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volitaunt) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
riverviewlogs2018-04-22 12:58 pm
volitaunt) wrote in riverviewlogs2018-04-22 12:58 pm
volitaunt) wrote in riverviewlogs2018-04-22 12:58 pm
no subject
You're starting to scare me. And I get the feeling you're not scaring yourself, so I'll go ahead and be scared enough for both of us. [ That makes sense. He thinks. ] I know what a punishment looks like. Whatever you think you're fixing by getting thrown into tables, you're not. You're wrong.
[ AND IF FINN HAS TO PUNCH HIM TO PROVE IT.... that's probably very counterproductive. Hm. ]
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[ Trying to get out of his own head. Trying to hurt something worse than he's already hurt himself. Looking for a way to stop feeling, and this isn't perfect, but feeling nothing but pain is a respite. It's something.
It's something.
He would go to Leia, if he could. If he trusted her to do more than command him to stop and then disappear. He's starting to wonder, he has to wonder, if she's even his Leia at all. His Leia... His Leia is different.
Paige is gone. John might as well be. His mom's ship is here, rusted and out of shape, like a dark promise of how long things stay in this place. How long they'll have to wait to get home, if they ever do. (If they do, if they do, a new doubt that's been cutting Poe to pieces strip by strip.) ]
I just. [ His eyes burn. Poe closes them. ] I just need this.
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Finn trusts him more than anyone. Maybe even Rey depending on the situation, because things have been-- different with her. Even with all the rationalizing he's done to justify how she thinks and how she sees things, even after the canister and starting to talk to her again. He doesn't understand it. Not really. It's hard moving around that.
Poe is a lot of things, but they've always undoubtedly been Poe. He leaves his boots in the middle of the floor. He bickers about petty things with a grin on his face, like he's mostly in it because it's funny to watch people get riled up about them, only sometimes he gets genuinely invested along the way and the grin fades out while he gets more and more frustrated. He chides BB-8 for bad language, then stubs his toe and swears up a storm. Finn's never seen him toast a marshmallow without catching it on fire. He still makes things more human. Even when he's frustrating or not at his best, he's good.
Poe gets pushed to a limit or punched in the gut or scraped out hollow and still tries to keep giving, to not need help.
It comes back to that a lot, with Poe. Not wanting or needing or wanting to need help. Not asking for it. Finn doesn't really understand that, either, he never has, but it's a less cutting thing to be aware of.
He reaches for Poe's wrist without thinking about it. Grips it carefully. ]
If I believed that, I'd cover you in as many sloppy fights as you wanted.
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BB-8, rocking back and forth the way he does when he's anxious, pops the arc welder from his side and whistles his willingness to take Poe down too. Poe has to wonder how much the little droid understands about the offer. How much of his response is based on knowing how Poe's mind works and how much of it is based on Finn's reaction.
He keeps his eyes closed, because looking at either one of them right now might make him cry. He's been distant from everyone he knows, lately. Either unintentionally avoiding them or actively trying to stay out of their way. He can feel himself cutting loose from the world, from this place, and he's starting to think he finally knows what it feels like to be displaced.
He's in mourning, for himself, for his people, for his cause, for everything. Ren's words come back to sting him all over again.
A fanatic cut off from your cause. You have no purpose.
You will never bring those lives back. You can never really avenge them.
The helplessness must be maddening.
Those words, playing in his head, over and over again, with every fight since. Every one more brutal. Every one with odds more and more slanted against him.
He's not trying to punish himself. He's trying to destroy himself. He just hasn't thought of a quicker way to do it.
He finally opens his eyes, giving Finn a look that's pure hopelessness. It's I'm going crazy, it's I want to kill them, it's I'm lost, and I don't know where home is any more.
He can't even bring himself to say Finn is right, that he doesn't need this, because he believes it. He believes that he does. ]
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Finn feels a pang of sympathy, even without the details of why he's been doing this, why it's happening, what the tipping point was.
He thinks about Poe in his hospital room, spikes of anger buried in with long stretches of vacant staring. He thinks about that handful of fighters backed into a corner on Crait, the desperate, muted pall that fell over them and spread. About Rey, and Poe lately, how unsettling it is to miss a person when they're standing right there. About Slip, and how easy it is to lose someone while all you can do is watch.
He's glad he mentioned being scared enough for the both of them, because he's viscerally aware of how true it is in this moment.
Finn hesitates. Drops his grip on Poe's wrist only to step into his space and pull him into a hug, for lack of any immediate ideas about what to say. That much, most definitely, is something he's picked up from the Poe Dameron school of daily living. ]
We're still in this together. We're still a team.
[ It's not enough to say that. It's never enough to get across what he means, it's one of the most important things he can say but it's not right. If Rey became home, Poe is the door that let him in. If Rey is the moon, Poe is the first constant star. ]
You know I'd cover you anyway, right?
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He presses his face against Finn's shoulder, feeling the sting of fresh bruises and a lip that's split in two places. Then he tightens the hug like hanging on to Finn is the one thing that can keep him anchored to this moon. Like if he lets go he really will drift off, suffocate somewhere out there between this moon and its pastel planet. ]
I know.
[ His voice is quiet, scraped bare. It breaks when he speaks again. ] I know.
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Finn lets Poe call the shots on how long the hug stretches out. Since it seems like Poe could use it, and it's not like Finn has anywhere he's supposed to be. Let alone anywhere he's supposed to be that would beat this in a priorities lineup. Riverview wishes it had anything to throw at him that could keep his people from getting top billing.
It also gives him that little bit of extra time to line up his... what to do next. He's winging it. Just a little. ]
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We could be stuck here, Finn. We could be stuck, forever.
[ A wave of exhaustion he's been keeping ahead of for the better part of a month washes through him, carried by the image of his mom's ship, rusting quietly in the jungle. Is she somewhere out there on the Capital World? Is she alive, is she dead, was she never here at all?
This is the first time he's voiced a possibility that's haunted him from the moment he recognized the A-wing's scuffed red paint. It had been there long enough to start to come to pieces.
What if they never get to go home? ]
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He doesn't try to brush off the notion, because it's true. There's no way of knowing for sure.
The First Order raised his cadre for a war he didn't see until he was 23 years old. In a way, the situation in waiting to go home is almost second nature. It might be harder on someone like Poe. While Poe's about on par with Finn for impulsiveness, his brand of impatience is very different.
Poe is so much worse at sitting still. ]
We could. [ They could be here for years. They could go home tomorrow. ] Doesn't mean we're giving up, right?
[ He knows he's not. If it's another day or another ten years, he knows he'll take the first road home they offer. They need to be there. So they'll get there somehow.
(He's entertained the thought of hoping to be able to come back someday, maybe. It's the most he's put into any sort of after-the-war hypothetical in his life.
But it always, always, comes after.) ]
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For a few seconds more, Poe just lets Finn hug him. For just a few seconds more. ]
No.
[ He doesn't do that. He doesn't give up.
(That's why the bars, the fights, the endless rounds he can't win. It's easier to have someone beat him into oblivion than to do it to himself alone. )
He slowly lets go. Exhales, lifts his head away from Finn's shoulder. He doesn't know what to do now. He's tired. Exhausted. He just looks down at BB-8, because it's easier than trying to look Finn in the eyes after all this. ]
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It's a start. As long as Poe knows he's here regardless, it's a start. ]
Want some waffles? I know a place. If you don't wanna go back yet.
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His lips twitch into a smile. ]
Yeah. Okay.