#jedifinnnet

The world is radiant as if made of light, the incandescent shapes creating his environs and it feels all wrong to Finn. He shouldn’t be here, he knows he shouldn’t, even if he isn’t quite sure where here is.

Where’s the forest? Where’s Kylo Ren? And where is Rey?

Stay calm, stay calm, he tells himself. He’s been in worse situations, most of them in the last few days, he handed those, he can handle this too. He thinks.

“Lost are you, young one?”

The voice from behind him makes him jump and spin around to see a tiny, green alien with pointy ears and a wrinkled face sit on a rock. Or what looks like a rock, made of light. This place is really making him loose his mental balance.

“A little, I think.”

“Hmm, more honest than most you are,” the alien says.

Finn shrugs. “What would be the point in claiming that I wasn’t, Master...” he lets his voice trail off in a question.

“Yoda you can call me.”

Finn blinks.

“Yoda? As in, Jedi Master Yoda?”

“Heard of me have you, hmmm?”

“Yes, I-” He doesn’t want to continue, what the First Order had to say about the Jedi, old and new, were nothing flattering and probably false most of it. “Yes,” he simply concludes instead.

The alien - Yoda he reminds himself - chuckles and Finn wonders if the tiny being is reading his mind.

“Wait, you’re dead aren’t you? Does that mean... I’m dead too?”

He tries to remember what happened. He and Rey was heading for the Falcon, then Kylo Ren was there and... he fought him, fought him and lost.

Finn feels his stomach fold in on itself.

“I am dead, aren’t I?”

He wasn’t ready for that, but then was anyone ever ready to die?

“Know a Jedi does, when their time comes,” Yoda says.

“I’m no Jedi,” Finn answers, his voice distant even to his own ears.

“Not yet, though your powers have grown considerably in a short time.” This voice belongs to another that has appeared out of nowhere behind Yoda. Logically Finn knows that just appearing like that can’t happen, but this man did. 

Of course, if they’re all dead there’s no reason why the normal rules should apply.

Where Yoda is small and wrinkled this man is tall and muscular, his skin as dark as his face is stern.

“Do I know you too?” he asks the man.

“Hmm, heard of master Windu perhaps you have?”

“WIndu, Mace Windu. You were the leader of the old Jedi Order weren’t you?”

“For all the good it did us and the Republic.” Windu’s voice has a dark tone to it now.

Finn decided to sit before his knees decide to give up working, something that feels like it’s going to happen soon. Well, if he’s dead he’s certainly in good company. Or maybe he’s hallucinating, can dead people hallucinate?

He looks up at Windu and Yoda again.

“What are you, what is any of us doing here? I mean, what do you do when you’re dead?”

“Dead, you think you are?”

“Yeah, I took a lightsaber to my back.” He can remember how much it hurt as the blade seared through the leather jacket. “That kind of injury tends to be fatal.”

“There are ways to survive that kind of wound using the Force.”

“Maybe, but it’s not something I would know, is it?”

“Consciously? No, which makes the fact that you did all the more impressive.”

A third figure has joined them, this one a woman with long black hair and tawny skin.

“Depa,” Mace greets her. “I did not expect you.”

“Why not?” The woman gives a lopsided grin. “This concerns us all.” She turns her attention and smile to Finn. “Don’t let Mace scare you. He loves looking intimidating, but he’s really not. Unless you’re a criminal. I’m Depa Billaba and much less illustrious than these two beings, though I was on the Jedi Council too.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Finn says, not sure what the right reply to her would be. Is there an etiquette among ghosts?

Something Depa said niggles his mind.

“This, what this?” What concerns could ghosts have? They were dead after all.

“You,” Depa answers.

“Me? I’m sorry to disturb you all, I didn’t mean to. But why am I so important?”

He doesn’t get it, he really doesn’t. All he’d ever done was bail on the First Order when they wanted him to become a killer, surely there were plenty of people in the galaxy who had moral fiber to compare to his, what made him so special?

“Good it is to be humble, but too much a flaw can be.” Yoda tapped his staff against the light rock while Finn just stared at him in confusion.

Depa shakes his head. “You’re both assuming he understand more than he clearly does. We have all been gone for decades, that he’s heard about any of us, even about the Force is nothing short of a miracle.”

Finn draws an internal sigh of relief, Depa at least seems to be making a shred of sense.

She turns away from Mace and Yoda, and locks eyes with him.

“Finn, you have a decision to make. To go back to your own world, or let it and your life go.”

“You mean, I’m not dead?”

“Not completely, not yet anyway. The Force is strong in you and so is your will, this have kept you alive. It was what allowed you to survive Kylo Ren’s saber in the first place, you reached out into the Force and made it keep you alive.”

“A dangerous move,” Mace interjects.

“Don’t interrupt me Mace, I didn’t hear you offer any explanations. And it’s no more dangerous than breathing is. Being strong willed isn’t a crime and he isn’t Anakin.”

Finn is barely listening to the exchange, still trying to make sense of what Depa just told him.

“How can I use the Force? That’s Jedis and people like- like Kylo Ren.”

“But where does Jedi come from?”

“I don’t know,” he replies. He hasn’t really considered it, in the old stories, the one’s he knew he wasn’t supposed to read but whom he found too interesting not to, they just were as if they were eternal.

Yoda looks like he might have lived forever, but both Depa and Mace looks very human and with a human lifespan even if the Emperor hadn’t had them killed. So they had to come from somewhere didn’t they?

“Touch the Force all living beings do, but some a special connect have,” Yoda interject.

“Someone... like me?”

“Yes,” Mace says.

“But why? What is there so special about me?”

“Nothing,” Mace continues. “Everything? Jedi have been debating why the Force manifests strongly in some and not in others for millennia, no conclusion have ever been reached. The Force manifests as it wills, in whom it will.”

Finn nods.

“Okay, so I can use the Force then. Or I could when I was alive, which I apparently still am. For now.” He looks at Depa. “So I can choose to be alive again, to go back.”

“Yes, but there will be a price.”

“What will it be?”

“Wise you are, to ask that question. Many in your position would not.”

Finn shrugs, to him the question is just common sense.

“Your life is no longer wholly your own,” Mace replies. “If you return the Force will move you as you move it, that is the way of the Jedi. To only take from the Force and give nothing in return, that is the way of the Dark Side.”

Finn recalls Maz Kanata’s words.

“The Dark Side. You mean like Kylo Ren and the First Order?”

“That is one version of it, yes.”

“And... the Force is likely going to want me to go against them.”

“I won’t speculate on what the Force intends for you.”

“Really?” Depa quips. “That used to be your day job.”

“Glibness is not a becoming feature in a Jedi Master.”

“Not even a dead one?”

Finn rises abruptly to his feet, interrupting their exchange. “Okay. If the Force wants me to fight, I can do that. I won’t promise I can win though, I don’t know how to use the Force, except apparently in emergencies, so I won’t be much use against someone like Kylo Ren. We all know how our last bout ended, but I can fight.”

“There will be those who can teach you,” Depa says.

“You mean, Skywalker?”

“Among others, though he may not be the first one to train you.”

Finn just shakes his head, it’s all too abstract for him right now. But decision made he suddenly feels a great sense of urgency.

“I think... I think I had better get back.” He looks at them somewhat bewildered. “But I don’t know how.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

A fourth being have joined them. Another human, male. Young, not much older than Finn by the looks of him and with dirt blond hair. Unlike the other three he seems faded, partial somehow, as if parts of him was missing.

“Anakin,” Mace greets him a note of distrust in his voice.

The young man bows respectfully. “Master Windu, it’s been a while.”

“It had.” The note of distrust is still present.

“Let go of the past you must.” Yoda is looking at Mace Windu as he speaks and Finn frowns in confusion.

“It’s alright master Yoda,” Anakin says. “There are some things that are difficult to forgive.”

“And yet forgive, a Jedi must.”

Anakin locks eyes with the diminutive alien. “Maybe that was where the Jedi went wrong.”

“Okay,” Depa interrupts. “You three can have your arguments on your own time. Right now we need to get Finn back, before his time runs out. Anakin if you will?” The last part is addressed to the newcomer who nods and looks at Finn, indicating that he should follow.

He nods awkwardly to the Jedi Masters in parting, muttering “thank you” as he leaves. He has no real idea what to say, how do you say goodbye to ghosts?

“Mace doesn’t like you very much, does he?” he asks Anakin, mostly to say something the silence feeling all wrong and stifling.

“I killed him, so you could say he has reasons.”

“Ah, I see.”

Finn can understand that. Even though Kylo Ren didn’t completely kill him he’s feeling none to gracious about the man, though kidnapping Rey and ordering the death of the Tuanul villagers certainly have something to do with it too.

The world starts coming into focus for Finn. Not the light shaped world he’s now in, the real one with colors and trees, and duracreet floors. He can see himself lying on a medical bed in a large room, people and droids milling about.

“Finn,” Anakin says. “This is as far as I can go, but it seems you have someone waiting for you.”

Finn looks to see Maz Kanata standing in a doorway. She’s looking straight at him as if... she can see him and Anakin. With a nod she approaches the bed, pulling a chair far too large for her up to the side of it. She jumps up on the seat and positions herself cross-legged on the seat, staring at his unconscious body.

“You think... she saw us?”

“It is possible. The Force is strong in her, it always have been though she was never a Jedi.” The man chuckles and he seems to ‘fill out’ as he does. “I always wondered what she and master Yoda would have said to each other if they ever met. I don’t think he would have approved of her.”

“And Maz?”

“She’d just have ignored him, she always did with beings she didn’t agree with. Unless they attacked her, then she became an impeccable enemy.”

“The First Order destroyed her castle,” Finn offers.

“Then I truly pity them. No sane being would want Maz Kanata for an enemy.” Anakin closes his eyes for a moment. “You had better go, no sense in keeping her waiting.”

Finn nods and start walking towards his body.

“Finn, one more thing.”

He looks back over his shoulder at Anakin.

“When next you face Kylo Ren, don’t hesitate. It is possible to turn away from the Dark Side, but it must be his choice. If he’s not ready to make it, don’t let others pay the price or his choices.”

“I won’t,” Finn promises.

He turns back and continues towards himself the world with its sounds and smells becoming ever stronger as he does. He starts to feel heavy, as if taking on his physical form again is weighing him down, but it’s a comforting weight.

With a gasp he opens his eyes, once more himself.

“So, what took you so long?” he hears Maz ask from her perch.