes along with an urgent matter.

 “Excuse me, I have to see to this,” Ellis smiles apologetically.

 He watches her walk away, stomach sinking. She can replace her rings, but she can’t replace her position if Finn takes reign, can she?

 A hand lands on his shoulder from behind, and someone leans in to speak by his ear.

 “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” purrs Poe’s voice. “If I had to look at one more transport order to ship in a dignitary for your coronation I might keel over.”

 Finn turns around to face Poe, grimacing. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

 “Luckily, I am very in favor of showing you off.” Poe flashes his best smile and affects a little bow.

 Poe is one to talk, tailored to perfection in a gold mantle. A sash travels across the front of his shoulders and falls down his back in two flows of silk, looking like wings. Finn wonders for a moment if there are any humanoids in the galaxy with flight-capable wings. It’s hard to imagine someone more deserving of such a beautiful characteristic than his Poe.

 “Did you get to bond with Ellis a bit?”

 “She’s a badass,” Poe winks. “She’s got a way with bureaucrats that could give the general a run for her credits. We got a date set for the coronation and everything.”

 All the breath vanishes from Finn’s lungs. “When?” is all he can gasp.

“In two days. They’ll announce it tonight.”

 “The day after tomorrow,” Finn blurts, starting to sweat.

 Poe shrugs. “That’s what two days means!”

 Ellis reappears and snags Finn, then. “Time to take a seat,” she whispers to him before turning to the rest of the company in a loud voice. “Good evening everyone. Please join His Grace, Prince Elix Illrious III and myself at our table.”

 She and Poe lead him to the table and all of the ministers circle around and remain standing until he is seated. Every eye in the room seems to be fixed on Finn now, as the majority of the ministers had not yet had the chance to meet the newly returned prince for themselves. Everyone applauds the announcement of the coronation, and toasts to his good health.

 Once the meal is underway, Finn drains his glass of wine in hopes that he’ll be relaxed enough to choke out more than a one word answer to anything, but it’s a rough start.

 “Have you been to the Anoat sector, sir?” Once. “I hear you know that Jedi girl, how exciting.” Rey. “Does Your Grace know the Ballad of Hammersky?” No.

 When the topic turns to leisure activities after the third course, Finn loosens up enough to wade into the conversation. Someone seated past Poe on his right mentions having spent the weekend at a sanctuary in the North Rim district, which feels like a perfect opportunity to express his delight at the plans he and Minister Wess he had set in motion.

 “What sort of sanctuary is Hollost IV? I’m not familiar.”

 Several rather inebriated heads turn toward him, eager to hear. One man hiccups.

 “It’s a public altar, Your Grace. My niece was getting married,” replies the minister.

 Finn smiles graciously. “Congratulations! I’m in the process of founding some overdue sanctuaries myself.”

 There is a chattering of echoed congratulations to the minister, who blushes.

 “-and from the prince himself!” her neighbor whispers.

 “Your Grace, if I may?” hiccups a minister.

 Expecting a follow up question about his planned sanctuaries, Finn turns. “Please, go ahead!”

“Will Your Grace marry soon after taking reign? Producing an heir promptly must surely be a priority.”

 Next to Finn, Poe chokes on his drink.

“Oh, this whole uncertainty has been so fretful!” exclaims another minister.

 The ministers must be further into their cups that he had realized if they’re getting to such impertinent questions.

 Catching up with what has been going on, Ellis breaks away from another conversation and butts in. “I’m sure His Grace can agree that having provisions in place does ease the mind. He is a fantastic strategist, if you were to look at his-”

 Undeterred, someone blunders on- “Wasn’t there a plan for His Grace’s betrothal to the Ellevesh heir of Garro Port? What was their name again? It’s on the tip of my tongue...”

 “Seffa, Seffa Ellevesh,” someone answers. “Lovely. The marriage would certainly strengthen the relationship to the coast.”

 “We’d have more seafood in the capital, for certain,” agrees the hiccupping minister.

 Before he can jump in and say something, Finn glances at Poe. His face is blanched and Finn’s heart plummets.

 “The betrothal was a consideration put before Velle Ilirious,” Ellis admits, “And while it was a very gracious offer, it was never official. Thank you Minister Henn.”

“They should meet!”

 Several minister chatter in agreement.

“I’m sure we will some day, making friends can only be to our benefit-” Finn starts.

 Poe stands up and tosses his napkin on his plate. “For the benefit of Resh Nen, of course,” he says quietly. Then he leaves the table towards the garden balcony.

 Unable to get up from the table without creating a shockwave of drunken, insulted ministers obliged to stand, Finn calls pleadingly over his shoulder. “Poe, come on!”

 If there was any pocket of conversation in the dining room that wasn’t speculation about the prince’s personal life, it was now the popular topic.

 Ellis stands and addresses the room. “If you please, you are now invited to join His Grace and myself in the portrait gallery across the hall,” she declares. Everyone begins to shift in their seat, in respect, rising as Finn stands.

 As they start to shuffle toward the gallery, Ellis catches Finn.

 “Political Marriages are nonsense. I think our parents knew that.” She hugs him tight. “The court will understand when they see the real thing. I’ll keep the ministers out of your way, go!”

 Finn breaks away, heart racing. “Thanks!”

 The stairs that lead to the garden below are empty when Finn strides up to balcony and there’s no indication of which way into the overgrown garden Poe might have gone. For all of Toosie’s extensive tours of the capital palace they had never made their way into the grounds, probably due to Ellis’ reluctance to revisit the scene of the attack. Finn only knows there must be a fountain somewhere in it because of the dream in which he had walked through that horrible night.

 He starts down a path, peering down every grove, calling out.

 “Poe? You don’t let stupid things strangers say get to you, what’s going on?”

 To the left he sees the shimmer of something he doesn’t recognize from his dream, and it beckons him toward it. He tangles with a dangling vine and cuts through a bush full of orange blooms to get to it. “Sorry, sorry,” he mutters to the flowers, before coming out the other side.

 A feeling of oneness washes over Finn.

 It’s the tree that grew the Force sensitive cutting Ellis had on her desk they day they arrived. It has woken up for him, drawing him here with its energy. In front of it stands a large white stone and Poe, his face in his hands.

SHARA BEY, reads the stone. DEFENDER.

  

7 ABE

 All of the windows in the palace are draped over in loops of white cloth that denotes mourning when Bram arrives. It is Resh Nen tradition to grant privacy to a grieving family, of course, but combined with the still scorched and rubbled facade of the building, the curtains look as much like bandaging as the sling on Ellis Task’s broken arm. She hangs her head as she leads him to his late wife’s chambers so that he can collect a few personal effects.

 “I’ll make sure the databanks are transferred to the Moonwarden,” she tells him. “You can take anything else you like, really. Whoever comes next isn’t likely to be sentimental about Ilirious heirlooms.”

 Ellis silently follows Bram through the room as he passes the shelves full of portrait busts and artefacts, the bed made with intricately embroidered covers, and the tableful of chairs carved with the Ilirious crest. He heads straight to the desk by the window, where he imagines Velle must have sat to do her work. One of her scarves- one Bram recognizes, is piled on top of a stack of documents. An upturned box beside the desk scatters toys on the floor.

 His wife, his son he never had the chance to meet are easiest to imagine here.

 There’s nothing Bram can do now for the people who lost their lives in the attack on Resh Nen’s capital- it’s still unclear which group one might even direct a retaliation at. The holonet media have baselessly accused several fringe terrorist organizations, gangs, and rival planets- but none have claimed responsibility. The survivors, raised in a culture of accountability, seem as outraged by this as by the damage to their infrastructure and loss of life.

 As fired up as the populace may be, Ellis looks extinguished.

Bram frowns. “What happens to you now?” His own position is technically non-existent, as they had married offworld and he never made it to court to be crowned alongside Velle. He’s here by invitation more than by right, at this point. When the mourning period concludes, the court will convene to study the dynastic history and find some obscure cousin to install as the new viceroy.

 Ellis shrugs with her one uninjured shoulder. “My mother refused to let my father divorce the queen because of the coastal districts allegiance to her. We don’t have any friends at court.”

 Meela Task’s decision had probably been the best choice for Resh Nen at the time even if it broke her heart, Bram knows. Sometimes there was no choice but to be apart from the ones you loved while there were lives in the balance. Ellis was lucky to have had a close relationship with her father at all.

 “You could come offworld with me,” Bram suggests. The girl Velle had fondly described to him wouldn’t let a little thing like political dislodgement prevent her sense of devotion to Resh Nen, but it’s hard to imagine leaving her behind with such a bleak future.

 With an appreciative smile, Ellis shakes her head and leaves him to have some time alone in the room.

 Bram sinks into the chair and folds himself over the desk, anchoring his forehead on the cool wood and struggling to keep the prickling feeling in his throat from turning into tears.

 His outstretched fingers brush the soft wisp of Velle’s scarf, and when he pulls it away, the plasti page documents below are revealed. Bram skims the language- an amendment to the executive succession of Resh Nen, already bearing his wife’s signature.

 If Bram had made it to court and been crowned before her death, his signature would complete the order to make Ellis heir.

 Before he leaves, Bram Tristell, honored consort of the late Viceroy Velle Ilirious, Protector and Chairman of the Resh Nen is granted an audience with the ministers. While they refuse to accept the document without the signature of two living crowns, they are convinced to adopt the provisos when repackaged as a stewardship of the crown.

 “Until such a time as claims that the true heir Prince Elix Ilirious III was abducted during the recent attack can be disproved by blood evidence,” they clarify for the record.

 It’ll buy him time to lobby for an entirely new amendment, Bram hopes. He can’t allow his late arrival to rob Ellis of a role she was groomed for by his beloved wife. He bows to the governors, tightens the knot at the collar of his jacket, then exits the capital palace, never again to be seen on Resh Nen.

  

32 ABE

 It all clicks into place.

 “This is how you found the planet, isn’t it?” Finn steps up next to Poe, looking at the inscription.

 “Even if I didn’t know why, I always knew where she had- had...” Poe sputters, unable to say the rest. He casts a hand out, pointing at the monument. “This why I have to!” he says gravely. “Whatever it takes.”

 Finn doesn’t know what in the world Poe’s feeling all obligated about, but he can understand being sad about moms, at least.

 “She was here to help, and she did,” Finn says gently. “Ellis and I might not have survived the attack if it weren’t for-”

 Poe rounds on him, his face red and anguished. “Don’t you see? She made a sacrifice here for your family. I’ve dedicated my whole career to fighting for the things she fought for, and this is one of them now. You were supposed to be the prince and then the viceroy like your mother- if mine had done better you might have had that.” Poe wells up with tears. “You can still have it. If I have to step aside so you can marry, then... maybe that’s the sacrifice that’s required of me.”

 “It’s not,” Finn says. He holds out both hands to Poe. “Your mom didn’t fail us, and you’re not letting her down, either. Or me.”

 “What do I do?” Poe asks helplessly. “I love you so much, how do I make sure you have the life you’re supposed to if maybe-” He stops himself like it's too horrible to put to words.

“Maybe what?” Finn steps closer with his arms still lifted, but he’ll wait for Poe to step into them.

 He’ll wait.

“-maybe I don’t fit in it.”

 “I’ve got news for you, buddy. I don’t think I fit in here either,” Finn admits. Poe’s brow furrows. “I mean I love it, Resh Nen is a great home to have but-.”

 “Don’t, Finn. Don’t feel like you have to give it up for-”

 Finn shakes his head. “I don’t. I’m not giving anything up.” He feels the way he feels, but he’s not picking Poe over a crown. “I want you and I wanna be good to you. I wanna be good to Resh Nen too, and what it needs is a leader... but it’s just not me. I’ve been talking to a lot of people and I think my mom would have understood.”

 Velle Ilirious hadn't planned on either she or her son serving as viceroy, after all.

 For a long moment of silence, Poe considers. He glances back and forth between Finn and his own mother’s monument, letting go of ghosts.

 “Mine too,” he says, finally stepping into Finn’s arms.

 This is the tribute to the memory of lost mothers Finn would rather make. They lean together wrapped up in each other's arms, rocking back and forth quietly while the trees sway all around them. Finn combs his fingers through the hair at Poe’s nape until he feels the switch from Poe taking comfort to positively luxuriating. He reaches out like he had that morning and finds that the cloudy, conflicted feelings have ebbed away. It’s just he and Poe and the brightness, the light between them. It’s more safe than Finn has ever felt. It’s home.

 “Poe, we are really, really in love.”

 Poe rumbles a laugh into Finn’s neck. “Yeah?”

 “Yeah, it’s crazy. I never even knew this could happen ‘til I met you,” Finn says, squeezing him tight. “I grew up with thousands of people who will never even have a shot at it- and our parents never really got to ride it out either.”

 “Not for long,” Poe agrees.

 “So, let’s just do that and call it even.”

 “Okay.”

 They could love each other enough to make up for all those never-had, half-had loves. That would be an ambitious enough legacy to try to live up to for any sane human, right?

Poe lifts his head from Finn’s shoulder and rubs the tip of his nose along Finn’s cheekbone. Soft kisses press against his jaw, getting more fervent as they travel. Lips connect and slide together in a hot sear and Finn feels drunk on certainty. This for the rest of time, please. The kiss deepens and they gasp and grip into each other like they’re stuck at an airlock. This is life, Finn thinks however irrationally. It makes his head buzz and his toes tingle.

 Poe pulls back and gazes at Finn with the same undisguised tenderness that hooked Finn in the first place. “I can’t believe I missed my shot with a viceroy,” he laughs. “I might have been a prince.”

 “Well...” Finn starts. “There is the Two Crown Rule.”

 “The what?” Poe puzzles at him.

“It’s kind of... Oh boy.” Finn takes a deep breath and both of Poe’s hands. “It’s not the reason why I’m about to ask what I’m gonna ask. The reason why is I love you.”

 “We’ve covered that, I believe.”

Finn exhales.

 “Marry me, Poe Dameron.”

 “Yes,” Poe answers, automatic and bright.

 Finn keeps barreling on. “We can do it now! Tonight!”

 Poe laughs, “I insist.”

“-I know a guy.”

 “You ought to, you practically own this place!” Poe grins.

 “You get to be prince for a day and we can use the Two Crown Rule to legitimize Ellis as my heir! She’ll be coronated instead,” Finn explains, thrilled to realize that everyone can get what they deserve! Finally Resh Nen can have a leader who isn’t held back by superficial formalities.

 Poe launches himself at Finn, kissing him quick then babbling twice as fast. “Brilliant. But especially the marrying part. Who’s your guy? I’ll go get him, you’re too gorgeous and noticeable, you’ll never get in and out of there without getting roped into a conversation.” Poe raises his eyebrows. “I’m gunning for the shortest engagement of all time, here.”

 “Mad man,” Finn pounces on Poe with one last kiss. “Find Professor Frell. Tell him we’ll all meet in his office.”

 Poe turns on his heel about to dash off before swiveling back around. “Wait! Go back to the room and get-”

 “BB-8!” Finn realizes. “She would never forgive me.”

 Instead of giving Poe a head start, Finn grabs his hand and the two run back down the stone path towards the balcony staircase. They charge up the steps at full speed, giggling and tugging. At the top of the stairs Finn whips around.

 “I’ll go left you go right?”

 “Yes sir, Your Grace,” smirks Poe. The moonlight paints his hair with golden highlights not unlike a crown.

 It’s a shame there isn’t time for all that, Finn thinks. He’d look fantastic in a crown. He plucks two blossoms off of a nearby vine and tucks one each into their breast pockets for a little extra something. The effect of the vivid flower is quite handsome on Poe, of course- Finn would consider putting a pair behind his ears if it weren’t too conspicuous for peeking into the portrait gallery.

 “Poe?”

 “Finn?”

 “Let me know when you figure out how you would like to be styled for your next thirty standard-hours of princeliness,” he says. “I’d like to respect my husband’s form of address.”

 “Will you be needing to refer to me formally?” asks Poe. “Only I was sort of hoping we’d spend most of those thirty hours in bed.”

 “Yes, I know. I will definitely be referring to you.”

 Poe grabs Finn by the collar and kisses him with a little moan. “It’s Your Worshipfulness, to you pal.”

 Finn grins and kisses Poe once again, unable to help himself, and then they dart off in different directions to locate the two witnesses to their furtive union.

 Skidding to a halt at the door to the Ilirious chamber, Finn bats the access pad and races into the room.

 BB-8 tootles in surprise as she wasn’t expecting anyone back from after-dinner refreshments for at least another hour.

 “Getting married,” Finn pants, doubled over. “Me. To Poe! Come on already!”

 BB-8 shrieks and follows along.

 They take off down a twist of corridors to the elevator up to Professor Frell’s office, but when they get there the compartment is already in service. Probably Poe and Frell had beat them to it. Finn eyes the door to the stairwell, briefly considering scooping BB-8 in his arms to run up the stairs that much sooner. They wait their turn, and when the elevator opens onto Frell’s office Finn takes a deep breath. There is no fanfare or great spectacle of a ceremony required to make this one of the most important moments of his life. It’s just Poe standing there, intending to pledge his life and entrust his happiness to Finn, and Finn intending the same.

 They place their signatures and stand opposite each other while Professor Frell reads the rights of courtly marriage, each with one hand on the Resh Nen book of law and the other covering their husband-to-be’s heart.

 “We do swear.”

 BB-8 squeals her delight, and just then the elevator opens onto the office again.

 “I thought this might be the case,” Ellis laughs, sweeping into the room. “Good thing I contacted Yavin 4, meanwhile.”

 Finn beams, hand in hand with Poe. “You’re just in time for a bit of good news, Viceroy.”

 -

 They leave almost everything behind on Resh Nen after the coronation. Ellis tries to offer Toosie to them as a wedding gift, but they’re smarter than that. They give back the unused clothes and store the rest. Finn packs away Velle’s holos and plastis. It will all keep until the war runs its course, when he knows they’ll still be welcome. Finn leaves behind his cousin, tearfully waving from a landing pad.

 He only takes one of his mother’s rings.

 Poe takes the other.

Notes:

art by me! stitchyarts on tumblr