franciscoramon: (:! VIBES)
Cisco Ramon ([personal profile] franciscoramon) wrote in [community profile] riverviewlogs2018-02-04 05:45 pm

[ open ] call it your 2.0, your rebirth, whatever

who: cisco + anyone!
what: catch-all + tdm prompts + fajro prompts
when: february
where: various places!
warnings: will add as needed

I. DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

[ Cisco thought that the crystal caves sounded exactly like something from a fantasy series he had loved as a child, so of course, he dragged Eddie to go and see them with him. There had been nothing ominous about the place, at the time. It isn't until a few days later that Cisco's dreams start to show the sign of outside influence. They become vivid, surreal, and most importantly, he starts having guests. A few times he'll have a passing thought about a friend before falling asleep, only to run into them in his dream. He's no stranger to unusual dreams, and - after what had happened in October - not even a stranger to encountering other people in them.

But it's still pretty damn weird. ]


You see that, right? It's not just me?

[ Cisco asks the question to whoever is standing next to him, pointing down an empty city street at the looming figure of what is, unmistakably, a Godzilla-sized robotic panda. ]

II. CLEANING HOUSE

[ Cisco had rolled his eyes at first at the idea of a whole holiday based around cleaning. What could be less fun? He's always been somewhat inclined to keep stuff. After all, you never know what use it could be later. He spends plenty of his time scavenging the things other people left behind in the abandoned parts of the city, for materials and parts for his work.

But once he and Eddie decide to share the same room, he realizes he is going to have to get rid of at least some of his stuff, to make room. So he reluctantly starts, only to find himself getting more and more into the task. He can be seen either having a cute little yard sale to get rid of various items (clothing, books, etc.), or else taking what remains after the sale down to the bonfires by the river. ]


III. CLEARING THE AIR

[ Along with everyone else in the Quarantine, as the month progresses, he finds himself dwelling on resentments from his past. Unfortunately for Cisco, most of those resentments pertain to people who aren't even here. Once the 15th rolls around, he finds that his sense of taste has vanished completely. A few conversations with others tell him that this is probably something to do with the holiday, that he needs to clear the air.

But what is he supposed to do, when the people he's feeling resentful towards aren't even here?

So Cisco can be found all that week making his way around town, sitting in a park or perhaps at a bar, slump-shouldered and wan and uncomfortable, needing (but not knowing it) someone to talk to. A good heart-to-heart will put things right, but he's not aware of that yet.

He is also, despite his distraction, more than happy to listen to others' woes, or any resentments held against him. ]
bythehand: (eat my entire ass)

[personal profile] bythehand 2018-02-09 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
[ Finn knows when he's not in top form to hold a good enough poker face. Most of the time, he's not especially good at it. More at valiantly attempting to contain his own implosions.

Or in any case, he figures Cisco's seen him a lot less calm and even less okay than he is right now. And he went more than out of his way helping Finn piece himself back togethr. If it might help return the favor a little, there are worse things he could do than be upfront, he thinks.

Finn (a little belatedly) holds up a hand, fingers spread. ]


Can't feel anything. I'm not a fan, either. [ He could almost, almost make his peace with the fact that he didn't get a choice in coming to this city all those weeks ago. Between meeting good people, doing some genuinely fun things, and it being an apparent accident, he's been able to get by as well as he can with anything.

The measures being put into this holiday are unnecessary and unacceptable. It's forcing things onto people to try to make them deal with things they don't want to, or that they can't. There's no choice. It's all but impossible to live around that without feeling like he's about to vibrate out of his skin. ]


Not being as bad as it could be doesn't make it fair that they did it.

[ Because someone, somewhere, one or multiple, did this. He really wishes he knew who. ]
bythehand: (WOW I DONT CARE)

[personal profile] bythehand 2018-02-11 06:26 am (UTC)(link)
[ Finn is maybe a little capped out on stress, which is the one thing he's been left wishing he actually couldn't feel, but it's safe to say his face took an appropriate journey through jaw-tightening acceptance of the warning. He doesn't seem especially offended by the intent behind it. He's just done plenty of overthinking on this in his downtime already. Right now he... almost thinks he'd rather just have a horrifying pain-numbing disease than some high and mighty magic side effect. Almost.

Then Cisco is absolutely speaking his metaphorical language. Self-righteous. That's the right way to describe it. He's been trying to think of the words. Join him in the no chill squad, Cisco. Everyone here has a lot of very strong opinions about the nature of free will, and might want to pvp the moon. ]


Exactly. That's exactly it. This whole thing is them going out of their way to tell people they can either do what they want or they'll have to suffer, because they've got the power to make sure it happens.

[ It's all suffering, no matter where it falls on the scale of things that hurt. It's something no one asked for that they get no option but to deal with. It's all enough to count by Finn's measure. ]

That's not doing someone a favor for a holiday. I'm pretty sure it's just cornering us. And I don't care much for not getting to make my own choices.
bythehand: (how do u bribe a droid)

[personal profile] bythehand 2018-02-13 04:50 am (UTC)(link)
[ There's a visceral sense of relief for knowing that Cisco understands it, in some way. That he isn't just making himself look like someone going overboard about something that can't be... explained to people who have never felt it.

Relief, and the sharp cut of thinking he wouldn't wish the familiarity onto anybody else. He doesn't even like it on himself. It shouldn't be something people understand at all. ]


I know the feeling. [ Finn hesitates. Vulnerability's still not one of his strong suits. But Cisco has more or less seen him at the worst mess he's made of himself here, barring maybe Poe.

They're in this together, he thinks. And neither of them are at their best right now as it stands. It can't hurt to measure out his own understanding. ]


I never really had privacy before I got here. No real chances. [ There's less observation in the Resistance, but no guarantees with them. More about limited space and unfortunate necessity than control.

He shrugs one shoulder, a jerky movement. ]
I've only had it this long and even I hate the idea of this thing-- keeping track of me somehow. I don't think it's fair. I think it's fair not to think it's fair.

[ If there were someone to punch to fix this, he'd invite Cisco to come along with him. Get in a good hit or two. That's probably not the greatest plan. ]
bythehand: (come with me tho)

[personal profile] bythehand 2018-02-18 04:51 am (UTC)(link)
[ He swallows ]

Yeah. [ Then, almost like an afterthought: ] I got out. Right before I got here. But once you get out, it's-- you start figuring out there are a lot of things like that. That you lost by never getting them.

[ Kindness, affection. Room to make mistakes, even big ones, to lose control without having to brace for the worst outcome. Trust. And yes, privacy.

He doesn't like being alone, really. He's not used to privacy by any stretch. Not even used to real silence. There was always someone right there with him, or observing, overseeing. This semi-breach in the privacy he's had here, it's almost not even a surprise. It's just something happening.

He's been able to embrace the concept, though, in some ways. Even if only as a concept of something that people are supposed to be able to trust in having, normally, to relax into without thinking about it. Part of him never fully relaxes, never fully trusts in having something like that. So this is maybe another thing he can't personally understand all the way down to the root. The same way that he'll never fully understand what it was like for Poe, having Kylo Ren dig into his mind looking for whatever he wanted. What it's like for Rey to have the Force, and no idea how to handle her own power.

Some things are outside his sphere.

But it's something Cisco understands, and it's something that Cisco relaxed into having, trusted in having. Should have been able to trust in having, from someone that he trusted as a person. And what happened to that was wrong. Finn can make that distinction. He can feel the spark of outrage on Cisco's behalf. ]


That sounds 'super shitty,' too. If you don't mind me borrowing words.
bythehand: (a bad fuckin time)

[personal profile] bythehand 2018-02-20 02:41 am (UTC)(link)
[ Finn's own pause isn't quite as long. Less awkward, more a moment of consideration. The whole-- spell thing, it weirdly doesn't crop up in Finn's mind in regards to this. Just the question, and the elaboration. ]

Okay.

[ And a pause again while he thinks, this one on the longer side. At this point, with as much as Cisco's ever done to help him, as good as he's always been to Rey, it's not a matter of trust. He trusts Cisco. It's usually about control over what people know, for a lot of reasons. About, despite knowing he didn't get to choose it, despite knowing that he left, still feeling... that curl of shame, for what he was. Could have been.

If he said I can't or I don't want to, if he started and stopped, he knows he could trust Cisco not to push it. To let him still have that control.

That's no small thing to him. People he can place that trust in are few and far between in his life so far, no matter how much he might trust them to be good people or to watch his back. So Finn leans forwards, elbows to knees, hands clasped. Looks out towards the people passing by a little ways off, minding their own business, and holds himself still. ]


I was a stormtrooper. [ It comes out soft. He tries to sound measured and matter-of-fact with it, but it's safe to say his tone veers more into uncertain territory. Waiting for second shoes to drop is sort of his hobby. He's not one to assume things will automatically go well. ] The, uh. The First Order raised me. That's what I was getting out of.
bythehand: (ahhh piss)

[personal profile] bythehand 2018-02-24 05:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[ He expects an "oh." The tone comes as a little bit of a surprise, if a pleasant one. More pieces of a puzzle coming together than something sharp, wary. Even when he told Rey on Takodana, there was sort of a... moment. Everything coming together, on top of him leaving. He's never asked if it was because of what he said or because he'd been lying. ]

I never planned on joining the rebels. Not at first. [ At this juncture, honesty feels like the best policy to adopt. ] I just left because I didn't wanna kill for them. My first battle, I couldn't do it. So I ran. Busted Poe out of holding and asked him to help me steal a ship. Met Rey and BB-8 on Jakku. Poe and Rey treated me more like a person in five minutes than anyone ever had.

[ If there's a shade of bitterness there, it's certainly not aimed at Rey and Poe. A lot of the important things in his life have just. Happened to him, he's realizing. Luck, maybe. ]

Now I have a name. A place where I fit. I know I can't stand back and let a war keep going like it's not my problem. Took me a while, but I got there.
bythehand: (ill try to find rey)

[personal profile] bythehand 2018-03-03 03:27 pm (UTC)(link)
[ One stormtrooper can't make a war stop. One stormtrooper is as negligible and replaceable as the armor they wear. Cannon fodder. Fighting didn't cross his mind.

But he could make it so they didn't have him to use. He could have that much control. Which made a nice overall plan, since once he left, his options narrowed down to "get away" or "die trying." And those both fit nicely into that slot. Better than staying, he thinks.

If anyone has given him a look like that before, so close to the fear and repulsion he was preparing for but not quite on the mark-- feeling it for him, not because of him-- he hasn't managed to catch sight of it. Finn files it away, a small, complicated point of hard light behind his ribcage. ]


I'm not a hero. [ In light of everything he got from that canister, and remembering his talk with Poe a while back about people generally thinking what they're gonna think, he's trying not to sound too insistent. ] But I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner.

[ Then Finn hesitates. Leans in closer, intent, and reflexively reaches for one of Cisco's hands (not too tight, he reminds himself. if you can't feel it you can't grip hard and hope for the best, because it isn't just your hand. and for all that the First Order didn't deal in gentleness, it at least taught him how to deal in calculated restraint).

Welcome to the Finn zone. Nobody has personal bubbles and almost everything merits high-octane intensity. ]


I don't want you to think you're the reason I didn't. You're a good person. I like you. I trust you. My hangups are all on me. Okay?

[ His problems, all the parts of himself that sometimes hurt and don't quite fit, aren't sparks he wants lighting to spread by proxy. If there's something wrong with him, he doesn't have to create the possibility of making someone think it's actually a problem in them. Someone he's friends with, least of all. ]
bythehand: (ok no its fine i can do this)

[personal profile] bythehand 2018-03-11 04:29 am (UTC)(link)
[ The First Order builds up a certain view of the world outside of it. Haphazard and chaotic, unbalanced without cause. Rife with deprivations and depravity.

And it's true, in some ways. Injustice. Cruelty. People turning a profit on galaxy-wide suffering, people with nothing to their name. Those kids on Canto Bight, they hadn't had any more choice in being there than he'd had about being an inductee. The real world is unpredictable, uncertain. It operates in unspoken rules and languages he was never allowed to learn, and he's made the mistakes to show for it.

But it's still so much better than what the First Order wants to do to it. It's still so much better than the First Order tells any of them to believe.

The good things that walk hand-in-hand with freedom, that coincide with messy uncertainties and the unbidden anxiety of seeing how genuinely big and unpredictable the universe is-- they shine so much more brightly and go so much farther than any of the bad. ]


Yeah?

[ He grew up in something cold and sterile, not allowed to be attached to so much as a real name. He grew up meant to be a mindlessly devoted warm body, only good for shooting until he got shot down or for rising through the ranks to train up even more soldiers like himself.

He woke up.

He broke out a prisoner and Poe Dameron somehow, miraculously, trusted him enough to help them both get out. He wandered aimlessly through the desert and somehow, miraculously, he met Rey, the only kind and beautiful thing to ever grow on Jakku. He met Leia Organa, and Rose Tico, a dozen other people who've lost everything and made themselves that much stronger fighting for what they've found since.

He found things worth fighting for, for the first time. A place he not only fit into, but belonged in. Somehow. Miraculously.

Finn found the real world.

Sometimes he meets someone so inexplicably, unbelievably, unerringly kind that it's hard to figure out what a person is supposed to do with the feeling it leaves behind.

Somehow, miraculously, he wound up sitting on a park bench with Cisco Ramon. Who, while certainly far from the first person to not be afraid of him, is the first person who's ever outright said it. People he likes, even considers friends, finding out... there's a broad span of reactions Finn is ready to expect or accept if or when they do. Fear is maybe the one thing that would hurt the most to see.

He swallows. Nods once. His eyes are bright, but dry. ]


Thanks. I'm glad you're not.