New Star Wars is coming out soon. I know that it’s gonna end bad for Kylo as it should. But gosh I wanna go in with a Finn/Breha alternative to imagine instead. Help?
long time no see, this particular soulmate AU! I really tried to get to somewhere less star-crossed and more redemption-y with this installment, but, uh . . . Kylo Ren insisted on being Kylo Ren. I TRIED, MAN, I SWEAR.
And IMMEDIATE read-more.
Kylo Ren and Finn get into a fistfight in some hidden corner of Starkiller while everyone else is busy trying to save/subjugate the galaxy, and when they break apart it’s Finn holding the lightsaber, and Finn who flicks it on. It lights his face up in red, and Breha--NOT Breha--can’t stand the way that looking at him bathed in its light feels.
That’s Kylo Ren’s lightsaber. It belongs to HIM.
HE lifts a hand to call it back, but that doesn’t do much good when HE can barely concentrate, when Finn’s already charging HIM with it. He thinks about letting the other chop his arm off. If he times it right, the lightsaber will go right through his soulmark and then . . . and then he won’t have these thoughts anymore, then he’ll be FREE. Darth Vader lost his soulmark and found the Dark Side, and he could too. That would work, he thinks. Even better than killing Han Solo, that would work.
He never thought about his soulmate before this. It never occurred to him that he’d find them.
It never occurred to him what name might be on their wrist.
Him. It never occurred to HIM.
It’s very hard to hold back the lightsaber, but he manages it. It’s even harder to look at the red-washed face of a traitor and know that’s what the Force intended for him, this Resistance scum. But that’s the Light talking, that’s the Light’s NONSENSE--on the Dark Side, that name’s just one more enemy. If he kills that name . . .
There’ll be no more lying Light calling out to him, if he kills that name. No more weak and useless Light Side to try and tempt him away from his path. No more--
FN-2187 nearly takes Kylo Ren’s head off, and Kylo Ren struggles to focus. If his wrist said--if it said “Ben Solo” . . . FN-2187 would already be dead, if it said that. Kylo Ren is SURE.
But it doesn’t say Ben Solo. He saw it in FN-2187’s mind, clear and perfect and constant. It says Breha Solo, and it’s always said that.
It’s always . . .
Just like HIS arm has always said . . .
FN-2187 didn’t even HAVE that name until a few days ago. That name wasn’t even a thing that EXISTED until a few days ago. How could it POSSIBLY . . .
FN-2187 takes another swing at him. Kylo Ren sends him flying with a brutal Force push, slamming him back into the wall. He loses his grip on the lightsaber, and it clatters to the floor. Kylo Ren picks it up.
FN-2187 is dazed, half-conscious at best. An easy kill.
Kylo Ren grabs his wrist, and yanks up the cuff of his sleeve. It says it, right there, just like he saw in the other’s mind.
Breha Solo.
FN-2187 yanks his hand back and kicks him in the knee. Kylo Ren staggers, and flicks his lightsaber on. He’ll kill him. He’ll cut him to the bone. Cut him THROUGH the bone. He’ll make FN-2187 sorry he ever even HEARD that name, much less WORE it.
And he’ll burn that name off his own wrist too, and never, ever hear the Light Side call again.
“You’re going to die here, traitor,” he says, and FN-2187 glares up at him from the ground, his face lit by the lightsaber blade held so, so close to his throat. “I won’t be fooled. There’s nothing in the Light for me.”
“Then DO it,” FN-2187 snaps, and Kylo Ren’s hand twitches around his lightsaber. It brushes FN-2187’s shoulder, just barely, and he cries out in pain. Kylo Ren should slice him up into ribbons, inch by inch. Should put his lightsaber through his face right now. Should--
“Traitor,” he says again, his hand trembling. “LIAR.”
Confusion flickers across FN-2187’s face, and Kylo Ren forgets about slicing him up or putting his lightsaber through him and slashes down instead, aiming for that lie of a name on the other’s wrist.
He misses.
He never misses. Not that easily.
“Leave her ALONE!” FN-2187 thunders, clutching his just barely scorched wrist to his chest, cradling it like something to be protected, and Kylo Ren . . .
“Why should I?” he rasps. “She’s never left ME alone. All these years, and I haven’t had a day without her lies in my head.”
“What?” FN-2187 looks confused again, and Kylo Ren tightens his grip on his lightsaber. He should take that hand right off him; take that name right off his wrist; break this lie of a connection for GOOD and finally be free, finally be who he’s always been meant to be. .
But the Light won’t be SILENT, and won’t stop calling her name.
“There is no Breha Solo,” he says raggedly, chest heaving for breath. “I killed that girl long ago.”
“Liar!” FN-2187 snaps. “She isn’t dead, her mark’s still there!”
“She’s dead,” Kylo Ren says. “She never even lived. She isn’t even REAL, she’s just a lie the Light tried to trick me with.”
“She’s REAL, you psycho!” FN-2187 snaps again; fumes. He’s still cradling his burned arm like there’s something precious there. The lightsaber went through his sleeve, and Kylo Ren can see burned flesh and the barest edges of that lie of a name in dark, jagged handwriting that he recognizes as easily as he recognizes himself in the mirror.
As easily as he recognizes himself when the Light isn’t lying about what else he could be, that is.
“No. She’s not,” Kylo Ren says, dragging off his helmet and staring at that burnt-edged name without the visor in the way. FN-2187 startles, his eyes widening. Kylo Ren wonders what he looks like to this man.
Not Breha Solo, he knows. He’ll never look a thing like her.
“I know you don’t know her,” FN-2187 says. “You think I didn’t ask your father first chance I got?”
“What would Han Solo know about her?” Kylo Ren sneers. He feels the fear and anger coming off FN-2187 and sees the red, red light of his saber lighting his face and thinks, savagely: this. This is the way it was always going to be. The way it ALWAYS should’ve been. “He doesn’t know anything about the Light’s lies. He doesn’t know anything about what I’ve had to do.”
“You don’t have to do ANY of this!” FN-2187 yells at him, and Kylo Ren laughs. This is the only thing he ever COULD do.
His name ought to know better than to ever think otherwise.
“You don’t know either,” he says. “But when you die, I’ll be free. I’ll never have to hear her voice again. Breha Solo is a lie, and you--you’re the last piece of her. You’ll die, and she’ll die, and she’ll take the Light with her. And I . . . I will be who I was always meant to be.”
“You’re crazy,” FN-2187 says, and Kylo Ren laughs again. It doesn’t--it doesn’t sound quite right.
“You don’t know how it torments me,” he hisses. “The constant lies, the tricks, the call in my mind . . . you could NEVER understand.”
He wants him to, somehow. He wants FN-2187 to understand why he’s going to die. To understand that there was never any hope for him, and it was always going to end this way. Even if FN-2187 had never turned, it would still be ending this way. As long as he has that name on his wrist . . .
He’ll cut it off first, that name. So he’ll be sure. So she’ll be truly dead.
“I hope she kills you,” FN-2187 says roughly, and Kylo Ren stabs him through the shoulder. He screams. It doesn’t drown out the Light’s call. It’s not enough. How much does it have to BE, to be enough?
“You don’t think she’s tried?” he asks. “It’s too late for her now. Kylo Ren is the only thing left.”
“Wait,” FN-2187 says, dazed with pain and sweating and dizzy-eyed, but somehow still finding the strength to meet his eyes. “What?”
“Han Solo doesn’t know anything,” Kylo Ren repeats. “He didn’t even know that girl was there.”
“What are you TALKING about?” FN-2187 says.
“Finn,” Kylo Ren says, and FN-2187 stares up at him, startled. “Who’s Finn? What part of you?”
“I am,” FN-2187 says.
“No,” Kylo Ren says, swinging the blade of his saber back and forth; looking at the other’s burned wrist. “You’re FN-2187. You’re a stormtrooper. ‘Finn’ is just some lie the Resistance used to turn you. And I am not as weak as you. I won’t turn over something as worthless as a name.”
“It’s not YOUR NAME,” FN-2187 bites off.
“I KNOW,” Kylo Ren hisses, glaring down at him. “You think I don’t know? I’ve known that name wasn’t mine longer than you could READ it.”
FN-2187 . . . blinks, very slowly. Kylo Ren swings the blade of his saber back and forth; back and forth. He watches FN-2187 still not understand, and still not understand, and STILL not--
“All these years of suffering,” Kylo Ren says. “I won’t falter now.”
“Breha,” FN-2187 says slowly, and Kylo Ren stiffens. “That’s what they would’ve named a daughter. If they had one.”
“If,” Kylo Ren says, and FN-2187 stares up at him.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says.
“It’s already done,” Kylo Ren says. “I told you. You’re the last piece of that lie. When you die, it’ll all be over.”
“Who told you THAT?” FN-2187 asks incredulously, and Kylo Ren sneers at him. No one had needed to tell him. He wasn’t fool enough not to figure that one out for himself.
“I’m going to cut that name off you,” he says. “And then I’ll kill that worthless scavenger, and Han Solo, and anyone else in my way, and the Dark Side will welcome me.”
“It’s your name,” FN-2187 says, like some terrible realization. Kylo Ren knows the feeling.
“It will never be,” he says, and then FN-2187 leaps up and lunges for him, tackles him around the waist and throws them both to the ground, and Kylo Ren shouts and his lightsaber goes skidding and FN-2187 puts a hand around his throat and--
“You don’t have to do this,” FN-2187 says again. Kylo Ren throws him into the ceiling, and rolls out of the way so he lands painfully on the floor. He calls his lightsaber back to his hand, and slashes out for the other’s arm again. It’s the hardest thing in the galaxy, trying to cut that arm off him, but--
FN-2187 yanks his arm back. Kylo Ren’s lightsaber slices into the floor. He bares his teeth.
FN-2187 pulls out another lightsaber, and flicks on a blue-bright blade that the sight of makes the twist of Light and Dark inside Kylo Ren SING.
“You don’t have to do this,” FN-2187 says again, panting for breath. Finn. Finn says.
“You have no idea what I’m going to do,” Kylo Ren says, and stalks towards the lie of him. Their lightsabers clash, and there is no doubt in him now. Finn is going to die, and he is going to take that name with him, and that will be the end of this, finally. At last. There is nothing that could possibly change that.
“I always thought you’d be an officer,” Finn says breathlessly between clashes, as they circle each other warily. His saber form is terrible. Kylo Ren wants to kill him by inches, one slash at a time. “I guess I wasn’t that far off, huh?”
“I never thought about you at all,” Kylo Ren says.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t have, would you,” Finn says. “But you thought about her, right? Yeah, of course you did, you’re selfish like that. Of course you thought about her. I bet she was all you COULD think about, sometimes.”
“Shut up.” Kylo Ren slashes at his saber arm. The blade bites deep, but Finn doesn’t lose his grip on his lightsaber.
“Not until you kill me, Breha,” Finn says, and Kylo Ren . . .
He is not weak. He would never turn over something as worthless as a name.
But at the same time, all he can think about is how no one has ever called him that name before, and the way it sounds in Finn’s mouth.
“DIE, traitor!” he snarls, eyes wide with fury and swinging up his lightsaber, and Finn--
Doesn’t.
Kylo Ren’s lightsaber bites into Finn’s chest with the sizzle of burned meat, and he falls. His lightsaber clatters to the floor, and so does his body.
His saber form really is terrible, Kylo Ren thinks, staring down at him.
He’s not dead.
Kylo Ren can fix that. It won’t even be hard.
That burned wrist lies upturned on the floor, and he sees that name in perfect fullness, underlined by the sharp line of a lightsaber burn.
Breha Solo, who doesn’t exist. Who’s never existed.
Who is still right there, and still in his head, and still . . .
“Breha,” Finn rasps again, pushing himself up. There’s blood in his mouth. His lightsaber is out of reach, and he doesn’t have the Force to pull it to him. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to BE this.”
“What do you know about it?” Kylo Ren asks a deserter of a Stormtrooper full of fear and anger and grim resignation, and lifts his lightsaber.
“I don’t know why it’s you,” Finn murmurs, and collapses. Kylo Ren . . . pauses.
It’s the Light Side, obviously. One of its lies. Why else would it be him? It’s spent Finn’s whole life telling him that some girl who doesn’t exist is out there waiting for him, waiting to be his MATCH, all so he’d be here right now and saying these things. All for that “you don’t have to do this”, repeated over and over like it meant anything. Like it thought it could trick him into turning back NOW, after everything else.
Finn is unconscious. Finn is breathing.
Kylo Ren is poised to kill him, and can’t stop hearing that name in his mouth.
That’s about when the scavenger shows up and attacks him. Kylo Ren has no idea if he’s furious or--relieved.
Breha, that lie inside him . . . Breha is relieved.
But what does she know, anyway?
He fights the scavenger, and she’s ready to kill him. He has more important people to kill than her, though.
Finn sits up against the wall, watching them with heavy eyes and a burned chest, and Kylo Ren’s fingers twitch on the hilt of his lightsaber.
He should’ve cut that name off them both when he had the chance.
He should’ve . . .
“You don’t have to do this,” Finn says again; rasps out low and weak and barely loud enough to be heard. He sounds just like the Light, because of course he does. Of course he would.
“Will you join me?” There’s no hesitation in Finn’s voice, his eyes are black and bright with the fury of a lifetime—a billion lifetimes—of slavery and abuse. Ren doesn’t need to think, it is instinct that reaches to take Finn’s outstretched hand in his. It’s the only right thing he has ever done.
Or the AU where the ex-child soldier and abuse survivor team up to lead the Stormtrooper Rebellion that tears the First Order apart from the inside.
