sixthiterationlogs | [closed] the life you learn from someone else

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[closed] the life you learn from someone else

WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: House 23
WHEN: September 6th [predated]
OPEN TO: Bodhi Rook
WARNINGS: Usual warnings for mentions of epilepsy symptoms may apply.

As it always does, life starts returning to normal: he’s shown enough people to the crevice in the north end of the canyon, prepared an updated drawing for the information board, and presented the rolled-up original to Bodhi as if to close the matter entirely. When he walks through the inn to use its working shower, he doesn’t look at the sketches. He puts it aside, like he always has, and he focuses on what he can put his hands on.

So: not the room, not the riddles on the board, and not--Bodhi.

Which left him to his paper, his journal binding, his wandering. Left him to the memory of collapsing against the glass wall, bright lights, Margaery’s concern. He’d left that out of the description, and she’d thankfully done the same, but it sits in him. The fact of it. It’s the worst things have gotten since his first few days: bad smells, maggots that weren’t there, shadows that don’t move like man or beast.

It’s the worst things ever get, that he remembers after. He’s never really ranked them before: the hallucinations, the overwhelming flashes of emotion, or collapsing. Like something can reach down and just take his body away from him, make it something dead, and he has to stare out of it while it crumples.

He didn’t know what it was back home, and he doesn’t think he’s ever going to find out, here. All he can do is work the routine. Keep his head down, mix paper, bind it into books, sketch the treeline.

Today he’s taking it a little easier than he has, letting himself sit on the steps with the proper sketchbook, drawing birds. Credence’s chess set has some inspiring shapes, and the real thing gather often enough when he’s steaming out the mash boiling inside into sheets.

It’s hot despite the clouds overhead, and he’s sitting with his shirt mostly off, left to hang around his throat like a scarf. There’s a jay coming to life on the page, all blue and black pencil, and he doesn’t look up until a shadow falls across the path too dark and well-shaped to be a cloud crossing the sun. “The finished stuff is up at the inn,” he says, the new sheets still drying out in the short yard from the path. It isn’t until he looks up that he realizes--when a person is the thing you aren’t thinking about, well, sometimes they’ll come to you.

“Hi,” he tells Bodhi, looking up through his hair.

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Bodhi's entirely too glad to be noticed. He was hesitating, never sure even after a few more successful meetings where he stands with Jude. Highly enough in his estimation to be justified in bothering him while he's working? Just as well he didn't have to figure out. He tries hard to look like he was just walking by and not awkwardly dragging his steps while he debated. It'd have helped to know who he was going to spot. This house is close to his own as the crow flies, but his wanders usually take him straight into the trees, not deeper into town, and he was surprised.

He appreciates the way Jude hides, though quite unconsciously. It softens all the trouble he has with eye contact. Hard as Jude is to read, he's easy to be around. Well, when and if Bodhi can stop agonizing over whether he's fucking it up again, anyway.

"Hi." And then, because his voice sounds dumb and that wasn't actually a real answer, he adds, "W-what're you working on?"

Not thinking about Bodhi keeps him a mystery when their paths cross. Is he shy, is he something deeper than--is he either of those things with everyone, or just strangers, or just Jude? Then again, he's not thinking about it, and he's not thinking about why he even cares which it is. This is the guy he almost brained with a rock his first night here, and had only just removed the useless he'd attached to harmless.

"Kind of taking a break," he admits, lowering his feet down a step to lower the slant of his legs, giving Bodhi a view of what he hopes is a less offensive sketch than the last. "Next batch is stewing, this one's drying," he lifts a pencil to indicate the screens suspended on tightly staked sheets, "It's too hot to be in the house with a fire in the stove."

There's room enough on the steps for another person, and Jude turns the pencil down against his palm, indicating it. "Pull up a step if you like."

Bodhi doesn't look at the page until Jude moves it for him (looking over shoulders is just rude), but once the invitation is clear he takes it immediately. His discomfort was entirely rooted in Jude's subject. This picture is as well done as the one sitting on his otherwise unused bed at home, and it's also of a pretty bird. Of course he wants to see it. He sits as close as seems polite, fascinated by the lines. Jude gets gently bumped by the trailing end of his headscarf as the light fabric catches a breeze and descends a beat behind its owner. It's looser than usual in the warmth of the day, just looped around once and the rest tumbling over his shoulder, and he only has on the lighter of the two tunics, no robe or sash.

He wants to ask about the paper. He's been wondering about the process since he realized it hadn't come from a mystery box, and now he's managed to catch Jude in the middle of it. But the picture's caught his attention first. Bodhi has no creative talents at all, but he does love the results of the fortunate people who do. He has no idea how you're supposed to compliment a drawing, though. It's pretty sounds banal, but trying to seem more intelligent and compliment the color or the lines is doomed to failure. It looks, well, just like a bird, sure, but that's not really the point, necessarily.

He's a little mortified when he hears himself say, "It looks alive." He could have gone for bland, tautological, or pretentious, but no, he found the secret option, just kriffing weird. Why does anybody put up with him?

Jude doesn't quite startle, but his expression does visible shift, turning his head enough to slant the hair out of his eyes. It's a genuine thing, when Bodhi says it, and it's been awhile since that kind of unfettered praise came his way. At school, everyone's trying to talk about art through the lens of what they're learning in their books, parroting words they had to learn were even things to say.

He wouldn't expect art history or theory from Bodhi, but he's glad there none of its taint in his point of view. Allison would have called it context, but--it's just a fucking bird.

"Thanks," he answers, just as genuine as the praise. It isn't very pronounced, but he smiles when he looks back down at the page, the shine of an eye made with negative space, the mild blur of feathers lifting to fend off the competition. Bodhi's scarf gets a second glance, but he doesn't push it away or shrug it off. It's like a point of connection, the only kind he thinks Bodhi would really make.

"I have bigger ones inside, just of places. I do people and animals in here." Flipping a page back over the bird, there's a cat that had prowled across his porch the other day; a sketch of Clary before that, her waterfall of red hair, and Isabelle in black answering something with a smirk. He flips all the way to some of the flowers near the river, stopping before he finds the page of Bodhi himself.

Bodhi leans in a little closer, trying to drink it all in with his eyes. He's too shy to slow Jude down or ask to hold the book, but he likes to take his time with anything he examines, even if it's just for fun. The details of the flowers, the way the cat seems to be moving, he'd even spend more time looking at the portraits if he had a chance. They're less interesting to him as a rule, but he's not bothered when the person isn't him.

He realizes how close he is when his ponytail falls forward. It's a bit longer than it used to be. Odd as his life is here, poor a job as he sometimes does of taking care of himself, he still eats and sleeps better than he did when he held himself together with ration bars and instant noodles between sixteen or twenty hour solo flights. He's healthier--physically--and it's beginning to show.

A bit flustered, he straightens up and becomes aware of the bright little smile that's been stuck on his face who knows how long. His fingers twist in the ends of his hair, but other than that he's not really nervous, close as he is to a near stranger right now. Pretty sure he's still being dumb, but that's the worst of it. But he already knows he can be calm around Credence. Some people just aren't alarming.

He's been quiet too long, and he doesn't know Jude well enough to have a sense of whether silence is alright with him. "Places... Places here, or do you make them, um, make them from memory, too? Or--or make them up, I guess."

If he notices the proximity, he dismisses it. Sharing work is like that, sometimes, it's a compliment for someone to want to be that close. It reminds him of Bodhi brushing his thumb over the sketch at the meeting--maybe the only thing he wants to remember about the meeting. He could hand over the book entirely, let Bodhi put his twisting fingers on the pages instead, but Bodhi's smile is already moving back behind clouds, and he doesn't want that old sketch to ruin it entirely.

The drawings inside are safe enough: bigger, hung up, black and white. No people but the one: Charlie on the couch, like he just shrunk the trailer and hung it up, like his father is still in the house.

"The first two, I guess," he answers, taking the space Bodhi's returned to him to shift back into his shirt and tug it down. It's hotter in the house, but it would be--weird, even if Bodhi was running around like some kind of hermit when they met. "It's not so bad in the dining room, I guess, we could go look if you want." The sketchpad next time, maybe, if he remembers to peel that page out of it and put it somewhere else.

He has to fight himself just a bit not to refuse politely. At this point he just has to accept that Jude doesn't find showing things to Bodhi to be taking any trouble. It even makes sense. If Bodhi could make anything like that, he'd want people to see. "Thank you," he says as he stands in another slight flutter of trailing hems. Usually his Jedhan clothes are heavy enough to keep themselves pretty tidy unless he's moving fast, but this improvised warm-weather version is a little more prone to billowing. When it gets cold again, though, all the layers will be a blessing.

He looks over his shoulder at the drying sheets and turns back. "If it's too hot I could look later." He almost made it. "It's... because of this?" He points vaguely at the paper. "Sorry, I don't have any idea how that, um, actually... works."

"It's just fibers," he explains, shrugging more comfortably into his shirt and getting up to head inside, ignoring the mild protest. In case of some breeze to alleviate the situation, he leaves the door propped open as he goes in, the house more humid and just as hot as the outdoors. "Plants, old sheets. I break it apart and boil it into a mash, if you strain that into sheets you get--well, pretty unrefined paper. I can't do anything to bleach it or press it perfectly flat." Jude's paper comes in two kinds: thin and already a bit rumpled, or heavy and thick, sometimes with the skeletons of leaves pressed inside.

That's what he uses for the big sheets in the dining room. He leads Bodhi in, the window seat where he most often sleeps more or less made by virtue of his bedding hanging out to dry on the back porch. Sketches of home are mixed in with landscapes from the canyon: stands of trees, the bend of the river, a view from the roof of the inn. There are foggy Pennsylvania mountains, the field he'd crossed before he disappeared, sketches of the trailer and Charlie's existence within.

Charlie would sleep on the window seat if he were here. Sometimes Jude sleeps there, under the picture of him on the couch, and feels like a kid who fell asleep waiting up for his dad.

"That's how?" he says vaguely. He has a lot of paper questions. It's a mechanical process, and that, at least, he can seem like less than a complete idiot about. Unlike art. But before he can follow up on that the pictures catch and hold his attention. It's rare that Bodhi's had a chance to visit something like an art exhibit, but he has the kind of mind that's good at viewing things carefully and slowly as an installation. And there's so little like this in the valley. There's work, there're people and their complexities and dramas, there are even some fascinating puzzles that he's done very little to see solved. But there's not much that's just for... entertainment? Not quite the right word. Stories. Things that are just there to experience. Credence's book is all he can think of.

He gravitates first to the picture of the mountains. There's not much similarity between the bare rock crags of Jedha and the soft, ancient heaps of earth in the drawing, but there's an inviting loneliness that makes him think of home.

He's quiet for too long again, beginning to suspect that Jude doesn't mind too much. But, just in case, he finally lets that banal compliment escape after all. "Th-they're really good."

"Mm," Jude answers mildly, "they just use wood pulp for the usual stuff, bleach it white, press it flat with big rollers. I just boil what I have and spread it out on old window screens."

Bodhi's attention already seems pulled away, but the reason plays enough to Jude's ego that he doesn't feel ignored. There's still a table in the room, but the chairs are pulled to the walls, finished sheets piled up to be used or broken down into smaller stacks for the inn. It's hot work, and tiring for it, but he has to make what he can before the frost kills his materials. He isn't actually sure how to render pulp out of a tree, or he'd be doing it already.

It leaves him to perch on the window seat, one of the cushions worn slightly down from where he's slept every night since arrival. "Thanks," he says, nothing banal in a compliment freely given. "I was going to school for it, before I arrived. It's where I learned about the paper. There are artists back home who just do that--make special paper, use it to make their art. I thought that class was pretty cool."

Bodhi isn't quite under the impression that all paper is special. The book he borrowed was pretty obviously a mass-produced, ordinary sort of thing, though he was still obsessively careful with it. But nothing about this being a skilled, artistic endeavor surprises him. He turns away from the pictures to Jude despite feeling like he could spend the next hour looking them over.

"Paper's for antiques and relics at home," he admits, not sure how strange that'll sound to Jude. It hasn't come up a lot. "A... a few of the temples kept, kept books or scrolls, when I was younger, but that's really it." And most of those had been moved offworld if possible. Fragile wood pulp didn't do well in a war zone, and fancy records of an earlier age were valuable enough to move, unlike, well, Jedha's general population.

"I guess that makes sense," he says, shifting to pull his legs up into the seat and lean into the pillow at the corner. He's at home in this room, used to it, and Bodhi's presence doesn't disturb that at all. They have all the time Bodhi wants, to study the drawings or the paper he does them on. "They put it all on computers, I guess?

"We're starting to get that. Programs you can draw in, things you can do with photos. I've never owned a computer though, just used the ones at the library. I like to do things with my hands anyway."

The computers Bodhi's used to are very hands-on in their own way. No touch screens in space. But he dismisses a suddenly too-vivid memory of jury-rigging a signal tower under heavy fire and just nods anyway. Not the same thing. "I'd rather look at these than a holo-feed," he says with a shrug. Something like this would be the domain of much more important people than Bodhi at home, a thought that makes him smirk a bit. "Looking at paper drawings a person physically made is... that's kind of the way I imagined Imperial officials on Coruscant spending their afternoons. Now we just need drinks that cost the GDP of a small moon and some kind of invasion to plan."

That's funny, in a way: computers are the sign of wealth in Jude's world, old school paper in Bodhi's. Alcohol, apparently, changes little across the gap. "I guess whatever's harder to get your hands on is what the rich care about," he says, shrugging, slanting his gaze briefly out the window.

But it isn't brief. Not every fit is a fit, or built up on stress or flashing lights. Sometimes a place is just too loud in the wrong way. Sometimes he moves his eyes wrong, or lets a headache get too bad, or picks up the wrong smell. If he knew the reasons, he'd probably come off even stranger trying to avoid them all.

For a minute, going into two, Jude's stuck. The window's there but it might as well be a wall. He blinks and breathes but he doesn't take anything in, doesn't have a single thought running through his mind. He doesn't always fall on the floor when control goes--sometimes he just isn't there anymore. Isn't anywhere. Then he's seeing the weeds between his house and the hall, and hearing Bodhi shuffle through the room, and he has to look up and over to see if Bodhi noticed. If Bodhi can give any indication how long he's zoned out.

"Sorry," he says, flicking his gaze instead at the stacks of paper on the table. Maybe he can pass off some kind of deep thought. Preoccupation with winter supplies. "What were we talking about?"

It could so easily have gone unnoticed. Bodhi misses stretches longer than two minutes all the time, just spacing out or getting lost in thought. But this is a subject it's easy to warm to. Even the Empire couldn't stamp out an impulse as fundamental as ragging on the rich and powerful. He lets go one of his almost laughs, the quick exhale that comes with a twist of smile, and replies, "No matter how silly. I've seen fruit going for an arm and a leg on Coruscant that no one cares about where it actually grows."

He didn't think it was that witty, but he does expect some sort of answer. When it doesn't come for too long, well, there's the possibility of being hurt or offended or confused, but he doesn't need any of those thoughts. Because Jude's talked about having trouble keeping it together, however vaguely. The causes may not be the same, but losing time is something he knows pretty well at this point. He does, very softly, say Jude's name, and when there's no response he just waits, looking at a picture of the canyon. He tries to stay aware in case something actually bad happens, but he also tries to look casual. Having these things called attention to sucks.

When Jude rejoins him his tone is a little softer and gentler than before, but he refuses to make it worse than it has to be. "Making fun of rich people? I guess every world... every world has those."

He's sensitive enough to the tone, but he tries to let it be what it is. Bodhi knows he loses time, can't always remember a thing when he's told--but maybe that's just why the tone is soft instead of hard. Offense is easy to push back against. Pity is a slippery thing. With someone else it would tic the muscle in his jaw, grind his teeth. With Bodhi there's a pit that opens in his stomach.

He doesn't want him offended, but he wishes that didn't come at the price of knowing.

"Not this place, I guess." All he can do is rejoin the conversation, now that he's been plugged back in. "Unless that's the new theory: rich people making it all happen." The sullen curtain of his hair could be blamed on that idea, but it's just the sting of the fit, witnessed by another person.

He's pretty impressed. His own episodes, the bad one during the earthquake, the little one when Johanna grabbed his arm, have taken a little longer than that to recover from. And he's very glad to jump back into this conversation. Doesn't matter what it's about, just that they can move along and Jude won't have to feel like... Well, however it feels for him. Bodhi's trying not to rely entirely on his own feelings.

"I know we don't--We don't know anything about them, but I did, um, I kind of assumed, whatever else is going on... They must be that." He feels a bit odd standing, looking down at the top of Jude's head, but it feels like a bad time to enter his space. So he stands still and twists the end of his sleeve absently to get out the extra energy.

"All that shit did look expensive," he agrees. He feels better speaking about the room obliquely, in private, and maybe with Bodhi. The man did tell him that ignoring everything but the basics wouldn't work long-term, and he'd been proven right enough. Jude doesn't think Bodhi has much gloating in him for anything, but at least hasn't come up in this.

Parker, he thinks, would probably love to crow an I told you so from any convenient rooftop.

He shouldn't miss that. He isn't sure how much he does.

"It's a big window," he adds, nodding at the seat bisected into separate cushions, pulling his legs up to give Bodhi the other half. "Or you can pull over a chair." Tilting his head to the glass lets him peer out toward the path, see anyone passing by.

Bodhi'd probably just be faintly sad to be proven right. If it was working and now it's not, that's a shame. And then he'd probably decide it was his fault for bringing it up.

He takes the other half of the window seat without thinking, and then immediately doubts the move. It was the first suggestion, so logically, it was the one Jude probably expected, right? But he's never been great at these cues. He doesn't remember having this much trouble deciding what to do with himself with the small handful of friends he's managed to make so far, but Kira just blows past him and makes decisions most times, he usually sees Johanna outside and she definitely just does whatever she wants, often to his detriment, and Credence is as shy and dithering about every move as he is. That's probably why.

He doesn't remember being so nervous about whether they liked him, but that might just be that he was newer, was still reeling from the last few weeks of his real life. He wasn't thinking that straight.

"It is a nice view from--well, I guess we all mostly have the same view." It's just that no one else turns it into pictures.

"Yeah," he agrees: "weeds and the sides of other houses."

He'd chosen this place on virtues of panic, emptiness, and something about its comparatively smaller size. Then he'd kept it for its color, proximity, and a fondness for the room they've seated themselves in. Rather than make him feel vulnerable, sleeping in the window makes him feel more aware. When the sun rises, it wakes him up. If someone passes by, he knows.

If he wakes up paralyzed, figures shrouded in mist beyond the window, well: at least they're not in the house.

Some ways of coping don't crumble in the face of inescapable horror scenarios. Bodhi sitting on one doesn't bother him so much. He invited him to do it, and it's--Bodhi. It's hard to imagine the man being anything but careful with something, especially if it belongs to someone else. Jude curls his toes into the end of his own cushion, rooting himself to his own side. "Were you busy with something when you stopped by?"

Bodhi remains very aware of the space between them. This would be a really bad time to freak out because of an accidental brush. Admittedly, it hasn't ever gotten quite that bad, but watch his luck turn now that he's thought of it.

For all that, this is starting to feel more like a conversation than an interview for his fitness to be here. It's nice. He tilts his gaze away a little sheepishly, but it's more or less his ordinary levels of self-deprecating foolishness at work. "Um, honestly, no, not... I go on a lot of walks, unless there's a big disaster to clean up from, or, well, um, any other big reason not to." He folds his hands in his lap and wonders if, well, most people would just put that away to weird Bodhi habits. Jude, though, has somehow would up knowing more about the holes in his head than anyone but Kira. Well, and Baze, but that's because he's the one who discovered Bodhi semi-catatonic in a makeshift dungeon. Nothing to wonder about there. Even Jyn never knew--well, he hopes she never knew how bad it was.

"That's cool," Jude says with a shrug, leaning into the window a while longer. In a way, he was asking just to ask--what this was, what it has the time to be. It doesn't feel like he has an answer, just more time to find one. It's a little like counting his steps along a canyon wall: maybe the number will change again, but he did it, and another day came and went without disaster.

Shifting, he resettles, never straying across the divide. Bodhi doesn't advertise much of himself, except maybe that red and blue scarf, but holding yourself slightly away from people is something Jude's seen enough to pick up on. Why he doesn't respect it in Credence, well--if the roof started caving in, he'd probably roll Bodhi under a table just the same.

Weird thing to think about--put that one away. "Eventually I'll have to do the next batch of pulp," he says, nodding across the room toward the kitchen, copper pots rattling gently as they boil. "You don't have to help if you don't want, but, you can stay if you want to watch."

Bodhi doesn't close the distance a bit, but his attention jerks from self conscious internal debates and back to Jude immediately. It's rare he gets a chance to feel useful around here. Even in this case, useful is probably pushing it, but being asked to help beats showing up as a volunteer and winding up, well, usually following Johanna around doing her bidding.

It helps that the paper is interesting in its own right, an opinion that may not survive the hot work, but is intact for now. He doesn't find carpentry repairs or weeding particularly intriguing, by comparison.

"If, well, if having no idea what I'm doing isn't a problem? I'm pretty good at being a... a spare pair of hands." Cargo pilots in the understaffed Outer Rim really have to be. Every tech and ground crew is short a few. "Just put me where you want me?" He gets to be helpful!

It's been awhile, since the impulse to capture something carried after it a pang of guilt. At least with Bodhi he doesn't have to worry his intentions like a loose tooth--he knows they're not the problem. Bodhi has his own hang-ups, and even if Jude doesn't understand them--he won't be hanging it up on the wall.

But he wants to remember Bodhi in the window, the afternoon light, the way Bodhi drifts in and out of a moment. Jude isn't the sort to assign any kind of thought to the moments Bodhi seems to drift away, probably because he's never thinking too deep when he does it himself--but it's the negative space that defines who Bodhi is when he's present, and Jude likes the switch. Likes Bodhi getting both hands on the wheel of the world and brightening, like he has an idea where he's going and he likes the destination.

Jude lets himself have it, this time: he did that, somehow. He did something right. Stretching his legs out over the floor, he turns on knuckled hands and pushes upright. "Come on," he says, turning away into private amusement at put me where you want me as he heads for the kitchen. "We'll settle the pots and go empty the frames outside. I'll try to explain it."

Bodhi looks entirely too enthusiastic about the prospect, absently tying the scarf up a bit higher so he won't be trailing three feet of drifting fabric while he tries to work. He was a bit worried when the clothes arrived. Well, worried about a lot of things, but one of them was that they wouldn't come naturally anymore, that habits lying fallow since he was a teenager would just be gone forever. But his hands are the cleverest part of him, and they still know the right knots. The adjustment is almost elegant.

Whatever else can be said of him, Bodhi is an excellent student. How quick he is with the subject matter varies, but throwing himself enthusiastically into the process and asking questions comes naturally. Add in the urge to impress Jude and the conviction that he's constantly failing at it, and there are probably puppies less eager. "Is it just... it's made out of any plant fibers?" He doesn't really know what to ask yet, but dammit, he'll try anything. Have to start somewhere.

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