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[realists]

@ kestrel
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[realists]

I'm 22.

[ SOMEHOW she manages to sound defensive over text

because she is a baby ]

[withinreach]

[ she is baby

but also still somehow decades older than him because time makes no sense anymore ]

I was getting in trouble at that age too.

[ tell us a story grandpa but more seriously- ]

Have you been to Scarif yet?

[realists]

You mean have I died? Yeah.

[withinreach]

Yeah, that.

I don't know how that works, but I'm glad that you're here.

[realists]

[ casually ignores that too she is obviously great at emotions ]

So who is going to be the first person to see you naked on the ship?

You you, not past you.

[withinreach]

[ conversely poe has a lot of Feelings at any given time and is almost incapable of ignoring them ]

In person or over the network? Are those two separate categories?

[realists]

Sure

[withinreach]

You'd really rather talk about that than anything about yourself, huh?

[realists]

I would rather talk about you being naked, yeah.

My wanted posters aside, I am not very interesting. I spent the last six months in prison.

[ which is as much an opening to ask questions as she is capable of giving ]

[withinreach]

There's a lot more to you than your prison time.
I've spent the last six months camping out in the jungle, and it's no prison but it feels like we're trapped, all the same.

You're not dead or in prison now. Have you thought about what you want to do, now that you've got another chance?

[realists]

Sleep until noon and eat until I burst.

[withinreach]

Yeah? That works for you?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging you. My parents got out too. Settled down on Yavin 4 actually, practically in the shadow of the old temple.

[realists]

I like not starving, yeah.

You parents were in the Alliance?

[withinreach]

They were. A fighter pilot and a ground soldier. I was born right in the middle of the war.

[realists]

Oh

I'm sorry I can't tell you I knew them. I was only there for a few days.

[ she genuinely is. if they were young enough to start a family they couldn't have been that much older than her. ]

Though if we'd met it would have been because of Scarif so maybe I'm not sorry anymore.

[ that was a stream of conscious journey she went on ]

[withinreach]

No one really knew who they were back then, before the Battle of Yavin. Which they only won because of what you and your crew did on Scarif. Without those plans the whole Rebellion would have been wiped out that day.

... Did you know that already?

[realists]

[ jyn abruptly sits down and since she wasn't actually hiding in her room but roaming the halls, she sits down with her back against the wall. ]

We didn't know if anyone received the plans.

The shield gate was closed and we didn't know if anyone got it open or if they hit the master switch. After a while people stopped answering their comms when we hailed them so we stopped calling.

[ one by one they stopped responding. first k2, then sefla, bodhi, tonc, melshi, chirrut, baze. she didn't know the names of the bodies they'd passed on the beach but cassian has probably tried to raise them on comms too.

in the end is was quiet, just jyn and cassian. ]

It's good

That they got the plans.

[withinreach]

[ He kind of figured that, with as many people running around from his own time, someone would have told her by now. Not that telling her in person would have necessarily made this easier to take in, hearing about a future she wouldn't have been around to see or even hear about, if not for the anomaly. ]

It was close. The shield went down, but by that time Vader and the rest of the Imperial fleet were right on top of them. A lot of good people didn't make it out that day.

[ They knew that was going to happen, successful mission or no, when they made the call to go all in. ]

Never thought I'd get to talk to any of them myself.

[realists]

[ he really underestimated how unsocial she is ]

Don't get your hopes up, I'm not that great

[withinreach]

I guess I'll just have to see for myself.

Unless you're determined to go with that isolation thing.

[ as if that's actually an option, she's got to come out eventually ]

[realists]

I'm in the hall outside the oxygen gardens.

[withinreach]

I'll meet you there.

[realists]

Okay

[ jyn is sat on the floor, legs splayed in front of her, knotting and unknotting a length of a pretty, silky fabric that looks out of place with her scruffy jumpsuit that looks like she scavenged it from someone else so she could make an extra sandwich instead of another jumpsuit.

she's the only one around so it must be her. ]

[withinreach]

[ Poe wasn't holding onto any particular expectations. Deliberately. Years ago? He absolutely would have been starstruck by the chance to meet an old hero of the Rebellion, it was all stories about huge battles and Jedi and Sith and planet-destroying weapons, none of which he had any experience with — at that point.

He does now.

He's coming off of a year of trying to hold a fraying, fading Resistance together, so this feels familiar somehow, actually. His own clothes are fairly worn too, they've been through a lot of skirmishes and living out in the jungle. ]

Don't tell me you've been sleeping out here.

[realists]

[ jyn looks up and makes a face, utterly childish because she is baby. ]

No, I have a bed.

[ sometimes she sleeps on the floor instead of the bed, but no one needs to know that, she puts the blanket just so so no one can see her under the bunk except cassian who doesn't judge her eccentricities.

she gives the fabric a sharp yank and the knot unspools in her lap, but she makes no move to stand up, jerking her head to the side as if offering him the free real estate of the floor next to her. ]

So you're Poe Dameron, who I definitely haven't seen naked yet.