wayward pines ✧ contact

[realists]

This is Jyn, leave a message I guess.

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THE FOURTHEENTHISH because why have one thread when you can have three

[volitaunt]

[ ♪♪♪ ]

just how i like it TBH

[realists]

[ jyn wasn't asleep, reading on the couch by the light of the muted television, so she picks up the phone on the first ring. she assumes it's one of her friends because none of elsa's friends would be rude enough to call after midnight because elsa would never have rude friends. ]

Hello?

[volitaunt]

[ For a moment, silence. Then: ] Rey is missing.

[ So many things have to be said like ripping off a bandage, lately. ] Caroline had a whole group disappear on her. This is happening all over.

[realists]

[ a whole group? jyn assumes a group from caroline's home, imagining poe and leia and cassian going missing all at once. she stops imagining that immediately. rey is missing but the rest of them are still here.

idly she wishes she had a cell phone like cassian because then she could walk to his house while on the phone with poe. ] Are you alright?

[volitaunt]

[ He almost lies. Says he's fine, in the face of the disappearances, even though this is too familiar. Even though disappearing is the way pilots die.

But there are things he'll say to Cassian, to Caroline, even to the General that somehow he can't say to Jyn. ]

Nope. [ There, at least it's the truth cut with sarcasm. ]

[realists]

Do you want company?

[ tough luck for him, she is coming over whether he wants her to or not so it's not really a question, more of a warning that she's coming over. ]

[volitaunt]

This place is too big when it's empty.

[ And as far as he's concerned, just him and BB-8 means it's empty.

...That's a yes. Yes he wants company. ]

[realists]

[ ACTUALLY ]

Why didn't you invite Caroline over?

[ still, she closes her book and gets up to shut the television off, flinging the book to land on the bookshelf with unerring aim. ]

[volitaunt]

She just lost everyone from home.

[ He didn't want to... what? Remind her? Make it about him? He's not sure. He'll have to tell her one way or another, let her know that her friends' disappearances are part of some greater pattern. He's not sure if that will comfort her or upset her more.

But there's something else, another dividing line that exists between him and Caroline, one that he's still not sure how to cross and thus mostly doesn't think about. ]

But Rey's... she's from our home.

[realists]

[ fair enough, jyn doesn't question it because it's a perfectly reasonable answer. ]

I'll be there in five minutes.

[volitaunt]

[ Poe hangs up slowly, then spends at least one of those five minutes thinking about calling Caroline. What they said to each other at Steve's place that night is truer now than ever. He has a war to go back to, she has people she needs to protect. And now they both have people from home who've vanished, like they were never here. In a twisted way it buys them time--they can't leave without their people.

But buy them time is all it does, and at way, way too high a price. ]

[realists]

[ the only reason it takes jyn the full five minutes to get to his house is because she leaves a not for elsa on the fridge with poe's number in case she needs jyn.

but five minutes later, jyn pushes open the door without knocking, kicking her boots off by the door and padding into the kitchen barefoot because she just assumes that is where poe is. for once, and possibly the only time, her hair is down, still damp from her earlier shower. ]

Hi.

[volitaunt]

Hey. [ He's working on tea. It is the one with the bear on it that supposedly is for helping people sleep, not that he's ever noticed a difference. He's even got his own honey-filled bear ready and waiting for her.

At least he knows enough to just brush her arm with one hand instead of trying to hug her. It's a small contact, but it still helps. ]

[realists]

[ why is everyone trying to sleepytime tea her. she sleeps... fine. she wonders if cassian told poe about that whole thing with jyn and the woods, she is hoping no but assuming yes.

she hops herself up on the counter, as always. ] You know Cassian is much better at this than I am.

[volitaunt]

At what? Playing nurse?

[ He finishes filling the kettle and fires up the (replaced) stove, which he actually knows how to do now. BB-8 is still rolling around Rey's empty room, making sad noises that carry through the downstairs hall.

Mugs. One of them has a bunny on it. This will be Jyn's mug, because now he knows she's a Disney princess. ] It's fine.

[ He can't stand those mournful cooing noises. They break his heart whenever BB-8 has cause to make them.

Funerals, funerals, the sounds makes him think of funerals. ] I'm getting used to not being okay.

[ He picks up the tea box. ] This work? I've got some others, not as many as at your place, but I tried to find some of the same ones.

[realists]

[ she nods that the tea is fine, not enough energy to argue. ]

Saw used to say, when I was younger, that war never ends. There's a lull, but peace isn't real, it doesn't last. It got easier, being not okay, once I accepted that I was born into a war I was never going to leave.

[ idryssa had walked out on saw when he has told her that, jyn half expects poe to have the same reaction. her own views had changed, eventually, but pushing down her hurt so deep had been instrumental to her own survival. ]

[volitaunt]

[ Poe balks.

His opinion of Saw Gerrera wasn't great to begin with. He's the son of the Alliance, grew up with the ideals of service and noble sacrifice, and even if he knows better what the cost of war really is these days, he's still his mother's son. He still believes in the good of the galaxy and the people in it.

(Yavin, glowing red across the bulk of the sky; his father's voice; afraid it was all for nothing.) ]

I can't accept that.

[ He glares at the wisp of steam that curls from the mouth of the kettle. ] Maybe I won't make it to the other side of what's here, or what's waiting at home, but peace isn't that fragile. Not when so many people are willing to fight for it.

[realists]

[ jyn refrains from pointing out that the peace she had fought and died for didn't last for poe because she can be blunt but she isn't outright cruel. they had won the clone wars only to fight the empire only to fight the first order only to fight whatever comes next. poe has hope, jyn can't take that from him. instead: ]

I watched the HoloNet feeds of the last Senate hearings. You sound like Senator Organa. [ mon mothma had the same idealism but senator organa had struck her as the type of person who would declare war; his fervency was different, as if he had more to lose. her childhood opinions were not wrong. ]

[volitaunt]

[ For a moment, he thinks she means Leia, but then it clicks--her Senate. The Senate of Bail Organa.

Poe looks over at her, dumbfounded. ] That's....

[ There's nothing he can say that quite captures the honor of the comparison. Instead he just shakes his head, wondering what the General would say, not wanting to know in case she finds it somehow an insult.

Finally, he manages: ] I'm no Bail Organa.

[realists]

[ well, it wasn't entirely a compliment -- the senate had literally ignored bail and his idealism. but he was one of few leaders of the rebellion jyn was willing to get behind. ]

Don't let it go to your head, [ she says dryly. it makes her wonder, though. if she had compared him to leia would he have died on the spot? ]

Why did you call me instead of anyone else?

[volitaunt]

[ The answer is yes, he would have died right there on the floor in front of the kettle and she would have to explain to BB-8 how she accidentally murdered his copilot.

How is she capable of constantly catching him off-guard? Maybe that's one of the things that draws him to her, beyond their shared home galaxy. She challenges him, consistently, with the simplest of questions. She makes him want to be honest with his answers.

(She makes him want to share his hope, somehow.)

He leans against the counter, drumming his knuckles lightly on its surface while he thinks it over. ]

Because I didn't want someone who would try to comfort me. [ His answer surprises him, too. ] I wanted someone I could trust.

[realists]

[ that is a completely fair reason to call her. jyn isn't exactly good at comfort. or anything really that involves being sweet. she's not unkind, she just isn't... soft. and so she nods, comfortable with her place in the world. ]

Why don't you want to be comforted?

[volitaunt]

[ Poe rubs his eye, quiet, knowing exactly why, knowing what the General would say to him if he said it to her. Knowing what Caroline would say. Cassian-- Cassian might understand, would probably understand, in fact.

So too, maybe, would Steve. ]

She's under my care, and they took her.

[realists]

You said she was old enough to fight in a war and now you're kicking yourself for not protecting her?

[ her eyebrows arch up like PICK ONE. rey can't be both.

jyn understands, she does. she feels the press of every single death on scarif, rebels whose names she wakes up screaming, rebels she never learned the names of, friends and strangers alike. they were there because of her.

but rey was here by no fault of poe's and she'd left through no fault of his either. probably. ]

[volitaunt]

[ He feels a prick of temper and then... to his own surprise, to his continual surprise where Jyn is concerned, he smiles. A fraction of a smile. A slice of an expression, as ironic as it is tired, but it's there. ]

My uncle--I call him my uncle, we weren't related, but he helped raise me after my mother died. My uncle flew for the Rebellion. His name was L'ulo L'ampar. He was my mother's commanding officer. In the early days of the Resistance, he flew under me. I was his commander, which's weird sometimes. He changed my diapers.

[ Poe goes silent for a moment, thinking of those first flights after L'ulo joined Black Squadron. Figuring out where they both stood. The kettle starts to whistle and he pulls it off the burner, setting it on a cool spot on the stove. ] He got blown out of the sky by a man named Terex who hated me so much he turned against the First Order just to... I don't know, win our personal pissing match.

[ He pours out the water. ] L'ulo was older than me by a good stretch. He joined before I did, served for longer than I was alive, but he died, and I...

[ One tea bag for her. One for him. ] It's the same thing. It's not my fault. It is my fault. That's just how it is.