riverviewlogs | [open] so don't stop me now

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[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 is ~~making 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! ]

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[ Things like this feel as stretched out and dangerous as hearing an incoming ship when you least need it. Knowing that something could happen, that he'll have to hope he can run fast enough or think hard enough not to mess it up when it does. The silence goes on, and Finn can't bring himself to break it.

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. ]

[ Poe heaves air and the taste of bile, fighting his body's instincts, focusing on that fiercely enough to drive the rest of it back. Dry heave, focus on the pressure of Finn's hand, gasp, focus on anything but those seven words. (Please, please, memory, let him go.)

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.

[ Poe comes out of the other end, still breathing. Poe squeezes his hand and sits up and eventually, he lays it out in simple enough terms.

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. ]

[ Poe just shakes his head. ]

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.

[ He doesn't know about luck. He thinks he'd call it shortsighted. Tunnel vision. The First Order cares about what the Supreme Leader cares about. It cares about what it can take and how it can use it.

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?

Edited 2017-11-25 14:46 (UTC)

[ No one. The answer is so laughably simple it feels like cheating. He was the best for the job. He wouldn't have risked any of his pilots on a mission he wasn't willing to run himself, anyway. He wouldn't wish anyone else into his position for anything.

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. ]

[ Sometimes you need to ask an easy question. If Poe had actually named anyone, he'd have to suspect cloning or insanity. That much he knows. ]

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. ]

[ Suddenly there's a lot more Poe could try to say. About the Finalizer, the interrogation. About the despair he still isn't sure was entirely his, so acute it was almost blinding. Other thoughts lurk behind those at the forefront. The Hosnian System. Those lights in the sky over Takodana. L'ulo, Muran. Pilot after pilot downed at Starkiller, rank after rank of empty coffins.

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.

Edited 2017-11-26 00:44 (UTC)

[ Finn exhales through his nose, a sharp huff that borders on amusement. More for the fact that this is one hell of a thing for nostalgia to get around to than the subject matter. Probably. ]

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. ]

Edited 2017-11-26 02:07 (UTC)

[ Poe chuckles. It's soothing, somehow, to talk about their shared piece of what happened. He does have a question, though, one that drifts up through his own fog. It wasn't important in the moment. It's not important, really, in the grander scheme. Finn did what he did. That speaks volumes more than the question of why, at least as far as Poe is concerned. Finn had said it was the right thing to do. That's enough of an answer.

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.

[ Okay.

Okay, now it's safe to relax a little.

You have to clean a wound before it has a real chance of healing eventually. He hopes a little of the worst might be over for Poe on that front. And maybe finishing out that medical treatment will do him some favors, too. It's not something Finn's got a lot of experience with, this kind of talking, but if it helped-- well, could be there's something to say for arguing the points that seemed most obvious to him after all.

Maybe there's something to say for seeing someone fall behind and going back for them. ]

I have heard that a lot.

[ Literally like twice, ever. But he says it like a smug guy who hears it all the time, because he can't not grin so he might as well commit. ]

You know, for someone who goes AWOL with other recruits during laps.

[ Poe shifts his grip so he can drag Finn’s head down and give him a noogie. Truly a sign that all is well. ] Good. Because I’ll say it as often as it takes.

[ And, because Poe doesn’t believe in putting things off: ] Should we disgrace ourselves properly and go to the hospital?

[ His desire for Finn to be there goes unexamined. They’ve gotten this far in conversation. It seems natural to see it through together. ]

[ Poe can say it until he's blue in the face, if it makes him happy. Finn can't say he buys into it, but it's nice to think someone does believe that.

Sometimes, of course, it's terrifying. Sometimes it feels like there are expectations just in how Rey and Poe look at him, and he isn't sure what he plans to do if he can't feasibly cover them.

For now, he very nobly makes the sacrifice and gets noogied. Very boldly. ]

Probably. We can make it one big incident instead of two repeat offenses.

[ That use of "we" is personally a little touching. Finn can go and stare down his favorite medics. Make sure they're on the up and up. ]

[ Poe lets Finn go and hauls himself to his feet, not hiding how much the action hurts now that it's all out in the open anyway. ]

Never played hooky from boot camp before.

[ A pause. ]

Well.

Not on purpose, anyway.

[ Who has two thumbs and is prepared to give a thirty-something year old man a piggyback ride to the hospital at any given moment?

This guy, which is not me shitposting, he is one hundred percent prepared for that possibility and he's got the hovering power to prove it.

Also that sounds like bullshit, Poe, what's up. ]

How do you accidentally do it?

[ Thirty-two. Thirty-two, geez.

And they are walking. And Poe is not answering. He is Not Answering--]

You lock yourself in a closet.

[ Look Finn's not a calendar, he doesn't know!!

Maybe it's the silence beforehand that does it. Maybe there's some sort of special solstice or planetary alignment happening in this galaxy right now that shifts the tides of fate. Who can truly say?

But boy if Finn doesn't laugh when Poe finally answers, because he's not sure what he even expected out of that to begin with. Now playing on a military complex near you: a reaction I don't have a good icon for since he got a whole movie and still couldn't be bothered to do it on screen. ]

[ Okay, it's so nice hearing Finn laugh that Poe doesn't care if the whole thing makes him look (understandably) ridiculous. ] Look, I didn't know the door had an autobolt. It wasn't my fault.

[ It's a good story and he likes it. All his training stories are basically the same as each other. Except for the ones here. The moon can have exactly one grace point for that. ]

And somehow you lived to tell the tale.

[ They're approaching the entrance building, the last obstacle between them and the hospital, now that Poe has stopped being an obstacle himself.

He claps Finn on the shoulder, a smile on his face. ]

Always do.

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