❛ it… it wasn’t all me. ❜han solo, finn thinks, legendary rebellion gen no, smuggler. but a hero all the same. chewbacca who lost a friend, and general organa who lost a son and husband.
war is made up of these personal losses that never seem like sacrifice until you’re standing at the finish line counting the scars you’ve just barely escaped with. he is for the first time thankful that his training kept him distant from his fellow troopers ( not the ones in his immediate squad; he’d cared for nines, zero & slip regardless of how it made him a PARIAH in their eyes. ) he can’t imagine what it’d be like to mourn the blood shed by every death out on the battlefield.
not all soldiers have the choice to die for what’s right.
some can only fight, and lose, and be ground up into blaster fodder in the army they were bred to die in. raised from earliest memory to believe what they were doing was justice.
❛ but… you’re welcome. and it’s great to meet you. i’ve heard a bunch of you nova corp guys but never met one of you in person. the resistance is lucky to have you on their side. ❜
Richard nods; though the words are unsaid, the sentiment is reflected in his own eyes. Too many times, too many times he’d have a victory that felt hollow in the wake of so much loss. A win, as it is classified by so many, yet, among that many, there wasn’t a difference in winning and losing either.
There are no winners in war. Not really.
He may be sick of it, endless years of the repetitive cycle. (When was the last time you rested? When was the last time you ate? The thought both his own, and the caring voice in forever embedded his mind.) Yet, he knows he is trapped in it, by it. Unable to comprehend being able to do anything else, unable to in good faith drop everything he’s ever worked so hard for, unable to abandon something that was in essence his very nature. He’s done this for too long, took pride in saving and protecting people, to ever imagine retiring. People like him don’t retire. They die, more oft than not in a blaze. (He would know, he’s already done it before.)
Which is why he even finds himself here, fighting the good fight.
And meeting this man, who wasn’t a stormtrooper. Someone who broken conditioning to become his own person.
“As they are you. The outcome would have been very different were you not present.” He doesn’t need to state what that would be. The Nova is certain they both can picture it well enough; the destruction and terror that the First Order and their deadly weapon had wrought upon the universe, when Hosnian Prime along with its planetary bodies and whole system had been destroyed with just a push of button. He looks down in the memory of the people he’s lost there, and everyone else in this war between the light and the dark, before managing to compose himself and raising a question, “What’s your mission here?”
❛ i… was part of the assault on starkiller, yeah. ❜ he remembers snow, the taste of the cold biting sharp enough in the wind to leave chills like teethmarks. the rest… the rest is a nondescript blur of scarlet light & searing heat.
finn watches with a nervous wariness as the stranger completes his scan. validation of his identity, he assumes; there’s no reason for it, but he’d rather not jinx his luck. it’d be awfully tragic for something to go wrong on his FIRST MISSION.
❛i’m finn. one of general organa’s people on the inside. who are you ?❜
He tilts his head, the mere mention of the name of base always seem to fill him with a combined sense of dread and hatred, even as destroyed as it was, (and even in the wake of all that he had seen and experienced); he is, after all, star stuff. And a weapon that harnessed the power of stars (to collect dark energy; appropriately ironic considering which side they were on) was something that shouldn’t be allowed to exist, oh he’d have blown that weapon to hell if he wasn’t so far off in galaxies away and too busy with his own array of missions. “Glad that horror is gone. You have my thanks.”
Soon as they’re done with the scan, and Richard is assured of there being no threat from the other — not that Finn couldn’t be lethal when the need arises — he relaxes further (not completely, never completely), and finds it fit to introduce himself.
