lina_musebox

;poe

Sex Pollen Pre Relationship
Poe Dies Pre Relationship
Nightmare Early Relationship
Hogwarts AU Pre Relationship
Poe Almost Dies Pre Relationship
MoM AU First Night
Slightly Older Hogwarts AU
Post-TLJ
Bodyguard and Prince AU; overflow
Massage Pre Relationship
Oblivious Poe AU
Cyborg Poe AU
MoM AU Sex Pollen
FO Infiltration Sex Ring
TFLN
Soulmate Tattoo AU
Finn Marries Someone Else AU
Evil Finn AU; overflow: 1, 2
MoM AU Poe 10 Yrs Older
Vamp/Were AU
Missing for a Year/Telepathy AU
MoM AU Poe 'canon' updated
Dark Possessive AU
Married on Yavin AU
MoM AU Sexy Outfits
MoM AU Subway Sex
MoM AU with Melodies!Finn; overflow
MoM AU Photo-Op Kiss
Nearly Old Men AU
MoM AU Rule 63
Online Dating AU
MoM AU Poe Lost His In-Game Memories; overflow
Trans Poe AU
College Roommate AU
TIE Pilot/Prostitute AU
MoM AU Finn Returns from Port-Out
MoM AU Manipulative Masturbation Machine
Canon AU Manipulative Masturbation Machine
Shape Shifter AU; timeskip
FO Sexual Torture AU
MoM AU Finn Has a Boyfriend
Hades AU Finn Left Alone
MoM AU Apocalypse
MoM AU Poe Died in Canon
Canon AU Handjob in a Hospital (inspiration)
MoM AU Another Apocalypse
WWI Pen-Pal/Love Letters AU
Institutionalized Prostitution AU
MoM AU Body Swap
Post-TROS Victory Party

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Finn kind of wished it had been his fault and Poe could just stay angry with him. That way, maybe, there'd be a way to get it all back. But he let the wish go and sat down beside him.

"A long time ago, I was here for about six months. I left and came back and... I don't have any of it either. It's happened to a lot of us." He deflated and licked his lips. "There's a lot to explain, but I'll try to be as precise and honest as I can, okay?"

Which included their relationship.

And Crait...

The pictures were innocent, for the most part, but Poe's thumb hovered over one of them anyway. It was of him and Finn - Finn was holding and looking at the camera, grinning at it, but Poe was only looking at Finn, with the kind of soft smile he didn't even know if he was capable of, after the finalizer.

He hovered there, not really understanding what he was looking at, and realising:

"... Do I actually want to know?" He asked eventually. "Two years-- Two years is enough time to have a life here."

One in which he was apparently incredibly happy.

Finn blinked and glanced away, understanding why that was an attractive option. Creating your own life rather than trying to insert yourself into someone else's had taken him a long time to master.

"You don't have to. If you don't want to know, I won't say anything. There are no obligations, okay? I get it, I've been there. You just... do whatever you want to do."

Poe swallowed thickly, unable to pull his eyes away from the photo for several long seconds, but then forcing himself to. He turned the screen away and held it back out to Finn. He couldn't look at it any more.

"... I don't know what to do about any of this," he mumbled after a minute. "It doesn't make sense. It shouldn't be possible."

Finn took the phone back, finding that his heard could, in fact, keep on breaking. He kept his facade, though, and didn't let it show.

There was nothing Poe could do about any of it. Nothing except try to accept it and move on.

He thought back to the point Poe mentioned, coming in fresh out of their crash on Jakku. Which meant that Poe was still more or less right out of the Finalizer. Maybe he had been able to run missions immediately after such a thing but that didn't make it right.

"None of it makes sense here... Are you hungry? Thirsty? There's a place not far from here."

When was the last time he'd eaten? He couldn't actually remember. With Lor San Tekka, probably. But he couldn't remember what they ate.

His stomach felt like acid, but. Just because he didn't want to eat didn't mean he shouldn't. And it was easier to focus on basic necessities than it was to focus on existential crises.

"... I should eat something, yeah."

Finn patted him on the shoulder and helped Poe up if he was allowed before silently steering him away. The place he had in mind was small, didn't get much foot traffic, but had a lot of good food for a cheap price. And free refills, which was probably the most important thing.

He urged Poe inside and asked for some water from the first employee he spotted before seating them at a secluded table. He didn't dare try to breach the subject yet, much preferring for Poe to process for however long he needed.

Finn... just tried not to think about anything other than the present.

Poe seemed almost in a daze, sitting where he was told to and then leaning his elbows on the table, rubbing his temple.

After the water was brought and the waiter left again, he finally spoke up.

"... I don't even know where to start. What do I-- What do I need to know, about my life here?" Evidently he'd decided "nothing" wasn't the answer.

Finn stirred his water around with the straw, trying to buy himself some time to think, before eventually deciding on some answers.

"You have your own place in a town called Nonah. You called it Base One and it's where a lot of people live, myself and the General included, but you were the one that built it. And your last job was in this planet's military, a branch they called the Air Force. You were a pilot, naturally, but the tech here isn't as advanced as ours back home. They don't have anything that can breach atmo. I'm sure they'll give you your job back if you wanted it, though."

What else? What else was dire, need-to-know information? "You had a lot of friends here. They'd be happy to know you're back, but they... understand how this happens, too. Um-" He should say it. Should he say it? "That's the most important stuff, really. What's important right now, anyway."

"I was serving a foreign military?" The skepticism was thick in his voice, but before Finn could reply he put a hand up and shook his head. "Just - never mind. Obviously I had my reasons. Why I would serve people who kidnapped us to another planet in the middle of a war and trap us here for two years, I couldn't tell you."

He let out a hard breath.

"Friends. But if you and the General are the only two I even know here, who--"

"There are people here from the Rebellion. And people here that you just met along the way." Finn shrugged, actually not knowing the story of how Poe met Archie or- Ugh, he couldn't think about Archie right now either.

"I should say, though, that no one can control the porter. The people here built it for some reason but now they can't stop it. That's why they give us homes, money, jobs-... To the average citizen, we're practically celebrities."

Poe rubbed his face vigorously, liking everything less and less as it went on.

"Okay. Alright. I don't - I'll go through it all later. There's got to be records, right? You have photos. Did I write anything down? Record anything? I must have left myself memos if I thought there was a chance I could come back and not remember."

... Ah. "The videos," he said to himself and sighed deeply.

"You once ported out for a few weeks and everyone got videos from you, basically saying goodbye. You left messages for yourself at the end of them, but when you came back, it was... kind of a mess.

"Anyway, I don't know if you did it again, but if you did then we'll start getting them in after you've been gone at least a month. So... another two weeks, I guess." That was going to be a long two weeks.

He could probably go to the company and directly ask them for these videos, but that would defeat the purpose of letting his old friends decide if he should see them or not.

"Will you get them now that I'm back?" Poe asked, frowning.

"They should at least be able to release them to me, right?" He didn't totally understand why he'd leave messages for everyone else, but the notes to himself must be important.

Good questions. "I think we will. If not, we can go and ask. You left a sort of... stipulation in the videos, though. You said that if someone just didn't want to show you, they didn't have to. That's why you sent them out to your friends and not to yourself. Not to mention if they were gone by the time you came back.

"There could be something back home, though. Some message only you could find. I don't know."

"Did you get one?" He asked, though his tone was almost tired rather than accusatory.

"I can run through my gear when we get back to - what'd you call it? Base One? - but there's gotta be something you can give me in the meantime, buddy. 'You made a few friends and worked for the military' can't totally sum up two and a half years, can it?"

"Yeah, I got one," he tried to answer casually before running a hand over his face again.

"I don't know what I can say or what you even want to hear. I've only been here for about a year anyway. I don't know everything first hand and there's so much." But he was just stalling now.

Finn put his elbows on the table, following the grain with his fingers and not looking at Poe. "You and I were together. Twice. Once a long time ago, before I left the first time. When I came back about eight months later, you-" Oh, how does he explain that? "You were with a man named TK-622. He was a stormtrooper in the Empire who served on the first Death Star... Anyway, you... said you built Base One for me, that we had planned to build it before I left.

"A lot of things happened. Nightmares started becoming real. The actual Death Star showed up once. This whole place is a mess. You and I got back together about six months ago before you left again. I-...

"I don't know how to sum everything up. A lot's happened, and you've changed along with it. I mean, you're still the same, you're still you, but it was two years. Plus, with everything that happened back home- It's just been a lot."

From a drought of information to a deluge, Poe was - for once in his life - stunned into silence. It was probably for the best that Finn wasn't looking at him, because the confused, innocent sort of shock on his face was not an expression he was going to be able to explain. He recovered quickly, putting a hand over his mouth and looking away, a weird hollow feeling filling his chest.

What did he even do with this?

It was so much information that trying to tease the pieces out was almost impossible. The Death Star? A storm trooper?

You and I were together. Twice.

He breathes through his nose slowly.

Work it like a mission, Poe. You can't take it in all at once. Most important pieces, first.

"... I'm sorry." He said it after a long moment, his mouth half covered by his hand, and still looking out the window. "That I don't remember."

He could barely explain to himself how he ended up in one relationship, let alone two.

Being on the other side of this was hell. He had so much sympathy for everything that Poe went through, just piling on to the pain he already felt.

"It's not your fault," he replied softly. "When I came back, I didn't remember us either. It's just how things are here."

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to feel, a painful mix of homesickness and the barest trace of longing.

He hadn’t let himself think about a life like this in a long time. To learn that not only did he have one, but that he had been happy—

It was a long, quiet moment before he spoke again.

“... So what do we do?”

That was a very difficult question to answer. He heard the we, assuming it meant what they should do with them, but there was nothing to do. They couldn't just pick things back up like nothing ever happened. So he answered the question a different way.

"When I came back, you told me this place is like a vacation. Time back home pretty much stops for us, so when the porter takes us back, we'll start where we left off. We're not actually missing anything at home, so... we just enjoy this peacetime while we have it, even if we won't remember it later. It's not always great, sometimes you're just trying to get by, but it's not bad either."

Finn shrugged and summed it up. "You do whatever you want."

There was the matter of what had happened back home. He needed to tell him about all of that, too, but not right now. It was already too much.

He'd meant the we not so much in terms of their relationship - he still was having a hard time getting his head around that - but in terms of them being all that existed of the Resistance.

All that existed of Poe's family.

So when Finn clarified it down to "you", he almost visibly wilted.

Whatever he wanted.

"Not whatever I want. You already said I couldn't go back."

Yeah... Finn didn't respond to that, choosing to just remain silent for a moment. Poe, most of the time, just wanted to go back to the fight. Even after Crait, it seemed like, no matter what he might have said. He was always-

... Oh. Finn straightened, remembering a crucial detail that he had really overlooked.

"There's another thing... We're not the only people from our time period. Kylo Ren and General Hux from the First Order are here, too." That was one of the first things Poe told him about. With everything else going wrong, he'd nearly forgotten about them.

"The porter is-... I don't know how it works, but when someone dies here, they just come back to life most of the time. It's like the porter doesn't want to let us go. Since we just keep coming back, bringing the war here was pointless and-... There's a truce. I wasn't here for it, I didn't approve at first, but... that's how things are right now."

Whether or not Poe even heard the second half of the sentence was hard to say. He went very still at the mention of the other two men, and then it was like the world was filled with white noise or static.

He certainly didn't seem to address the question of a truce.

"Where are they?"

Poe...

Finn watched him for a long moment, hands around his drink, not surprised in the least. But he still stayed quiet, rotating his jaw for a moment and eventually looking back down at the table.

"You worked hard to get the truce in place. Sacrificed a lot. You even killed Hux once that I know of before it was in place. If people knew about that or if you tried again, you'd be locked up in a prison somewhere and Hux would be doted on in some mansion on the other side of the continent, alive."

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