She should correct him, that Cassian isn't there. Instead she murmurs, "Yeah", and hangs up. Things like thank you or please either don't occur to her or don't seem to fit the moment.
When he and BB-8 cross town to her home, the door is open and the light in the kitchen is on, he'll find Jyn sitting on the kitchen counter absently stirring a cup of tea, kettle still steaming on the stove, cabinet still open. Everything sort of half completed.
BB-8 rolls straight to her once he's up the stairs, chirruping concern. Poe closes the door. Picks up the phone. Moves the kettle, closes the cupboard.
"Not hungry." Even the sentence is just a fragment and it's clear once he gets close enough that Jyn's eyes are bloodshot and rimmed with red. As a personal rule, Jyn doesn't cry. She remembered breaking down alone on the ship after her father died, finally giving herself the chance to grieve the life she never had, the father who never raised her and protected her by lying to the world so well that he convinced even his tiny daughter that he had forsaken her and the cause.
For so long she'd believed that her father was a traitor, that her father was a bastard, but her father died in her arms not knowing whether or not his revenge would ever come to fruition. It seems to be a family trait, dying before seeing their mission completed.
The weakness of crying would irritate her on a good day, replacing her grief with anger as she usually does. It seems impossible to fall back on that coping mechanism now, shoulders slumped in defeat and loss.
There are times when Poe will push things, argue with his pilots, order them to take steps in self-care. Orders won't work with Jyn. The look on her face, her posture-- now isn't the time for arguments, either. It's not the time to push. He sits down across from her and sets his hand near the center of the table palm-up, reaching out without invading her space. He doesn't look at it, doesn't try to get her to take it. The gesture is simple meant to mean, I'm here.
"Yes."
BB-8 rolls back and forth in a little see-saw next to the table, silent but still worrying.
It takes her too long to find her voice again, protracted silence stretching between them, heavy and dark. When she does manage words they are clipped, almost clinical, impersonal because if she thinks about the men and women and droids that she lead out to the beaches of Scarif, if she thinks about Tonc and Sefla and Melshi and Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze... she won't make it.
"Status report--" She falters, voice cracking, breaking into a whisper. "Rogue One."
The query he's been avoiding. A history that, if not remembered, isn't his to know. BB-8 makes a final noise of concern before letting out a short chorus of sounds. Poe keeps his voice calm and steady, his focus on Jyn without looking her right in the eye. He doesn't want her to feel watched. Scrutinized.
He's done things like this before, he realizes. Not just with the news about Hosnian Prime. He's done this before, and it doesn't get easier.
"Rogue One determined killed in action at the Battle of Scarif, 0 BBY."
Jyn's eyes immediately close against the tears that threaten to fall, expression crumpling with grief. Their chances had been spent. That had been the Death Star in the sky. The weapon her father helped build, his acquiescence solely to make sure that Jyn would stay safely out of the reach of the Empire, had ultimately killed her and Cassian on that beach.
The irony is not lost on her.
It had been a futile hope.
"And the plans?" Had they even been transmitted? Had Bodhi made it that far? The man in white -- Krennic -- had taunted her that she shields were still up. What if he wasn't wrong? What if Bodhi had been-- Jyn finds herself unable to think of sweet, gentle, brave Bodhi Rook without shaking and when she heads the tea cup clattering dangerously against the saucer she abruptly sets it down. The scalding tea that splashes out against her fingers doesn't seem to have any effect on her.
This, he can answer without BB-8's help. "They brought down the Death Star."
He doesn't say the first. He made that mistake once already.
Poe gets up, goes to the sink, wets a clean rag with cold water. When he comes back to the table, her winds it gently around her burned fingers. He has to be delicate with her; she's so sharp, so willing to cut, that knowing how much comfort she'll let herself receive is a tricky proposition. "The Alliance took what you gave them and destroyed the Empire's weapon."
Every chance they took at been worth it. They had transmitted the plans and someone had been listening, someone had taken those plans and finished her father's work.
Her eyes stay closed as she reaches for her necklace, fingers curling around the crystal as Poe tends to her other hand. She doesn't fight it, all the fight seeming to have left her entirely in the moment, flooded with an odd kind of gratitude that the one thing that had gone right in her life was finding and transmitting those plans, fulfilling her father's legacy.
Fragility touches her voice now, as if it had broken and she's holding the shattered pieces of her entire life together by willpower alone. "My father built it, the Death Star, to keep me safe from the Empire, so that they wouldn't look for me and try to use me against him. He designed the flaw in it and he told us how to find the plans."
Jyn herself doesn't need credit, doesn't want it, but she does want her father to have some breath of recognition. He deserves that much, even if it's just Jyn telling a new friend.
Galen. Galen Erso, the murderer of Alderaan, designed the flaw that brought the Death Star down. It's a monumental shift in Poe's understanding of a history he still can't completely recall. He feels oddly betrayed at not knowing this fact. Lied to. Galen Erso tried to protect his daughter, sabotage his masters, and lost his life and his child before being placed a tier below villains like Vader. A condemnation so complete it's almost breathtaking.
Slowly, Poe puts a hand on Jyn's shoulder. "Your father is a hero."
He put the entire galaxy in danger to protect her, Jyn isn't sure that can be considered heroic, but she appreciates the sentiment. She thinks she appreciates the sentiment, she's honestly not sure what she feels anymore. She's... a fucking mess.
Slowly her head shakes. "He's not. He did what he could." She doesn't know how she can make that clarification, maybe because it is the same one she would apply to herself. She and her father were making up for too many past mistakes for a handful of choices to make them heroes.
The train of death and destruction in her wake, because of her... she can't escape that.
"Maybe not." Certainly General Organa and the survivors of Alderaan would never give him that distinction. Poe gives her shoulder a small squeeze. "But he did what heroes do. The best they can, for what they love most."
They all did the best they could for her, her parents, she just wishes... they had told her what they were doing. It wouldn't have changed anything, she doesn't think, but at least she would have had some salve to the abandonment. Or would it have stung just as much because she was such a little girl?
She jerk under his grip, eyes flickering up. "Krennic. Orson Krennic. Tell me he's dead." Please let him have died down there, cut down with the machine he'd forced her father to build. Jyn doesn't think she could bear it if she somehow survived, the injustice would be too much for her.
The sigh the comes out of her is somehow both defeated and relieved. She died, she's dead, but at least Krennic went down with her. Cassian had told her that her father would be proud of her, but now she thinks her mother and Saw might be proud of her, too.
What else is there to know? She doesn't have anyone else to ask about because they're all dead. Everyone that she had ever loved or even cared about even a little is dead.
She swallows, trying to keep her chest from aching. "I have to go."
The chair almost tips over she stands up so fast, but it hits the wall with a thud. She doesn't flinch, only repeats herself. "I have to go." Without another word, she sprints out the door. Three guesses where she is going in the middle of the night, barefoot and in her pajamas.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 04:15 am (UTC)"All right. I'll walk him over to your place, you and Cassian can ask him whatever you need to."
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 04:29 am (UTC)When he and BB-8 cross town to her home, the door is open and the light in the kitchen is on, he'll find Jyn sitting on the kitchen counter absently stirring a cup of tea, kettle still steaming on the stove, cabinet still open. Everything sort of half completed.
The phone is still on the floor behind the couch.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 04:55 am (UTC)Whatever she's remembered, it isn't good.
(Cass. When did you die?)
"You eat recently?"
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 05:26 am (UTC)For so long she'd believed that her father was a traitor, that her father was a bastard, but her father died in her arms not knowing whether or not his revenge would ever come to fruition. It seems to be a family trait, dying before seeing their mission completed.
The weakness of crying would irritate her on a good day, replacing her grief with anger as she usually does. It seems impossible to fall back on that coping mechanism now, shoulders slumped in defeat and loss.
"You'll translate everything?"
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 05:35 am (UTC)"Yes."
BB-8 rolls back and forth in a little see-saw next to the table, silent but still worrying.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 05:43 am (UTC)"Status report--" She falters, voice cracking, breaking into a whisper. "Rogue One."
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 06:04 am (UTC)He's done things like this before, he realizes. Not just with the news about Hosnian Prime. He's done this before, and it doesn't get easier.
"Rogue One determined killed in action at the Battle of Scarif, 0 BBY."
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 06:22 am (UTC)The irony is not lost on her.
It had been a futile hope.
"And the plans?" Had they even been transmitted? Had Bodhi made it that far? The man in white -- Krennic -- had taunted her that she shields were still up. What if he wasn't wrong? What if Bodhi had been-- Jyn finds herself unable to think of sweet, gentle, brave Bodhi Rook without shaking and when she heads the tea cup clattering dangerously against the saucer she abruptly sets it down. The scalding tea that splashes out against her fingers doesn't seem to have any effect on her.
Why would it? She's already dead.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 06:33 am (UTC)He doesn't say the first. He made that mistake once already.
Poe gets up, goes to the sink, wets a clean rag with cold water. When he comes back to the table, her winds it gently around her burned fingers. He has to be delicate with her; she's so sharp, so willing to cut, that knowing how much comfort she'll let herself receive is a tricky proposition. "The Alliance took what you gave them and destroyed the Empire's weapon."
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 06:50 am (UTC)Every chance they took at been worth it. They had transmitted the plans and someone had been listening, someone had taken those plans and finished her father's work.
Her eyes stay closed as she reaches for her necklace, fingers curling around the crystal as Poe tends to her other hand. She doesn't fight it, all the fight seeming to have left her entirely in the moment, flooded with an odd kind of gratitude that the one thing that had gone right in her life was finding and transmitting those plans, fulfilling her father's legacy.
Fragility touches her voice now, as if it had broken and she's holding the shattered pieces of her entire life together by willpower alone. "My father built it, the Death Star, to keep me safe from the Empire, so that they wouldn't look for me and try to use me against him. He designed the flaw in it and he told us how to find the plans."
Jyn herself doesn't need credit, doesn't want it, but she does want her father to have some breath of recognition. He deserves that much, even if it's just Jyn telling a new friend.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 09:32 pm (UTC)Slowly, Poe puts a hand on Jyn's shoulder. "Your father is a hero."
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 10:51 pm (UTC)Slowly her head shakes. "He's not. He did what he could." She doesn't know how she can make that clarification, maybe because it is the same one she would apply to herself. She and her father were making up for too many past mistakes for a handful of choices to make them heroes.
The train of death and destruction in her wake, because of her... she can't escape that.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-19 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-20 12:09 am (UTC)She jerk under his grip, eyes flickering up. "Krennic. Orson Krennic. Tell me he's dead." Please let him have died down there, cut down with the machine he'd forced her father to build. Jyn doesn't think she could bear it if she somehow survived, the injustice would be too much for her.
He has to be dead.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-21 03:07 am (UTC)Poe listens for a moment, a tiny smile-- a very unfriendly smile-- quirking the corners of his lips. "Determined killed at Scarif, 0 BBY."
no subject
Date: 2017-05-21 04:04 am (UTC)"Good." That's all, no other comment. Good.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-21 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-21 04:48 am (UTC)She swallows, trying to keep her chest from aching. "I have to go."
The chair almost tips over she stands up so fast, but it hits the wall with a thud. She doesn't flinch, only repeats herself. "I have to go." Without another word, she sprints out the door. Three guesses where she is going in the middle of the night, barefoot and in her pajamas.