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riverviewlogs2017-12-15 07:05 pm
volitaunt) wrote in riverviewlogs2017-12-15 07:05 pm
[ open ] well I've got thick skin and an elastic heart
who: Poe Dameron AND YOOOOU
what: catchall log
when: mid-to-end-of December
where: here, there, every--that's a lie, it's mostly in the hospital and a bar
warnings: References to spinal injuries, general fight-accrued damage. Some drinking. Will add as necessary. This post is SPOILER FREE unless the comments themselves are labeled otherwise. Any character details not previously known from TFA are sourced from the TLJ visual dictionary and are not mentioned in the film.
i. general hospital - closed to existing CR/hospital staff
[ He was wrong about his back not being hurt. It's fractured, to be precise, three vertebrae cracked from where he hit that tree. The ribs, as suspected, are just out-and-out broken. He has internal bleeding, though nothing too terribly severe. Enough to explain the blood in his mouth.
"Blunt force trauma," he says to one of the nurses before he's put under for treatment. "Not the most fun way to go."
The first night in the hospital he refuses visitors.
He needs space. Time to think. The only one he lets in is BB-8, and then only because he couldn't stand the thought of the droid rolling around the communal housing building alone, fussing to himself in a language only Rey can understand.
Human company is too much. He almost says no to visitors in the morning, too, but by then he doesn't have the excuse of exhaustion from treatment to hide behind. It's the fact that he's hiding, more than anything else, that gets him to open the figurative door.
He's too tired to pretend to be all right. Instead, he's just laying in his bed in a hospital gown, rolling his mother's ring between his fingers on the end of the chain around his neck. ]
ii. barrrr idk titles man - open
[ Poe is at what can only be called His Usual Place at this point. He is not, however, at his Usual Stool.
Instead he's at a table near the back, having a stare down with a glass of whiskey.
Anyone who knows Poe well enough to have gone out for a drink with him knows that he adheres pretty strictly to tonic and lime. Anyone who's asked knows it's not because he's a teetotaler. It's habit, plain and simple, the determination to be sober should the need for emergency action arise.
It's finally hitting him after almost a month that there's no emergency action to deal with here, not that the Perimeter Guard can't handle without him.
And after what he's learned about Kylo Ren, about his relationship with Leia--nope bye not thinking about it, it's all he's done the past few days.
Poe knocks back the drink in one go and gags. ] Oh, kriffing--
[ A tiny, watery-eyed wheeze. ] Holy Savior Unborn.
iii. it's oscar isaac this was going to happen eventually - open
[ Up on the communal housing rooftop, Poe is giving BB-8 an oil bath the old-fashioned way. Meaning he has a big plastic tub. That is full of oil. And BB-8 is in it. Also, there is a sponge, that a gloved Poe keeps dipping in the oil to scrub over the surface of his droid.
BB-8 has several maintenance arms deployed, and yeah, sorta seems to be splashing around in the oil like a two year old in a bubble bath.
Poe is singing to him. The song of choice is All My Loving by the Beatles. ENJOY. ]
iv. why this - open
[ There are seven of them. Seven holocubes of the most embarrassing image ever to bear Poe Dameron's face, andbefore the Hosnian Cataclysm there were a lot of pictures of Poe Dameron doing stupid shit in his Academy days.
But no, this is worse, and they dumped seven of these things on him. They didn't even give him something to carry them in. He just has to walk back to the communal building juggling seven goddamn holocubes programmed with Yolo Ziff's gag poster, the thing that finally benched him from running any more "undercover" missions for Leia. At least until Jakku.
He keeps dropping them, all the way back to the communal building, and every time he does, the damn things turn on. ]
v. wildcarddddd
[ HMU aw yeah. ]
what: catchall log
when: mid-to-end-of December
where: here, there, every--that's a lie, it's mostly in the hospital and a bar
warnings: References to spinal injuries, general fight-accrued damage. Some drinking. Will add as necessary. This post is SPOILER FREE unless the comments themselves are labeled otherwise. Any character details not previously known from TFA are sourced from the TLJ visual dictionary and are not mentioned in the film.
i. general hospital - closed to existing CR/hospital staff
[ He was wrong about his back not being hurt. It's fractured, to be precise, three vertebrae cracked from where he hit that tree. The ribs, as suspected, are just out-and-out broken. He has internal bleeding, though nothing too terribly severe. Enough to explain the blood in his mouth.
"Blunt force trauma," he says to one of the nurses before he's put under for treatment. "Not the most fun way to go."
The first night in the hospital he refuses visitors.
He needs space. Time to think. The only one he lets in is BB-8, and then only because he couldn't stand the thought of the droid rolling around the communal housing building alone, fussing to himself in a language only Rey can understand.
Human company is too much. He almost says no to visitors in the morning, too, but by then he doesn't have the excuse of exhaustion from treatment to hide behind. It's the fact that he's hiding, more than anything else, that gets him to open the figurative door.
He's too tired to pretend to be all right. Instead, he's just laying in his bed in a hospital gown, rolling his mother's ring between his fingers on the end of the chain around his neck. ]
ii. barrrr idk titles man - open
[ Poe is at what can only be called His Usual Place at this point. He is not, however, at his Usual Stool.
Instead he's at a table near the back, having a stare down with a glass of whiskey.
Anyone who knows Poe well enough to have gone out for a drink with him knows that he adheres pretty strictly to tonic and lime. Anyone who's asked knows it's not because he's a teetotaler. It's habit, plain and simple, the determination to be sober should the need for emergency action arise.
It's finally hitting him after almost a month that there's no emergency action to deal with here, not that the Perimeter Guard can't handle without him.
And after what he's learned about Kylo Ren, about his relationship with Leia--nope bye not thinking about it, it's all he's done the past few days.
Poe knocks back the drink in one go and gags. ] Oh, kriffing--
[ A tiny, watery-eyed wheeze. ] Holy Savior Unborn.
iii. it's oscar isaac this was going to happen eventually - open
[ Up on the communal housing rooftop, Poe is giving BB-8 an oil bath the old-fashioned way. Meaning he has a big plastic tub. That is full of oil. And BB-8 is in it. Also, there is a sponge, that a gloved Poe keeps dipping in the oil to scrub over the surface of his droid.
BB-8 has several maintenance arms deployed, and yeah, sorta seems to be splashing around in the oil like a two year old in a bubble bath.
Poe is singing to him. The song of choice is All My Loving by the Beatles. ENJOY. ]
iv. why this - open
[ There are seven of them. Seven holocubes of the most embarrassing image ever to bear Poe Dameron's face, and
But no, this is worse, and they dumped seven of these things on him. They didn't even give him something to carry them in. He just has to walk back to the communal building juggling seven goddamn holocubes programmed with Yolo Ziff's gag poster, the thing that finally benched him from running any more "undercover" missions for Leia. At least until Jakku.
He keeps dropping them, all the way back to the communal building, and every time he does, the damn things turn on. ]
v. wildcarddddd
[ HMU aw yeah. ]
i. look.... i have to live up to being 25% of your inbox
He gets word to Rey and he parks himself in a mildly uncomfortable chair and he waits.
They say Poe Dameron isn't taking visitors.
He says I'll be here when he is, then, perhaps in a sharper, less calm tone than anyone would like.
It was objectively way less stressful to be the one who got almost murdered than it is to be the person who isn't. He's stuck between feeling sorry he did it to Rey on Starkiller and feeling like he'd much rather just be the one who almost gets murdered from now on to save the trouble. It's terrifying.
It was way too close.
When he hears Poe is accepting visitors, Finn double-times it to the room in less than a minute, if at all physically possible to get there in less than a minute. He positively guns it. He probably almost knocks over a lot of unsuspecting people.
Knocking on the door? What's that? Never heard of it. Finn's just walking in and immediately sitting by the bed like it's his job to be here. ]
Finally.
[ Poe is alive and the hospital tech is admittedly very good, and Finn can just about breathe again, metaphorically speaking.
He could hug him for not being dead right now, which is probably written all over his face. This is an impulse he mostly combats, recent injuries considered (he doesn't need someone trying-- and trying is the key word, because he would raise at least four levels of hell if they did-- to kick him out for potentially reopening something). Not strongly enough to keep from reaching for Poe's non-occupied arm, though. It's all about accepting your feasible limitations. ]
I don't know how you can make yourself hard to find when you're stuck in one room, Poe, but you did a hell of a job of it.
[ He doesn't sound mad. He's just relieved he finally got in here without having to resort to criminal means. ]
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BB-8 rolls over from the other side of the room, whistling a greeting in tones that are, admittedly, not as enthusiastic as the droid usually manages to be. Who knew that medical emergencies could take a toll on AI.
Poe's fingers still on the ring, but he doesn't let it go. ]
Hey. [ There's no fire in him. He can't be cavalier and reassuring. He's just... tired. ] Sorry, I just--I needed... to think.
[ It's more than that. It's so much vastly more. Kylo Ren cracked him open again, and this time there's no great escape to make it better, no survival on Jakku, no dogfight over Takodana or military strike on Starkiller to give him time and distance. Ren made him suffer, and took something precious from him in the process.
What's worse, somehow, is what Ren gave back.
He couldn't face anyone with those parallel wounds still so raw. He still doesn't want to face anyone. But Finn is a reminder that what he wants doesn't always matter as much as what he needs to do. ]
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It's fine. [ His answer is immediate, with enough sureness to show that he's not just saying it to put up a front. It's fine now.
Finn doesn't know exactly what happened before he showed up yesterday. But it involved Kylo Ren, and that's enough to know it wasn't good. (The look on Poe's face, the way he's holding onto that ring, that's enough to know it wasn't good.) ]
I can give you more time if you need it. I'd rather stick around for a minute first if you do, but.
[ A shrug. It's Poe's call. And only Poe's call, there's basically nobody else in this building that matters opinion-wise. He can always try again later. ]
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[ For a while that’s all he can say. BB-8 rolls off to patrol the hospital (he has a standing order not to mess with anything) and still, Poe can’t get his head around what he can say. About the park, about Ren. Any of it.
So he starts somewhere else entirely.]
He murdered his father. His dad.
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The words that break it are unexpected. ]
He did.
[ Solo gave his son every chance not to. Every chance to go back to a family. A free ticket away from the First Order. Finn's not much on wishing things had been different, at least not during his waking hours, when he's thinking clearly-- if they had been different, he wouldn't be here, wouldn't have the people he has-- but he can't fathom what it would have meant for someone to walk up and all but give him an easy way out. (An easy way home.)
Kylo Ren made his decision.
It was the wrong one. ]
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[ It's mystifying. Horrifying. Poe tries to imagine it, he tries to imagine himself standing in front of his father and choosing to pull the trigger.
It makes him sick in body and heart.
But then there's the question that's been circulating in his mind, keeping him awake when the medications he's on don't put him under. ]
How could he do that to her?
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Why ask what's obvious? ]
You mean the General. Leia.
[ He doesn't know enough about families to try to offer an in-depth answer. Poe might not even be looking to get an answer, really. ]
If I knew, I'd tell you.
[ All Finn knows is all he knows. Kylo Ren sits near the helm of the First Order. Up there, what matters is power and control. Everything else gets shoved aside. ]
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He called me the son she always wanted.
[ There's so much in that conversation that he's not really dealing with well. No surprises there really. There was So Much in that conversation, after all. For a second Poe is lost again in that open field of memory that Ren dragged him through, not seeing the hospital room or Finn or anything but those moments in his life where Leia was there, either at a distance or in person.
He doesn't know what to do with Ren's declaration. He doesn't know how seriously to take it, how to unpack the contempt, when all Poe can think is that he would love nothing more than for it to be the truth. ]
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[ Sure and immediate, again. Finn's barely met Leia, only really knows her from her history and the air she had about her on the Resistance base, but... she's good. It's there, carefully threaded through her. And Poe is good. Every cell in his body. He's the son anyone good deserves.
Finn thinks about Han Solo, standing open and vulnerable on that walkway. His desperation. His words. The way he reached out for his son's face before he fell-- ]
They both still wanted him back. He knew before he did it.
[ They wanted him. Even like this. Finn can't keep the disbelief from his tone, muddled between the fact that they still could at all and the fact that Ren turned away from it. ]
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He needs a damn decloaking scan for his own emotions. ]
Of course they did. They're his parents. [ Then he stops, realizing what he's saying and who he's saying it to. ] I wasn't thinking.
[ It's true, and it's not true. Think is all he's been able to do in this stupid bed, but he keeps cycling around a single set of ideas without resolution. ]
I just don't understand how he could-- how he could be who he is, when she's who she is.
[ Poe sits up enough to throw himself back again against the pillow and immediately regrets it as a jolt of pain rips through him from crown to pelvis. He grimaces. ]
Ow.
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But it's this place, this person, this tone.
The fact is, Finn really doesn't think about parents or family all that much. He never has. Never needed to. And you can't love what you've never known. Poe knows better than he does on that.
What he thinks instead is, Poe almost died. He's laid up in a medbay trying to wrap his head around something apparently nigh unfathomable, trying to understand the motivations of a person with all the humanity of the pebble stuck between the cracks on the bottom of Finn's boot. Poe cares so much about this, about Leia, that he can't help trying to draw the lines to make it make sense. Poe, in all this thinking, still stops himself short trying to be careful of someone else.
All the parts of him that are the most Poe are clearly still here. That's good enough to balance out.
...speaking of the most Poe parts of Poe.
Why??? Did he get attached to this reckless 'throw himself back without a second thought' man?? Why are both of his favorite people full-power concern generators? Finn plants a careful hand on Poe's shoulder, and gives him a hard two-second stare just to make sure he's not about to turn sharply south. ]
Take it from someone who's been here. You won't understand any better after you reopen something.
[ says the hypocrite who woke up in this hospital on day one and absolutely wrecked his own shit by trying to walk himself out within an hour. somewhere in the building, a doctor just slammed their hand onto a counter in unexplained rage. ]
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I'm going to go crazy in here.
[ It should be a joke. He means for it to be a joke. But the sentence that starts laden exasperation just... peters out. Part of him, however small, is afraid that he will. He's afraid that he'll open his eyes one of these times and be back on the Finalizer, that this whole thing will just be a delirium dream, the desperate wish of a prisoner who thinks that someone will walk in and save him. Give him an impossible chance.
He's afraid, persistently and unshakably and every moment he doesn't spend thinking about Leia and Han Solo and Kylo Ren is a moment where he can't forget his fear.
He's never been this kind of afraid. ]
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If it wouldn't probably legitimately damage Poe in a serious way, Finn thinks he would offer to dump him in a chair and bust him out of here right now. The way that tone drains off, he wishes he could. He keeps his hand on Poe's shoulder for a few seconds, doesn't apply any extra pressure. Just in case.
In lieu of an escape plan, he offers the next best matter-of-fact thing within his power: ]
Let me know if you do. I'll come back for you.
[ Finn's not joking, even if his words come out more lightly than Poe's did. If it means getting a call at 4AM and breaking into a hospital room, he'll do it. There's no actual shortage of things he would do to help.
He lets that sit where it will. Lapses back into silence, trying to put words to this thing with Ren and Solo and the General that will somehow make sense. There are a lot of thoughts tangled up in it. Too many to charge in half-formed. He'll bide his time and see if he manages to scrape it together. ]
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He starts to sit up so he can put an arm around Finn's shoulders and do like, one of those jostle-hug things, but sitting up is still a terrible idea! Surprise!
At least this time he has the sense to ease himself back down, grimacing, weirdly grateful for the pain. It takes his mind off everything else. His voice is a little breathy when he speaks, because he's busy trying not to like. Yell. That would be alarming, probably. ]
No matter what?
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Of course, Finn has a running hand-grabbing bias. Maybe Poe views the world through more of a hugging filter.
It's so strange to feel genuinely touched by a question, yet also like there's a need to huff about it. A huff just sort of falls right out of him in spite of himself. ]
Don't know if you heard, but I brought a rock to a lightsaber fight for someone the other day.
[ See, jokes. He's got them, sort of. In short bursts, followed swiftly by nearly-exasperated sincerity. Reassurance is easier than joking, honestly. ]
I think we're past the point where a what can matter enough to stop me. I'd come back.
[ That's a choice he gets to make. Weird how getting to a part of his life where he has that choice keeps making it obvious that he can't make a different one. ]
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His next statement, at least, isn't one that takes him by surprise. ]
How much did you see?
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I wasn't too close for most of it.
[ Missed a lot of the finer details, he's pretty sure, between distance and the sharp grip of fear. Some of those details, he thinks he can guess at easily enough.
That split-second where he was positive he was going to be too slow, the spiraling realization that if he'd been half a minute late walking out the door, it would have been over before he knew it was happening-- when he dozed off in a waiting room chair last night and dreamed of Poe dragging bloody fingers across his face, woke up thinking not again--
He clips those short, too. Made himself stop thinking about them as soon as they cropped up, pushed it all into a hard stone to sink to the back of his mind because what he needs to be doing right now is functioning. And what he's going to do is make sure they can all keep functioning, that they have enough of themselves to be okay, to think one day at a time. ]
Heard you scream. Saw him throw you.
[ Saw Poe wrench himself up, waiting.
Finn wishes he could put a blaster bolt through Kylo Ren's forehead.
No big speeches. No talking about why. No drawn-out suffering beforehand or injuries to match what he's doled out in the past, no anything, just quick and clean and efficient, everything the First Order ever told the two of them, pulling a trigger and having it be done. Doing it and making sure that Rey and Poe and this whole damned moon are safe from that, whatever it costs him.
Of all the probably-impossible things in the galaxy, he thinks that's what he wants the most. ]
Got there as fast as I could.
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[ He hadn't been sure. He's gone again, back in the park (through the park, into the darkness of the Finalizer). Screaming in the past, screaming in the present. Not in the present--still the past, now. Poe squeezes his mother's ring and remembers the sight of Kylo Ren approaching. He can feel the snow melting through his pants at the knees and the cuffs.
He would have been grateful to hold on to it until he died. He would have been grateful to have her there in that way.
It wouldn't have been so bad, dying on the ground, not if he had done it that way. ]
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[ It says something that he didn't know. His silence says something, too, but it's not something that Finn knows how to speak.
He remembers Poe doubled over on a bench during boot camp, though, trying to breathe through the things that had a hold on him. His fingers flex, tighten.
Poe's one of them. Poe's one of his. If it's something he has to ride out, Finn will make sure he comes to the other end. In the meantime he talks, fierce and earnest. ]
You're still here. We're still in this together. You're covered. As long as you need it.
[ All the good parts of you are still here, he doesn't know how to say. I've already seen them, someday this will end, someday you'll be fine.
If that's what he picks to assume the best about, as long as it's possible, he can make himself believe in it by making sure it stays true. ]
Anything trying to change that goes through me and Rey first, and I guarantee it won't get that far.
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He knows....
[ Poe shivers. ] He did it again. He--not for information on the Resistance this time, he didn't care about that, he went after--he went after my memories.
[ That last bit is a whisper. ] They were mine.
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That's what people do when they have time to do it, right? Mourn their losses. It's not something he can fix, not something he's got a lot of experience with, but-- he can stay here. He can make sure he listens. ]
They're still yours.
[ When is enough enough?
Never, Finn thinks. Kylo Ren is a loose frame around a gaping void that he only ever chooses to tear wider, and maybe there's just nothing left to stop it from growing. It'll never be enough.
Same way that saying I'm sorry to Poe right now could never be enough. ]
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[ Yavin 4, Hosnian Prime, even D'Qar. Poe laughs, the sound pained, the kind of noise that would be tears if it had the chance. ]
He saw me-- [ Poe steadies himself, or tries to. This is the meat of it, the thing he's been avoiding, the thing he's been circling since last night. The emotional mess clasped up in its shell of physical pain, waiting to be shucked open, impossible to seal away again. ] That... bastard saw me crying in my mom's A-wing. He saw the letter that Leia sent me when she died. He....
[ Rage flares so suddenly that Poe finds himself seizing the plastic cup on his bedside table and hurling it across the room, splashing himself, the bed, the wall. Plastic cracks and ricochets off whitewash. For a second Poe can't do anything but arch in fresh pain caused by the motion.
Pain at least burns through the anger, for now. Poe can't tell if he's crying now from the former, the latter, or from something else. ]
They were mine. He had no right to be there. He had no right!
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Finn wishes fervently that he was a person who'd been allowed to learn gentleness. He wishes he'd been able to learn to piece things together instead of taking them apart, that it came easily instead of getting fumbled around by unpracticed fingers.
He knows better than to get snagged on things that can't be changed. ]
You're right. You're right, he didn't.
[ Finn is the one who pushes himself up and reaches out this time, impulse-driven, to pull Poe into a hug-- if Poe will let him. A careful one. He doesn't know gentleness, but he knows restraint, and every once in a while the stars align to let the two mean the same thing. ]
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His mouth seems to be working fine, at least: ]
I hope I don't have to clean that up.
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The resiliency of Poe Dameron's speech capacity rears its head in its place. And that's okay. That's another very important part of Poe to see surviving.
So he huffs. Gives Poe a couple of affirming pats. ]
I did my time on sanitation duty. Pretty sure I can get you off the hook.
[ Not that a patient would be on the hook anyway. Not that he like broke medical equipment or knows that from experience or anything. Definitely didn't do that here.
Finn hesitates, not letting go just yet. Plunges onward, while he's going ahead and giving in to impulse. ]
One day, every choice he's made is gonna turn back on him. One day he's gonna get exactly what he deserves, and you're still gonna be standing when he's gone. And I don't care who he's with, I don't care about the Force-- as long as he's here, if you say the word I will find a way to put him down, Poe. That's a promise.
[ He doesn't promise lightly. He doesn't consider this a light one. They have more than a few panic-ruled seconds in the forest, here. Anything could be possible if they have the space to think ahead and he doesn't lose his nerve. ]
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