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.

Threaded | Flat

BB-8 needs a polishing. He's picked up some oil streaks and, in the oil streaks, bits of dirt and hay.

He trundles along next to Poe, who looks very much the same. Engine grease, dirt, a coating of sweat tacking down his tank top and his hair. His jeans are filthy, he's got a plaid shirt knotted around his waist, and he feels--dangerously, maybe stupidly--happy. There's something about spending a day at work and seeing tangible results at the end of it. Fixing primitive farming machinery is both a puzzle and a pleasure. It's so simple that the simplicity itself starts to be complex.

More than a good day's work, though, Poe remembers. He remembers Kes Dameron. Kes the rancher, the tracker, the father, not the file he's had BB-8 recite to him a half-dozen times. He remembers his dad's face.

So there's a bounce in his step and an obliviousness in his attitude when he walks into Go Ask Alice to get a coffee. Until he catches sight of a familiar blonde head and freezes.

BB-8 rolls a few more feet before halting, looking back, and chirping a question.

Shit.

Jyn doesn't know it, but she's always been something of a night owl. It's not just insomnia and nightmares that keep her from sleep, it's a natural inclination to stay up in front of a screen. It used to be her drawing pad, then a data pad, then an unfortunate cell mate keeping her too scared to sleep. It's for the best that she doesn't remember that.

It does make the nightmares of an oppressively humid beach and Cassian so hurt in her arms and then nothing before she wakes up panting and shaking, sheets soaked through with sweat, a little bit harder to handle.

Which is what finds her outside at 2 in the morning, running a circuit around the town to shake herself out of her nightmare and exhaust her to the point that she can fall back into a dreamless sleep when she's done. It's been working and she doesn't always run alone, but tonight she is alone and seemingly more wired than ever. Her run turns into pacing around the town's park, more of a town green really. Her fingers worry around the hem of Cassian's stolen tee shirt, trying to push out her excess energy when she spots a familiar bobble of orange and white.

"Morning BB-8."

He doesn't run. That's the concession he makes to discretion. He doesn't run out of the woods and straight to Cassian or Jyn's front door. He stops at his place first, gathers up some fruit, a blanket, the props for his lie. Then he decides to go to Cassian's first. From Jyn's dramatic entrance last night, Poe is going to go out on a limb and say the two won't be straying far from each other for a while.

He whistles his way to Cassian's house, blanket slung over his shoulder with the fruit bundled up in it, but he's tense. Wired. Ready to do something, possibly something stupid. All of that is evident in the sharp-edged smile on his face when he knocks on Cassian's door. Whichever one of them answers, Poe says, "Found a great picnic spot. We should go. Me and you two."

Now.

Edited 2017-05-22 00:52 (UTC)

Poe's done the rounds. Checked in. Learned about the murders that happened while these people had him wherever they had him. A week, vanished, like smoke, and he wakes up to people dead at the hands of someone trapped here just like them. He needs to clear his head. The stars are starting to come out--he's learned their names by now, their constellations, the fact that supposedly there's no life orbiting any of them. That's hard enough for him to believe.

He settles the ladder against the side of the house, clambers up, starts making his way toward the peak, where he usually sits.

He doesn't get all the way there.

Vertigo hits him, so abrupt and powerful that he's not even aware he's falling. The world swoops, dips, grays around the edges-- and then he has a giddy freefall sensation and the vertigo is gone, and there's the edge of the roof, slipping past. The ladder tips over backwards, and Poe follows it fast toward the ground.

There's an uncomfortable sense of deja vu when Poe walks out of the hospital a second time. As soon as he woke up, he was out of there. No permission, no forms to sign, no paying attention to the nurses who tried to stop him to get both.

It's like he can't quite breathe until he's in the open air again.

They were so close.

"We talk too much," he says under his breath, ironic.

He scrubs his face with both hands, trying to put his thoughts in order. He should have looked for Steve on his way out, Steve or the others who were with them. Now that he's out, though, his priorities are Cassian, Jyn, the General, Caroline, and BB-8. Steve will come later, once he's sure those who were peripherally involved are safe.

So to that end--he heads for Go Ask Alice, deciding he may as well start there.

He's catchable anywhere between the hospital and Main Street.

Edited 2017-05-27 21:07 (UTC)

Poe isn't sure how long he's been up in this tree, but he also isn't sure which way is down.

He's hanging on to the trunk. He knows that much. The roughness against his forearms, under his palms, tells him that much. It's the one solid thing in his world right now. He feels close to vomiting, his head is starting to pound. It's like being in a tailspin in high gravity.

But this isn't a passing thing. It's not going away, the way it did when he was on the roof. He needs to get out of this tree before he completely loses his balance and falls out of this tree. Poe kinda doubts Caroline will be there to catch him a second time.

Threaded | Flat

May 6th - Closed to Caroline

may 8 - look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness

May 20 - closed to Cassian and Jyn