maskormenacelogs | step out, step out of the sun

WHO: Han Solo and Sarissa Theron
WHERE: some café in Nonah
WHEN: idk idk uhh. near the end of May??
WHAT: Han runs into someone who might've kind of sort of messed with his head during the dream plot. Sarissa runs into someone she might've kind of sort of traumatized during the dream plot. whoops.
WARNINGS: imagined death and non-consensual messing around with someone's head.

[Of all the places to run into the human-shaped rancor fodder that screwed with his head in the dream, Han never actually figured on a café in Nonah being one of them.

He doesn't really try to think about any of it—usually, he'd be the type to just let bad dreams lie, and he's been doing his damnedest to let this bad dream lie too, put the screams he knows are false to rest. Still, some days he can't quite go back to sleep without those screams drifting back up.

He's in Nonah at the moment for two reasons: his actual, legitimate job as a taxi driver, and a small side job where he's dropping off a packet of something Very Illegal off for someone paying him very nicely. He ducks into a café to pick up some coffee for himself, and stops.]

You.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( It's not like Sarissa's not used to pissing people off. And now she's a cop again, and they've got her on duty with traffic citations until she's proven she can hold her shit together for a couple months? She's pretty sure she's pissing off more people. Unfortunate inevitability, really, when she's already gotten verbally hit around the head for how she's a menace to society, not fighting real crime, and all that.

Just because she's off-duty doesn't mean people can't still recognise her, and she momentarily worries if Sarah or Cosima have gotten subjected to any flack that should have been aimed at her, when— )

Jesus Christ.

( The words are barely audible, and she swallows. Her mouth feels dry, feet unsteady, as she looks at Han Solo. The man whose brain she'd picked apart, whose memories she'd corrupted. )

I didn't— oh God, you're real.

( It feels stupid as soon as she says. Of course he was real, of course she hurt an actual person when she was trapped in her own head. )

[There are a lot of things Han tries to forget about the dream. The memories are one of them, the way they'd shifted and changed to accommodate death and dying and hopelessness. Most days he lets those false memories fade away with the rest of the dream. Now they're clawing their way up to the surface. Funny how trauma works.

(Here is their final kiss, here is Leia's blood staining his hands, here is—)

It's a miracle Han doesn't launch himself at Sarissa right away, but that may have something to do with the fact that they are in a public place and he is not keen on getting kicked out of a café at the moment. But his jaw sets, his eyes narrow.

There's some dark circles under them, like he doesn't sleep much.]

Damn right I'm real. [Right here and right now, anyway.] You know, you'd have fit in real well with the Empire. [You know, the guys led by that black-clad monster in Han's memories.]

Hey!

( She takes a step closer - she's shorter than him, just barely 5'4", and the shock of seeing him isn't so much to hold her back completely. Not with what he's saying. Not with what he thinks she is. ) I'm real sorry what happened to you. That wasn't nothin' any soul should get put through, you understand me? I think it was sick, and screwed up. But the person what did that to you, that wasn't me. That was some— twisted, brainwashed monster with my face, but it wasn't me.

( Sarissa tilts her head to the side; the burst of heat in her words, that wasn't directed at Han. Not really. Wasn't him that should get scorched by it. ) I'm sorry. But— I ain't got any words that'll come close to saying how sorry I am, or how fucked up all that was. I don't know how to even start—

( And she gestures, vaguely, at the space between them. How the hell do you talk to someone you tortured in a dream where you weren't you? Christ. )

[He steps back.

She's 5'4" and small enough that he could take her in a fight if he needed to, but Han's brain calls up an image of Sarissa watching him with a smile right before she started messing around in his head, and Han steps back, fear choking him for a moment.]

You're sorry? That's not gonna fix it and you damn well know that.

[Bravado, that's what this is. A smuggler's bravado, ratcheted up to cover that flash of fear and terror, because Han still remembers what it felt like, to have his own memories shift and change on him, to have blood on his hands that never really was there. And if he lashes out first then he won't be the one who gets hurt, this time.]

And I don't know about you, but from where I was sitting, it sure as hell looked like you. Even had your accent.

( She knows what fear looks like, spent enough time living when it felt like she could feel nothing else. Sarissa doesn't step after him, just holds her hands up, palms out so he can see them. No sudden moves.

When she speaks, her voice is calmer, not the heated rush of words, but deliberately slower. )

They broke me. ( How else do you say it, even? ) That was the only way I'd do that shit to anybody. The things that I did? That wasn't who I am, that was what being brainwashed did to me. They screwed my brain up the same way I was screwing up yours.

( "It was me but it wasn't me," what a cliche. Next she'd be talking about how something just happened, or it wasn't what it looked like, or maybe they should get outta here. (Most used line in movies, she read one, let's get outta here.)

Softly, an afterthought, )

And I should explain some stuff about there being a few women who look like me knockin' about, but— that's a different story.

So, what? It was you but it wasn't? [A snort of laughter, almost cruel.] Some excuse. What's the next one? It wasn't what it looked like? Because I've used that before.

[The bitch of this whole mess is—if it hadn't been done to him, he might've had some sympathy. He's seen this kind of thing before, after all, and on some level, even here and now, he knows it's unfair to Sarissa to snap at her for something that happened in a dream, for something beyond her control. He didn't ask to have her mess around in his mind, and she didn't ask to be turned into the kind of person who would do such a thing in the first place.

But it's still raw. It's still not quite settled yet, still rears its ugly head in his worst nightmares—the false memories, blurring with the real ones until he can't tell which is which, anymore.]

Like that Sarah you mentioned?

Oh, fuck—

( Fuck you, she almost spits out, but she bites the inside of her cheek and forces to stop for a second, calm down. They're making a scene, she's pretty sure, but it's not really important. )

Look, we both know it was what it looked like, and it was me, yeah, but I wasn't in control. All right? I can't get proof or a bloody certificate, but whether you believe it or not, I'm not the person who did that to you. I wouldn't believe me either, but, so— fuck it, I guess.

( A brainwashed dream version of her made her bed, and now she's got to lie in it, or something. What she can do, at least, is nod. )

Sarah and Cosima, they're my sisters. We're identical. I'm the only shit one, but, so... don't take this shit out on them.

step out, step out of the sun

OKAY, shaking off the delay induced nervousness, I'M HERE

wheres my starbucks

i drank it, in the name of the empire

RUDE also wow late screams

oh please, you have full immunity from worrying about lateness in tags to me tbh

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