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volitaunt) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
riverviewlogs2017-11-20 06:26 pm
volitaunt) wrote in riverviewlogs2017-11-20 06:26 pm
[open] so don't stop me now
who: Poe Dameron (and by extension BB-8) + YOU
what: Catchall log
when: The remainder of November
where: Multiple locations
warnings: None at the moment, will edit as needed.
i. perimeter guard: aerial survey & exploration
[ Poe ismaking out with getting to know the Intrepid. At the moment he's underneath the ship on a rolling dolly, keeping up a steady stream of commentary to BB-8 while he roots around in an open panel.
BB-8 is next to him, projecting a hologram of the inner workings of the ship. ]
--deflectors aren't bad, but this baby has nothing on an X-wing. No offense. [ That last bit is directed at the ship, which he pats before going back into its insides. ] I'm thinking we can squeeze a little more speed out of these thrusters if we modify the thermal vents. What do you think, buddy?
[ BB-8 chirrups his support for the idea as Poe emerges again, hair sticking up from sweat and face marked with grease. ] Need to clear it with Jim first. Man, if Jess were here, she'd go to town on this thing.
ii. also... perimeter.... guard..........
[ Poe isn't really the weight lifting type. It's boring, for one thing. A static exercise. If he can't be in the air, he'd rather be in motion.
Which is why he's in the Perimeter Guard's fitness area whaling away on a few of the standing targets instead. Kicks, punches, all relatively basic moves executed at high speed. He knows enough to get by in a hand-to-hand combat scenario, but he's no advanced martial artist. The moves he knows are enough to get him a full-body workout, and that's good enough for him. His accuracy isn't great, not when his muscles protest this particularly vigorous abuse, not with the numbness in his arms and legs that gives way to tingling pain somewhere close to the surface of his skin. It makes him grateful the First Order didn't go after his hands. He can deal with the time it takes for the rest to heal.
--Also, he's talking to BB-8 the whole time he moves, conversation punctuated with grunts and the sounds of impact. ] --can't let ourselves get comfortable, you know? We-- need to be ready to-- move at a moment's notice.
[ He pauses, and BB-8 rolls over to the edge of the practice mat with a towel held in one maintenance grip and a water bottle in another. Poe takes both, taking a drink and wiping his face, speaking while his face is in the towel. ] Need to figure out a high-speed way to get a hold of Rey and Finn, so if they line the portal up or whatever it is they need to do we can hit it together. A kind of emergency signal.
iii. a park
[ He's jogging, focused on the motion of legs and arms, entirely absorbed in the rhythm. BB-8 rolls along in his wake, the droid more interested in their surroundings and the things in them than keeping up. At least since they're in public he's not rambling at his droid this time??
But you can bet if BB-8 sees something interesting or someone familiar, he'll detour away from his owner. ]
iv. a bar!
[ Poe doesn't drink much, and he doesn't let his pilots drink either. It's too much of a risk when they need to be ready to move the second intel or orders come in. Still, he likes people watching, and bars are a pretty good place to do it. (BB-8 elected to stay at the communal housing building.)
He is definitely not trying to avoid sleeping, because he's definitely not getting more tense with every day that goes past. Old habits, though. He's nursing a tonic with lime, since it's what the bar tender suggested for someone who doesn't want alcohol. ]
v. wildcard
[ Something else? Hit me! ]
what: Catchall log
when: The remainder of November
where: Multiple locations
warnings: None at the moment, will edit as needed.
i. perimeter guard: aerial survey & exploration
[ Poe is
BB-8 is next to him, projecting a hologram of the inner workings of the ship. ]
--deflectors aren't bad, but this baby has nothing on an X-wing. No offense. [ That last bit is directed at the ship, which he pats before going back into its insides. ] I'm thinking we can squeeze a little more speed out of these thrusters if we modify the thermal vents. What do you think, buddy?
[ BB-8 chirrups his support for the idea as Poe emerges again, hair sticking up from sweat and face marked with grease. ] Need to clear it with Jim first. Man, if Jess were here, she'd go to town on this thing.
ii. also... perimeter.... guard..........
[ Poe isn't really the weight lifting type. It's boring, for one thing. A static exercise. If he can't be in the air, he'd rather be in motion.
Which is why he's in the Perimeter Guard's fitness area whaling away on a few of the standing targets instead. Kicks, punches, all relatively basic moves executed at high speed. He knows enough to get by in a hand-to-hand combat scenario, but he's no advanced martial artist. The moves he knows are enough to get him a full-body workout, and that's good enough for him. His accuracy isn't great, not when his muscles protest this particularly vigorous abuse, not with the numbness in his arms and legs that gives way to tingling pain somewhere close to the surface of his skin. It makes him grateful the First Order didn't go after his hands. He can deal with the time it takes for the rest to heal.
--Also, he's talking to BB-8 the whole time he moves, conversation punctuated with grunts and the sounds of impact. ] --can't let ourselves get comfortable, you know? We-- need to be ready to-- move at a moment's notice.
[ He pauses, and BB-8 rolls over to the edge of the practice mat with a towel held in one maintenance grip and a water bottle in another. Poe takes both, taking a drink and wiping his face, speaking while his face is in the towel. ] Need to figure out a high-speed way to get a hold of Rey and Finn, so if they line the portal up or whatever it is they need to do we can hit it together. A kind of emergency signal.
iii. a park
[ He's jogging, focused on the motion of legs and arms, entirely absorbed in the rhythm. BB-8 rolls along in his wake, the droid more interested in their surroundings and the things in them than keeping up. At least since they're in public he's not rambling at his droid this time??
But you can bet if BB-8 sees something interesting or someone familiar, he'll detour away from his owner. ]
iv. a bar!
[ Poe doesn't drink much, and he doesn't let his pilots drink either. It's too much of a risk when they need to be ready to move the second intel or orders come in. Still, he likes people watching, and bars are a pretty good place to do it. (BB-8 elected to stay at the communal housing building.)
He is definitely not trying to avoid sleeping, because he's definitely not getting more tense with every day that goes past. Old habits, though. He's nursing a tonic with lime, since it's what the bar tender suggested for someone who doesn't want alcohol. ]
v. wildcard
[ Something else? Hit me! ]
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That's the problem, though: needing help. Admitting there's a reason to need it. ]
I have to do this.
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[ Finn couldn't be more adamant about that.
The door they walked in through is the same door they can walk out of. They can leave. They can leave anytime they want. They could walk up to the front and say they need to put off the rest of this boot camp for a week, to recover from unrelated incidents, and they'd probably get it without a hitch.
Poe's been trending like he needs a medic, and Finn thinks he could settle for seeing him rest at bare minimum. ]
You're making a choice. You can make a different one.
[ Because he will follow through on dragging them out, if he has to. ]
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I have to do this, Finn.
[ It's not about making a choice. It's not nearly that simple. ]
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Why?
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[ Poe freezes, a numb tingle that has nothing to do with nerve damage washing through him. He just said that. He just said it out loud, released it into the air like poisonous gas, made it into something that can't be contained. He said it where people can hear, can judge, can pity him.
Poe takes a step back, closing his eyes against the pounding in his head. ] Forget it. [ Hesitation, then: ] Please.
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Okay, now this makes a lot more sense. Suddenly it's no wonder that nothing's been working. Poe's outburst presents a clarity that wasn't there before, that Finn didn't think to seek out, now replacing the hard lines in his expression with realization.
With everything that happened after getting away from the Finalizer, it was easy to let it slip out of his mind. Why they deployed to Jakku, why Ren had Poe taken aboard in the first place.
Finn doesn't agree to forget it. He doesn't plan to. It's just not much of a conversation to kick off in open space. ]
Come on. We're still sitting down.
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Yeah. All right.
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He's silent as they walk this time. He's silent for a while as they sit, straight-backed and letting his mind run a hundred miles a minute.
They don't get anything else from me.
There are a lot of things he thinks about saying. A couple of things he thinks he understands about as well as anyone ever could, if he could figure out where to start. He doesn't want to jump in on half a feeling, half a thought.
This isn't a problem he can fix, but he doesn't want to leave Poe alone to carry it. ]
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[ As though this is just about the injuries. As though it has anything to do with the injuries at all. He rubs his face with both hands, keeping his eyes shut. ] I was supposed to go in for another before....
[ A gesture toward their surroundings, the planet hanging in the sky. ]
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[ And what it doesn't, Poe all but outlined when he started snapping. It's a deliberate choice of words, same as Poe made a deliberate turn in the subject. ]
They don't do bacta treatments here, but you could see a medic. Finish out in less than a day.
[ He doesn't know that for sure in terms of the kinds of injuries interrogations leave behind, but he has to figure if he fell through the portal mostly-dead with a lightsaber wound and was on the streets maybe a day and a half later... it's possible. ]
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Then there’s the idiot fear that won’t let go, the worry that actually getting treatment wouldn’t help. Finn is living, breathing proof that whatever medical tech these people have is far better than what they’ve got at home.
A long silence, then: ] Okay.
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[ Finn feels the sharper edges of his anger start to smooth out. If Poe says he will, he will-- it's something. It's a start. Maybe he'll offer to go with later, just to be safe. He was supposed to follow up with the medics last week, he ignored the messages.
He lets another shorter stretch of quiet pass, hesitating. ]
I know what it's like to not wanna give them more than they already took from you. The second I decided to walk away from the First Order, it was all I could think about. We didn't lose the same things, but I still know what that does.
[ The anger. The shame. The bone-deep fear. The desperate attempts to ignore everything going on around him until he could feel like he'd finally done it right, finally gotten somewhere they couldn't reach. It's all still there, under the skin. ]
no subject
There's... [ Poe grants himself one weakness. He stares straight ahead instead of looking at his friend, studying a spot on the grass. ] Maybe five people know. The General-- I had t... It's in the report. Maybe five people know, Finn.
[ He doesn't want anyone else added to that number. ]
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I don't have to be the sixth.
[ Because if he pushes it, if he tries to force Poe's hand here, he's not doing the right thing by any means. Because there are things he tries to keep buried, too, even if they can't stay that way forever. ]
But they did raise me. [ He knows what they have. He knows what they can do with it. Interrogation is another word for torture even before Kylo Ren takes a personal interest. ] And I did have a good seat when you flew us out of there after.
[ His fingers twitch. None of it sounds right. None of it sounds like what he's trying to convey. ]
I'm here.
cw torture
But Finn goes on, he says I'm here, and that's the whole of it, isn't it? Finn is there. He was there when it happened, he's here now, and of all the people in the galaxy or universe or whatever this place is, he's the one best equipped to understand what Poe isn't sure he knows how to say.
He tries. He tries, while the silence lengthens, but there's that room, the view of the dark ceiling, the steady inflections of the intelligence droid asking over and over What did you do with the map. That first jolt of pain that ripped through him when the stormtrooper in the corner stepped forward and pressed a modified force pike against Poe's stomach, the white haze of surreality that came with impacts, suffocation, neuroshock, electricity, until he wasn't sure if he was screaming or wishing he could.
What did you do with the map.
The fear of breaking.
What did you do with the map.
The black wish for death.
What did you do--
Poe leans forward suddenly and fights the urge to puke. ]
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Poe pitches forward and Finn reflexively reaches for his hand, grip tight for a moment before he catches up with himself and eases off. Concerned would be a very light, bare-bones word for what he's feeling. A lot of things are warring for top billing right now.
He thinks of saying something like you're good, but Poe is definitively not good right now, and there's nothing so pressing that he has to try to get him pulled together as soon as possible. They've got privacy to get by. It's been an awful long silence, though, so what he winds up with is a worried: ]
Buddy?
[ Which is... exactly as weird to say to someone as he suspected it would be, so he's glad he got that out of the way.
Not that Poe isn't worth the effort. ]
no subject
Eventually his vision starts to clear. The headache is worse--all that retching can't have helped--but he can breathe. He's shaking, but he can breathe.
What the hell was that, and how can he stop it from ever happening again.
Poe keeps his head down. ]
I'm okay. [ A breathy sound that could, in other circumstances, be a laugh. Okay has just become a very relative term. Quieter: ] Thanks.
[ A pause. In something approaching a more normal tone: ] That was fun.
[ Poe sits up, giving Finn's hand a little squeeze before reclaiming his own. He swallows, throat raw. Silence, silence, silence. It's starting to irritate him, how hard it is to find words for this. He's always got something to say, a joke at the ready, a thousand ways to keep things comfortable.
Finn has been honest with him. Maybe all he can do is be honest in return. ] I don't want...
[ Even honesty is hard. Poe closes his eyes, leaning back and inhaling slowly. ] You're one of the five, Finn. You're one of five people who knows that I thought I was going to die. One of five people... [ He falters. ]
I failed. The people on base, my pilots, their crews, they hear the story and it's this great escape with the help of a hero stormtrooper. The thought of them telling it the way my mom's squadmates told her stories--
[ He stops again. ] I failed.
no subject
Technically it makes sense that he's actually one of those five people. In hindsight. His first thought was that they were more Resistance track, more official. That's where things stop making as much sense.
I failed.
Repeating it in his head doesn't make it make any better from this perspective. It's like stepping wrong the minute it leaves Poe's mouth, and Finn frowns because it doesn't fit.
The description of the story doesn't fit either, honestly. He can't help but agree with that. None of it fits at all. ]
You did everything you could. And believe me, you did it right.
[ Got his intel successfully. And when his escape got cut off, he left that intel with BB-8: something small, hard to track, unexpected. Easy to lose or hide away on a planet like Jakku. Didn't give the First Order anything after being captured-- Kylo Ren had to walk in himself. He might not have even been able to evade capture at all in the long run, not with a troop combing the area.
From a technical standpoint, it's more or less the best anyone could have done during that raid. Like a trick question during a quiz on strategy. ]
With the First Order, doing it right isn't always enough.
[ He can't tell Poe not to think of it as a failure, can't try to brush it off. If it were him, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from thinking it, either. To call a loss the same thing as losing. ]
no subject
Do you know how lucky it was that Kylo Ren didn't want to know what missions I'd been on, our supply contacts, how many ships we have? That he didn't try to find out where the base was?
[ Poe's stomach churns. He can remember the pain of the interrogation. But what Kylo Ren did went beyond pain. ] He broke me open pulled pieces of me out, Finn. I couldn't stop him. I couldn't protect the one thing that mattered.
no subject
Snoke wanted the map, so Kylo Ren wanted it, so everyone on the ship wanted it. They got what they wanted. One Resistance pilot didn't matter much past that. Finn's not completely sure how to get that across in short order. "Once Ren got what he wanted, anything else you know was worth about as much as dung on a stormtrooper's boot, because they were more worried about the Republic and apparently Luke Skywalker as an opposing force than some small Resistance base."
It doesn't exactly sound great. ]
Out of the whole base, which one of your fighters could have stopped it from happening to them?
[ Finn doesn't know what he's doing in this conversation, exactly. He doesn't think he's expecting Poe to walk out of this with his mind changed, not totally. And something like that, that's never happened to him-- he can't even pretend to know what it does to a person. All he's got are his own experiences. Nothing equates to that.
What he does know is that he's pretty sure he's right. That none of this was Poe's fault. And that since leaving the First Order, he's turned out to have a lot of spare energy for arguing his point when he thinks he's right. ]
Who do you think should've been on Jakku instead?
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His silence is answer enough to Finn's question. Still: ] I should have been able to fight him.
[ Best pilot in the Resistance. That has to mean something. It's supposed to mean something. ]
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Got a scar that says it's not only a fight if you win it.
[ And a jacket that was really hard to get fixed that also says that, which he's still kinda miffed about. ]
But I know what you're trying to say.
[ Should have done more. Should have been more, somehow. ]
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If he starts talking he might never stop. ]
Y'know. When you pulled me out of that hallway, before you took off your helmet? All I could think was 'this is a weird place to execute someone'. [ Poe blinks. ] Not sure why I thought of that.
no subject
Well, it would've been. I wasn't supposed to be anywhere near that section, for starters. [ The Finalizer would have had a big collective web of confusion to do the paperwork on. A random stormtrooper on the wrong level performing an unsanctioned execution? Sort of fits the spirit, but not the protocol.
By that point, maybe, part of Poe was just waiting for an execution. Some idea of penance for self-declared failure, or for fulfilling his usefulness to the First Order. For setting back the cause. Pilots are soldiers, too, after all.
(And Finn is so, so tired of causes.)
He leans in a little, conspiratorially. ]
I didn't even have a backup excuse worked out yet. Kept coming up empty.
[ That's desperation and panic for you, though. ]
no subject
Still, there's that curiosity. What tipped the scales? How did someone like Finn live so long surrounded by the monolith of the First Order?
What others are there, just waiting for the chance to be free?
Poe puts an arm around Finn's shoulders, squeezing lightly before he leans against Finn.]
You really are a good man.
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