And I'll use you as a warning sign

[volitaunt]

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.

Comments

[volitaunt]

"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."

[realists]

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?"

[volitaunt]

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."

[realists]

"Two years after." It's an uncomfortable feeling, thinking about the after. Thinking about parts of her life as the Battle of. It sounds like something she'd hear on the radio in Coruscant, stories about the battles and heroes of the Clone Wars before Lyra would shut it off. Her mother never liked thinking about the Clone Wars, Jyn was simply too young to remember anything except being carried around of her father's back, world always framed on one side by Galen's hair.

His parents weren't part of the teams that went to Scarif as reinforcements then, good. Cassian knew his parents because they were in the Alliance, not Poe.

"The war was over in two years?" She doesn't ask about peace because Saw and life had burned that idea out of her mind. Peace didn't last, it couldn't, but wars took time to gain traction, the illusion of peace could last for years.

[volitaunt]

"Five, not counting cleanup."

His father always put it that way. Cleanup. Like the months (longer) of hunting down pockets of loyalists and freeing Imperial-held worlds was something that could be managed with a housekeeping droid. His father never said that much about the transition from total war to blood and blaster janitorial work. It's easier these days to imagine why.

[realists]

Five years, yeah, sounds more reasonable. Poe was a baby born in the middle of war, just like she was. Three when the war ended, she wonders idly if his memories of war were as innocent as hers. She can hope, she supposes.

But the war ended, the Death Star destroyed with her father's plans. He'd done it after all, eventually. They had been successful and this proves it more than any assurances could have. Poe grew up free of the Empire.

Her nod comes slow, an acknowledgement more than anything, she's still listening even if she's drifted off. "What happened to Yavin? Mon Mothma? The council?"

[volitaunt]

"Yavin is great. It's beautiful. My parents settled there after they mustered out. There are ranches, farms--the old base is a museum now."

Which might be too much information, but Poe genuinely loves his home. He could talk about it all the way to Cassian's, probably, but she asked other questions and not everyone cares as much about the landmarks and developments of a tiny Outer Rim moon.

"Mon Mothma and the council helped found the New Republic. She served as a leader in the Senate until she retired. The General never talks about her with anything but respect."

[realists]

The General, right. Organa's daughter. The New Republic though, what a fascinating idea. Jyn was so tiny when the Republic fell the first time, she only remembers growing up under the Empire, under Emperor Palpatine. She's heard stories, of course, but it wasn't the same as knowing. It still isn't, she can't truly fathom the idea of peace.

Her head bobs in another nod, taking it all in.

It's odd to think that this conversation is history to Poe, the strange sense of discomfort makes her shove her hands in her pockets. "And the General's father?" What has Bail Organa been up to since the council outvoted her?

[volitaunt]

Poe's expression clouds with the memory of the night Cassian found out about the second Death Star. "He died. Before the Battle of Yavin."

Should he tell her that it was the Death Star's doing? Should he tell her about Alderaan, the warning to the galaxy? Should he leave that to Cassian, or would that just be ducking the responsibility of it?

He doesn't want to lay it all off on someone else. He doesn't want to lie. And if she finds out the truth later, and that he knew and said nothing, he'll have betrayed her in a way. He reaches for her but doesn't touch her, fingers hovering for a moment over her arm in the ghost of a comforting gesture, before he lets his hand fall.

"The Empire used the Death Star on Alderaan."

[realists]

It wasn't as if Jyn and Bail Organa had a deep, emotional connection. She'd barely met him, she certainly didn't know him. But he's agreed with her, he'd tried to see Scarif through, she'd felt pride when he looked at her. He was the kind of man her parents would have liked, the kind of person her mother would have told her was a Good Man.

And the Death Star had killed him and his people just like it had done with Jedha. She supposes it was called a planet killed for a reason.

Her eyes close and she comes to a stop, breathing slowly and purposefully. It doesn't matter that she didn't know Bail Organa, she's grieving for all of Alderaan, all of Jedha, all her friends that died on Scarif. All because of her.

[volitaunt]

He stops when she does, silent, wanting nothing more than to comfort her in some way. But there's nothing he can say that will lessen the weight of those billions of lives, and any apologies or sympathetic words would be like trying to wrap a bleeding wound with paper.

So he waits, and breathes with her, and asks the Force, the universe, the Powers that Be, to send any mercy they have to Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor. To let them find solace, and maybe some peace, once this nightmare is over.

[realists]

Eventually, Jyn swears in Huttese -- they have the best swears -- and her eyes open with a deep breath. She doesn't think she'll be asking any more questions about the war. She knows how it ends, she doesn't need to know the details, not yet.

Not when she is sober.

She takes a step forward, jerking into motion. "Tell me about Yavin."

[volitaunt]

He can do that. He can do that with pleasure.

He starts close to home, his parents' ranch, the bantha herds and koyo orchards, the jungles beyond. Skies he memorized by heart. His father, his mother, his uncle L'ulo. Festivals, competitions. The moon races, where pilots had to circle each of the Yavini satellites before making a final lap around Yavin 4. Stargazing and meteor showers, the colony market, the annual harvest fair. It's all very mundane, really, but Poe talks with the same passion he'd use to recount the deciding lap of the Five Sabers. He's in the middle of telling her about the noisemaker he made when he was twelve to try and scare the herd into their pens faster--an adventure that ended with a broken arm and fences to fix--when he realizes they're almost at Cassian's.

"...Anyway, it didn't go well."

[realists]

Hearing about Yavin and how it's more than just a stronghold for the Alliance makes her feel better, they could move on from that enough for Poe to grow up there and that strikes her as important.

It all sounds so wonderful in a foreign kind of way, Jyn doesn't really... understand communities. Even on Skuhl, she didn't often venture into town unless it was to the pub or the market. They didn't have moon races or fairs and she didn't much care about the stars. Still, the idea of bantha herds makes her feel at home.

Papa had loved Bantha milk.

"You're lucky you didn't get gored."

[volitaunt]

"I am. But my dad liked to keep his horns clean."

Said with--okay, not a completely straight face. He's fighting a smile and his eyes reflect it. She's managed to accidentally lift him out of the numb fog the revelation in the tree left drifting through his psyche.

When he looks from her to Cassian's house, some of that fog returns. He's not looking forward to explaining their discovery.

[ouzel]

Cassian came home to an empty house - not terribly surprising, considering Jyn's habits (and the fact that she has her own home she can retreat to any point she likes) and Junyoung's work scheduule - only to be interrupted a few minutes later by a very stressed yet somehow slowmoving astromech currently struggling with the warring ideas of Poe is in trouble and move slowly and calm down. It's not too difficult for Cassian to presume that it's Jyn's way of saying it may be an emergency but she is Dealing With It, and if there's anything Cassian trusts, it's Jyn.

Possibly to blow a thing up, but he's also pretty sure 'a thing' is unlikely to be 'Poe Dameron' today, so he talks BB-8 down and making him a promise that if there's been no update in half an hour they'll go out together and see what's what.

Fortunately the pair in question show up and Cassian opens the door so BB-8 can roll down the stairs and assault Poe with questions about his current state. Cassian takes one glance at the two of them and nods, slightly. "Anyone hungry?"

He presumes the answer is yes, at all times, but.

[realists]

As always she rolls her eyes at Poe before Cassian opens the door and she is too distracted to, say, punch Poe in the kidney. It's lucky really that Cassian is there to act like the diplomatic buffer between Jyn and Poe's terrible jokes.

"Poe is," Jyn supplies helpfully, pushing forward to overtake Poe and reach Cassian first. Her fingers brush against the back of his hand briefly, the most fleeting touch, before she slips right back him and into the house.

She veers directly into his bedroom and closes the door behind her, throwing herself under the covers. She needs a moment, she needs many, quiet moments to herself to deal with--

Everything.

[volitaunt]

He hears the door inside shut and drags a hand through his hair, worry for her crowding out his own misery.

She doesn't even know, yet, about the second Death Star. That, he not sure he'll ever tell her. That, it may be better for Cassian to share.

"She asked about after the war. And about Bail Organa."

[ouzel]

"Ah," is Cassian's response to that, because while she has essentially holed herself up in his room for the time being that small touch has worked to reassure him that he can - for the moment - forgo following up with her on how she's doing.

It's about as clear of a sign for 'I'm not okay but that's okay' that he could expect from Jyn in company of any kind.

"He stood up for her, when the Council argued over the plans, over Scarif." He would have rathered to follow Bail Organa's ideas on the subject than the decision that was reached, but. Either way, they may as well go inside.

[volitaunt]

"There's a statue of him outside of the Senate building on Hosnian Prime." It takes Poe a moment to realize he's speaking in the present tense, that it should be past, but it's too late to correct himself without bringing it to Cassian's attention.

Leave it, he thinks, his heart aching. He would rather talk about anything than Hosnian Prime.

He follows Cassian in, closing the door behind him, eyes immediately going to the place he knows a camera will be.

He sticks his tongue out at it, because he is a mature adult.

[ouzel]

Cassian nods. "I assume you didn't tell her about the other...?" The other Death Star, he means, and he assumes that because...well. Because Jyn is in a quiet, familiar room instead of breaking something.

He doesn't want to know, but he needs to know, because he is the secret-keeper. Of some things, anyway.

"What was happening with you in the tree?" Hope you didn't think you could avoid that conversation, Poe.

[volitaunt]

"No, I didn't." It's probably more than his life is worth to say anything about that.

Poe taps BB-8 lightly with the side of his foot. "Tattletale."

The little droid beeps guiltily and Poe immediately relents, reaching down to pat his head dome. Morose BB-8 is the worst.

Poe draws in a breath, long and slow, like he's bearing himself up to report on a failed mission. "I got stuck."

[ouzel]

Cassian doesn't repeat that statement as a way to request clarification, but he's tempted. As it is, instead of nodding he goes into the kitchen, to the fridge, and starts trying to figure out what can be served without too much preparation.

They're gonna start with a fruit salad.

"Was Jyn able to help you down?"

[volitaunt]

"She was."

Poe crosses his arms and leans back against the counter, out of the way, still close at hand. He knows he's being uncommunicative. Which isn't him. He knows that, too. But he's sinking into the morass of the feelings kept at bay by talking to Jyn.

The sky is hope. He might not be able to reach it from here anyway, but what they did still sends a message. We can take anything from you.

"¿Extrañas Fest?" Poe, predictably, speaks with a Yavini accent. Of course, his father (and thus Poe himself) would say that Cassian speaks with a Festian accent, but that's neither here nor there.

[ouzel]

"Nací allí," Cassian replies, which isn't really an answer but it's been so long since he's talked about Fest at all that while he's more or less okay with the change in topic he's a little thrown that it's been shunted onto him, now.

"Mi madre habría odiado tu acento," which is as much of an opening to ask about his mother as he's ever given anyone. So. Should probably take it, Poe.