[ There's so much he can't explain. Not without time, not without wrapping his words around themselves a few times, tangling them. How the First Order wove itself into the galaxy little by little like a vein, how they steal children-- stole him, from somewhere, took away whoever he would have been and everything he had before he knew what it meant to have it. Ohe miners who were all malnourished and injured and terrified of them, with no way to escape. How they called themselves liberators, called themselves harbingers of true equality. How they destroyed a system like it didn't even matter.

How it felt wrong, there and on Jakku, in every sense he was using-- seeing it, hearing it, thinking about it. How Slip died and they left him there like old garbage. Left all of them.

Those are the reasons Finn knows now. The things he's realized. He thinks for a few seconds, pushes his own thoughts back, jaw tight. Simple might be best. ]

The only two times I got sent out, they stood me in front of unarmed civilians and told me to open fire.

[ He swallows. His first deployment isn't something he talks about, not even to Rey or Poe, not yet. He isn't even telling the story in full now. But it's worth admitting to. That it happened twice. ]

First time I couldn't follow orders. Hard to get more wrong than that.