He's looking Poe right in the face, kindness in his own, and telling him to stop.
Poe's eyes fill. He closes them, which doesn't so much hide the tears as force them to fall. He pulls away from John's grip, rests his forehead on John's shoulder, and tries not to let solitary tears become weeping. He already cried on Leia's shoulder. He already broke the one time.
He wants to say please. He wants to say please, let me have this.
He doesn't want to do that to a friend.
Even drunk, even this drunk, Poe doesn't want to do that to John. He said that's all you have to do. He doesn't make promises he can't keep.
This is not the man his mother would want him to be. ]
I'm sorry.
[ To her, to John, to Paige, to every gunner and pilot and bombardier whose lives he lost. He hates himself for apologizing, he hates himself for having to. It's like every weeping soldier his father held on their living room couch with its little woven blanket tossed over the back. The scars of war laid bare, ugly and twisted and all at odds with the domesticity of Kes Dameron's home.
There it is: a promise he didn't keep. He told himself he'd never be one of those men.
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Date: 2018-01-17 05:31 pm (UTC)He's looking Poe right in the face, kindness in his own, and telling him to stop.
Poe's eyes fill. He closes them, which doesn't so much hide the tears as force them to fall. He pulls away from John's grip, rests his forehead on John's shoulder, and tries not to let solitary tears become weeping. He already cried on Leia's shoulder. He already broke the one time.
He wants to say please. He wants to say please, let me have this.
He doesn't want to do that to a friend.
Even drunk, even this drunk, Poe doesn't want to do that to John. He said that's all you have to do. He doesn't make promises he can't keep.
This is not the man his mother would want him to be. ]
I'm sorry.
[ To her, to John, to Paige, to every gunner and pilot and bombardier whose lives he lost. He hates himself for apologizing, he hates himself for having to. It's like every weeping soldier his father held on their living room couch with its little woven blanket tossed over the back. The scars of war laid bare, ugly and twisted and all at odds with the domesticity of Kes Dameron's home.
There it is: a promise he didn't keep. He told himself he'd never be one of those men.
He lets John go. ]