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[volitaunt]

"Hey, try again later."

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action; its birdgate 2k17

[bythehand]

[ This week in The Quarantine Is Not A Cool Place, imminent domination looms on the horizon? Apparently? Finn met one of these guys once in the ice maze (where he presumably learned that he's Taako) and he seemed like an okay guy, actually. But hey, what does Finn know. That guy he met either deadass murdered someone off-screen or turned them into a bird maybe, both of which have been established as fully feasible and fully horrifying.

Realistically, Finn probably stopped paying very close attention the second they hit the "freedom is a lie, we'll bring order" sentiment. He was busy losing his fucking mind, which may or may not have actually just been gripped by the icy fingers of straight-up panic. What he knows is his mind has long outlined for him that he cannot afford to not take this message seriously, no matter how weird it may be.

Anyway WHAT'S UP, FINN'S HOME, EVIDENCED PERHAPS MOST CLEARLY BY THE WAY HE GOES TO TOWN SLAMMING THE FRONT DOOR OPEN. He pulls from somewhere dumb like a closet shelf or under one of the beds... three homemade bug out bags! He has also stashed for his convenience an empty one. Finn's not dumb, okay. He prepared for this possibility within a week of arriving. ]

Who's still here?! We need to regroup!

[ That empty bag is the one he's starting to ransack this room to fill, as efficiently as possible. Mostly random snack foods and stuff that could supplement what he already put together rations-wise, but at this point he's also stressed out enough to start reaching the "if it fits it ships" event horizon. Nothing is safe. Which, ironically, is the whole point and he was right all along and he KNEW IT. ]

[volitaunt]

[ Poe, for his part, had just posted his reply. He has his feet propped up, and had been scrolling through the other responses, shaking his head at the people taking Taako seriously. Less because he thinks they're dumb for doing it than because he wonders if Taako and company know what the heck they're doing. Yeah, there's a certain level of humor in it, but--

And lo, the door crashes open. Poe jumps, dropping the communicator in his lap as BB-8 (under the desk) gives an alarmed whistle. Then, suddenly, there is a whirlwind shaped vaguely like Finn dismantling their living quarters. Poe spends several long seconds just watching, trying to figure out what the heck Finn is doing. If something went that wrong--

Oh look, another unfinished thought, because Poe just figured out what this is about. He tosses the communicator onto his desk and gets up, trying to grab Finn's arm and get him to hold still for a minute. ] Finn. Finn! Calm down. Just take a breath.

[bythehand]

[ Part of Finn's brain says something along the lines of "you should probably have tried to open by explaining what's going on instead of dismantling the place."

He can't argue with his own logic, and so he ignores it. He's also not very into arm holds at this current moment in time at all, so he winds up half spun around and trying to get Poe to hold onto like, the Poe Bag (which Finn has obviously designated specifically even though it has the same stuff as every other bag), by determinedly pushing it at his hands. ]

No, no no no no no, Poe, we've gotta move right now, I'll explain on the way. We can worry about breathing when we have room to breathe! [ BREATHS ARE FOR PEOPLE WITH THE LUXURY OF TIME okay no wait his friend count is not up to par. ] -- and before we can do that we've gotta get Rey, where's Rey?

[volitaunt]

[ Poe takes the bag. And then he drops the bag. ]

I don't know, I think she's been avoiding me, Finn would you calm down and listen for a second?

[ This time rather than grabbing Finn he grabs one of the bags instead. Poe is pretty sure if Finn wanted to, the younger man could probably throw him into a wall. He's built more solid than Poe. He's also hoping that instinct hasn't taken over to the degree that Finn will actually throw him into a wall. ] This is about the network, yeah? That post, the one with the whole bit about freedom being a lie, magical power crap? I know that guy. It's okay. He's--it's a joke. For him, it's a joke.

[bythehand]

[ Betrayal. RIP, Poe's supply bag. He's starting to think Poe isn't taking this as seriously as he should be. They need to get out, because Finn can't do this again and he can't just leave the others here while he takes off, either, and why is that so hard to understand?

His heart feels like it is personally trying to somersault its way through his ribcage. He hates this. ]

Wh- that is not a joke! It's not something people joke about! I've sat through enough morale sessions to know a manifesto when I hear one.

[ He doesn't try to throw Poe into a wall. Might try to pull the bag back with a white-knuckled grip, looking all but ready to vibrate himself through the floor, but he doesn't go for the throw. Be a waste of energy. He needs to save all the energy he can for basically exploding. ]

[volitaunt]

[ Poe lets go of the bag and attempts again to grab Finn's shoulders, resisting the urge to shake him (with love) until he stops vibrating. ]

Listen to me. Taako's been here eight months. How long did it take the First Order to gain power?

[bythehand]

The First Order's always had power! As soon as it formed!

[ Argued like a dude who was uhhh raised to be on that side of the argument. Kinda makes him feel sick. But he has stopped trying to shove a kitchen sponge or whatever into the supplementary bag for now, so there's that much working in Poe's favor. ]

All they did was bide their time longer. How can we know?

[volitaunt]

[ RIP Taako, because Poe is going to kill you. ]

You’re wrong. [ It’s a gentle statement in spite of the words. Poe takes a step closer, hands still on Finn’s shoulders. ] Trust me, Finn. Trust me.

[bythehand]

[ Sounds Fake But Ok.

Power isn't about armies, or funding, or system-destroying weapons, or public recognition, or using the Force. Power is about what you can take, how you can control it, and how you can use what you take to control something else. Power is a tool even one person can use. The First Order had it before it ever started stealing soldiers or blowing up planets.

Finn really can't bring himself to look Poe in the eye and say "hard pass on trusting you right now, thanks." It wouldn't be fair. Or true, just as a general statement. For a second, he wishes he didn't trust Poe at all, because trust is making it awfully hard to do what he has to do right now, and he doesn't have that kind of time. ]

It's not you that I don't trust right now.

[ Just everything else. He wants to be moving. He wants to get what matters and get it far enough away that the itch beneath his skin stops, that thoughts hold more weight than an idea pressing into the edge of an empty space. He wants to be able to breathe. ]

[volitaunt]

I was there when the First Order started testing their strength again the New Republic. I was there, Finn, I watched them spread, I watched--

[ He pauses. It's dangerous to talk about this. It brushes up against the raw wound of Hosnian Prime's loss. The names and faces he'll never see again. ] Conquest doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen just because two jerks wake up one day and say 'I know, let's do this.' The First Order might have had power from the moment it was formed but it didn't have support. That took years. It took decades.

[ It's so strange to be on the other side of things. He'd been getting used to Finn being the one with the level head, the addiction to hard facts, the deathgrip on reality. Quieter: ] It took people pretending the problem didn't exist. It took people running away. Finn. Even if they do mean what they're saying, and I don't believe for a second that they do, the only way they get what they want is if everyone on this moon agrees to give it to them.

[bythehand]

[ Why does everyone who matters have problems with running away? Why do people not see basic sense? Why is there always some sentiment out there about banding together and fighting? What's wrong with running away in the desperate hope that you might run far enough to get to die free?

Rebels, he figures in a sort of helpless wonder, maybe missing some of the finer details of what Poe says in favor of absorbing the tone. That's the whole point with rebels, people who call themselves the Resistance, people like Rey who can save up their hope and decide that standing with it means something, that's what they do. Is that just what they think other people do, too? Is that how people think?

Part of his mind says if you could have followed orders, you wouldn't have to think about any of this at all-- makes everything inside Finn twist sharply, pull overwhelmingly against the thought. Makes him so badly want to step back and away from himself in that moment that stillness breaks over him like a wave.

Is that how people think?

That's not even how he thinks. That's not something he thinks.

He looks down at the bag in his hands like he's just realizing he's got it, breaths coming in short bursts. It feels like half of them aren't getting anywhere, but by that line of thought, half of them still must be. ]

I'm calm.

[ That's generally untrue even on a good day and he knows it. Have to get there somehow, though. ]

I'm calm, it's fine, I'm calm.

[volitaunt]

That’s it, buddy. There you go.

[ Poe lets his hands drop from Finn’s shoulders to the man’s upper arms, staying there a moment like he can steady Finn out somehow just by hanging on. Slowly, Poe moves to take the bag out of Finn’s hands. ] Come on. Sit. Let me get you some water, all right?

[bythehand]

[ He still feels like this will turn out to be a spectacularly wrong course of action. The other shoe always drops, and it's past due on this moon. He thinks that about a lot of things that he winds up doing, though.

Finn tries not to think about it. Just puts his energy into thinking stay calm on loop, which never actually makes him calm, but it can give him enough of a focus point to hold his nerve and function. That's almost the same.

So he lets go of the bag, fingers feeling stiff and uncoordinated. He sits, trying to forcefully temper the energy telling him to get back to climbing the walls, for lack of a better term. Finn already knows it won't work forever; his heart rate's got plans of its own for the rest of the day.

Perhaps most importantly in the meantime: what could be the most halfhearted argument he's ever tried to commit to. ]

I don't need water. Why would I possibly need water right now?

[ Does Poe ever make sense for more than a short burst at a time? (Yes. Not right now but yeah.) ]

[volitaunt]

It gives me something to do and you something to focus on other than what's going on up here. [ Poe taps the side of his head. He pulls a glass down from their cabinet and fills it half-way, keeping a sidelong eye on Finn as he does it. ]

You drink this--slowly--then change clothes. We're going for a jog.

[bythehand]

[ He doesn't have it in him to get miffed about more or less being bossed around. Seeing as he did sort of hassle Poe right to the hospital during boot camp, which involved a lot of bossing around and haranguing in itself. And a lot more yelling. Technique could use some refining, maybe.

Finn is a lot of things, is the point. A blatant hypocrite isn't one he wants to add to his list right now. He nods instead.

Besides, he's pretty sure that if he one-shotted a glass of water out of spite, he actually would get sick instead of simply sitting here feeling vaguely sick. That's about the only thing he can think of that could make this experience worse.

Give him the dumb water, he'll drink the dumb water. ]

[volitaunt]

[ Good, drink the dumb water. Slowly.

Poe doesn't do the whole "commander" thing a lot, with his friends. Or he didn't used to. It's been a while since Black Squadron. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime since it was just him, Jess, Karé, Snap. (L'ulo, Oddy.) He's still their friend, he can't be any less, but there's a distance between him and his subordinates has grown into something that sometimes feels impassable. He's their Commander. They come to him with their panic, their fear, their exhaustion, and he puts them back together again. He has to be someone who can give them the most mundane orders with the assurance that they'll be obeyed. Eat. Breathe. Listen. Lay down.

Finn is different.

Finn is the first friend he's had in ages who doesn't have to answer to him, who doesn't owe him some degree of obedience or respect simply due to his position. Finn, he has to be more careful with. Finn, he has to be more honest with. He can't just command and trust that the person he's talking to will assume he has their best interests in mind.

Still, he watches in silence to make sure that Finn does in fact drink the dumb water.

Very quietly: ]

I'm never going to run, Finn. I understand, and I will understand if that's something, someday that you have to do. But I can't.

[bythehand]

[ Rey doesn't run, either. It shouldn't hurt to hear something that he knew already. If they can't run, it means he won't. This is where his loyalty lies, and he'll hold to that loyalty with both hands if it kills him. It was part of what turned his fear into anger on Starkiller, part of what made him walk towards Kylo Ren instead of away.

Finn bows his head. He tries to dredge up an honesty that makes sense. An explanation. ]

You know, the first time I couldn't shoot on command, I thought something was wrong with me? I thought it was something I had to fix. I wanted to fix it.

[ He's tired of words leaving him on edge. He's tired of the First Order inevitably being a stain on every single good thing that he finds, everything he tries to do, of feeling like a liar no matter what he does. He hates living in the irrational certainty that it won't ever stop throwing a shadow over those things. That no matter how far he runs, he'll never actually get away. ]

I've been trying to run since Jakku, Poe. When I figured out the problem wasn't me, all I did was get scared and try to get as far away as I could. I didn't leave because I found some better cause to die for. I didn't wanna make it out because I planned to jump onto the other side of the same war to fight them. I didn't stop to think about the galaxy. I'm not-- I'm not like that.

[ Not that brave. Not that good. ]

Everything that came out of that was luck.

[ He's not ashamed of that. Ashamed that he's not ashamed, maybe, but he did what he did. There's no changing it. He did what he felt like he needed to do, with no one to answer to and no hangups about whether it meant he's evil or good or whatever the hell categories people fall into.

Running worked out terribly in the long run, objectively, because he wound up on the First Order's most powerful weapon fighting a dude with a lightsaber? But it also worked out pretty well because of what he has now.

Finn looks back up, finally. ]

Anytime you both stay, I'll stay. If it's real. We're in this together. But I can't promise I won't ask you to run first every time.

[ Stormtroopers aren't raised to have hope. He found that feeling for himself when Poe Dameron looked up and said I can fly anything. They don't have anything to lose but their lives, which they're told they're obligated to throw away as needed. But he found that feeling for the first time with Rey, with whatever it is that they saw in each other.

Now Rey and Poe both give him hope. Now they're both something he can lose. And that's a form of power over him, the kind that Finn freely gives. Out of anyone in the galaxy, he thinks, Rey and Poe have proved over and over that they won't try to use it as a weapon against him. He can make it into a weapon against himself just by not wanting to leave that behind.

He can make it into a weapon against the things that threaten it.

He can't visualize a point where running isn't the first thing that comes into his mind, though. If he looks lesser for that, so be it. ]

[volitaunt]

Do you have any idea how brave that makes you? Being scared and staying anyway? That’s what courage is.

[ Poe loves Finn for his honesty. He loves him for being willing to expose this particular truth. Even if bringing BB-8 to the Resistance was incidental, it still happened. It happened because there was something important enough to Finn that he couldn’t turn away. ] Not everyone in this fight wants to save the galaxy. Not everyone cares about those stakes, and I wouldn’t ask them to. They fight because they have one person, one place, one thing worth protecting.

[ It’s a strange and touching honor to realize Finn places him in that category. He doesn’t think of himself as being worth that kind of position. He’s just a flyboy, good at dodging around the letter of the law and good at blowing things up. There are plenty of people he loves that much, but he knows the way his story will probably end. Debris, stardust, luminous memory.

He doesn’t value his life the way other people seem to. ]

If you need to ask, you need to ask. What matters is what happens after that.

[bythehand]

[ Finn expects disappointment. He expects-- not to lose a friend exactly, because that's Poe, but to lose something from that friendship wouldn't surprise him. It wouldn't say anything against Poe if something changed because of that, it would just...

It would just be something he had coming.

When he explained it to Rey on Takodana, they both wound up pushing a little, and he wound up walking away without her, and a lot of things after that happened very quickly. There was no time for still silence, for reading the lines of her face as she processed in full. She was gone when he turned to look back. If the lying disappointed her, if leaving disappointed her, and he's sure one or both of those things did because he could tell in the moments that they did get. By the time he'd seen her again she was willing to leave it behind them.

(What matters is what happens after that, Poe says, and he wonders if that's the way Rey felt, too.)

Every cell in his body is lit up right now, frenzied and transparent. There's nothing he can push down that won't bleed through.

Finn expects disappointment.

He doesn't find it, and that discovery takes him aback. He couldn't have laid it out more clearly. What he is. What he's never been. He expected something to run from and there's nothing to run from. He expected to be saying he's sorry for something, and apologies sit on his tongue unused. He finds understanding. Someone who says without hesitation that it's okay even if it's just one person that matters, and someone who still seems to think bravery has anything to do with it.

Finn almost argues. Wants to try to push, to get across what Poe doesn't understand yet. And if he did get it across, maybe Poe would understand some things are conditional, and it's just the way they are. In some things, you're good enough or you're not and that's the end of it, and he'd rather hear it sooner over later.

He stares at Poe like he's waiting for something, sharp. Eventually he realizes that whatever he's waiting for isn't coming. And Finn can't make himself argue for it to come. ]

-- okay. [ He considers taking this as something new to learn the controls of, instead: in the moment it has all the same adrenaline and unblinking terror of taking a gunner's seat for the first time, and he can use that to shift his thoughts from I'm calm to I can do this. Tries to use it to wrangle his breathing back into control.

What matters is what happens after that.

It's not a bad compromise for two different ways of thinking. He can afford to think that. Maybe about a few other things. ]

Okay.

[volitaunt]

[ As far as Poe is concerned, there is no condition of goodness, no condition of courage. It's a choice, it's always a choice, every day it's a choice. It's a choice he's made so often that he doesn't know how to choose anything else, maybe, but the option to be greater or less than is always there.

BB-8 rolls over to bump lightly against Finn's leg, the droid's own small vote of confidence. ]

Okay.

[ Poe wishes there was some way to communicate to Finn what he expects. What he doesn't. He wishes he could crack open Finn's past and go toe to toe with everyone who ever made the man think he needs to be perfect. That imperfection is some reason for shame.

He wishes he could promise Finn acceptance, sure and unwavering, in a way Finn would believe.

All he can do is keep giving it. All he can do is keep understanding until Finn relaxes into the expectation that's how things will be, at least as far as Poe himself goes.

He can't put words to what Finn did for him. Incidental or not, because he was running or not, because he felt broken or not. Poe hasn't made it clear enough, obviously. He hasn't been able to make Finn understand.

Poe has been ready to die for a very long time. He doesn't want to, that's never been a risk for him--he loves life the way he loves most other things. But he's been ready. Kylo Ren destroyed that balanced peace with death. He made Poe want it. He made Poe wish to be another nameless First Order prisoner, a number slated to be scratched off a list, the sooner... the sooner the better.

Finn saved him. There's no other way to put it, but there's nothing in those three words that explains the breadth of what they mean. ]

We are in this together. No matter what.

BOIIIII

[paged]

You tell me you're in the hospital right before they discharge you? What the fuck, Poe

W E L P

[volitaunt]

hi, karen

[bythehand]

[ It should be cheating to use his own words against him, clearly. He should raise a complaint through official channels. Mostly, it's reassuring all over again.

These are the things that matter, that mattered most to him even back before he knew what it meant to have people matter so much.

We're in this together.

You're one of us.

What he used to want more than anything was to just not be alone.

Then he wasn't. He isn't. Even BB-8 thinks so, presumably. He wonders if the string of Poe giving him things that matter (a name, a jacket, hope, trust, understanding, reassurance, more than he can ever give back) will end.

They're here, they're fine, it's okay. And so is Rey. Probably. Assuming she's not on her way here to subdue him by large-stick means as she deems necessary, he should consider calling her back to mention that they might not need to flee an impending takeover. Not that she would have gone.

He is a very calm man and he can definitely do this. Whatever "this" is. He sets his glass down and stands up, because he's had enough sitting, he wants to explode out of his own body. ]

If we get murdered on this jog, I'm blaming you.

[ It's not a joke, per se, but Finn can put enough of something in his tone to acknowledge that it probably isn't likely. Poe deserves that much trust, at least. ]

; ;

[paged]

[ She doesn't have to ask if he's alright - despite the reflex to - because they wouldn't have discharged him otherwise. ]

Why did you do that?

[volitaunt]

[ There's a long delay in his reply, while he tries to figure out why he did do that. ]

i didn't want you to be angry with me.

over what happened.

[ Has he told her what happened? No he has not. Good job Poe. ]