pineslog | And I'll use you as a warning sign

Entry tags:

And I'll use you as a warning sign

Who: Okay this turned into a Poe catchall + Various
Where: Various locations/listed in the headings
When: May 1st-31st
What: May Catchall - specific closed prompts, some open threads
Warnings: N/A yet
[Open and Closed]

May 10th - Open

Tequila Mockingbird has Cassian's liquor of choice in the name, which is why Poe picked it. He's not a big drinker, but between the memories, the conversation with Jyn, the... party. Well. He has a few reasons to drink.

The reason he picked for tonight was to pour one out for L'ulo, for Muran, for the pilots whose names and faces he hasn't yet remembered. Not for his mother--it doesn't seem right, to drink for her. She wouldn't want it, her son inebriated and alone at a bar, wallowing in her memory. Poe won't pretend that isn't what he's doing. Wallowing, letting himself feel the grief and pain he tries so hard to outpace.

Jyn is right. He has to stop sometime, and taking the opportunity now to brace himself for future losses is better than breaking under one too many.

His table is in the corner, in a quiet part of the restaurant. Not by any virtue of paranoia. Poe doesn't have the same hardwired need to keep his back to a wall and his eyes on the exits that some veterans do. It was just the most private space he could find while still being around people. Drinking at home where Rey might have seen him would have felt worse than this, but drinking somewhere entirely alone wouldn't have been right either. He might not have squadmates to share a glass with, but having some form of life circulating around him is better than being entirely alone. Plus, there's BB-8, sitting underneath the table, domed head tilted to rest against Poe's leg.

Maker, he's glad to have his droid.

May 12th - Open

Poe is beating up a freestanding punching bag thing. He's been going to Crossbones Boxing in the morning on the days he doesn't work. He'll go stir-crazy if he just hangs around the house, and being grounded for this long is driving him bonkers as it is. He's tried to keep his head down, tried to be good, but man (thump, kick, wham) he going to blow a sensor if he doesn't get some air time.

It doesn't help that beating up things is usually the time he spends talking to BB-8 about whatever's on his mind. Here, where it's public and monitored like everywhere else, they have to keep up the same act. So BB-8 sits, watching, grumbling to himself with a towel draped over his head dome, while Poe tries to kill an inanimate object.

May 13th - Open

Poe is in a tree.

It is a tall tree. A very tall tree, near the edge of town, just inside those woods they aren't technically supposed to enter.

He is very high in this very tall tree.

Fuck gravity to be honest.

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He takes it slow. Embarrassingly slow, if he's honest, but it would be more embarrassing and probably more hazardous to his health if he fell and took Jyn out on his way down. He's only climbed down about five feet when the world slows, stills, the change so surprising that he almost loses his grip on the tree.

Poe opens one eye, then the other. The world is right-side-up and stationary.

"Jyn, wait." He feels drained and still queasy--prolonged vertigo will do that to a person--but. But. "I'm fine now."

He looks back up, toward the branches they just climbed down, thinking hard and trying not to think at the same time. If he just keeps climbing down, he doesn't have to find out for sure. He can leave it for another day. Leave it for another day, and get someone killed when speed matters.

He reaches up for the next highest branch and starts to climb upward again.

This is a terrible idea, but as fast as Jyn is, she's not fast enough to stop him. She slumps back against the branch she's clinging to, pressing her palms against the sharp bark in case she does have to vault up the tree again.

"Poe, what are you doing?" This is uncool!

"I'm checking something," he says, quietly. He's not the most graceful climber, but he's proficient.

Enough so that it only take a moment to get close to the point where she found him, and it's there that the vertigo hits. Poe grits his teeth and lowers himself back down, though not far this time. Slowly.

The dizziness fades.

Up again. The world spins.

Down. It steadies.

Poe presses his forehead against the trunk, a rush of heat and then cold rolling through him from head to stomach.

"No, no, no, no, no--" He doesn't realize he's saying it aloud.

"Poe!" This time the snap is tinged with some kind of anxiousness. Not fear, but close to it. "Come down now!"

Whatever crisis he is having he can have with both feet on the ground, safe from falling out of a damn tree in the middle of the forest. Jyn doesn't relish the idea of having to carry him back into town if he hurts himself, she'd much prefer he panic much lower.

"Just one more."

Just to prove he's not imagining this. That it really is... what it is, that it's keyed to height.

Up--

This time he endures it, willing his head to stop spinning, demanding his body to stop feeling things seesaw under him.

No such luck.

He climbs down, a slow numbness creeping in where nausea was before. As soon as he's on the ground, he walks a few steps into the woods, scrapes a clear patch with one boot, and throws up. Poe stays there, bent over, staring at the ground without seeing it.

Tell Jyn you're all right, he thinks. Tell her you're sorry if you upset her. She climbed up there to help you, Poe, talk to her.

"I..." He sways, and backs away from the vomit so he doesn't fall into it. Kicks dirt and leaves over the mess the way his father taught him when they were camping and Poe ate underripe berries. "Sorry, I."

Jyn doesn't crowd him, lets him be sick in peace while she leans against the tree, rubbing at her shoulder idly. This wasn't the physical therapy she thinks any doctor had in mind. She waits, seemingly calm and quiet, for Poe to finish.

The time allows her to think about Cassian, crumpled at the bottom of the tower, but it's easier to deal with when she isn't in the middle of climbing something. Cassian is fine, Cassian survived that.

"It's fine." It's not, clearly not, Poe is not fine, but she doesn't need an apology.

Poe makes it as far as the tree before he sort of just folds up, sitting down in the dirt at its base. He's still not really seeing the clearing, the trees at its edge, even Jyn. He knows she's there--her presence is as strong as Cassian's is muted--but he can't work himself up to looking at her, let alone thanking her for her help.

The implications of what they've done to him crash through his mind with the kind of force that makes coherent thought impossible. He's possessed by the idea, the magnitude of it eclipsing everything else. He doesn't doubt for a second that it's a punishment for what he and Steve did, and in the corner of his mind that's still handling the basics (breathe, blink) he wonders how they've hurt his coconspirator.

"They did something to me," he says. The words are like a spell. His focus expands (blink, breathe). He feels like he's going to be sick again as shock turns into inference turns into you can't fly, you can't fly, you can't fly.

He wants to swear, but there's no curse he knows powerful enough to bear a quarter of his feelings.

Edited 2017-05-29 17:39 (UTC)

"Probably," Jyn agrees carefully. She's not about to disagree. Whatever just happened in the tree broke something in Poe, she can tell that much, she's not going to tell him otherwise. He was gone for a week, they no doubt did all sorts of things to him.

She doesn't push away from the tree or move closer, giving him space. She knows Poe tends to comfort with touch, but Jyn just isn't that kind of person -- only with Cassian.

"What did they do?"

It takes a while for what she says to filter through the silent whirlwind that his mind's become. (The Resistance, mom, General Organa, how can you face your squadron, mom, what use can you even be, who gets Black One, mom.)

It takes a while, once it does filter through, for Poe to remember how to put words in order enough to answer.

"Vertigo." He says it like the word means murder. He can almost see the letters materialize in the air. "They grounded me."

It takes one try, two, three, before he finally manages, "I can't fly."

Edited 2017-05-29 21:10 (UTC)

Jyn has never quite understood the desperate need to fly. She'd seen the happiness on Hadder's face and how being in the pilot's seat made every bone in Bodhi's body relax. Even Cassian seemed calmer with his hands on the controls. But she doesn't get that bone deep need to be in the air. Jyn loves the stars, but she doesn't know why it's so important to constantly be up in them.

Still, she understands feeling trapped.

She settles down next to him after a moment, crossing her legs. "For now." He can't fly anyway, not here, at least, on a planet that hasn't gone further than their own moon and only a handful of times. There's nowhere for him to even go on this planet and there is certainly no airport in town. "Vertigo can't be permanent, it'll pass in time."

Jyn isn't good at offering hope, not yet.

This time, he catches on a little faster.

For now. Vertigo can't be permanent.

He has no confidence that it will pass. No reason to believe that they would undo what they've done. He doesn't have that kind of faith in the enemy. That's what they are now--the enemy. Not a mystery, not a force to be studied and measured while they wait for an opening. They're something to be found and destroyed.

Somewhere in the middle of that train of thought, he stood up.

They did it. They can undo it.

Okay, so, maybe she is too good at offering hope.

When he stands, Jyn leaps to her feet, stepping in front of him. She recognizes the reckless, determined look in his eyes. She'd seen it in every single member of the Rogue One crew that went to Scarif. It's a suicidal combination of half stupidity, half obstinacy.

"No."

She doesn't know what he is thinking but it is no.

"Please get out of the way, Jyn."

He barely recognizes his own voice. He wants to tell her that the coldness, the anger isn't for her. For a moment shame gives him pause. Poe looks away, considers backing down. And instead, he just... turns to her left and starts walking that way back toward town.

"Don't make me stop you."

Jyn doesn't plead, she's begged three times in her life and every time it was in the face of her parents dying. Her tone isn't pleading but there is a definitive beseeching quality to her voice. This rings of Hadder wanting so desperately to join the resistance...

"Poe."

He stops. If she'd thrown a punch, stepped in front of him again, done a half-dozen other things, he would have just kept going. Or, he amends realistically, tried to keep going. But she just says his name. How many fights has someone been able to stop him, just saying his name like a question or a petition?

He lets out a breath too long and too broken to be considered a sigh.

"I told you. I've been flying since I was three." It doesn't begin to cover everything that means. How his mother let him hold the flightstick the second time they went up together, how she taught him to hang on to it while she maneuvered so he knew the feel of each jink and roll she could get out of her A-wing by the time he was five. The nights he spent sleeping in the A-wing after she died, his father doing nothing but bringing him a blanket and a pillow and telling him to leave them there until he was ready to come back inside.

The way even now, sometimes, he would swear that old ship still smells like her.

"They can take a lot, but they can't have the sky."

Edited 2017-05-30 02:11 (UTC)

"They haven't. There isn't a sky here to have, this planet is stuck in the dark ages, they've taken nothing from you."

Now Jyn moves in front of him. He's half a foot taller than her, at least three stone heavier than her, she knows she can drop him easily, but she doesn't move to even touch him, just lingering in front of him so he can't continue.

"They've taken something you already can't have. You've been grounded the moment you woke up on this planet," Jyn tells him, willing him to realize the truth. Maybe she should have talked Zorahda down like this on Wobani, but these changes she knows were brought on by Jedha and Eadu and Scarif, by her stupid crew and the ember of hope they breathed into a flame. "They're manipulating you. Engaging them is what caused this in the first place. Don't give them another chance on their terms."

She's right. The fact that she's right settles like another new weight across his shoulders. He's been looking at this place like turbulence, a temporary problem to be quickly resolved so he can get back to the real fight.

They might be stuck here. They might be stuck here for a while. Crashing through the front doors of the hospital and punching the nearest doctor, however appealing, isn't the way to fight this.

He almost says I don't like being controlled, but isn't that what she just said they're doing? Manipulating him. Poe drags a hand through his hair, helpless and helplessly frustrated.

"Can't I punch one doctor? Just a little punch?" He's joking. Mostly. He's mostly joking.

She's oddly relieved she doesn't have to knock his ass into the ground, which is odd only because Jyn thrives in violence. That makes sense to her. This is well out of her league.

"No, Cassian would be cross. Now come on, I told him and BB-8 to meet us at his house." That's still happening, whether Poe likes it or not. "You're going to tell him everything you told me."

Cassian is the spy, he's the one that wants to know everything. Jyn just wants to rest, why doesn't she ever get to rest? She's been running for her entire life.

"Yes ma'am."

He manages to give her a crisp salute (joking though it may be) by virtue of years of practice. Certainly he doesn't feel like being military-precise right now. He just feels... tired. It's nothing he's used to. He's been tired before, physically drained, but this runs deeper than that.

He doesn't like it.

"Thank you." He starts walking again, this time without the same violent purpose. "By the way."

Her hand waves to brush off his thanks, if she is honest, there is something selfish in keeping him safe. She's already lost Bodhi, the pilot, she's tired of losing people. Poe, somehow, became one of her people. As much as she sometimes wants to slap him.

"I've been in prison before, remember? I understand feeling trapped." She doesn't know if the town is a prison, per se, but she knows that not being able to fly or be up high is definitely a trapped feeling for Poe.

Also. "If you ever salute me again, I will break your hand."

"Yes ma'am." He starts to salute again, but if she looks at him it will definitely become an innocent forehead scratch.

The silence between them feels comfortable enough. Poe lets it last, for as long as it takes to get his thoughts in order.

It takes a little longer than normal.

"I'm sorry. For disappearing like I did." Doesn't matter that he didn't know that's what would happen. (It doesn't matter what they did to him, how much he can't remember.)

Maybe Jyn should apologize for avoiding him when he came back yesterday. She probably should, but Jyn doesn't believe in apologies.

Instead: "Hand breaking applies to ma'am as well."

"Yessir." He gives her a sidelong look, wondering how much he can get away with before she actually hauls off and smacks him.

Funnily enough, it helps him feel a little more normal. A little less like the world just came down around his ears.

He's quiet until they're almost out of the trees. "Cassian told me you were angry." He pauses, trying to put this the right way. "Wouldn't normally be happy about something like that. But I was, a little. Not that you were angry. But you, y'know. That there was a reason you would be." Poe glances at her again. "I'll be more careful. I can't promise I'll be as careful as I probably should be, but you're right. The next time has to be on our terms."

Well. Cassian is going to be smacked, that's for damn sure.

Her mouth slants into an unhappy line because Jyn doesn't like to feel her emotions, much less hear about them from someone else. If it's something she's just meant to get used to, it's going to take a lot longer for her to get used to it.

She decides, quite quickly, that she also doesn't want touch that and so she changes the subject again. "When were you born?"

He'll roll with it. He's said what he wants her to know--the knowledge is there, for her to take or leave. He's getting better at moving with her when she zigs instead of zagging. It's almost like a game, one whose outcome he's still failing to predict.

He'll roll with it, but it isn't lost on him what the question means.

"Two years after the Battle of Yavin--that was the same year as the Battle of Scarif."

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