legitimatesalvage:
While Holden seemed on edge, both Alex and Amos returned the greeting with a wave of their own. Amos with his usual, jovial altitude and Alex with a feeling of giddy excitement.
Aliens, droids, humans, all here in a system that should have been uninhabited! And no creepy, glowing stuff anywhere in sight.
“Your general?”, Holden asked and the tension was clear in his voice, making Alex wonder what exactly his issue was. “You are a military force?”
While Alex still tried to fit all the information he had acquired into his picture of the universe and to place his captain’s behavior, Amos seemed to have different priorities: “You got some actual food on this rock?”, he asked, cutting off Holden’s interrogation with what Alex had come to recognise as the big Earther’s way of diffusing a situation and apparently, Bobbie had recognised it too.
“Please tell me you have some actual meat! Or at least something that isn’t artificially textured protein and mushrooms.”, she chimed in and quickly, Holden was overruled.
The mess hall was large and filled with beings of all shapes, sizes and colours and some of them turned and greeted their guide in a variety of languages on top of something that was to Alex’s ears just plain English.
Aliens spoke English. Who knew?
It turned out that there was actual food with actual meat to be had, but curiously, nobody asked where that meat came from. At least Amos, Alex and Bobby didn’t. They were the only ones who had opted for food.
Holden sat stiffly between Bobby and Alex, the tension vibrating off of him and making Alex nervous.
“What’s going on here?”, Holden asked finally, rolling his shoulders against the weight of his armoured suit. “Who was shooting at us, who are you and what is all of this about?”
While Alex would have probably liked a different tone and chosen some different questions (for example anything about the small, round, bleeping droid or Dameron’s flying), he couldn’t help but shrug and point the blunt end of his fork at Holden in a way that meant ’good question’.
Poe was glad to escort the small convey of out-of-Galaxy-ers to the caf. Glad to offer them food that probably was not the best this Galaxy had to offer, but it was better than rations cubes and water. He was seated across from them, the toe of his boot bouncing silently against a durasteel floor and his fingers idly tapping out a rhythm upon his thigh. Holden, his nervous energy, was palpable and if Poe hadn’t become used to the nervous vibrations rolling off of nearly everyone he came into contact with–and maybe if he weren’t strung out on fatigue–he might have acquired some of that nervousness too. For what it was worth, he couldn’t blame Holden. Entering in to the middle of confrontation and being immediately dragged to one side was as daunting without information, as sticking your head in a hole that may or may not contain a sarlaac. They were safe now, officially under the protection of at least one Resistance fighter. Inhaling slowly, the pilot tilted his head one way and the other, humming thoughtfully before he finally let the his bouncing leg still. “Well, that is a pretty long history to catch up on over supper–or breakfast–or whatever meal it is you’re currently dining on.” He brought a hand up to rub at the back of his neck, the gesture was almost slowed down to ensure at least the big guy didn’t go reaching for his gun. “There isn’t really a short story to explain what’s going on here sooo~” Drawling and setting his arms to fold across themselves on the table, he smiled. “I’ll—Explain what I can. So this entire galaxy has been host to a number of pretty nasty wars, makes sense. Anywhere civilization is, there are going to be opinions and differing opinions. Within the last give or take little under a century, there had been a couple of pretty bad regimes that’ve cropped up with intent to pretty much hold the galaxy hostage or to clean it up. You don’t agree with their power tripping? You’re dead.” He shrugged and continued. “Current opposition is the First Order, before them, there was this fancy regime called the Empire. Before them we had the Republic and the Separatists–on and on. So some force-happy sleemo got his hands on another force-capable dirtbag, engineered this rise to power because they’ve got the magic touch, or whatever you want to call it–” Poe wiggled his fingers and heard BB8 chirp an exasperated sound. He glanced down and laughed. “Yeah, I’m telling the story, buddy. I don’t think they’ve quite got what you’re saying.” The droid purred an indignant noise and Poe laughed again. “Soon, pal. Where was I–Oh right, space woo woo, mystic powers whatever. So this guy rises to power and he starts killing all of these other force-capable people, probably because he’s scared of being de-throned, but I don’t take much interest in the force and how it works for the light or dark side. I’m a pilot, I fly things. Anyway, those guys were defeated by the Resistance’s predecessors, the Rebellion. You can tell we’re really good at naming things.” He winked and he looked between Bobbie, Amos, Alex, and Holden, but he held his gaze mostly on the nervous man in an effort to try to sooth his nerves. "My parents, the general, her brother, and her husband all thought that when they took down the Empire and its dark-side regime, their antics would come to an end. It is a vain hope, but they thought peace might reign for a little bit. Obviously where you’ve got light, you’ve got shadow too. Well, not every single Empire person was detained, or killed. In the shadow there were some pretty furious officers that decided they wanted to try again. No surprise there. Up until just a little while ago, we were living in relative peace under the new Republic’s order. Nobody expected another galaxy-wide war to just crop up thirty-ish years after the last thing had been put down. But here we are. Resistance verses the First Order. Light verses Dark. They call us terrorists, but we just want peace and freedom.“ When he was finished, Poe unfolded his hands and knocked his knuckles on the table between himself and the Sol-System visitors. "You don’t gotta get yourself tangled up in this fight.” Poe offered, his expression was sincere and colored with concern. “A lot of good people have died in the name of peace, a lot of good people are going to die in the name of peace. We’ll take whatever help we can get, but if you aren’t from around here and if you aren’t planning on staying, we can’t rightfully ask you to put your lives on the line for our fight.”
