I haven’t decided if this is coming out of the fic yet, but it doesn’t really fit anywhere and I like it anyway so.
—-
“You look terrible,” the General says. He looks up from the window overlooking the training yard, straightening as much as he can with the headache.
“I expect so, yeah. Sir.”
“At ease, Dameron. Nightmares?”
He shrugs, “With everything else, yeah. The Force shit. Never was trained for that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault I didn’t get the Jedi genes.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Poe.”
He turns to her, has to when she says it like that.
“He’s my son.”
He clenches his jaw and looks away. “That’s no one’s child.”
“He is, and he—”
“That is no one’s son.” He presses his fist against the edge of the window very, very slowly. “That is a tool. That is a claw on the end of something bigger and nastier; that is not a son.”
“He was my child. My responsibility. I’m trying to tell you that I’m sorry, that it’s my—”
“Leia.” He hasn’t called her that in years, and coupled with the sunken cheeks and red eyes and clenched fists in makes her quiet. “I know you need this to be your responsibility, your, your jurisdiction, because then you can control it and you can fix it. But I need— I’m selfish, and I’m” — hurting, broken, tired, so, so small — “trying, and I need this to not be your fault. Please.”
She says nothing, just nods once. They look out over the yard again, the suns starting to dip below the tallest of the trees, outlining everything in oranges and reds.
“You could have a son, if you wanted,” he says, not looking over at her. “Not a replacement, I don’t mean that. But another son.”
When he catches her eye she looks utterly surprised, like she doesn’t quite know what to say. He nods toward the window and she looks.
Finn is following BB-8 across the yard toward the mess hall, doing his half hop-half jog that he’s developed to keep up with the excitable droid. The doctors tell him the limp will heal before too long, but he’s hardly going to wait for that, not when there’s so much he has the freedom to explore.
“Finn?” she says.
He nods.
“Not you?”
He doesn’t look at her. “I’m no one’s child. Not anymore.”
“You don’t grow out of it,” she says, but he shakes his head.
“Finn,” he says, “he’s got this capacity for— love, I guess, and he wants to learn everything, and he’s sweet, and he wants to look up to people. He deserves to know what it’s like. He’s young. He deserves to be someone’s child.”
He does meet her eyes, then, and it’s not the trademark smirk, but there’s something settled and familiar in his eyes when he continues, “Preferably not mine.”
She finishes the smirk for him and watches him try not to blush. “Get some sleep, Dameron.”
“It’s 16:00, sir.”
She puts a firm hand on his shoulder, propping him up. “You’re listing. After my first interrogation, I only ever slept in the middle of the afternoon. Give it a try.”
She walks away before he can say anything else, leaving him wreathed in burning red.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1RDbS7c