sixthiterationlogs | i've got thick skin and an elastic heart (open)

WHO: Kylo Ren
WHERE: Fountain, river, 6I Inn
WHEN: 15 December
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: ~~Emo Boy ca. 2003.~~ TBD.
NOTES: I only want one person on the fountain prompt; the others are wide open! I know The Last Jedi just came out so there will be NO SPOILERS for that movie in this post.

Fountain

The first sensation he's aware of before anything else is the cold. Throughout his training, throughout his life, really, Ren's always been aware of the push and pull of the Force and how it affects the living beings around him. This feels devoid of life, empty of the warmth that humanity brings and is ice-cold instead. It's the sort of cold that makes his legs and feet feel leaden and his attempts to augment his upward progress with the Force fail somehow.

He's been conflicted, yes, but how can the Force simply leave him? He has no time to ponder that particular conundrum before he's pushed up and out and the source of the cold is made known to him: he's in a fountain, of some sort, and there's ice along the stone rim of it. Such architecture isn't common on former Empire worlds and had often been destroyed. The Order has destroyed such things in former Rebellion planets in order to put up their own architecture, sleek and black, so this is something he cannot identify. What planet is this?

He does a quick assessment of his body and finds himself in possession of his limbs, his faculties, but one very important thing is missing. He cannot feel the Force, he cannot seek it out, and what he'd thought was simply shock from being underwater is now shown to be some sort of active suppression. He exhales noisily, his breath turned visible in the frosty air, and slams his hand down against the lip of the fountain with all the strength he can manage. The fountain looks no worse for the wear. His right hand may well be fractured.

He struggles to pull himself from the fountain and collapses on the ground, wondering how he'd wound up on this planet and how he can remove himself from it as quickly as possible. He needs the Force and he needs the advantages it gives him if he has no access to a weapon or warm clothes.

Inn

Eventually, he finds himself to the Inn. It's a central location in this village and while he has no more answers than he did inside the fountain he is, at least, warmer. He's currently wrapped in a blanket before the fire and there's a cup of herbal tea in his hand but he's not drinking it. He'd tried it, briefly, but it'd been too bitter for his tastes and his requests for sugar had been met with blank stares. Apparently that is something too precious to be wasted on something so mundane as tea.

He rolls his neck a bit, feeling the muscles and joints expand and contract, and wishes yet again he had access to the Force if only so he could ease the tightness there and assess the injury in his hand. He has rotated it some so if there is a break, it's not in the joint itself, but it hurts and he thinks it's already begun to swell.

When someone walks by, he gruffly offers to get up and offer them his chair but he doesn't want to vacate it. Instead, he wants to sit and watch the fire for a while and see if he can divine anything from it since his normal divination tools are lost to him.

River

It takes him a few days but eventually someone tells him that he has to work to be fed. Ren has never worked in his life for anything; during training, naturally, he'd done some physical labor but his master had gone easy on him since he'd been his nephew. He's never done any physical labor without the Force to augment his strength so when someone suggests he fish, he decides that's the task he'll take on.

He has a fishing pole made of a long, springy branch and he's got a hook attached to it which looks like it had been something else in a former life and has now been repurposed. There's bait only in the sense that someone's told him to dig for it and that had only netted him with two grubs and much frustration.

The only fish he manages to catch is smaller than his hand and when he tries to get it off the hook, he ends up dragging it across his palm in a jagged, surprisingly-deep laceration.

He seethes in his pain, instead of crying out. (Lies. He cries out loudly.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Fishing is certainly an admirable goal, to be true. And there's little denying it's a useful source of food, besides. Especially when living off the land is the name of the game. But fishing in the middle of winter isn't something that Picard would consider to be particularly useful. Even if there is still water that hasn't entirely frozen over. But it's as good a place to start as any, and to be perfectly honest, if it had been just that, he might have mostly left Kylo be.

The sharp cry of pain, on other the hand, catches his attention and he makes his over towards Kylo without so much as a second thought.

"Are you alright?"

He knows the answer is likely to be no, given that cry of pain. Still, better to at least ask, he figures. Especially given that he knows at least one culture where self-inflicting pain is entirely normal, if not precisely a frequent occurrence. Not that Kylo looks like a Klingon on first glance, mind. But stranger things have certainly happened.

"It was simply a fishhook. I've removed it now." Ren keeps his tone flat and even, trying to give the lie to how much pain he's in. He's never been one to handle pain well, even if that's contrary to the Jedi way (and the Sith, for that matter) and he tries to keep it to himself even though he hasn't met anyone here who seems to be aligned with either side of the Force.

He can't even feel the Force, much less wield it for anything.

"We have no medical bay here and no medical droids, so I don't know how I'm going to have it repaired. This place is backward and barbaric. I didn't realize the Outer Rim didn't even have basic necessities." He's determined this must be the Outer Rim, some long-forgotten planet or moon that he's been marooned on.

Fortunately, Picard doesn't press further about the comparative level of pain. Injuring oneself with a fishhook is unfortunate, yes. But it's not anything that's entirely unexpected when fishing, and to be perfectly fair he doesn't have any idea as to the severity of the injury in in question, especially given Kylo's efforts to keep his voice flat and even. It's only when Kylo starts complaining about not knowing how he's going to have it repaired and the comparative level of technology here that his eyebrows begin to rise towards where his hairline would have been if he still had any in the first place.

"There might not be a sickbay here, true. But that hardly means it's barbaric. As for the injury in question, I would assume it should be able to heal naturally, although I could have a look at it, if you like?"

He also has his opinions about things like regenerators being seen as basic necessities, even despite the fact that he knows very well that they would certainly make life easier. But for the time being, at least, he figures he can keep those thoughts to himself.

Ren doesn't know if he should trust this man. He hasn't revealed much about himself to any of the people he's met here and he doesn't know if admitting a weakness now is a good idea. Still, he does have an injury and it's prudent to see how bad it truly is before risking infection and more scarring.

He thrusts his hand out to let the man examine it. "I've never fished before. My home system doesn't have a lot of lakes and rivers."

For all that Picard isn't aware of Kylo's thoughts with regards to admitting weakness, he certainly wouldn't have blamed him for them, either. He might be generally inclined to not play on any weakness he spots in people, true. But that doesn't mean that Kylo is going to be aware of that, when they've only just met.

Still, once Kylo does offer his hand he wastes no time in looking it over - and if he's none too impressed with Kylo's reaction to such a minor injury he at least has the grace to not say as much. Instead, there's a nod a Kylo's comment about not having a lot of chances to fish, prior, before he turns back to matter at hand.

"An injury like that should be able to heal on its own. If you wanted to have it bandaged, I could show you where the nearest equivalent to a sickbay is, but other than that it won't need much care, if it's kept clean."

Ren lets out a short, sharp breath and curls his hand in on itself. He thinks he'll end up in the sickbay eventually, if only to make sure it doesn't get infected, but he'll nurse the injury a little longer before he does. He'll just add another scar to the one that bisects his face.

"There's no droids here. Are there human medical personnel of any worth?"

If Picard is any judge of injuries, it might not even scar over much, in the long run. Not enough to be anything particularly noticeable, at the very least. That said, he isn't at all familiar with Kylo's medical history, nor can he really say for certain what the injury will look like when it heals. Not when he hasn't needed to let an injury heal on its own for some time, barring certain specific situations, all of which are reasonably unlikely to be repeated here.

The question about medical personnel, on the other hand, earns Kylo another raised eyebrow, and one that's just as much for the idea of using robots for medical purposes as it is the implication that the medical personnel here might be in any way less than the best available.

"I can only speak to the ones I'm familiar with. But absolutely, yes."

"This place seems backwards, even more backwards than the most remote system in my galaxy," Ren says, still frowning. The idea of submitting himself to medical treatment that isn't through a droid is a little terrifying but so long as it's a small injury, he guesses it isn't going to matter much.

"There's no ships, no lighting, no droids. It seems like everyone is ignorant of things that are commonplace."

Picard is, at the very least, willing to admit that the village lacks even the sort of technology that would put it at 'behind the times but tolerable'. He might not care for Kylo's precise wording but at least it's understandable. And then Kylo continues on, and while he'd been willing to forgive the comment about the place seeming backwards the same isn't at all true of the implication that people are ignorant simply because there isn't any significantly advanced technology to speak of.

Outwardly, there's not much to suggest at his displeasure - a slight shift in his stance and fact that his expression suddenly closes off are all that are immediately visible. But between that and the way his voice has gone cold and hard-edged, it's more than clear that he doesn't approve in the slightest.

"'It seems'. Have you even tried talking to the people here? Or did you simply assume and have done with it?"

"I assumed based on the lack of convenience that the residents of this system were as backward as their technology. You are an outlier to that, as you at least know about things that ought to be commonplace."

Ren sneers in response; he doesn't like to be challenged, ever, and it feels like Picard is pushing back at his established norms. It makes him uncomfortable.

He absolutely is pushing back. True, he doesn't know the first thing about Kylo's established norms, but he can't say that he's in the least bit impressed by what Kylo has been willing to show him so far.

"Then I would advise you to not blindly assume. There are no native residents of this village."

There might, possibly, be some to the system the word they're on is located in, especially considering the Observers themselves have to have come from somewhere. But given that there isn't any real way to check just at the moment he can't say for certain - and isn't going to mention, given that admitting to being uncertain could very well jeopardize the position he's currently taking.

i've got thick skin and an elastic heart (open)

River

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