[ finn sure has been gone for a few days. and when the last time they'd really talked was during a huge Confrontation with rey where finn took rey's side against him, he can't help but feel responsible. finn didn't understand him, maybe finn didn't like him anymore. and now he's gone.
he wanted to be leia. endure loss after loss and still keep going. finn could disagree with him, stop believing in him, but if he couldn't lead the resistance to survival then there was no point to any of it. just as he'd chose the resistance for his incentive over leia, he could choose the resistance over finn, too.
and it hurt. but urahara was right. he knew he was right at the time, but he lets the words wash over him now. you won't have much of a world left if you only concern yourself with the people you're closest to and don't look at the big picture. if choices were easy, they wouldn't be choices.
that's the introspection you missed on glee. 🎵 comin out of my cage and i've been doing just bad 🎵
poe has taken this time alone to commit more Violence on Inanimate Objects. the maintenance droids repaired his tv, but his hands look re-bandaged and there are new strips of bandages on his forearms. he seems to be holding one of the roombas hostage. it's his only friend.
so he looks kind of red-faced too when he opens the door. embarrassed that his life is a god damn mess. (he's stripped down to a tank top and boxers, but judging by the lucidity level, had not been sleeping.) he immediately sees the bag and goes ??? inside. ]
Hey. Uh ... are you okay? What's wrong? ... It's late.
[ What a question. What a series of questions, in an order that makes Rey feel like she's teetering on the brink of further tears. They don't come, though. Some distant part of her, some delusional hopeful part, thinks maybe he'll come back. That's why she'd known she couldn't stay in that room — it was as desolate as Jakku and twice as disappointing. She couldn't do that to herself again. Wouldn't.
If he came back, then … that would be then. For now, she can't just wait around. She can't give up.
Unfortunately, all this introspection and self-reflection does Poe no good. She needs to form actual words into sentences. She can do this. Stars, she doesn't know where to start. ]
I know. I'm sorry. And I know that we're not … [ Oh man. This is the hard part. The fact that things aren't good between them right now either, but she knows that Keith has his own thing with Voltron, and she doesn't want to impede on that, and she'd already imposed on Hayame enough. She draws a breath. Straight to the point. ] Can I stay with you?
[ as much as his internal reflex is something like "nah that's ok i'd like to keep feeling sorry for myself in peace," he can't turn her away. not like that. he doesn't have it in him. despite everything, family is still family. that wasn't something he said just to appease her. ]
Yeah. [ he steps aside so she can come in. ] Of course. Sorry if I'm not good company right now.
[ She trudges inside, shoulders hunched a little at the awkwardness of it. She props her weapons against the wall beside the TV and takes a look around. It's … uneasy, how familiar some of the lingering evidence of his fit is, if only because it resembles Kylo's room aboard the Headquarters.
Maybe that's just her looking for him everywhere, but … she doesn't think so. She's always seen similarities between them. ]
Better than where I was.
[ She mutters this mostly to herself as she pulls the bag off her shoulder and drops it at the edge of the bed. ]
It's alright. [ She turns to look over his hands, his face. He's wired. ] I'm lucky you weren't already asleep.
[ he wants to ask about where she was, what happened there, but he decides not to push it. she's not giving him 50 questions, even though he deserves it. it'll come out eventually. probably. ]
I don't sleep that much. I'm not good at it.
[she didn't stay in hanabira with him long enough to get the whole attempting to sleep experience. and it had been easier, for a little while. sharing a bed with finn (when they did — poe had started pulling away even before finn left) had been some kind of comfort.
[ She hadn't either, once. She'd always curled up, desperately trying to imagine a place far, far away from Jakku. The island on Ahch-to, apparently. The first real, decent night of sleep she'd ever gotten in her life had been with Ben.
She sinks down onto Poe's bed then, surprised by the blow that reminder deals. By what she's lost. She'd done this for the sake of being able to talk about it. She could now. But where she did she start? What did she say? She didn't need affirmation — she knew that she'd done the right thing, sticking up for herself and her worth. ]
[ he's grateful she doesn't push the subject, because he didn't want to launch into a whole thing about how being tortured and Seeing Shit Go Down has a lasting effect on a person.
he takes a seat next to her on the bed. ]
I wouldn't do that.
[ they'd worked together since the whole thing at dr. lundberg's. proven that they could at least come together for the sake of the mission. (come together for the sake of helping kylo and finn.) now he's realizing that there's still something to be said about the downtime. something he needs to say. ]
[ Rey nods, as though that's what she'd been counting on. The thing unspoken in why she had come here instead of somewhere else. In fact, she nods a time or two too many, and then it becomes clear that her expression is contorting with the effort of holding herself back, and—
She turns into him, her arms going around his neck as she finally lets out a choked noise into his shoulder. She'd been afraid, so afraid, that it had all come too late. That she had lost him and Keith to the fighting and Finn to reassignment and that digging her heels in with Kylo had been for nothing, nothing, and had cost her the very last thing she had.
But she'd hoped. And she'd been right. All the things Kylo had said, the hurtful things that promised a hard world full of suffering and disappointment, melt away. She's never had a family before. Not one that would stay. Not one that would accept the worst of her and still think she's worth — this. They'd discarded her. Kylo had discarded her. But Poe's here. Despite what he's going through, his apparent grief, he's here. ]
he rubs her back (even though it reminds him of how sore his hands feel), working through some deep emotions of his own. just because he felt like he was going full-tilt into his beliefs and was willing to do it alone didn't mean he actually wanted to be alone. he wasn't the sort of person who thrived on loneliness.
he could fix things with rey. finn was gone, but rey was still here. rey came to him. maybe he's going a little glassy-eyed while she's buried in his shoulder. ]
Me too.
[ there's a small waver in his voice that betrays his attempts to be fine. ]
[ About the Thrawn stuff? Maybe. But not about her, and not about Ben. He'd been right — maybe not about all of it, but about enough. And all he'd ever tried to do was help her. If she'd spat on anyone, it wasn't Ben. It was Poe, and Keith, and Loki. And everyone who'd tried to help her see what she was allowing to happen.
There's a lot there between them. Hugging it out probably won't fix all of it, but Rey knows they can fix it. This moment tells her they're going to be okay — a good thing too because it's just them now. ]
I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. [ She pulls away, sniffling. ] I should have come to check on you right away when they sent out the message about Finn's transfer, but I thought you wouldn't want to see me.
[ he shakes his head as she pulls away. ] It's okay. I — I think I needed some time alone. To process everything.
[ his hands go back down to his lap. ah yes. some tangible proof of his "processing." his own very special way of processing. (it had helped, for whatever that was worth.)
there's more that wants to spill out, just on the tip of his tongue. it was because of me. finn transferred because of him. but if he says it, if he pulls that idea out of his mind and up into the air, rey will agree with him. she'll say he's right. and he can't deal with that knowledge when there's no way to fix it. just an endless downward spiral of wallowing. ]
[ Her gaze follows his down to his hands. Rey reaches for one of them, gentle in how she turns his palm over, examining the bandages. He's done a fair job, which means it probably wasn't him, but some droid. ]
Does it still hurt? [ She looks up at his face. ] I think I have some more painkillers left in my bag. [ Assuming Ben didn't cave and take some while she hadn't been keeping track. She doubts it. ] Not as good as bacta, but it's something.
No. [ well, yes, his hands were sore, but it's more of a no to the painkillers. he's not the ~the pain helps me feel alive~ type, but it did have a grounding quality to it right now. as a kind of distraction. who has time for a depressive episode when your hands are on fire. he glances down. ] That's okay. I'm okay.
[ guess what? they don't have to talk about him if they're talking about her. so — ]
What happened? You don't have to talk about it. But I'll listen if you want to.
[ The trouble with the question is that Rey can't decide if she doesn't want to answer it because she doesn't want to get into it or because she doesn't want to upset Ben. Ben, who left. Ben, who would rather watch her suffer the loss of all of her friends than trust her to know what she should and shouldn't tell them.
She buys herself a moment by adjusting her grip on his hand to hold it loosely for handholding purposes instead of for examination. ]
I was staying with Ben. [ She's too frayed to pay mind to the fact that she'd avoided naming him that to Poe, but — It does occur to her that the name feels wrong, after the fact. Intimate. ] Uh, Kylo. [ This she offers as a correction and as a clarification, like maybe Poe won't know who she means otherwise. She drops her head a little. ] I'm not anymore. Obviously.
[ he knows so little about the nature of what was going on between the two of them. like, okay, he's not stupid, it was not just training, but the room-sharing does get a tiny bit of an eyebrow raise. five percent of an eyebrow raise.
and of course he's going to wonder what happened and infer from that tiny little water droplet of a statement what actually happened between them, but he doesn't have the energy to pry that much or even feel an ounce of "aha i told you so" about kylo ren being ... kylo ren.
because he knew, at the very least, whatever she was doing was because she saw something in kylo worth saving (even if he disagreed). and that it must have hurt to have that blow up in her face in some way.
he squeezes her hand back a little bit. tenuous handholding is happening.]
[ She looks back up at his face, sees the eyebrow raise, and the chagrined sympathy. Somehow that surprises her — not the lack of 'I told you so,' but the leap straight to sympathy. No outrage. No hurt. Some part of her had expected that he'd be disgusted with her, but … maybe he'd known too. Just like Keith and Loki had, about the bond.
That makes the whole argument feel that much more absurd, honestly. Not her stance, but Kylo's. He's so caught up in trying to hold things close to the vest that he can't accept that the secret's out and everything's still fine. No one's dead or on fire.
She wants to punch him, but she knows it wouldn't help. She can't force him to see how he's hurting himself. All she can do is be here if he decides to see it for himself. ]
I shouldn't have pushed you and Keith away. I should have listened.
You didn't want to. Sometimes you wanna believe something so much, there's no room for anything else. I already knew it was like that last time we talked about it. [ a brief pause. ] I'm the same way.
[ and maybe he'd been the same way about thrawn. but, just like finn, it didn't matter now. he'd gotten that transfer message, too. in a way it was a relief. the source of contention gone, not having to throw himself in the middle of it. he didn't think he was wrong about thrawn — just like he was sure rey still believed she was right about kylo — but continuing to fight about it did nothing to help anyone.
there was a sadness to it, too. finn being gone was a maelstrom of emotions he didn't know what to do with. with thrawn it was just ... sad. they said their goodbyes, and that was it. it was done. ]
I seem to be better at blinding myself than most people.
[ That digs too deep. Telling him the essential information of what had happened with Kylo was not the same as talking about her parents the alcoholics who sold her for booze. Who she'd pathetically waited for ten years before Finn had dragged her off that planet.
Oh, Finn. It wasn't his first reassignment for her — the pain was less, this time — but it's still hard. He'd been one of the few things that had helped her see that she wasn't asking too much, that she was worth something, that she did deserve more from Kylo. ]
He was upset. [ She draws a deep breath. ] I hurt him. [ Poe understands that, right? He'd been so concerned for Thrawn's feelings. Surely he can see why she'd value and consider Kylo's. ] Last time that happened, he hurt Keith. So you should keep an eye out. If he tries anything, call me right away. I'll stop him.
[ yep, he's not trying to fight her on kylo ren having feelings. he clearly ... has them. somewhere. maladjustedly. the picture where he and rey are reflections of each other is coming into focus.
anyway, the truth bomb about keith makes him math lady face a little bit. keith had vaguely alluded to something happening with kylo ren but refused to say anything else about it. which was fine, they weren't best friends. but ... yep. that checks out. ]
Yeah, okay. [ that is a sincere "yeah, okay." a little reluctant because he doesn't like having to accept that he would have no power in that hypothetical situation, but he still accepts it in the end.
with this new information at his disposal and a mended bridge with rey, he decides to broach another topic of discussion. ]
I was talking to Scott about something. Well, not about something. About Kylo. Scott thinks I should have reported him from day one, when he tried to go back in my mind. He'd back me on it. I'm not gonna now, not for that. But if he tries something like you're saying? I will. You can't just keep giving him chances until somebody dies. You get that, right?
[ She says this with great struggle. Like, she definitely wasn't ready for Poe to go that hard, and then he did, and now she's wrestling with it. Baby steps are not the way of her life, though. She doesn't get to take time to get used to separating herself from him before dealing with this possibility. It might be tomorrow. It might be tonight. ]
But I hope I won't need to.
[ The larger part of her wants to believe that Kylo wouldn't do it after what had happened with Keith, how it had torn her apart. When he'd left, she hadn't felt anything like that, unlike that night in Hanabira with Keith. But …
Maybe it's the balance. Between her hope, and his cynicism. She knows that she has to be prepared for the possibility instead of ignoring it and thinking the best of him. ]
He knows I'll intervene now. I did that night, with Keith. It should be enough to dissuade him. If nothing else because he knows he can't beat me.
[ 'If nothing else.' If not because he cares about her enough to stop. That promise, the assurance that he would try to hold back his temper from that, was probably bunk now wasn't it? It's hard to know. ]
I don't think what he knows matters to him about stuff like that. I watched him yell at a horse. [ he'll never forget kylo ren throwing a temper tantrum at a horse. iconic. ]
I believe you, I trust you. Trusting Kylo Ren with logic is a different story. He loses his temper once, and, you know, that's it.
[ he's not blind to his own shortcomings. like, poe knows that he himself also has a temper and can do dumb irrational shit because of it. but, consider: he has never tried to murder anyone. ]
[ She says this with purpose and powerful certainty. It's not that she's saying she's positive and it definitely won't happen — but she feels the need to qualify her determination so that Poe doesn't just think she's been fucking off and risking everyone's lives for the D. ]
He never hurt me. Even when he could have, even when he was angry. [ Not like that, at least. Not physically. He'd certainly considered it. Tonight he'd considered it; she'd seen it in the way he moved. She thinks of that day by the ogre cave. Probably still the scariest moment of her life. At least top five. ] He's not the man he was.
[ poe purses his lips, takes a breath ... and just looks tired. he doesn't want to fight with rey. not right now, not about kylo ren. not on the heels of losing finn, not when he feels like they're finally in a good place with each other.
he's just tired. ]
He doesn't hurt you. You're special to him. I get it. And I'm glad. I'm glad he's ... making progress or whatever. [ poe dameron: as delicate as a blaster to the face. ] But I don't think it's right that you should have to throw yourself between him and everyone all the time. It's not right to you.
[ he takes a moment to bite at the inside of his cheek.]
Like ... okay, say you're working on a ship. Compressor's shot. You spend all this time trying to fix the compressor, you're not paying attention to the rest of it falling apart. End of everything, maybe the compressor works, but now you've got a bucket of bolts that can't leave the ground. That make sense?
[ She exhales, looking down at their hands, chagrined. ]
And you're right; it's not fair. And if he crosses that line, I'll understand if you report him. [ She'll understand, but she won't do it. She'll handle it herself. Because — ] But when it breaks down, you don't throw the ship out. You salvage it.
[ People aren't ships, though. Ships will lie there and let you fix them. But Kylo Ren gets a say in whether he gets fixed, whether anyone can get close enough to make those repairs, and he doesn't want it. She'll have to contend with him if she wants to help Ben Solo. ]
I'm only trying to say … [ The same thing she'd been saying from the beginning, really. ] I want us to be ready for the worst. But I still have hope. You can think I'm naive if you want — he does.
[ he joins her in looking down at their hands, and then back up at her. ]
I dunno. I'm not — I dunno how to say this. I think it's gonna come out wrong. I don't believe in Kylo Ren, but I believe in you. I think if anyone could turn him, it'd be you. But I don't wanna see you kill yourself trying to do it.
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he wanted to be leia. endure loss after loss and still keep going. finn could disagree with him, stop believing in him, but if he couldn't lead the resistance to survival then there was no point to any of it. just as he'd chose the resistance for his incentive over leia, he could choose the resistance over finn, too.
and it hurt. but urahara was right. he knew he was right at the time, but he lets the words wash over him now. you won't have much of a world left if you only concern yourself with the people you're closest to and don't look at the big picture. if choices were easy, they wouldn't be choices.
that's the introspection you missed on glee. 🎵 comin out of my cage and i've been doing just bad 🎵
poe has taken this time alone to commit more Violence on Inanimate Objects. the maintenance droids repaired his tv, but his hands look re-bandaged and there are new strips of bandages on his forearms. he seems to be holding one of the roombas hostage. it's his only friend.
so he looks kind of red-faced too when he opens the door. embarrassed that his life is a god damn mess. (he's stripped down to a tank top and boxers, but judging by the lucidity level, had not been sleeping.) he immediately sees the bag and goes ??? inside. ]
Hey. Uh ... are you okay? What's wrong? ... It's late.
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If he came back, then … that would be then. For now, she can't just wait around. She can't give up.
Unfortunately, all this introspection and self-reflection does Poe no good. She needs to form actual words into sentences. She can do this. Stars, she doesn't know where to start. ]
I know. I'm sorry. And I know that we're not … [ Oh man. This is the hard part. The fact that things aren't good between them right now either, but she knows that Keith has his own thing with Voltron, and she doesn't want to impede on that, and she'd already imposed on Hayame enough. She draws a breath. Straight to the point. ] Can I stay with you?
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Yeah. [ he steps aside so she can come in. ] Of course. Sorry if I'm not good company right now.
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Maybe that's just her looking for him everywhere, but … she doesn't think so. She's always seen similarities between them. ]
Better than where I was.
[ She mutters this mostly to herself as she pulls the bag off her shoulder and drops it at the edge of the bed. ]
It's alright. [ She turns to look over his hands, his face. He's wired. ] I'm lucky you weren't already asleep.
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I don't sleep that much. I'm not good at it.
[she didn't stay in hanabira with him long enough to get the whole attempting to sleep experience. and it had been easier, for a little while. sharing a bed with finn (when they did — poe had started pulling away even before finn left) had been some kind of comfort.
but he's gone now. ]
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She sinks down onto Poe's bed then, surprised by the blow that reminder deals. By what she's lost. She'd done this for the sake of being able to talk about it. She could now. But where she did she start? What did she say? She didn't need affirmation — she knew that she'd done the right thing, sticking up for herself and her worth. ]
Me either.
[ And that lets a silence sweep in. ]
Thanks for not shutting the door in my face.
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he takes a seat next to her on the bed. ]
I wouldn't do that.
[ they'd worked together since the whole thing at dr. lundberg's. proven that they could at least come together for the sake of the mission. (come together for the sake of helping kylo and finn.) now he's realizing that there's still something to be said about the downtime. something he needs to say. ]
You're still family. I wouldn't take that back.
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She turns into him, her arms going around his neck as she finally lets out a choked noise into his shoulder. She'd been afraid, so afraid, that it had all come too late. That she had lost him and Keith to the fighting and Finn to reassignment and that digging her heels in with Kylo had been for nothing, nothing, and had cost her the very last thing she had.
But she'd hoped. And she'd been right. All the things Kylo had said, the hurtful things that promised a hard world full of suffering and disappointment, melt away. She's never had a family before. Not one that would stay. Not one that would accept the worst of her and still think she's worth — this. They'd discarded her. Kylo had discarded her. But Poe's here. Despite what he's going through, his apparent grief, he's here. ]
I've been such an idiot.
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he rubs her back (even though it reminds him of how sore his hands feel), working through some deep emotions of his own. just because he felt like he was going full-tilt into his beliefs and was willing to do it alone didn't mean he actually wanted to be alone. he wasn't the sort of person who thrived on loneliness.
he could fix things with rey. finn was gone, but rey was still here. rey came to him. maybe he's going a little glassy-eyed while she's buried in his shoulder. ]
Me too.
[ there's a small waver in his voice that betrays his attempts to be fine. ]
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There's a lot there between them. Hugging it out probably won't fix all of it, but Rey knows they can fix it. This moment tells her they're going to be okay — a good thing too because it's just them now. ]
I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. [ She pulls away, sniffling. ] I should have come to check on you right away when they sent out the message about Finn's transfer, but I thought you wouldn't want to see me.
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[ his hands go back down to his lap. ah yes. some tangible proof of his "processing." his own very special way of processing. (it had helped, for whatever that was worth.)
there's more that wants to spill out, just on the tip of his tongue. it was because of me. finn transferred because of him. but if he says it, if he pulls that idea out of his mind and up into the air, rey will agree with him. she'll say he's right. and he can't deal with that knowledge when there's no way to fix it. just an endless downward spiral of wallowing. ]
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Does it still hurt? [ She looks up at his face. ] I think I have some more painkillers left in my bag. [ Assuming Ben didn't cave and take some while she hadn't been keeping track. She doubts it. ] Not as good as bacta, but it's something.
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[ guess what? they don't have to talk about him if they're talking about her. so — ]
What happened? You don't have to talk about it. But I'll listen if you want to.
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She buys herself a moment by adjusting her grip on his hand to hold it loosely for handholding purposes instead of for examination. ]
I was staying with Ben. [ She's too frayed to pay mind to the fact that she'd avoided naming him that to Poe, but — It does occur to her that the name feels wrong, after the fact. Intimate. ] Uh, Kylo. [ This she offers as a correction and as a clarification, like maybe Poe won't know who she means otherwise. She drops her head a little. ] I'm not anymore. Obviously.
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and of course he's going to wonder what happened and infer from that tiny little water droplet of a statement what actually happened between them, but he doesn't have the energy to pry that much or even feel an ounce of "aha i told you so" about kylo ren being ... kylo ren.
because he knew, at the very least, whatever she was doing was because she saw something in kylo worth saving (even if he disagreed). and that it must have hurt to have that blow up in her face in some way.
he squeezes her hand back a little bit. tenuous handholding is happening.]
I'm sorry.
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[ She looks back up at his face, sees the eyebrow raise, and the chagrined sympathy. Somehow that surprises her — not the lack of 'I told you so,' but the leap straight to sympathy. No outrage. No hurt. Some part of her had expected that he'd be disgusted with her, but … maybe he'd known too. Just like Keith and Loki had, about the bond.
That makes the whole argument feel that much more absurd, honestly. Not her stance, but Kylo's. He's so caught up in trying to hold things close to the vest that he can't accept that the secret's out and everything's still fine. No one's dead or on fire.
She wants to punch him, but she knows it wouldn't help. She can't force him to see how he's hurting himself. All she can do is be here if he decides to see it for himself. ]
I shouldn't have pushed you and Keith away. I should have listened.
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[ and maybe he'd been the same way about thrawn. but, just like finn, it didn't matter now. he'd gotten that transfer message, too. in a way it was a relief. the source of contention gone, not having to throw himself in the middle of it. he didn't think he was wrong about thrawn — just like he was sure rey still believed she was right about kylo — but continuing to fight about it did nothing to help anyone.
there was a sadness to it, too. finn being gone was a maelstrom of emotions he didn't know what to do with. with thrawn it was just ... sad. they said their goodbyes, and that was it. it was done. ]
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[ That digs too deep. Telling him the essential information of what had happened with Kylo was not the same as talking about her parents the alcoholics who sold her for booze. Who she'd pathetically waited for ten years before Finn had dragged her off that planet.
Oh, Finn. It wasn't his first reassignment for her — the pain was less, this time — but it's still hard. He'd been one of the few things that had helped her see that she wasn't asking too much, that she was worth something, that she did deserve more from Kylo. ]
He was upset. [ She draws a deep breath. ] I hurt him. [ Poe understands that, right? He'd been so concerned for Thrawn's feelings. Surely he can see why she'd value and consider Kylo's. ] Last time that happened, he hurt Keith. So you should keep an eye out. If he tries anything, call me right away. I'll stop him.
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anyway, the truth bomb about keith makes him math lady face a little bit. keith had vaguely alluded to something happening with kylo ren but refused to say anything else about it. which was fine, they weren't best friends. but ... yep. that checks out. ]
Yeah, okay. [ that is a sincere "yeah, okay." a little reluctant because he doesn't like having to accept that he would have no power in that hypothetical situation, but he still accepts it in the end.
with this new information at his disposal and a mended bridge with rey, he decides to broach another topic of discussion. ]
I was talking to Scott about something. Well, not about something. About Kylo. Scott thinks I should have reported him from day one, when he tried to go back in my mind. He'd back me on it. I'm not gonna now, not for that. But if he tries something like you're saying? I will. You can't just keep giving him chances until somebody dies. You get that, right?
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[ She says this with great struggle. Like, she definitely wasn't ready for Poe to go that hard, and then he did, and now she's wrestling with it. Baby steps are not the way of her life, though. She doesn't get to take time to get used to separating herself from him before dealing with this possibility. It might be tomorrow. It might be tonight. ]
But I hope I won't need to.
[ The larger part of her wants to believe that Kylo wouldn't do it after what had happened with Keith, how it had torn her apart. When he'd left, she hadn't felt anything like that, unlike that night in Hanabira with Keith. But …
Maybe it's the balance. Between her hope, and his cynicism. She knows that she has to be prepared for the possibility instead of ignoring it and thinking the best of him. ]
He knows I'll intervene now. I did that night, with Keith. It should be enough to dissuade him. If nothing else because he knows he can't beat me.
[ 'If nothing else.' If not because he cares about her enough to stop. That promise, the assurance that he would try to hold back his temper from that, was probably bunk now wasn't it? It's hard to know. ]
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I believe you, I trust you. Trusting Kylo Ren with logic is a different story. He loses his temper once, and, you know, that's it.
[ he's not blind to his own shortcomings. like, poe knows that he himself also has a temper and can do dumb irrational shit because of it. but, consider: he has never tried to murder anyone. ]
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[ She says this with purpose and powerful certainty. It's not that she's saying she's positive and it definitely won't happen — but she feels the need to qualify her determination so that Poe doesn't just think she's been fucking off and risking everyone's lives for the D. ]
He never hurt me. Even when he could have, even when he was angry. [ Not like that, at least. Not physically. He'd certainly considered it. Tonight he'd considered it; she'd seen it in the way he moved. She thinks of that day by the ogre cave. Probably still the scariest moment of her life. At least top five. ] He's not the man he was.
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he's just tired. ]
He doesn't hurt you. You're special to him. I get it. And I'm glad. I'm glad he's ... making progress or whatever. [ poe dameron: as delicate as a blaster to the face. ] But I don't think it's right that you should have to throw yourself between him and everyone all the time. It's not right to you.
[ he takes a moment to bite at the inside of his cheek.]
Like ... okay, say you're working on a ship. Compressor's shot. You spend all this time trying to fix the compressor, you're not paying attention to the rest of it falling apart. End of everything, maybe the compressor works, but now you've got a bucket of bolts that can't leave the ground. That make sense?
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[ She exhales, looking down at their hands, chagrined. ]
And you're right; it's not fair. And if he crosses that line, I'll understand if you report him. [ She'll understand, but she won't do it. She'll handle it herself. Because — ] But when it breaks down, you don't throw the ship out. You salvage it.
[ People aren't ships, though. Ships will lie there and let you fix them. But Kylo Ren gets a say in whether he gets fixed, whether anyone can get close enough to make those repairs, and he doesn't want it. She'll have to contend with him if she wants to help Ben Solo. ]
I'm only trying to say … [ The same thing she'd been saying from the beginning, really. ] I want us to be ready for the worst. But I still have hope. You can think I'm naive if you want — he does.
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I dunno. I'm not — I dunno how to say this. I think it's gonna come out wrong. I don't believe in Kylo Ren, but I believe in you. I think if anyone could turn him, it'd be you. But I don't wanna see you kill yourself trying to do it.
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