Slow Rider, Slow Rider, Move On a Little More

[pretendtoneedme]

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: 6I's Town Hall
WHEN: July 10th
OPEN TO: Everyone who wants in. There will be one subheader for welcoming back the group and one for the actual meeting
WARNINGS: Nothing so far; please add headers in the comment subjects if something does come up that could be problematic

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The return is, when everything is said and done, uneventful. The group who went to explore the break in the canyon walks back into the village in the early afternoon, laden down with most of the supplies they'd brought with them and without any obvious injury. There's some scratches, a couple bruises, but whatever had happened to seal them away from the village for a week definitely didn't happen to them, and they're not buzzing with any news so world-shattering that everyone needs to be collected and reported to at once. There's enough time for the group to separate and grab showers, clean clothes, and something to eat, while the word passes from person to person that the explorers have returned and that there's going to be a meeting right after dinner for them to explain what they've found and answer questions.

At the appointed time, the five of them are there, looking less ragged, and ready to talk. They've brought a few things back with them to show the others in the village, but all in all there's just not a lot to show about the other side that's different - except for that one, giant thing. But the non-changes are going to be shocking enough for most people, and decisions have to be made about what to do with the information they have now.

Comments

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi wonders absently what Jyn's side of things was like. Not something he'd have thought to ask, but he's sure it wasn't much like his own. She was so certain. She was, well, Galen's daughter. Never freezing up in something colder than terror, never losing the thread of a task from the sheer immensity of what was in front of them. He envies it a little.

He stops a long moment to breathe in the smokehouse scent of his tea, finding a place where he can be calm, if not quite collected. "There was never anything for-- Going home wasn't an option. That, that... That didn't bother me, until the option was-- It doesn't have much do do with me and what I want. Most people, um, well, I wouldn't even... wouldn't think of me as Jedhan anymore. It's just that there aren't better options less." Thinking of the end of a city in a wave of heat and smoke leaves no room for anything as small and insignificant as him. "I was there to carry a message, that's... That's all."

[3ofswords]

Until the option was gone, Kira imagines the thought completing. He doesn't know much about leaving home, having only the canyon to really compare it to. He'd barely visited the mainland for anything but odd jobs or accompanying his mother to see friends of the family.

But he understands how absence changes a thing. Absence of a friend, absence of safety. He doesn't know what he'd say, asked about home as he'd left it. Bodies in the streets and a virus still hidden behind biohazard tarps and locked gates. There were entire city blocks even the experts tread carefully around.

He'd still want it to be there when he got back, gunfire and all. "You did deliver it, though," he offers, surmising as much from Jyn's winding accounts.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"Not in time to do NiJedha any good." Or, most likely, the entire moon. It was big enough to hold onto its atmosphere and have enough activity in the crust for people to live there, more or less comfortably, but a blow like that must have damaged more than just the surface. Planet killer indeed.

Lucky Leia hasn't mentioned Alderaan yet.

"If anyone--If I'd been able to get someone to listen..." He's not allowed to let himself off the hook. The flightsuit from the bottom of the box reminded him of that. "It was only a few days, but..."

[3ofswords]

"At least you tried," and his shrug is more a way to sink into himself, his sweater, his tea. There are still flashes of chills and aching joints, but he thinks he's mostly over the cold. Spring water and antibiotics never hurt, though he's been trying to lean on the former and save the latter.

"A lot of people give up; a lot of people wouldn't have listened. You can't know what it takes to convince everyone." He'd learned that at an early age: sometimes fate was fate because you couldn't steer a person off a path, even if you gave them the choice. He'd told who he thought might listen about why they were leaving the shop, but only so many understood that it might extend its claws out to them. He can't imagine trying to tell all of New York City not to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving, especially without being able to give a concrete reason as to why.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"There's failure and there's spectacular, catastrophic, cascading failure," Bodhi says, one of those rare moments of lucidity where he finishes a thought firmly and deliberately. It's one he's quite used to. "I don't know if someone else--I couldn't do it, not in time to save a city, at least one other planet..." Scarif may not feel like much of a loss, but there was probably more there than an Imperial base. He can't remember if there was any kind of indigenous population or not. It's not the sort of thing that gets brought up in Imperial circles.

[3ofswords]

"From what I've heard," Kira says carefully, because he has only heard, and from one person: "it was a much bigger thing than any of you. Set in motion before you were even born." And if anyone knows a bit about life on that scale, it's his mother, and by some extension, himself. Being that deeply connected to the world around you didn't make it any smaller. Everything was part of a bigger picture. There was meaning in failure, held against the rest.

He sets the mug down and does his best to regain breath through his nose, clear away the last of the cold. "It doesn't matter if someone else was more capable, they didn't try. They didn't sign up for it, just like this time. You went and you did something, that matters."

That he could be talking to himself about his own arrival doesn't track, but he's certainly learned to live with it so far.

[onlyeverdoubted]

He almost asks how old Kira thinks he is, but then, a precise timeline of someone else's world isn't a reasonable thing to expect someone to know. The look he shoots his roommate is still grim and mutinous as he gives up on trying to preserve his good mood. There's something of it left, though, in looking defiant and sullen instead of just slinking off to silently stare at a wall. The energy that was cheerfulness has become pure orneriness. "Sithspit. I'm not talking about complicated politics. There's a specific chain of events here, and the weak link is me."

[3ofswords]

With a look like that, it doesn't take extrasensory powers to know Bodhi's stepped behind a wall, pushed to the limits of what he might be able to take in regards to arguing his self-worth. As much as he cares about the man's idea of himself, he doesn't have the energy left to push it.

He's been told most of his life not to, but left to twiddle his thumbs in a closed space, there's little he enjoys more than bashing his head on other people's stubbornness.

Thankfully, good tea is a close second, so he sips it through the length of Bodhi's final words on the subject, and only shoots an assessing look back over the rim of the mug: "Did you just say sithspit?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi has to pause a moment to recall that, yes, he did, a moment that kills the momentum of his irritation before it can become anger. "Yes?" It is a little old fashioned and nonsensical, but he's never thought that swearing was supposed to be logical. Honestly, it was barely a curse. Children wouldn't even get much of a raised eyebrow. Bodhi is capable of a pretty foul mouth, but that would be back in his old life, at ease with other pilots and techs. Now there's care taken with everything, even unconsciously.

[3ofswords]

"No," Kira says, shaking his head, like he can deny Bodhi's bemusement, or the subject, or the universes between their previous lives. "I get the point, and like--Bodhi, please just say fuck if you want to, I don't care. That's just the silliest curse word I've ever heard."

He's not trying to belittle him, moments after failing to build him up, but there's little else he can say in this new world he's been given a peek of, where dogs look like pangolins on roids and people say Sithspit when they're worked up over something.

[onlyeverdoubted]

He can't see why that would be until he remembers that almost no one here knows what he means by the Force, and, as such, would have no context for Sith. In that respect, he can see how it'd seem a bit peculiar. "I think I was going for..." He pauses to mentally sort through what he's seen of the more common cursing options in the canyon. "Bullshit." Fuck isn't much of a swear that he can see, but habit is everything in that respect.

[3ofswords]

Kira's snort is helpless, trailing off in something closely approaching a giggle. He aims it all into his mug, wondering which layer of their dilemma has him ground down into such a mood. He feels like he's several days out from sleep, despite it being a majority of his days since Tim dragged him in out of the rain. Has he pushed too hard again, or does everything seem to just--matter a bit less, the world shaken and left in its piles, people still rolling out of the fountain, Bodhi coming back with impossible rock samples and tales of hey, look, even more to fail to wrap your head around?

At least there are still the little things, gathering himself behind his mug until he can apologize. "Sorry, yeah, that sounds about right." While they're on the subject of Jyn and alien languages, he finally asks, "do you know what she meant when she said kriff?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

Kira's pretty clearly wrung out, an observation that makes Bodhi quicker to forgive the prodding. He sits with his own cup of tea and shrugs. "That she's pretty polite for a career criminal, I guess," he says with a shrug, a little past being reasonable despite the remaining optimism. Feeling good about himself doesn't mean not being tired and a bit overwhelmed.