[ He makes a little grumbling noise and hauls himself back to his feet, eyes closing briefly even as he stands up. ]
Fine. You win.
[ He peels his shoes off, tossing them over by the door instead of leaving them in the middle of her floor. Then he just stands there for a second. Because he's tired enough that his brain is only processing in increments.
[ She had meant to help him to his feet if he needed it but he's already up and looking like he might fall asleep on his feet. She reaches over to steady him only to step back to let him get his shoes off.
She's torn between laughing and being sympathetic; she knows what it's like to feel so exhausted. Karen wonders if he's slept at all since leaving the hospital.
After he's flopped down on the bed, she nods, pulling one of the blankets over him, ]
[ He closes his eyes, enjoying the feel of the blankets being drawn up without effort on his part. The pillow smells like her, like flowers he's never seen but that are somehow still familiar.
He reaches out from under the blanket and catches her hand in his, keeping her from walking away. And Poe just... looks at her. He should say something. One deep breath, two.
His eyelids flutter, close, and he's asleep while still holding her hand. ]
[ She stills when he grabs her hand, waiting for him to say something. But then he's falling back asleep and she just smiles, her hand giving his a small squeeze, her voice quiet. ]
[ He sleeps for an hour or so without dreaming. Without even really moving.
The dream starts the way it has many times over, with a soreness in his wrists, shackled and chafing as he's dragged through the halls of the Finalizer. This time things go a little differently--instead of an interrogation room, he's brought to an open place with trees, snow falling lightly, and left there alone. A stormtrooper without a helmet, Finn, it's Finn, comes jogging through the trees, white armor shining in the darkness.
Run, the dream-Finn yells. Run!
A ribbon of red flares to life behind him, too close for Poe to do anything about it.
When he wakes up, it's with the sound of a lightsaber ignition crackling in his ears, and he flails under her blankets, yelling a warning to Finn. ]
[ Eventually, she lets go of his hand and goes back to finish the sandwiches. She has one herself and sets the other aside in her small fridge, hoping he'll eat it later. In between watching tv and reading files while she eats, she glances over at him every few minutes, checking to make sure everything is alright.
She's in the middle of writing up bits of her report when he starts shifting on the bed. She doesn't notice immediately, concentrating on what she's writing with a singular kind of focus.
But then Poe is very much awake and it startles her completely out of her work, dropping her pen and turning to him. She leaves her chair without hesitation, ]
[ She can't hide the concern on her face, only faltering for a moment before she sits down on the edge of the bed beside him, her voice soft, reaching out to touch one of his arms. ]
[ She takes her hand back, crossing her arms and needing to look away. It's all too familiar with her own nightmares and she feels at a loss at how to comfort or console him. ]
[ Something else is bothering her, but Poe can't guess at what. He can't even summon the will to argue as much as he'd like.
Maybe it's because they haven't really lied to each other, at any moment in their short friendship. Understood without speaking, without elaboration, but never deliberately left anything out. Poe sits up enough to prop himself on one elbow.]
Me, Finn, and Rey--I don't think any of us have slept through a night, here. If I get lucky, I go four hours at a stretch. I haven't slept really well in a long time. [ Except on Yavin 4, in his little room, with his dad half a hallway away. The one place in the galaxy that is wholly and completely his, other than Black One's cockpit. ] Sometimes it's dreams, sometimes it's just adrenaline, but I'm fine. I'm okay.
[ He's a pilot in a war. Of course, it would be normal to him to go in small stretches. And she can't suggest for him to possibly take something for sleep when it's just natural for him to do that. She gets that part.
It's the waking up screaming and reaching for - for fighting off - something that isn't' there that hits her deeply. She knows that there is nothing 'okay' about that, no matter how many times she's tried to tell herself it is. It's part of the reason she doesn't really want to bring anyone home (along with not trusting many people).
She closes her eyes and gives her head the smallest shake, resisting the urge to argue further. ]
[ Well he messed something up. Poe shoves the blanket back and swings his bare feet around to the floor, reaching out to grab her hand lightly before she can get too far away. ]
[ She almost pulls her hand away but just bites back a sigh, instead. She's had nightmares ever since she woke up next to a dead man in her apartment. But those nightmares hadn't compared to the ones where Fisk finds her and crushes her skull in with his bare hands. Sometimes he strangles her. Every time she dies.
Or at least it seems that way in the dream before she wakes up, screaming and trying to fight off the phantom that isn't there.
She knows what it's like. She knows more than she would ever want to admit. But all she can do is shake her head again. ]
I don't like it when my concern gets brushed off. That happens enough with people I care about. Getting kinda sick of it.
[ Back home and now here. She can't even escape this shit in another universe. Granted, that wasn't the real gripe here, though it seems to be a more prevalent thing with the kind of company she keeps. But she's not willing to admit Poe touched a very raw and active nerve. ]
[ He gets up, taking her other hand in his. ] I’m not brushing it off—I’m not trying to brush it off.
[ God, he’s tired. He looks down at Karen’s hands, running his thumbs over her knuckles. ] It’s just. We’re at war. This is life. We don’t have a choice. It has to be okay.
[ We, always we, without a second thought. He still feels like a stranger on this moon, even though there are people who know his routines. There's a bar with a stool that stays unoccupied for him in the evenings. There's a grocery store where one particular clerk sees him coming and points out the freshest fruit. He knows people, he's made friends, and still.
Still, he feels like he's waiting for an order to come in. He's waiting for the sound of TIE fighters screaming over the city. He's waiting for everyone else to realize the fight is still out there, the fight is going to find them, they need to be ready.
Sometimes he only feels sane around Finn and Rey. ]
[ She looks at him and then their hands. It hurts how similar this sounds to Matt or Frank. There's always a war or a mission or a fight to fight. And while she has her own in Hell's Kitchen, this just... what is she suppose to say to that?
There's no war here?
She knows better than most how demons will follow you everywhere you go. And Poe was a soldier. Those kind of demons may never go away.
What about after the war?
What business does she have asking something like that? Especially of a war she isn't even apart of. She can't really bring herself to look at him. Her voice is quiet even in the silence of the apartment. ]
Just because you're used to it, that doesn't make it 'okay'.
[ The only thing she can say with certainty and experience. ]
[ Poe lifts her hands, then stops, not sure what he was planning on doing. Kissing her knuckles? No. He just stares at her hands like they'll give him an answer or something else to say.
He's not sure how to exist in a world where he's admitted that he's not all right. It means admitting that Hosnian Prime is gone, that he's been tortured physically and mentally not once now, but twice. His uncle got shot down trying to save his life. His friends are dead and more will die. He lives in a landscape of chaos and violence and somehow--
Somehow, it's become okay.
He raises her hands and presses his face against the backs of her fingers. ]
I have to be okay, Karen. [ She smells like her pillow, he thinks, stupidly. ] Just. Until it's over, all right?
[ She looks back at him when he moves her hands but remains silent. As much as she wants to help him, they are from two different worlds. Two different walks of life. Even with all the similarities they share in experiences, in personality, it feels like there's this chasm between them. Something she's not sure she's ever going to be able to cross.
It's when he presses his face to her fingers like that that she feels she needs to try. Even if she has nothing of value to offer. She's no soldier, no genius or fighter. She's just... her.
She moves forward and wraps her arms around him again, pulling him into another hug. ]
I just--I wish I could help more.
[ Because God knows she can't help her own nightmares disappear. She wishes she could at least do right by someone else. Especially someone as good as Poe was. ]
[ This time, at least, he doesn't flinch from the hug. He wishes he could return some of what she's given him, the steady support and understanding.
(There's that voice again, that demand to be better than this, to pull himself together, the hissing reprimand that lives are at stake and he can't afford to come to pieces like this. They're his responsibility, and he's primed to fail them all.)
He feels a little like Karen is the only thing holding him up, or holding him down. Just like Finn in the hospital: she's keeping him in the present.
Mumbled into the cloth of her shirt: ] You help more than enough.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Fine. You win.
[ He peels his shoes off, tossing them over by the door instead of leaving them in the middle of her floor. Then he just stands there for a second. Because he's tired enough that his brain is only processing in increments.
Poe shakes himself. ] Bed.
[ Like it's a self-issued order.
And he flops down on it. ]
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She's torn between laughing and being sympathetic; she knows what it's like to feel so exhausted. Karen wonders if he's slept at all since leaving the hospital.
After he's flopped down on the bed, she nods, pulling one of the blankets over him, ]
Bed. That's an order, Commander.
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He reaches out from under the blanket and catches her hand in his, keeping her from walking away. And Poe just... looks at her. He should say something. One deep breath, two.
His eyelids flutter, close, and he's asleep while still holding her hand. ]
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I'm not going anywhere.
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The dream starts the way it has many times over, with a soreness in his wrists, shackled and chafing as he's dragged through the halls of the Finalizer. This time things go a little differently--instead of an interrogation room, he's brought to an open place with trees, snow falling lightly, and left there alone. A stormtrooper without a helmet, Finn, it's Finn, comes jogging through the trees, white armor shining in the darkness.
Run, the dream-Finn yells. Run!
A ribbon of red flares to life behind him, too close for Poe to do anything about it.
When he wakes up, it's with the sound of a lightsaber ignition crackling in his ears, and he flails under her blankets, yelling a warning to Finn. ]
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She's in the middle of writing up bits of her report when he starts shifting on the bed. She doesn't notice immediately, concentrating on what she's writing with a singular kind of focus.
But then Poe is very much awake and it startles her completely out of her work, dropping her pen and turning to him. She leaves her chair without hesitation, ]
Hey, hey! Poe! You're okay, it's okay.
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[ He's in Karen's room. He's in Karen's bed. He's more tired than he was when he fell asleep.
Poe presses his knuckles against his eyes until he sees stars. ]
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It was just a dream.
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[ He lets his hands drop. ] That's. Not new. Worse lately, I'm usually better about being quiet.
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"Worse" since that guy got here?
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I'm okay.
[ Which isn't an answer, which is an answer, in its own way. ]
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You were falling asleep on my floor and then woke up screaming. I don't think that says "I'm okay".
You don't have to talk about it but don't brush it off like it's nothing, okay.
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Maybe it's because they haven't really lied to each other, at any moment in their short friendship. Understood without speaking, without elaboration, but never deliberately left anything out. Poe sits up enough to prop himself on one elbow.]
Me, Finn, and Rey--I don't think any of us have slept through a night, here. If I get lucky, I go four hours at a stretch. I haven't slept really well in a long time. [ Except on Yavin 4, in his little room, with his dad half a hallway away. The one place in the galaxy that is wholly and completely his, other than Black One's cockpit. ] Sometimes it's dreams, sometimes it's just adrenaline, but I'm fine. I'm okay.
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It's the waking up screaming and reaching for - for fighting off - something that isn't' there that hits her deeply. She knows that there is nothing 'okay' about that, no matter how many times she's tried to tell herself it is. It's part of the reason she doesn't really want to bring anyone home (along with not trusting many people).
She closes her eyes and gives her head the smallest shake, resisting the urge to argue further. ]
Whatever you say.
[ She pushes herself back up from the bed. ]
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What? Karen. What did I do?
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Or at least it seems that way in the dream before she wakes up, screaming and trying to fight off the phantom that isn't there.
She knows what it's like. She knows more than she would ever want to admit. But all she can do is shake her head again. ]
I don't like it when my concern gets brushed off. That happens enough with people I care about. Getting kinda sick of it.
[ Back home and now here. She can't even escape this shit in another universe. Granted, that wasn't the real gripe here, though it seems to be a more prevalent thing with the kind of company she keeps. But she's not willing to admit Poe touched a very raw and active nerve. ]
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[ God, he’s tired. He looks down at Karen’s hands, running his thumbs over her knuckles. ] It’s just. We’re at war. This is life. We don’t have a choice. It has to be okay.
[ We, always we, without a second thought. He still feels like a stranger on this moon, even though there are people who know his routines. There's a bar with a stool that stays unoccupied for him in the evenings. There's a grocery store where one particular clerk sees him coming and points out the freshest fruit. He knows people, he's made friends, and still.
Still, he feels like he's waiting for an order to come in. He's waiting for the sound of TIE fighters screaming over the city. He's waiting for everyone else to realize the fight is still out there, the fight is going to find them, they need to be ready.
Sometimes he only feels sane around Finn and Rey. ]
We're at war.
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There's no war here?
She knows better than most how demons will follow you everywhere you go. And Poe was a soldier. Those kind of demons may never go away.
What about after the war?
What business does she have asking something like that? Especially of a war she isn't even apart of. She can't really bring herself to look at him. Her voice is quiet even in the silence of the apartment. ]
Just because you're used to it, that doesn't make it 'okay'.
[ The only thing she can say with certainty and experience. ]
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He's not sure how to exist in a world where he's admitted that he's not all right. It means admitting that Hosnian Prime is gone, that he's been tortured physically and mentally not once now, but twice. His uncle got shot down trying to save his life. His friends are dead and more will die. He lives in a landscape of chaos and violence and somehow--
Somehow, it's become okay.
He raises her hands and presses his face against the backs of her fingers. ]
I have to be okay, Karen. [ She smells like her pillow, he thinks, stupidly. ] Just. Until it's over, all right?
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It's when he presses his face to her fingers like that that she feels she needs to try. Even if she has nothing of value to offer. She's no soldier, no genius or fighter. She's just... her.
She moves forward and wraps her arms around him again, pulling him into another hug. ]
I just--I wish I could help more.
[ Because God knows she can't help her own nightmares disappear. She wishes she could at least do right by someone else. Especially someone as good as Poe was. ]
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(There's that voice again, that demand to be better than this, to pull himself together, the hissing reprimand that lives are at stake and he can't afford to come to pieces like this. They're his responsibility, and he's primed to fail them all.)
He feels a little like Karen is the only thing holding him up, or holding him down. Just like Finn in the hospital: she's keeping him in the present.
Mumbled into the cloth of her shirt: ] You help more than enough.