╔══════ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐘 𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍
'𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞' ═════════╝
━━ -ˋˏ★ˎˊ- ━━
...THE RADDUS, HYPERSPACE
𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐍 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐃, Lyra followed Eleni through the hallways of the Raddus. She was glad, too, because she might not have ever found Poe if Eleni hadn't shown them where he was hiding out. Two floors down from the command bridge, Poe was pacing back and forth in front of a service lift. He was no longer dressed in his flight suit, instead wearing his dark brown jacket and a clean shirt.
When he noticed the three of them standing there, his face crumpled into agitation. "Eleni, seriously?" he admonished. His pride had been wounded, and he didn't want an audience. "I didn't ask you to go grab a committee."
"Don't be so dramatic, she could have tossed you out the airlock," Eleni groused. She grabbed Finn gently by the arm. "C'mon Finn. You don't look busy, and I need some help cleaning power couplings."
"I don't even know how to clean a power coupling," Finn began to protest.
"I'll teach you, you seem like a fast learner," Eleni chirped, already dragging him away. Finn had no choice but to follow.
Once they were out of earshot, Poe finally looked up at Lyra. "What?" he said tersely. "Did you come here to gloat? You were right," he let out a hollow laugh. "You don't have to say it."
Lyra let the comment slide. Crossing her arms across her chest, she told him, "I came to make sure you were okay."
Poe said nothing. He just pressed his back to the wall behind him and slid to the floor, hanging his head in between his knees. Every ounce of his solid, unbreakable confidence was shattered.
She sat down in the space next to him. "Tell me what happened," Lyra coaxed. "It can't be that bad."
Poe tilted his head to look at her. One of his cheeks was slightly more pink than the other. "Leia slapped me in the goddamn face. Is that bad enough for you?"
Lyra let her arms fall to the floor, biting the inside of her cheek. As badly as she felt for him, she would have paid all her credits to see that happen. "She did what?"
"I walked into the command room and Leia was livid. I don't know if I've ever seen her that mad, and I've done a lot of stupid shit," he muttered, rubbing at his eyes. "She told me there's problems that can't be solved by jumping in an X-Wing and blowing something up."
Delicately, Lyra said, "She might have a point."
Poe scoffed, throwing his head back into the wall behind them. "Yeah, I know she had a point. It's glaringly obvious that I messed up," he said, lowering his voice until it was only a hoarse whisper. "That whole bombing squadron is dead because of me. That's what she said, dead heroes, no leaders." His voice was hollow, broken.
She frowned, remembering the choking emotions of the bombing squadron as it had gone up in flames. Her aunt was right, and Lyra couldn't deny that she was still upset with him for risking so much. But Poe was drowning in his own guilt, and as big of a mistake as it had been, it had ended with the fleet escaping.
"You can't do that to yourself, Poe," Lyra told him with conviction. "You made a mistake, yes, but now you have a chance to make things right. The good thing is that it isn't the last thing you'll ever do."
He shook his head, setting his jaw and shutting his eyes tightly. "Leia shouldn't have let me go. I shouldn't have even put her in that position."
She stared up at the ceiling. "I'm sorry for what I said in the hangar, I was just in shock." Lyra let her head fall back against the wall behind her with a light thump.
"I understand. And trust me, it won't happen again."
"What, me being worried about you? You can't control that."
Poe took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together. "I can try."
"Don't make promises you can't keep," Lyra smiled sadly, laying her head on his shoulder.
He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. The warmth of it traveled right down her arm and straight to her heart. It was a promise. And even if they both knew it would be broken, there would always be a way to pick up the pieces of the fallout.
"Come on," Lyra said as she stood. "We need to go find Finn. I really don't know where Eleni took him."
"I think we can consider him as good as gone," Poe said, standing up next to her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his head in her shoulder.
She pressed a hand to the back of his head. With a light sigh, she said, "Captain Dameron. That's a new one."
He groaned, voice muffled by the fabric of her shirt. "When you say it, it sounds worse."
-ˋˏ★ˎˊ-
𝐎𝐍 a star cruiser full of pilots who couldn't fly, everyone was pitching in to help with any and all jobs that needed to be done. Lyra was helping Kaydel Connix with a final inventory of their stock. It wasn't promising, and they soon realized just how many munitions they had been forced to abandon. Lyra had been walking up and down the hangar bay with a holo pad for the last hour, making a running count of all available spacecraft they had left.
When Lyra got in front of her squadron's block, she stopped short.
"What the hell," she muttered, picking up the pieces of a half-put together astromech. It had a bright blue stripe on its head, made from the body of a recycled R-6 unit and the head of a decommissioned BB unit.
The Phoenix Squadron was officially assigned to a post on the bridge, knee-deep in possible transmissions from allies and untangling leads that would give them their next mission assignment. Still, it was tedious when there was nothing but stale air and the blankness of hyperspace. Georgie and Ellis clearly had found a way to break up the hours.
"What's up?" Connix said on the other end of the line. "If it's a bad thing, just don't tell me. I can't handle more bad news, this inventory is pitiful."
Lyra had forgotten she was still transmitting. "No, just Georgie and Ellis."
"Ah," Connix answered knowingly. "Say no more."
Lyra was just checking off the last T-70 X-wing on her list when she heard a horrible noise. It sounded like the airlock had gone out with a high pitched hiss. She whipped her head around, looking for the source.
"You're not getting any accident reports from the hangar door lock, are you?"
"Nothing on my end," Connix answered. "Why? Is something wrong down there?"
"I don't think so," Lyra told her, keeping her voice steady.
Her heart raced as she realized that no one else was disturbed by the mysterious noise. She saw that Eleni was still holding a conversation with Kenny, and every other person in the hangar moved like they too heard nothing. It kept getting louder and louder like it was coming towards her.
And then everything went dead silent.
"Lyra."
The voice was like ice in her ears, freezing her senses and emitting a noise so high pitched, it felt like her brain was vibrating from the frequency. The holo pad clattered to the ground as she squeezed her eyes shut against the noise. It was pulling at every fiber of her being, worse than any headache she had ever felt and piercing her with a sensory overload of pain.
"Your fate will come in due time, no matter the lengths you may go to outrun it."
Her vision blurred and the hangar disappeared. A ring of light glowed like an eclipse of a sun so bright, it was pure white. At the end of a corridor, it molded and spun until the light became a line, twisting and writhing into a tether. A strange place, a new place, it felt cold and empty and unforgiving.
"When disaster strikes, know that the fault was all your own."
The voice faded away
Lyra could again hear the technicians working in the hangar. Black spots cleared from her vision, and the fluorescent lights were blindingly bright. She looked around, sweeping the room with wide eyes. No one noticed anything.
She was the only one who had heard the voice of Snoke himself.
"Lyra? Lyra? Can you hear me?" Connix was asking.
"I'm here," Lyra said into the com, voice barely audible against the roaring rush of blood in her ears. "Sorry, I--dropped my com."
With shaking hands, Lyra bent down to pick up the fallen holo pad. It had fallen on the corner of its screen, and there was now a large crack running right across the center of the glass.
"Tell General Organa that I'll be up on the bridge in five minutes," Lyra said. "I need to run something by her."
"Sure," Connix began. "Anything in particular?"
"Just a new idea," she lied.
Snoke's voice was not new. But the blinding light, a vision in tandem with his sickening whisper, that was cause for greater concern. And a disaster? They didn't need any more disasters.
Lyra's stomach twisted. She set the ruined holo pad down, abandoning her inventory.
It could wait.
-ˋˏ★ˎˊ-
𝐔𝐏 on the bridge, Leia and Lyra stood next to one of the wide bay windows. They were out of earshot of everyone in the room, but that wouldn't have mattered. It was just as busy as the old command room on D'Qar, and no one even glanced in their direction.
After digesting Lyra's hastened explanation, Leia asked, "How long has this been going on?"
"This is the first time it happened on the Raddus." Lyra looked out into the hyperspace as it blurred by, her eyes too tired to focus on anything else. The sound of his voice echoed again, and she shivered. "But ever since Takodana, it's either his voice or the dreams."
The General's lips twisted in disapproval. "You really should have come to me sooner."
"There were no direct threats until today," she said tersely. "But considering he's claiming there's some imminent disaster, I thought you should know."
Leia sighed. "I'm not just your General, Lyra. This isn't a case of proper protocol, you can be candid with me."
"I didn't want you to think I was going back on my resolve," Lyra admitted. "Because there isn't a day that goes by where I don't wonder if I was right to decide to stay here."
"You are right where you need to be. Snoke is playing with your fears, analyzing what you're the most worried about and telling you the worst."
"The entire Resistance fleet is concentrated on four light cruisers. Rey hasn't made contact with us. Poe almost got himself killed–" she pressed a hand to her forehead and cut off her rambling. "It's all hanging in a fragile balance. What if Snoke's disaster is enough to shove everything off the edge?"
It was clear in Leia's eyes, the way it was getting more difficult to conceal the stifling fear of her own concern. Leia had seen this story unfold before, and no one wanted it to happen again.
"What Snoke hopes to gain, I don't know. But you can't let him win over your emotions. You're stronger in the Force than you might think, more powerful than you realize." Leia gently took Lyra's hands in her own. "But you don't believe me, do you?"
Lyra thought about lying, but instead, she shook her head. "How can I? If it isn't Snoke, it's something else. Every time I close my eyes, I re-live something horrible. I have no control over it. I have no control over myself."
Leia's lips twisted into a sorry frown. "This was never how I thought any of this would end," she told her bitterly. She was looking at the command room spread out before her, thinking of more than just the disaster of the Skywalker family.
"I feel like I should have gone with Rey," Lyra blurted, unable to keep the words to herself any longer. Leia just raised an eyebrow, so Lyra kept babbling, letting the troublesome thoughts spring free. "The Force is–it's messing with me. I thought I had made up my mind, and now I don't know. What if I had gone with Rey?"
Leia pursed her lips in a thin line. "I have no idea what would have happened, Lyra. I know you want to see him again, we both do."
Lyra thought of Ben Solo again, and how much it must hurt her aunt to see her only son pulled away to the other side, and then to know her husband had died at his hand. And still, Leia was the hope of the Resistance. Lyra needed to suck it up, because she knew Leia was counting on her, too. She wasn't about to let her down.
"Okay, you're right," Lyra nodded, composing herself again. She tried her hardest to keep her head held high, and the quavering out of her voice. "It's alright, I'm fine. I need to go finish taking inventory, there's so much I still need to do."
Leia chuckled, putting her hand on Lyra's shoulder with a knowing smile. "You sound like you've been hanging around Dameron too much."
"Has he been up here at all?" Lyra asked nonchalantly, trying to keep her tone professional and unbothered even though she felt her cheeks burn.
Leia gave a proud sort of smile. "I see him lurking by the entrance every so often, but anytime he needs something, he snags a lieutenant to get his orders. He thinks I can't see him, but that flyboy is nothing if not conspicuous," Leia chuckled, "But he did come in here once–not too long ago–and gave a formal apology. It was rather impressive, especially because not once did he ask for his position back."
Lyra looked near the doorway. Eden and Aliyah had their heads bent close together, conferring over data on the holo desk. There were a few admirals sitting at the high command conferring with Admiral Ackbar, and then of course the lieutenants rushing back and forth, deciphering the constant stream of data. It almost felt like D'Qar.
"He knows that he deserved to be demoted," Lyra said.
Leia nodded, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a sad smile. She cared about Poe like he was her own son. "I understand that. And I'm not going to keep it that way for long. I can't have him moping around the ship when there are still things he needs to do. I just need him to understand that there is more to this war than blowing the First Order to hell and back."
That was one thing that had never been hard for Lyra to grasp. After seeing the inside of the First Order with her own eyes, she knew what it was like to be swallowed by a regime where you weren't anything more than a number in the system. "Our job isn't just to fight," Lyra said. "We're here to prove that there's something worth fighting for on our side, a hope that overrules even the darkest fear."
Leia's expression shifted. "Sometimes, I look at you and all I hear is Cora. She never wanted this life for you, but she would have been so proud of everything you've done. You're more like her than you even realize."
The charm of Lyra's necklace burned with heat. The life of Cora Grené had been reduced to a cautionary tale, a history lesson and a warning. So many people had known her personally, and yet Lyra had only scraps of memories.
"I barely remember her," Lyra swallowed, trying to picture her mom's face in her mind. It was difficult, just a fleeting image that she always worried she would forget. "Every time I try to dredge up the memories, I get stuck on the last one that I have of her."
Leia looked pained. "The fire?"
Lyra nodded, tugging on the charm of the necklace. "I just can't get around it."
"You have to think of it like this," Leia told her, spreading out her hands. "You're suspended in a cycle of grief. That memory might be old, but it's like new to you. There is nothing wrong with being upset, and you need to allow yourself to feel all of those emotions you're running from. That's the only way to come to terms with them."
"Remembering all of those memories–the good and the bad–was terrifying. I just don't know how to handle the Force anymore," Lyra admitted. "I'm not trained."
Leia shook her head knowingly. "You might not be trained, but you've been using it since you could walk. And I've read all your mission reports. I know that you use the Force more often than you admit and more often than you realize. I wish I could have helped you more than I did. If there was more time, I could have trained you."
"You?" Lyra's voice rose. Not meaning to sound so disbelieving, she quieted her tone again. "Why didn't you become a Jedi, too?"
Leia smiled, looking straight through Lyra as she remembered the past. "Believe me, I trained with your dad. But being strong in the Force doesn't equate to becoming a Jedi. There is more than one way to influence change, and there is more than one way to use the Force. Everyone is at least a little aware of it, and some happen to know how to wield it better than others. Using a lightsaber, for one thing. That's a pretty good sign of proficiency."
"Finn," Lyra said quietly. "There's no way he would have lived if he wasn't."
Leia nodded. "Based on what you've both described to me, it's impossible to think otherwise. The Force creates leaders, fighters, senators. Even pilots," she listed.
"Poe?"
"Poe Dameron should be dead for the stunts he's managed to survive. And I'm not the first person who will admit that it's uncanny how skilled he is. Now, that comes from years of practice, but as I said before, everyone is aware of the Force. There are times when we can harness it, and times when it seems to fade. You just have to believe it's there."
"That's what he used to say to me when I was little," Lyra mumbled, glancing up at her aunt again. She cleared her throat, finding the strength to say the word. "That's what dad used to tell me."
Leia smiled the sad smile of a sister who longed to see her twin again. "I know he did. And he would tell you the same thing now, kid. I know I'm not half as good as having your dad around, but I want you to know that you will always have me, alright?" Leia smiled softly. "No matter what."
Lyra nodded gratefully, knowing that Leia understood every word she couldn't bring herself to say without dissolving into tears. "I know."
"I might be your General, but I'm still your aunt first," Leia told her ever-so-quietly. "Always."
-ˋˏ★ˎˊ-
𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 inventory was officially complete and the sorry numbers were rounded up into a neat report, Lyra went off in search of the subject of her next project. Though somewhat skeptical, Finn listened to her idea and agreed to go along with it.
It was something that she had been thinking about since Finn had woken up from his time in the bacta suit. He was cagey, hanging around in the shadows now that Poe's time was occupied with assignments and Rey was gone. Lyra had promised Finn that he would find a place in the Resistance, and there was really only one way to make good on it.
Up and down the rows of the practice range, members of various squadrons were firing at the targets along the far wall. The facilities on board the Raddus were a little rusty after months of disuse, but they had managed to turn out a new training schedule that would stand in the place of their usual patrol runs. From the looks of it, the pilots practicing were mostly members of Red Squadron.
"You really don't have to do this," Finn continued to argue. Still, he kept the Glie-44 blaster pistol securely in his hand like it was made to be there.
"I know I don't," Lyra told him, firing up the diagnostic computer at the furthest shooting booth. "But I also don't think you want to be stuck drifting for the rest of your time with the Resistance. The best way to get an assignment is to prove you can handle one."
"I'm not going to be in anyone's way?" he asked, looking around for someone to tell him to leave. So far, no one had even noticed they were in the room. They were too busy firing at the targets themselves.
Lyra waved off his concern. "Of course not. Eden is leading drills today, anyway. I'm in charge of her, so therefore, I'm in charge of drills. I say you're more than welcome to be here, too."
They switched places once Lyra had everything set up, and Finn stepped up onto the metal platform. She handed him an earpiece and said, "The computer will talk you through it, but it's standard procedure, same as First Order training. Thirty rounds with stationary targets–"
"Is that the most basic level?" Finn asked, more self assured.
"It's a level 2, one up from basic."
"What's everyone else in here shooting at?"
Lyra raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to run the same training loop as they are?"
For the first time in the last day, Finn looked at Lyra with nothing but confidence. "Yeah, I do."
After a quick explanation from Lyra, Eden hopped right up to the computer and switched the program over to mirror what the rest of the pilots were doing. She gave a skeptical glance over her shoulder before coming to stand next to her commander.
"Are you sure he knows what he's doing?" Eden muttered. "That's level five with moving targets. He'll be lucky if he lands a hit, he hasn't even warmed up to it."
"He's adamant," Lyra said easily. "You can switch it back if it's too high, but I have a feeling you won't need to."
The sequence began, and the targets whirred to life at the end of the range. One by one, they moved across Finn's field of vision. He clocked each in turn, firing a barrage of ion blasts one after another. It was hard to tell from their vantage point if he was hitting any, but Lyra saw the steadfast accuracy in the way his body was reacting. Squared shoulders, a steady arm, legs staggered and unmoving. Like he had done this for years.
"Cease fire!" Eden called, ending the round of firing. The noise died off. "Cold range, switch weapons!"
Her attention was pulled first to Finn. The screen above him displayed the diagnostics, rounding it off with one neat little number: 96.75% accuracy.
"Finn, you're an amazing shot," Eden marveled, mouth hung open in shock. "Holy shit, this is higher than anyone who's shot today! And that was only your first go at it!"
The pilot to Finn's left, Shoan Tul, gave a very obvious frown in response to Eden's praise.
"I thought you said you were in charge of sanitation on Starkiller," Lyra mused, unable to hide her grin.
Finn gave a modest shrug. "That was Starkiller. There were other missions before that, and I still did the same combat training as everyone else. There's a reason they were sending me in for reconditioning after Jakku; I was the ideal cadet, they couldn't fathom why I wouldn't fire."
Eden clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Finn jumped a little from surprise. "I'm glad you didn't, Finn." She gestured back at the shooting range. "Do you want to go again?"
He was about to politely decline, but instead, he told her, "You know what, I'd like that."
Eden looked ready to burst from glee. "We should switch you out for something else, maybe a DH-17. I want to see how you do if I change the speed of the target recycle."
"I'll give it a try," Finn told her easily.
This was the ultimate gift she could offer him: a fresh start.
━━ -ˋˏ★ˎˊ- ━━
a/n ^^a short summary of this chapter (and also probably the entire skywalker saga)
the idea of a finn training scene has been bouncing around in my drafts for so! long! the films did not give him enough agency, and I'll never understand why a character who was canonically successful within the first order was shoved to the side in the resistance. I'm also just super passionate about developing poe, rey, and finn to their fullest potential so this is not the first nor last time you'll see it 😈
--nat <3