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]

"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.

[volitaunt]

"No contestaste mi pregunta, y mi madre se pudo alimentar tu madre a una bantha," he says, grinning briefly. Very briefly.

"You and your mom, you're close?"

He knows why he's asking these questions. He knows what he's avoiding. That doesn't mean he isn't genuinely curious about Cassian's family and world. Cassian and Jyn are family, in practice now instead of just memory. And Fest is one place Poe hasn't been, or doesn't remember going.

(I don't remember has become such a loaded phrase.)

[ouzel]

Cassian smiles but it's tight, the way smiling at something that hurts a little tends to be.

"We were."

He takes a breath as he starts moving around the kitchen. "My mother was terrifying. Incredibly intelligent and unafraid of anything. She would walk into a room and demand respect, attention. No room for bullshit, or hiding behind consideration. She advocated for what was right.

But she had her vanities. The culture, the language, they were hers. On top of..." Cassian waves a hand, shrugs. His mother was beautiful, he remembers being told, but he has stronger memories of her voice and hands than her face, so he's not sure if he wants to say that exactly.

[volitaunt]

"Festian and Yavini or not, I think our mothers would either kill each other or love each other." Poe reaches out long enough to touch Cassian's shoulder.

"You lost her young." It's a guess, but Cassian talks about his mother in a way that's all too familiar. The way a person talks about a ghost, someone who will haunt them forever and forever stay half-unseen. "Me too."

[ouzel]

There's an 'mmhmm' kind of noise from Cassian, a nod to follow. He'd guessed, about Shara Bey, when Poe had asked him what she was like; even though that could have easily just been the amnesia everyone was blessed with.

"I don't think she'd be very pleased with me." All things considered. "But she would have liked you."

[volitaunt]

"Why not? The work you do, you've done, it saved billions of lives." Poe reaches out again, this time ruffling Cassian's hair lightly in a reverse of that move he remembers his cousin pulling on him so many times in a youth that never existed. "I'm proud of you."

He loves Cassian wholeheartedly, no reservations, none, and he'd throw down with anyone who bad-mouthed Cass the same way he would with anyone who talked shit about Finn. Even more so, probably, Poe realizes. He's known Cassian that much longer.

[ouzel]

Oh gods, the man is ruffling his hair. Last person to ruffle his hair was Kay and he was seventeen, no, nope, ducking away thank you.

But he does have a laugh startled out of him.

"Well. Thanks." Cassian gives a one-shouldered shrug. "People say the means justify the ends and that's at least half true. She'd still be disappointed in some of the choices I've made, though."

[volitaunt]

Cassian and Jyn continue to break his heart in increments. Their lives, their stories, the people they've lost. The people who judge them, even from the confines of their own imaginations.

"My mother would like you. Both my parents would." He smiles a little, for the first time saying what he's been thinking about almost since they met. "I want you to meet my father when this is all over."

He comes from a place where when it's all over seems like a time that can be reached. Whatever this place is, whatever they'll face going home. He'll never stop flying, maybe never stop fighting, but he believes in a future where he'll protect shipping lanes and drive off pirates, not face down armies backed by monsters in the dark. A future where he can be bored in the cockpit, and be grateful for the boredom.

He wants it now more than ever. He wants Jyn and Cassian to have lives without the shadow of war. He wants them to see worlds and moons like Yavin 4, where people don't survive; they live. They build. They work in concert for the sake of the future, not in defense of the present. "I think even he and Jyn would get along."

[ouzel]

There's a semblance of a smile, there, because Resistance people would like him. They'd see what he'd done as noble, somehow, as if all the blood he'd spilt while smiling meant nothing in the end.

Maybe it didn't, but Cassian's guilt tells him it did, and the knowledge that he would have removed himself from the entire equation too early to be any help to Jyn is a different kind of guilt, but guilt all the same.

"That would be something to see." Because Jyn doesn't really like getting along with anyone. She pushes, full expecting to get any real offer of friendship or family rejected outright or stolen from her at a moment's notice.

[volitaunt]

What Poe doesn't say is how good he thinks a trip to Yavin 4 would be for both Cassian and Jyn. For them to see the flourishing colony, the beautiful farms, the jungle undisturbed by military patrols or watchposts. He doesn't say how much he misses it, or his father, or the galaxy they both know.

He figures Cassian must miss it just as much.

"She would fit in well with the Pathfinders. A few of them live on Yavin 4." The ones who aren't still serving the Resistance. "Maybe we could go to Fest, too."

Maybe. Once things are calmer, the war won. His parents' peace restored.