Give all you have been, or could be.
-"Barter," Sara Teasdale
Steve wakes up on the banks of the Styx, with a dead Amazon looking down at him. Diana wakes up on a battlefield in Belgium, with living men gazing at her in awe. They're both far out of their comfort zones and thoroughly unprepared for the new world they must learn to inhabit, but one way or another, they'll find their way back to each other - no matter the cost.
For the fic title meme: "The Thousandth Man," a Star Wars fic.
FN-2187 was not the first stormtrooper to leave the First Order. Nor was he the tenth, or even the hundredth. In fact, for the longest time, it was thought that he never really left at all. He died, the reports said, in a failed attempt at insurrection.
This is the cost of betraying the First Order, the bulletins said. This is the result of disobedience.
They never said anything about what happened to him afterwards.
~~~~~~~
GC-5283, “Knots,” crashed her TIE fighter after a routine reconnaissance mission ended in a Resistance skirmish that left her wing commander dead and five of her fellow pilots scattered like wreckage in the vacuum of space.
Never let it be said that the Resistance has bad pilots.
Her self-destruct sequence was damaged – Executive Order 36: never allow yourself to be captured by the Enemy – so she aimed her TIE at the nearest planet and tried to let re-entry do the work for her.
Except it didn’t work.
The first time she woke up, she was gasping in the thin atmosphere under a hot sun and she screamed when the melted edges of her armor plates caught on the singed underweave every trooper wore. The second time was when they came for her, and her frantic scrabblings towards her blaster sent fire racing under her skin, sinking into her bones. The third time, she was in an infirmary – obviously not a First Order infirmary if the cave walls and humidity were anything to go by – and a man was sitting in a chair next to her bed, his head bowed to his chest in sleep, but with his hands resting casually on a blaster.
A med droid bustled over to her. “Patient, please remain still. You are in safe custody.”
It said nothing about the padded restraints on her wrists and ankles.
“Lieutenant Finn,” the droid was saying, tapping once on the man’s shoulder. “The patient is awake.”
The man came awake all at once, his dark eyes snapping first to the droid, then to where Knots lay quiet and still on the cot. Then he smiled. “Thanks D-8. I’ll take it from here.”
“I will inform General Organa,” the droid replied, and wheeled out of the door.
General Organa. That meant Resistance. Which meant she’d been captured. Which meant–
“Hey,” the man said, pulling his chair close. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”
Safe? She was in Resistance custody. Of course she wasn’t safe–
“What’s your name?”
Protocol stated that under no circumstances was a trooper to give information to the enemy. If pressed, they were to relay their designation and where their unit was stationed, nothing more.
“Pilot GC-5283,” she responded, staring determinedly at the ceiling. “Station: Deliverance.”
There was a beat of silence.
“I get that it’s protocol to not tell me anything, but I’m not going to ask you about the Order,” the man said. “I just want your name. Your real name. The one your squad gave you.”
No one had ever asked for her name.
This isn’t Protocol, she thought, fighting to keep her face still. It was so much harder without the helmet on.
“Knots,” she said finally, and the name fell into the space between them like deficient ordinance, resting uneasily in the silence.
The man smiled. “I’m Finn.”
He said it like it was a gift, like they were two pilots who’d never met who got stationed at the same post together.
He said it like he knew what it was like to keep a name hidden from the world.
“Who are you?” she asked, because there was something she couldn’t put her finger on. Some quality of emotion in his face that reminded her of the infantry troopers that would patrol the corridors of the Deliverance. (Except those troopers were always the same behind their white helmets, just as she was always the same behind her black pilot’s gear…)
“My designation was FN-2187,” the man – Finn – said.
She knew that designation, every trooper did. For six standard months after the destruction of Starkiller Base by the terrorist Resistance, ‘FN-2187’ had been paraded around as the example, the traitor. And every trooper, pilot, and maintenance worker had stared straight ahead as the officers shouted about their anger and hatred that one of them had dared to go against the First Order. Outwardly, they all agreed. FN-2187 was a traitor. But inwardly… inwardly they had quietly scratched his number into the insides of their helmets or under their chestplates; wherever it was that they put the names of the fallen.
Knots knew this designation well. It was right next to Stagger’s, to Rook’s; right next to the names of the four cadets who didn’t make it out of training with her.
“You’re dead,” she told him. (She could see the people standing by the door stiffening at her words.) “You’re carved in armor,” she repeated. “You’re dead.”
The ma– Finn – had an odd look on his face, even as his hand brushed the outside of his upper leg as though in a dream.
“Finn?” asked a woman from the doorway, her fingers clutching a staff and her eyes glaring daggers at Knots.
“No, it’s alright,” Finn replied, waving the woman away, wonder still in his eyes. He turned back to Knots. “I go by Finn now.”
“You need to tell them,” Knots told him, though her eyes flicked over the room at large. “The officers are saying you died. If they knew…”
No one comes back from the Resistance, the rumors said.
To betray the Order is to face execution, the officers said.
Nothing ever said what to do if the Order lied.
Finn’s eyes met hers, and she can see why the First Order tried so hard to keep FN-2187 in the ground.
For Narnia! For Narnia!
We raise our sword and shield
There is no tameness in this land
Our cause will never yield
Not in the depths of winter
When the battle rages high
We’ll yet raise sword and shield and scream
Defiance to the sky
For Narnia! For Narnia!
As the sun springs up at dawn
For Narnia! And the Lion!
Ever inwards, ever on!
Inspired by the latest chapter of @imaginarygolux ‘s Narnia’s Shield (which is so so good, and everyone who loves either Narnia and/or The Force Awakens should totally go read it)
I haven’t actually finished reading the chapter yet, but when Rey, Finn, and Poe got ready to fight, my brain decided that the Talking animals definitely needed a battle cry.
it’s four in the morning (which is the best time for dumping things from the elephant graveyard when trying to clear off your desktop before the new year) – so, all the way back from august: never-quite-polished sketches of poe and his red lollipops from @imaginarygolux‘s “Oral Fixation” ¬_¬
Relationship: None, currently. Unless you count my polygamous three-way with video games, writing, and Star Wars
Favorite color(s): Green. Any kind of green, though I tend to prefer sagey/olive greens
Pets: A cat, Sunny, who may be convinced she’s a Screech Owl-cat. Two dogs: a dachshund (Hildie) who is the sweetest dog you will ever meet, and a pug (Tao, pronounced Dow) who may be the stupidest dog you’ll ever meet (he’s jumped off things he shouldn’t and....well....as you can imagine it’s affected his brainpan)
Last song I listened to: Across the Stars by John Williams from the Attack of the Clones soundtrack
Favorite TV show: Fringe, followed very closely by Star Wars: Clone Wars
First Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Hobbies: Video games, reading, writing, knowing far too many random facts about spaceships, and Star Wars
Books I’m currently reading: just finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and I’ll probably be reading American Gods next.
I’ll be tagging @fivefootoh, @butteredonions, and anyone else who wants to have a go.