Fic Prompts: Star Wars Wednesday
Because Disney can pry the Finn Skywalker headcanon from my cold, dead, fingers. And because Disney can’t stop me from reworking their movies if I darn well please.
Most of the fortress had been picked over by scavengers years ago. Any Imperial memorabilia had long since been looted and either auctioned off or confiscated by the First Order. Really, that was the only reason the scout team had considered it as a potential base at all. It had already been gutted, and was pretty well beneath the notice of Kylo Ren unless he was up for sentimental tours.
The general didn’t find that very likely.
Mustafar was far from a hospitable world for most species, but the heat shielding of the fortress was still highly efficient. The scouts had set up a base camp in what looked like it had once been some kind of audience chamber. Nobody had felt like exploring alone. The whole castle just felt...off.
The young leader of the scouts sat on a pile of rubble, head tilted like he was listening for something. He frowned and glanced down at his team.
“What, Trache?” he asked.
The Twi’lek raised his brows at Finn. “I didn’t say anything.”
Finn seemed confused. “You sure? I could’ve sworn-”
Finn?
Finn looked up again. "Rose, you heard Trache call me just now, right?"
Rose Tico set down a power lamp and plugged it into their Artoo unit, then shook her head. “Sorry Finn,” she said, “All I heard was Artoo.”
Finn.
He whirled, squinting into the darkness of the derelict fortress. “There! You guys heard it that time, right?”
Rose fidgeted awkwardly. "Finn...I didn't hear anything."
Finn.
Finn turned again. He felt as though someone had tied a string around his soul and was pulling. As if under some other power than his own, the boy began to stumble into the shadows.
"W- what are you doing?" Trache hissed.
"Gotta check something out," Finn mumbled. He could just make out what looked like a figure, standing at the end of the corridor. "It's...it's okay. I think it's the Force."
His scout team's protests faded into static behind him. There was nothing but the voice.
Finn. Come to me.
Finn slowly reached down and loosened his blaster in its holster. There was a possibility that he was hearing this voice in his mind. And that had to mean enemies.
"Where are you?" he asked, tensed and ready to fight.
The shadowy figure he had glimpsed before reappeared, further away. It stood, as if waiting. Then it raised one arm, beckoning.
Finn didn't sense anything particularly hostile about the stranger, but he was wary nonetheless. He eased forward, following the dark shape into another chamber. The closer he got, the more he realized that it wasn't made of pure shadow after all. A faint flicker of blue light outlined the person, if a person it was, slowly illuminating more details. A black tabard. A heavy gauntlet. A cape that fell to the floor and seemed to swallow all light that touched it.
The rhythmic hiss that Finn had taken for some kind of machinery in the fortress took on a new volume.
It sounded like breathing.
Finn stopped dead in his tracks. He had seen that shape before. In the First Order barracks, as a little boy, he had seen that shape in the propaganda forced down the children's throats.
"Aren't you dead?" he blurted out before he could stop himself.
The giant inclined his head -- or, well, his helmet -- regally and turned. He gestured to one side.
"Walk with me."
The authoritative voice brooked no argument.
Finn knew he should have been running. That was Darth Kriffing Vader, or his ghost, or a clone, or something. But...he didn't sense the kind of painful storm he'd always experienced around Kylo Ren. There was no hatred, filling the air with danger. Just a strange echo of regret.
With one hand firmly on the butt of his blaster, he gritted his teeth and stepped closer.
"The Force is with you, young one," the late Sith Lord remarked, "but you are not a Jedi yet."
That rankled a little bit. Finn knew he couldn't do all the things Rey could yet. The General had told him that his connection to the Force was more like hers than Rey's, but he still didn't know what that meant. That didn't mean he wasn't learning. He was just going at his own pace.
"Maybe I'm not," he said, "But I will be."
Will I be?
Darth Vader began to walk. Hands clasped thoughtfully behind his back, steps slow and measured. Relentless. What did he want? And why was he even here?
Reluctantly, Finn followed a half step behind.
"I'm not hallucinating this, right? Because my team can't see you." Getting lured into the depths of the castle by the ghost of a Sith probably wasn't a good thing. "Why'd you call me?"
"I have been expecting you for some time," Vader said, tipping his helmet down as if observing Finn. "It was inevitable that you would find me here."
His footsteps echoed on the stone, but did not disturb so much as a single mote of dust. The hair on the back of Finn's neck rose when he looked down and saw only one set of footprints behind them.
"You know who I am." It was not a question.
Swallowing hard, Finn nodded. His mouth was dry, and despite himself, his fingers trembled. Like a death sentence the name fell from his lips.
"Darth Vader."
Abruptly, the man turned on his heel. His cape flared out around him as he raised a finger almost in warning.
"That name no longer has any meaning for me," he said sternly.
"Then..." Finn wrinkled his brow and tried to remember the legend. "You're um, you're a Skywalker-?"
His companion nodded. "I suspected that if I had chosen my true form, you would not have known me."
He raised his helmet as the chamber emptied out into another set of corridors. "Come. There is something I must show you."
Well. This was going to make an interesting story to tell the General later. Finn pulled the collar of his jacket up and shivered.
"Dar- I mean, uh...Master Skywalker? You didn't answer my question before. Aren't you dead?"
Anakin did not slow his steps. "The Force, young one, is a pathway to many abilities that some may consider to be...unnatural."
A wry chuckle wrenched itself from Finn's lips. He shook his head and took a jogging half step to keep up with the ghostly warrior. "You're telling me."
Anakin glanced down at him again. Finn wasn't sure how he knew the ghost's eyes were on him, but somehow he could guess where to look.
"You show remarkably little trepidation in the face of the impossible," he commented.
It was strange, but Finn was almost beginning to feel comfortable with the conversation. He shrugged. "Nobody ever told me how the Force was supposed to work. How am I supposed to know what's possible and what's not?"
He jumped when Anakin tipped back his helmet and laughed. It was a deep, rolling sound, utterly at odds with the mechanical whoosh of his respirator.
"Indeed! Do not lose your open mind, Finn. It will serve you well."
"Did anybody ever tell you," Finn huffed, "That you make even compliments sound ominous?"
Another low chuckle. "Yes. Your father did."
His father?!
What was the ghost talking about?
Finn scowled at him. "Whoa, hold on. How do you know my father? I don't even know my father!"
Under his breath he added, "I don't even know what I'm doing here."
Abruptly, he began to sense a complicated tangle of emotions from the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. Regret, anger, concern.
"You remember nothing, child?"
Sometimes Finn thought he did remember. But they were just images. Feelings. A woman's voice and strong arms. A man's smile. Sometimes he heard snatches of a song in his dreams, always just out of reach by the time he opened his eyes.
Other times, the dreams were not so kind. Flashes of an old man, reaching for him even as he was shot in the back. His own tiny hands reaching desperately for an old woman screaming a name he couldn't hear. He wondered sometimes if they had been his grandparents.
The Resistance was his family now. Rey and Chewie were his family. Poe and BB-8 were his family. The General was his family. But in his heart, Finn still wanted closure. To at least know where he had come from.
"I...remember my grandfather dying." Finn said haltingly.
"Not your grandfather," Anakin corrected him. "Your mother's cousin. Your grandfather died long before your birth."
He quickened his pace before Finn could insist on an answer. Through stone galleries and ominous archways he continued with a single-minded determination. He did not stop until he had reached what had once been an impressively secure door, long since reduced to ruin by looters. Inside sat a strange dome-like structure that reminded Finn of an egg.
"Did you see that in my head? Is that like a thing you can do?" Finn demanded. He was determined to get the truth. Maybe he could "sense" it somehow. "How did you see it if I can't?"
Anakin did not immediately answer. He waved his hand over the dome, and with a rumbling groan it separated neatly into two halves. It was an old-fashioned hyperbaric chamber. A few lights still flickered dimly inside. Anakin reached down to touch one small screen, and a hologram sprang up. A young man in Rebellion era fatigues smiled up at them from the hologram. Old though it was, the holo was still recognizable.
"What the- That's Luke Skywalker!" Finn realized.
Anakin nodded. "He was no older than you are now when my spies brought me this image." He seemed almost lost in nostalgia for a moment. "Truly, I would have torn the very fabric of the universe apart to find him."
Finn watched the ghost, noting that he cupped the hologram in his hands as though he held something infinitely precious.
"You...kept a holo of him in your chamber?" Seemed a little odd for a Sith.
He was pretty sure Ren didn't keep holos of his parents.
"Of course." Anakin did not look away from the tiny, grinning face of Luke. "He is my son."
Finn sat down carefully on the seat within the chamber. His feet didn't even touch the floor. "Hey...Master Skywalker?" he asked, "How did you know my grandfather died before I was born? If it was before I was born, I wouldn't have had any memory of that. Buried or no. Did you...meet him in the afterlife or something? Do all ghosts know each other?"
He sensed hesitation as Anakin answered, "No, I...I was...there."
That could mean a lot of things. "Did you kill him?" Finn guessed, "Like, was he a Rebel? Or a Jedi?"
He heard the creaking of leather as Anakin's hands tightened into fists.
"He was a rogue and peasant Sith. A knave who chased after power at the cost of his kin," Anakin snarled.
Finn jolted back. A Sith?
A horrible thought slid into the back of his mind. What if his family had given him willingly to the First Order? What if they expected him to follow in his grandfather's footsteps?
"So...what does that make me?" he rasped.
The tension drained quickly from Anakin's shoulders. He turned away from the hologram of his son and raised a spectral hand to rest against Finn's cheek. It did not pass through him, as he had expected it to. Instead, it lingered, like the brush of a curtain.
"You are," Anakin said, almost reverently, "A valiant son of a worthy father. And the beloved grandchild of a grandmother who deserved a better life than she was given."
The Force was almost screaming at him that the answers to his questions were at last before him, but Finn was afraid to believe it. Afraid to get his hopes up and be wrong. If, after all this, his growing suspicion was wrong, he wasn't sure he could bear it.
"Master Skywalker, please," he begged, "I don't know why I'm here, I don't know what you want from me. Just tell me the truth? Did you know my grandfather?"
The other glove rose, and Finn found his face being gently cradled by an ex-Sith Lord.
“No,” Anakin answered, quiet and inevitable. “I am your grandfather.”
