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I don't understand at best, and cannot speak for all the rest
Who: Cassian Andor (¿y ustedes?)
Where: ALL AROUND TOWN. Seriously. Pick a spot, I'll come up with a reason for him to be there.
When: May 7th - May 14th
What: This is an open catchall, y'all. There will be starters in threads as they come to me, but feel free to make your own! Come meet the man, the myth, the Go Ask Alice employee.
Warnings: None, yet. Will put specific warnings in comment headers.
[Open]
Where: ALL AROUND TOWN. Seriously. Pick a spot, I'll come up with a reason for him to be there.
When: May 7th - May 14th
What: This is an open catchall, y'all. There will be starters in threads as they come to me, but feel free to make your own! Come meet the man, the myth, the Go Ask Alice employee.
Warnings: None, yet. Will put specific warnings in comment headers.
[Open]
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On a certain level it's strange, because he's not used to this sort of casual physical contact. Even with Pietro, Cassian often vacillates between a hug or something more distant, but Poe is just...easily there. It's weird. It's the kind of weird Cassian wouldn't mind getting used to, honestly. ]
"The important things" like ensuring people get even more of a sugar fix. [ He shakes his head, giving Poe's arm a pat. ] Very different from the important things I'm used to.
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Poe's expression shifts, briefly distant, his thoughts tinged with a longing so fierce it aches. ] Yeah. You and me both.
[ He finishes with the worst of the mess, easing the door of the stove shut on the ruined dinner and not bothering to clean up the inside of the stove for now. That's. For later. He doesn't want to get glop on whatever Cassian is cooking. ] There's someone I need to introduce you to, sooner or later. Someone I know well.
[ Poe trusts Cassian to pick up on the fact that it's someone from home that he knows well, someone he knows for real. ]
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He's probably a great recruiter, however. ]
I'm guessing this isn't the roommate that shares Jyn's accent and love of food?
[ Yes, that's what we're calling that.
Who is it, Poe? ]
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Her name's Leia Organa. [ It makes him feel incredibly weird not to say General before that. But Poe is getting better at speaking in code, even if he's terrible at controlling his expressions. As long as he thinks of it like a strategy game, it's even tolerable. A challenge he can accept, instead of an obstacle to resent. ] That nickname some of the kids use for her, 'General'. It really fits.
[ Okay he's not GOOD at talking in code but HE IS GETTING BETTER. ]
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He'd been doing a decent job of not examining too closely just whom the school administrator he'd talked to at the Bake Sale was, mostly because it was just too strange. Knowing of someone when they were younger than you and then meeting them when they're older and you're the same. ]
I know her father. [ Because that's not as strange. Somehow. He can't say 'knew', that just makes his entire existence questionable on a level he needs more alcohol for. ]
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Caraya's breath, this is weird. It's very easy for him to forget how weird. That introduction was such a blur of information, BB-8 pouring facts out, Cassian explaining his own part in it all--
I've probably been dead for a long while for both of them.
There's that old cliche, Poe has heard it, read it. The air going out of the room. He can hear the soft hum of electricity in the lights. The rumble of the fridge. BB-8 rolling away with the dirty towels, carrying them off to the laundry. ]
Cass. When did you die?
[ Poe shakes his head, dazed by the question and the need to ask it. Cassian is here, alive now. They're both--they're all alive.
(Caroline: I died once and when I was brought back to life...)
Never mind the impossibility. Never mind that particular impossibility for now. ]
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3276, 77 on the Lothal Calendar. Same year the Death Star fired on Jedha, and Scarif.
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The Battle of Scarif. 0 BBY.
Poe kneels to get out the bottle of tequila. It's the one he's heard Cassian mention, so he got some. Both to try it and to share it. This seems like a time to do both. ] Should this be mixed with something?
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[ He could ask a question, maybe. How much longer was it until Poe was born? What happened to Bail Organa, to Mon Mothma? (He's not going to ask about Davits Draven. If the man got his way, no one would have known him enough to remember him a generation on.) He doesn't, though.
This is the first time he's talked about it, and it's harder than he'd expected somehow. ]
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He's not sure where to start, what to say, what there even is to say.
Rip off the bandage? Ease in to it all?
Or has that particular bandage already been ripped, with that particular question? ]
How much do you want to know about what happened after?
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He slams the first glass, flinching quickly before giving a little shake of his head. ]
GIve me the primer version.
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Poe grimaces. He's not sure, suddenly, if tequila is meant to get you drunk or wake you the hell up. It certainly seems capable of the latter. ]
After Jedha, the Battle of Scarif, General Organa got the Death Star plans. [ There doesn't seem to be much point in pretending Leia isn't what she is, if they're going to talk about this. ] Princess, then.
[ Because that needs saying now. ] She got the plans to the rebels, but she was captured herself. They did it. The Alliance -- Luke Skywalker, Leia's brother -- he fired the shot that took down the first Death Star.
[ All right. Poe pours himself another glass. This... this isn't old war stories, this isn't tales twenty or thirty years removed from the violence that birthed them. This is Cassian's life, his death, his movement. ] But before the Alliance destroyed it, they used it. To try and break the General -- the Princess. The Empire destroyed Alderaan. Bail Organa was there at the time. I'm sorry, Cassian.
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[ Yes, that is what Cassian focuses on...as opposed to the destruction of Alderaan, as opposed to the deaths of people he knew, or that the Princess of Alderaan gained a brother, lost a father and a people.
Those are important details, sorted away and tucked into a box where Cassian will examine them in the dark, by himself, and wonder what he should feel other than an echoing emptiness. I died for this and it was not enough. Well, he thinks, who are you to presume your death would ever be enough? Countless of beings die in war.
He is no different.
He narrows his eyes and pours himself another drink. Jyn won't react well to that particular bit of news, he's pretty sure.]
How many were there?
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[ Except for, as his father put it, "cleanup." (It's another Death Star.) Except for Jakku, (I wish that were the case.) and the Empire's loyalists, (This was the Death Star.) and the attacks on Naboo and other occupied worlds.
Except--
Except.
Except for those lights he keeps remembering. Except for those awful red streamers and their nova terminations.
Starkiller Base.
Poe leans hard against the counter, waves of uncomfortable, internal heat washing from head to stomach, one after another. He remembers. He remembers being told, now, what those lights had been. He remembers coming out of hyperspace and making the approach at Takodana with those lights faint above them. Not having time to wonder. The adrenaline rush of the fight, the triumph of seeing the First Order retreat knowing he hadn't lost anyone.
Then being told what had happened to the Hosnian System, and having to tell the pilots who flew with him. The rest already knew.
And he just told Cassian that there were two Death Stars. Poe imagines being informed of a second Starkiller, when they haven't even conquered the first.
In a whisper: ] Fuck.
[ As soon as Cassian sets his glass down, Poe pulls him into a hug. ]
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Cassian should be more upset, he thinks, or maybe just upset in a different way. Right now, though, his mind is preoccupied with wondering what he'll tell Jyn, if she asks, if she wants to know, if she finds out on her own before he knows the answers to either of those first two questions - then it spins to Leia, and how strange it must be to have lived through all this history - and then back to Poe.
In that meantime, he has drained the glass and set it back. The hug is unexpected, but not exactly unwelcome.
For the first time in a while Cassian lets himself reciprocate it fully, hoping it's not too awkward.
He wants to ask what happened after. How long peace lasted, and what changed, who changed it, but. Maybe taking a moment isn't a terrible idea. ]
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He pulls back a little, enough to grip Cassian's shoulders. ] You're the reason the Alliance survived at Yavin. I hope you realize that. Without what you did, it all would have ended right there. The Empire would have won.
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[ Not because he wouldn't otherwise believe Poe! But that is his signal, as it were, that there are more questions he is not up to asking right now. ]
I'm glad. At least the mission was successful. [ Cassian swallows, and nods. ]
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He's pretty sure he knows how Cassian would react to being called a hero, so he refrains, at least from doing it aloud. But he feels it acutely, the honor of knowing this man, so similar to the honor of knowing the General.
Poe knocks back his drink, squints, and clears his throat. ] Ow.
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Still. Cassian gives a little shrug, and a smile. ]
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[ Youthful restraint becoming force of habit over time. Know your limits, never pass them, never fly with booze in your system. You drink, you're grounded. No exceptions. ] Maybe once or twice since.
[ Bottoms up. ]
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[ Because he's never had the time and space to do it. Here, he keeps forcing himself to go to work, to make a routine, to be present for people. Can't go drowning his sorrows. ]
So if I'm an asshole, here is my apology.
[ Cheers, Poe. ]
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