Chapter Text
Poe had two essays due that week. Five thousand words and two graphs with six sources for his class on post-war reconstruction. The second was smaller: three thousand words, two sources, but it also had to be presented in front of the mock Senate. His was a case against scaling down military forces after the Concordance. That one terrified him. It was an unpopular opinion even the company of Populists, doubly so because it came from the son of war fighters, who was also an ex-fighter pilot.
Then, the next week was stuffed full of readings, mock quizzes, and making flashcards for final exams. Poe couldn’t fathom why he had picked up a full load of classes right out of the gate. And politics? He wasn’t even sure he liked the Senate all that much. After a semester of burying himself in studying the institution, he was ready to throw up his hands and run as fast as he could back to the family farm.
He took a long, deep breath as he stared at the detailed lists on the tablet in his hands. “You can do this,” he whispered to himself.
As the train slowed on its approach to the next station, Poe glanced up to catch the grumpy looking older man next to him look away. Poe thought he probably shouldn’t talk to himself on the train. In an effort to deflect, he dug around in his bag, searching blindly for his headphones, but came up short.
“Damn,” he muttered as he remembered exactly where they were—sitting on his desk. He had dumped out his bag to find his favorite stylus, then got caught up reorganizing his entire room, and had left the headphones on the desk.
“Uh—sorry,” a woman’s voice above him said.
Poe watched as a pair of ripped blue leggings, tucked into scuffed brown boots, scooted around him and found a place to sit several seats down on the opposite side of the car. He swallowed his groan and didn’t look up at her. Just like the old man, she was probably giving him a weird look for talking to himself on the train.
It’s not like this was a problem unique to him—lots of people talked to themselves on the train. That wasn’t to say it was a healthy thing to do. But it wasn’t odd.
As the train started moving again, Poe flicked his finger across the datapad and clicked on the icon of his friend Finn’s face.
[is it odd that I talk to myself on the train?]
[yes.] Finn’s reply was quick and succinct.
The train from Hosnian University to the house he shared with Finn, Finn’s girlfriend Rose, and her sister Paige was an hour on a good day. An hour and half if trains were running late—which, despite being the capital of the Republic, seemed to happen often. It was a long, long journey, especially without his headphones. There’d be people having their own weird conversations he didn’t want to listen to, but couldn’t help overhearing. Then the kids who didn’t understand what inside voices were and others playing their music too loud. Poe leaned his head back against the window and sighed.
At the next stop, the grumpy old man next to him got off and more passengers shuffled about the car. Poe caught sight of the woman he’d accidentally sworn at. She had messy brown hair tucked up under a tan knit cap, glasses with a strip of tape in the middle, and she was holding a cactus.
Poe blinked.
[is carrying a cactus on a train odd?]
[why do you have a cactus?]
Poe ignored Finn’s question and decided his time was better spent reading his coursework than texting his friend about the people on the train. He ran his finger across the text, highlighting what he thought would be the important bits. It ended up being most of the article. When he looked up and blinked his eyes after staring at the screen for too long, he realized the train was making good time. Only three stops left and the car had mostly emptied out. His stop was second to last at the end of the line before the train would head back the other way into the city center.
On a city commuter, he recognized one or two of the faces still in the car, though he really didn’t pay much attention, or care. The woman with the cactus, however, he would have remembered her if he’d seen her before. Or maybe she only made an impression this time because of her potted plant. Her cap had slipped off her head and was sitting on her shoulder, she had one earbud in her right ear and the other hanging down, and she seemed to be singing to her cactus. Humming, really, not loud enough to be heard, but her lips were moving and she was tapping her foot rhythmically.
Poe realized he was staring at the exact moment she looked up and also caught on that he was, in fact, one of those creepy guys on a train. He quickly looked back at the device in his hands and furiously started tapping. Nonsense filled the note margins, but it didn’t matter—he was obviously very busy with his schoolwork and definitely not staring.
At the next stop, he glanced up to see if the woman and her cactus had moved, but they hadn’t. It was the same at the one after. Poe shoved his datapad back into his bag and pushed it onto his shoulder in anticipation of his station, while trying not to think too hard on the fact that the woman was also getting ready to get off the train. He stood as the train slowed down, gripping the handhold until it stopped. He shuffled to the door on the opposite end of the woman with the cactus, though he couldn’t help taking one more glance at her as the train doors slid open.
Oh no.
Her hat must have fallen off her shoulder and then onto the seat and she hadn’t noticed. It laid abandoned on the garish orange bench.
Poe started to raise his hand to point and say something, but she was out the doors before he could get a sound out. Though he had one foot on the platform, he dashed back into the car, snatched up the discarded hat, and barely made it out before the doors shut. The track attendant blew his little whistle at Poe, his arm jerking back and forth to wave him away from the train.
“Sorry,” Poe muttered and quickly walked away. He looked frantically around at the smattering of people moving about the platform, but he didn’t see her.
He hurried down the steps, but the walkway split off heading to either the main lobby of the station or other connecting platforms. Another look at the crowds, now increasing as he moved further into the station, and he still didn’t spot her. Poe gripped the cap in his hand and chewed on the inside of his cheek. He had some random woman’s hat—now what?
He shoved it into the pocket of his jacket and headed home.
“Where’s the cactus?” Finn asked after Poe walked through the door.
“What?” Poe responded, almost in a daze as he dropped his bag to the floor and shrugged off his jacket.
Finn gave him a look up and down, probably realizing his friend was exhausted and slapped him on the shoulder. “Never mind. Paige is making dinner.”
“It’s not too spicy is it? Last time she cooked, it was like a Death Star going off in my bowels.”
“Stop being a baby, Dameron!” Paige shouted from the kitchen.
“I like spicy,” Poe told Finn, as if he had to defend himself. “Paige gets crazy with the peppers. It’s assault what she does with food.”
“I heard that!”
“Don’t worry, Poe,” Rose said with a smile as Finn and Poe made their way into the dining room. “I made her make a not-so-spicy plate for you.”
“It’s heresy,” Paige declared as she put the large bowl of noodles and vegetables on the table. She left and then returned with a plate made especially for him—obviously less red than the main dish.
“Thanks, Paige,” Poe said as he reached for a fork.
“Wait!” Rose nearly shrieked as she threw her hands out to stop him. “You have to say one good thing that happened today.”
Both Poe and Paige groaned. They had different opinions on food, but they both agreed that Rose’s positivity plan was becoming tiresome.
“Do it,” she commanded, pointing her fork at both of them.
“I’ll start,” Finn offered while dumping a healthy portion of the food onto his plate. “All of the guys in my shop showed up to work today and there were no accidents. Made enough to pay rent on time. And I got to come home to my best girl, and you two.”
Paige made a gagging motion while Rose beamed at Finn. “None of my kids ate glue today, so I guess that’s a win. Poe, you should come by sometime, since you and the little urchins share the same palate.”
“Paige—” Finn was always the first to jump in to have Poe’s back, and he appreciated that. It just didn’t seem worth it after a while. Paige was always going to be acerbic towards him, which he didn’t understand, and Rose was always going to be making excuses for her.
Like now, as Rose put her hand over Finn’s to stop this from escalating. “Poe?” she prodded, now with a forced grin. “How about you?”
Nothing. Literally nothing good had come of today. He was up at dawn to catch the train. It was raining and he stepped in a puddle so his left shoe and sock were wet most of the day. His classes were long and there were the looming reminders of all the deadlines coming up. He had packed a sandwich, but it had managed to slip down to the bottom of his bag and became a squashed mess by the time lunch rolled around. And then, on the train ride home, he’d realized he’d forgotten his headphones taking away the one hour he’d set aside for relaxation. Instead, he’d studied and tried not to look at a woman with a cactus.
And he realized her hat was still in his jacket pocket. Now he was a thief, too.
The three of them were all staring at him waiting for an answer. Rose with her faux enthusiasm, Finn with his wincing, second-hand embarrassment, and Paige with her sarcastic eye-roll. He looked down at the plate of food in front of him.
“Paige made me food and remembered I have the spice tolerance of a human baby, so there’s that.”
“Great!” Rose exclaimed, her voice just a pitch too high. “Let’s eat!”
“Finally,” Paige said and fell into her chair.
Like most meals that they managed to eat together, which wasn’t that often, thankfully, Finn and Rose dominated the conversation between each other. To their credit, they did try and get Paige and Poe involved, but Paige was usually on her datapad and Poe just wanted to finish eating and get back to his studies. However, it was his turn to clean up tonight which made hiding away in his room that much further away. Rose stayed to help clean up, and Poe appreciated it, but he knew she was doing it to try and make up for Paige’s antics.
“There’s a bunch of leftovers, so I put the not-spicy noodles into a separate container. Maybe you can take it with you tomorrow for lunch?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks, Rose,” Poe said as he went through the motions of drying the clean dishes and stacking them back in the cupboards.
Poe forgot his noodles the next day. But he did remember his headphones, so he counted that as half a win. Luckily, he had just enough left on his meal account for a piece of fruit and a bagel. That was the last of his entitlement for the month, though. He needed to be a bit more frugal for the next few days until the Navy deposited the next cheque.
It was a pittance, really. Barely enough to live on. They paid for his school, but not the licenses for the texts or other supplies. There was a cost of living allowance, but Poe would have to live on Jakku or some other dumpy planet for that meager sum to cover all his expenses from housing, to train fare and food. It did not go very far on the galactic capital, to say the least.
Not to mention the Centrists were always trying to cut everyone’s benefits. One more thing Poe had to worry about—if he could even afford to finish this stressful academic path he’d chosen.
“Don’t want to be a farmer—not a farmer,” Poe told himself again. Not that he minded helping his father out back at home, but he did not want to do that for the rest of his life. The same exact thing, over and over, everyday? It’d drive him crazy. Like actually crazy, not the sort of overworked, stress-induced crazy school did to him already.
Thankfully, it was a short day. It was either go home and take the chance that the house was empty and he’d be able to study in peace, or go to the library and take that chance that someone wasn’t loudly chomping on their food near him (which happened more often than he thought it should).
Poe yawned. At least accidentally falling asleep in his bed was better than on a library table.
The train ride was slow. Lots of stopping and starting again, which Poe hated. It made him tighten his grip on the handhold and alternate between pinching his eyes shut and staring intently at anything outside the window. Slow as the ride was, Poe barely noticed the passage of time. He had his headphones planted securely on his ears and an eclectic selection of the last thirty years of greatest hits playing loudly. He kept his head bobbing, the beat running through his boots, and tried to take himself away from this aggravating train ride.
Finally, it was his stop. Poe was so deep in that music cloud, floating away to someplace distractingly better, he almost ran straight into someone getting on the train while he was getting off. His first grumbling thought was that they should have waited—always wait for people exiting the train before getting on. He looked up at whoever it was to give them his most annoyed glare, but faltered.
“Oi, keep up now,” she chided him as she moved past. Her arms clutched around the pot in her hands as she moved to the other side of the train and frowned at him as he stepped out the door.
In a rather confused daze, though Poe wasn’t entirely sure why, he stared at her as the doors started to close. Then it smacked him right in the forehead.
“Oh, I have your—” as he reached into his jacket pocket to pull out her discarded knit cap, the train pulled away “—hat.”
Poe sighed and stuffed the item back into his pocket. When his head dropped, he spotted the charming presents the strange woman had left him. With two fingers, he pinched the cactus quill out of his sweater and flicked it off onto the train tracks.
“What is with the cactus?” he mumbled to himself and walked to the station exit.