sixthiterationlogs | let's take it to the grave [closed to several]

Entry tags:

let's take it to the grave [closed to several]

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: Southwest of the Town Hall, under one of the tallest trees nearest the village
WHEN: Feb 7, after the discovery of Ren’s death
OPEN TO: Open to but not requiring tags from: Casey, Credence, Veronica or Mark, Jyn
WARNINGS: Grief, character death, a dude literally digging a grave for a friend
STATUS: Yes, from the above people

Time to dig a way out, or a grave.

The message had seemed a threat, at first: Kira had wondered if meeting Ren alone might put him six feet under. What he should have done, what he should have paid attention to, was the invisible force the man spoke of, the way it connected all things. The way Ren had reached out with it, and had wanted to help him test his own strengths. There would be no more time alone with him. There would be no more meetings, no taking him into the forest to hunt the wendigo, no looking for the way out.

Taking a deep breath, Kira lifted the short, unfolded shovel again, and speared it into the hard earth. The snow had stopped falling, and the air had warmed enough to melt some of it from the ground, but the soil at the base of the tall pine was packed tight and cold. Kira was sweating under his clothes, his coats laid at the roots, and every impact of the shovel travelled up to his injured hand and tested the healing skin.

It hurt: so did his fingers and palms, the muscles strained by sudden labor. So did his arms and back, and his hamstrings, his calves, from standing and bending and tossing the dirt he moved off to one side. He’s outlined the hole to an approximation of Ren’s height, and started to sink it in.

Ren had only just returned the tool to him, after his meeting. It made Kira’s heart crawl up to his throat to think about, how thoroughly the place had punished the man for his efforts.

Maybe it was chance. Plenty of people had been injured, but so far only Ren had died. Only his home had been torn in with a symbol burned across it, and Kira took another breath, lifted again, rattled the impact up his shitty narrow frame, again. It was exhausting work, worse than deep cleaning the kitchen or scrubbing out the tub. And those were his only points of comparison, as physical a project as he undertook, to prepare him for this one. He had lain awake most of the night, wrestling with the glimpse of Ren’s body, well after it had been removed from the house; he had lain awake in a silence that denied even Casey’s concern, the cat’s attentions, his own prickling flop sweat of weariness.

And at sunrise he’d gotten up, the question of what to do with that body mixing with the question of what must have been done with Ty’s. The question of his own worthlessness tying itself to both ends, marrying them to each other, tethering him to this single purpose: dig one of them a grave, at least.

It wasn’t lost on him that Ren might have predicted this. That he might have known, and Kira hadn’t recognized it about him.

It wasn’t lost on him that, with his full abilities, he might have told him not to go home.

He’d stolen Casey’s gloves on the way out. It was almost habit, to pull one over his injured hand, to see how much he could get done in the kitchen. Today he wore both of them, and he could feel the soft new skin tear and ache for the work, under the leather. Sweat made a slippery layer between his flesh and the interior, but the gloves saved his grip, and he put his weight into it. There was no strength left, the sun directly overhead, his breath rattling dry in his throat.

On the next attempt, the shovel hit the side of a rock; slid; and sent him falling forward into the hole. It wasn’t so deep yet as to swallow him, but he tipped awkward inside, scuffing his shoulder and hip on the dirt, jabbing the handle against his ribs. When he sat up, his head and shoulders, hunched as they were, showed over the edges. His limbs shook from the long effort, and he slowly unclenched his hands from the handle: it was time for another break, whether he wanted one or not.

There was so much left to do, and not enough strength in him to do it.

He felt like he was facedown in the snow again, exhausted, out of his element, following a feeling in the hopes of doing something concrete. He’d been an idiot then and he was an idiot now: wasting time with people, getting attached, having a sliver of hope, when he knew how it ended. What awful place would he be whisked away to before he finished this task? Was he going to push a boulder up a hill, over and over, stripping away his sanity every time it crushed him on the way back down?

Lifting dirty hands to his face, Kira hid his mouth and eyes against them, and the sounds of the shovel chipping at the cold earth were replaced with soft and solitary sobs.

There was still a long way to go before even the top of this hill.

[Kira, owner of the Village Shovel, can be found either crying in his initial attempts at digging Ren a grave, or if you prefer to skip the waterworks, after he's gotten up and gotten back to work a while later. The list of characters are those who can tag, but no one is required; kept it short due to the emotional nature of the post for Kira himself]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's almost like being alone, if he just closes his eyes and holds his arms over his head, buries his face in his knees. Listens to the same sound of the shovel tearing away the soil, feelings not unlike his own a baleful hearth for him to rest at. And it is restful, in a way he doesn't often find: he can almost feel like himself, live in what he's actually feeling, when he's alone or at least--

--with someone sympathetic.

He'd had a thought, before Ren died. The man claimed to have powers of his own, weakened in the village but capable of picking through the minds of others outside of it. It should have been a terrifying, and yet, the idea of being picked apart and laid bare, with none of the work, and all of the understanding--there had been a kind of anticipation, and disappointment, that they were both too broken to achieve it.

He'd never had a friend like that, like himself. No one but his mother and her contemporaries, and they'd only understood that half of him.

It seems no time at all passes, tears leaking into his trousers, before he's blinking his vision clear and trying to take stock of the world. But the hole beside him is deeper, a sheen of sweat on his companion, and her energy running ragged as his own. She might be better built to it, but there's something bigger behind her movements, something burning her at both ends in the grave of a man she will never know.

"Jyn," he says, voice a rasp against the dry air. "Jyn--"

He has to uncurl, reach for her, despite the warning of fangs in the soft flesh of his hand--don't interrupt her--but she'll hurt herself if he doesn't, and he can't be responsible for any more of that. "Jyn, stop, take a break," as his hand lands on her shoulder, and squeezes a grip.

It had been a two-minute ceremony. There'd been no body to claim - lost in the shuffle and the immediacy of seeking safety and escape. Instead, there'd been a simple marker - a stone onto which someone had written her initials. Pressed into the ground, hugged by the loosened dirt around it. A stone destined to fade back into the earth from whence it came, only to be discovered years later by a stranger, who had no context for the letters, no recollection or inclination of the life they represented, and no reason to mourn.

It felt wrong, strange, to do it this way. But what were there options? There was no spare time to be had; this was life as a soldier. They were the only family she had had. This was the best they could do.

Jyn had snuck back to the makeshift grave, later that night - after all of her comrades had found their slumber. She'd sat by the rock in silence, running her fingers over the curves and angles of the letters, remembering the woman who'd mothered her when she'd first arrived.

She deserved better than this, Jyn thought. She deserved flowers and accolades. She deserved hysterical mourners, creating a sea of bodies miles long. She deserved to live most of all.

But what does war know of life, except to take it away?

Jyn had said her goodbyes to Maia that night, a parting touch on the stone. She'd dusted herself off, returned to her bunk - promised to never get attached again.

She's struggling, trying to remember Maia's face all these years later. Were her lips plump and supple, or thin and crooked? Was it her left or right eyebrow that had been permanently singed half-way through? Were her eyes verdant or of the sea? She can't remember - for the life of her, she can't remember.

No matter how many times she drives the spear down into the earth of this strange place, no matter how many times she tears into the bleeding blisters that've already formed on her hands, no matter how many times she inhales hard enough to make her lungs burn, she can't remember.

Maia deserved better than that.

It isn't until she feels a hand on her shoulder that her head snaps, eyes darting to Kira like a wild animal. She's dirt-ridden, face smudged and sullied, hands raw and bleeding. She hadn't noticed the pain until the moment she stopped, until the moment she saw the concern in - who is this? She can't remember where she is for a moment, mind scrambling to place itself correctly.

Kira.

She softens, then, shoulders slumping down as the spade of the shovel falls with a clank to the ground. Standing tall the level ground is about at ribs - she isn't a particularly tall individual, but she sees how much progress she's made. How long had she been digging?

"- I'm fine," she says, though there's no real conviction in her voice. "I need to keep digging."

Edited 2017-02-18 02:58 (UTC)

Grief was a hole, full of false bottoms, cracks in the earth, new lows to fall toward. She was digging toward the next one, and looking at the state of her hands, feeling the state of his own, Kira realized--they were going to have to pull each other out. Not with long talks, not with good advice, or safe space--

but by throwing themselves at it one at a time, so the other had to stop, put the shovel down, pull their head out of the dark and take a breath of the clear air.

Casey seemed content to hold people at length, taking care of them enough to take care of himself, but Kira didn't know how to draw the line. Taking care of others was taking care of himself, as far as he was concerned: the better they felt, the better the feelings he had to brush against throughout his day. The more work it was to get them there, the less he had to think about himself at all. He'd saved his own life, despite hindsight wishing he hadn't, by giving up his seat on the evac to someone else.

All he can do is what he knows. Deviation, digging graves, learning to fight--these got him where he sat now. "You're not," he says, voice still struggling for the pain in his throat, but steady: "and you don't."

With her attention on him, and no outburst yet born, he slowly braces on her shoulder, leans over the edge of the hole and fishes the shovel up by its handle. Pushing it into the opposite side, he levers himself upright again, and stands, offering his blistered hand to her own: "We'll finish it," he promises them both, "someone will finish it, but not right now."

"No, I'm fine - I can keep going," Jyn tries to protest. But the weariness and strained effort of her voice suggest the exhaustion she's trying her hardest to hide. Though she's not entirely conscious of it, digging the grave is not only a somber way to mourn and respect the ghosts of her past, Maia in particular, but it's a way to do something - for someone else - in, perhaps, an attempt to redeem herself. A baptism, of sorts, meant to erase and forgive her of whatever sins she might've committed.

Kira had shown her great kindness when she'd first arrived, under no obligation or force. Perhaps he'd done it for the same reason that she wraps her fingers around the handle of the shovel, tries to tug it from his grip slightly. To prove to himself that there was still something alive in his broken body, to prove that he still had the capability to be soft and kind. That whatever he'd suffered did not have the power or ability to strip away the essence of who he was.

She eyes his hand with resignation and eventually slips hers into it, allowing him to hoist her out of the hole.

"I only need a few minutes," she murmurs, "Then I can keep digging."

You could swear oaths in many cultures by touching blood to blood, but they'd agreed no terms before their blisters met, the cuts and scrapes of their hands meeting and mingling. He can't imagine it means nothing, even in this place--maybe it will spare him having to give her one of the die, to have some small link that he might know the day she falls or disappears. Maybe it just ensures that he will.

There are three left in his coat pocket: one to know the others, and one for the bottom of the grave. If the body disappears, if the grave is dug up after the fact, he needs to know.

Still holding her hand, losing his footing in the dance that says he should let it go, he nods for the words but scans the small clearing around the tree. He could take them back to the inn, but it seems so far now, so full of activity. The only other place is one he hasn't been, but has seen on the map, due south of them through the trees. Somewhere the plants grow thicker and greener, with a hot spring they can use to wash their hands and soak whatever they're willing to expose to the elements. It might distract her from killing herself in a hole for someone she's never met.

"This way," he says, angling perpendicular to the grave and walking until his hand tugs the tether of her own. "There's some kind of spring, we can rest there."

She follows without protest or hesitation. She knows very little of the town, her exploration always falling to the same areas - the northern outskirts. Her desire to leave this place has weakened since finding Cassian - but her need to understand the whys, the hows has blossomed from fading embers to raging fire - and for some reason, her mind tells her the northern edge is where to find those answers. She's so far been unsuccessful, perhaps unsurprisingly, and so she's never known of the spring of which Kira speaks. Has never given herself a chance for respite amidst all the work, real or otherwise, that she feels needs to be done.

Her feet drag heavily as she walks - not out of conscious decision, but out of exhaustion. The sharp sting of her blisters against his hand feel dull, as though far and felt by someone else, someone else's hand that Kira is holding, tugging. But she follows, allows herself to be guided. A quiet, simple declaration of something like trust for Kira.

"For a few minutes," she echoes, voice small and distracted, "Then I'll keep digging."

Without sparing a glance back, he nods, searching neither sky nor mossy roots for their direction. He has to keep them aimed straight, pushing through darkly needled branches and bare saplings, finding the only patch of real green in snatches through the brush, the beginning of a path to their destination. His cards and Ren's knife are back in his coat, left at the roots of the tree.

He doesn't know if it will be tall enough to lead them back, and he starts breaking the thinner branches in his free hand, smearing fresh blood from his injured knuckles on a low hanging bough, ripping a sheaf of loose bark from a gnarled trunk.

"Sure," he answers, belated and placating.

Biting his lip, he scuffs his boots through the soft grass trailing forward along the loamy floor, thickest in the patches of sunlight through the trees. Concentrating on the path keeps resentment at bay: it isn't her fault, that he can't bear to let her work her hands bloody while he slumps into himself on the ground nearby. That she isn't the first person he's set exhaustion aside for, over and over, until it became the bedrock he's still standing on. "Tell me about Vault," he says, trying to draw her out of the hole a little more.

She's only half-conscious in her body, despite the moving limbs, the dragging feet, the ebb and flow of breath. It feels like sounds and sights travel through water, reaching her half a second too late - creating a strange sort of slowing of time as they walk. She has no idea where he's leading them; she realizes, now, that for all she knows, he could be bringing her somewhere dangerous - somewhere isolated and desolate. He could be leading her somewhere to bring her harm or worse. And, worst of all, she'd have nothing in her to resist it - not physically, at least. The thought of Cassian, leaving him behind, tearing the very heart out of his chest with her absence (even if part of her still can't seem to bring herself to believe that it would devastate him as much as his loss would kill her), would give her a second wind. Would make her try to fight, try to resist. But her body, empty in its exhaustion, would be able to do little.

She shakes the thoughts from her mind; there is nothing Kira has shown so far that would give any credit to these scattered, dark thoughts. She's had enough people in her life who wanted her dead, some who actively tried to bring about that end. There's nothing like that here, nothing like that in the loosely clasped grip on her hand as he drags them both through the forest.

It would be peaceful, she thinks. It could be.

"Vallt," she corrects quietly. "There's not much to tell. Didn't spend too much time there. It's -" she stops, normally unwilling to give out such information. But there's no connection to her home galaxy here. She isn't even sure there's a galaxy still left to speak of. "Ice world. It's mostly a Separatist Prison. My parents were there because my father refused to use his knowledge of kyber crystals to help the Confederacy in their war against the Galactic Republic." She isn't sure if any of this even makes sense to Kira, but there's something oddly cathartic in letting it spill out to someone who understands none of it. "We were only there six months."

Edited 2017-02-21 03:44 (UTC)

Those are certainly some words she's strung together, and Kira gives her hand a fortifying squeeze to show he is listening, to make her feel--heard? Safe enough to say it? There's a rush of feeling behind the words, bolstering them both through the link of their hands, but the words barely mean anything to him individually, and less in that order.

What does make sense is the forest shading green around them, as if the vegetation had already been hiding under the snow. Now that it's melted away, the plumes of new grass and ferns seem to have gotten brighter, thicker the deeper they move into them. Seeds grab and trail along their pantlegs; leaves rustle in the dry breeze, then louder for their passing.

He's never been anywhere like this, really. The park was manicured hills of grass and paved paths, full of triathletes and students drawing the back of the Met.

It was a bit like walking through the emptied streets after the first snow: new, calming--and full of shit that could kill you. "We're almost there," he says, though he has no real idea of the distance, "Where did you live after Vallt?"

Jyn murmurs an affirmation to his comment. She'd almost forgotten why and where they were going - caught up in the recollection of memories caked under years and layers of dirt and dust and pain, caught up in the dull sound of crushed earth and fauna underneath foot. Aside from the very obvious temperature difference, the denseness of the vegetation reminds her vaguely of Yavin IV - green and lush and overwhelmingly present. She isn't sure if this reminder blankets her in comfort or a vague feeling of dread.

"Coruscant," she replies lifelessly, "For a while. Then Lokori, then back to Coruscant. I don't have any memories before we moved to Coruscant for the second time." She'd tried to ask her parents about those years, once, but the non-committal answers told Jyn they'd rather not talk about it. And so, she'd never tried to obtain more information. It was as though those years had never existed at all. "Then Lah'mu, then -" her breath catches in her throat, forcing her to inhale suddenly. "Across the galaxy, for varying lengths of time." She lifts her gaze, which had been unfocused and lost in the underbrush to glance now at the back of Kira's head. "Where are you from?"

At least his answer is probably going to make as little sense to her as hers did to him--not that the point is getting to know each other. Not that the point is anything but trying to find the light at the top of the hole, put their hands out into the clear air, find a hold, and pull themselves out.

"A place called New York," he says, the first time the answer has felt small or obscure in the telling. "On a plant called Earth. A lot of us here are from Earth, I guess." It certainly takes his mind off other things, to try to put his section of what is an increasingly large universe into proper context: "It's the only habitable planet in our solar system, and in my time we haven't really explored beyond that.

"And I've never left New York until now." He hadn't even moved out of Chelsea, when he left his mother's building. She'd offered him a room upstairs, hardly understood the point of his leaving at all, without a family of his own to start, but his rebellion had gotten him all of a city block away.

"What did you--" do falls quiet from his lips, as they clear bright young saplings into a carpet of moss, covering the rocks surrounding the spring. Steam comes off the water, bubbles rising idly from whatever natural vent is heating it. When he drops her hand, its an idle movement, their fingers catching at the tips and resting together, waiting for someone to pull away. "It's pretty," he says in a low hush, like it's the first thought he's had since the other day that doesn't hurt.

"New York," Jyn repeats, first once, then twice, then three times. By the time it's leapt from her tongue the third time, it's lost whatever little meaning it had had. It just sounds like a bunch of grunts and hoots and gibberish, but it's mostly an attempt to feel her lips, feel her tongue, feel her mouth move to remind herself that she's capable of putting things out into the world - like non-sensical sounds - as much as she's capable of taking things from it - like the lives of all of those who'd followed her to Scarif.

She begins to wince at hearing the inevitable question about her past life when she's saved, forgiven by the clearing and beautiful spring that's laid out in front of them. She's grateful for the lingering feeling of his fingers against hers - the skin that had now grown used to the feeling of his against it tingling in his wake. It's a steadying gesture, a grounding gesture. One to remind them both - we're still here, we're still breathing, I haven't lost you yet.

"Very," she whispers in reply, eyes skating across the surface like a stone. "Can we go in?"

"If you want, people have before." The question of what to wear and whether she's inclined to care about his presence isn't one he'll ask. He's running on less than fumes, carried on the momentum of his own two feet, and now that he's stopped, his mind is similarly stalled.

All he can do is rest his eyes down on the carpet of green like he's never seen it before, hands at his sides, gaze trailing patches of blue blossoms popping under the ferns. He's never known the name of them, but they're almost familiar, the kind of flowers that grew through cracks in sidewalks and choked the short grass around a gutter drain. A sign of spring that might bleed out from this place to the rest of the canyon. Might bloom up over the grave when it's finished.

It isn't a bad thought, but it reminds him of the long hours left to work when they return. "Come on," he says idly, finally making his legs move and pulling from her orbit. He only needs space to crouch and pull at his laces with his shaking fingers, wanting to feel something other than dirty socks under his toes, wanting to soak some of the ache from his legs.

"Bet I can stay under water longer than you can."

"Bet you'll drown before you get anywhere near my record!"

"Deal."

Jyn steadied herself in the still water of the grotto, Codo opposite her, Staven lingering somewhere off to the side (preferring to keep the bulk of his body dry, in the water up to his ankles), Maia snickering to Codo's left. Now that she'd properly learnt how to swim, and in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that she was the youngest, she'd felt emboldened, brazen in her desire to prove her merit. Prove she wasn't just another kid fighting another war, prove she was more than Saw's "favorite."

She scanned their faces - Codo, Maia, Staven - before pinching her nose, inhaling a deep gasp of air, and sinking underneath the surface of the water.

Kira's voice pulls her back, away from the wailing ghosts of her past. Eyes scan and search for him, only to find him hunched over - pulling with trembling hands at the laces of his shoes. It's all the permission she needs to follow suit - toeing one boot off, then the next, tossing them idly over to the side. Socks, trousers, shirt - all peel away like an exoskeleton - until she's standing in her underwear and sports bra. She's slighter than the size of her clothes would convey, and her body is mottled with the lingering spirits of the battles she'd seen, the war she'd fought. She has a particularly large one on the side of her right hip, running down from the bone almost to her knee. Her left calf is also slightly misshapen when compared with its counterpart, a piece of shrapnel still nestled underneath her skin. There's hardly any fat on her, and each movement of her muscles looks like a beast stirring beneath the blanket of her skin.

She gives Kira a glance before wading into the water, the warmth of it relaxing her almost instantaneously. She continues going out until the water's at her neck, when she finally turns to see if he's followed.

More than politeness steadies his gaze on his feet, his hands too clumsy to be left to their own efforts on the laces. He hears her pull free of the scrubs and pad toward the water, hears her body slip into it, then very little over the bubble of the spring itself.

Her own rejection of privacy or propriety gives him permission to do the same, to strip to his briefs and slip into the water--but his fingers slip down his boots, only opening his laces on their own weight. He's hitting a wall, a limit of how long his body will remain conscious, with or without his deciding he should sleep. He'd rather not drown in his underwear with a near stranger.

He doesn't speak yet, conserving the energy for getting his boots off. Sitting is just the dull tip of a crouch to his ass connecting with the mossy earth; his whole body aches, trying to pull the boots from his feet, but the reward of fresh air and new grass underneath is worth it. Painstakingly, he rolls the hems of his greying pants up to the knee, and hardly stands up straight to hobble to the edge. Just his legs, plunged into warm water. Just some of that ache eased away, with the rest of him safely on dry land.

"I think if I get in right now, I'll fall asleep," he admits, an apology for not following her further from the hole's edge, now that they've crested it.

Jyn watches him quietly, sees the silent struggle as he wars with the boots at his feet. She's thought to go back, to offer help - but is always concerned about crossing the line between empowerment - allowing the person to handle the issue themselves - and coddling under the guise of assistance. So, instead of toeing the line or even crossing it, she stays in the water - sweeps her arms out in large circles to either side of her, kicking her feet lightly beneath the water. The resistance against her limbs is rejuvenating, and the warmth of the water soothes her down her bones. Even her raw, blistered hands feel moderately healed, somehow.

When he's eased himself into the water up to his calves, she begins to tread back over to him - slowly, carefully. She crouches in the water as she nears the edge, eventually standing to exit the water - the chill of the air making her body tremble slightly as she walks over to him. She folds her arms across her chest, both out of modesty (though living in shared quarters for most of her life has led her to drop the constant sexualization of the human body) and out of heat preservation. She stands next to him, the water reaching closer to her knees, looking down at their feet.

"I wouldn't let you drown," she says quietly, wiggling her toes. "If you wanted to go into the water." She glances up and over at him, the ends of her hair dark and sopping, dripping water back into its source. "If you wanted to float - it might help." She pauses, eyes falling to his shoulder then to their feet. "I wouldn't let you drown," she repeats, voice quieter.

"I'm starting to think you just want to see me with my shirt off," he says, too tired to reach the flippancy the words the deserve, voice going hoarse and trailing on the last few syllables. He hasn't slept since the morning before Ren died, and he's put his body through too many things it's never had to do before: move a body, search a burning house, dig a grave.

How can he trust her, with her own body recently dragged from the fountain, fed and rested one night, thrown frenzied into the digging of a grave? How can he put the responsibility on her, when he can't promise the same?

He isn't strong enough, wasn't--has never been. The end of this physical rope hangs by the frayed end of his spirit, and he wants to give this to her, he wants to let her help if it will make her feel better, but guilt drags claws under his skin. Heats his cheeks and sets him crying again, refusing to look at her. He feels like a child, like he's responding to tragedy like a child--confused and helpless, shutting down sooner than a grown man should. "I can't," he starts, but it chokes off, and he breaks out one inverted sob, a cat swallowing back a hairball, before he crosses his own arms in a placating self-hold and sucks it all back again.

"You don't have to," he manages. "It isn't fair, you just--you just got here."

His comment, though weak and full of the exhaustion running rampant in his body, doesn't go unnoticed; she responds with a lazy, lopsided smile and a gentle nudge of her elbow. She'd be foolish not to admit (only to herself, of course) that Kira is a good-looking person, as a purely objective statement of fact. But some part of her brain or perhaps her heart or perhaps something even deeper than that, the part that relates to romanticism and sexual attraction, had been stunted - taken with the innocence of her early childhood the moment she'd had a blaster shoved into her hand. She'd only been eight years old, then. The men and women she'd known and come to care about were seen in terms of their tactical skills, their abilities, their resiliency and strength.

Still, Jyn knew - from a factual standpoint - what made someone attractive.

She lets the sounds tumble out of his mouth, lets his arms tangle themselves around his fragile frame and lets him feel whatever it is he must. She only hesitates a moment longer before she turns towards him, wraps her own arms around his body - realizing too late that she's dampening his scrubs with the wet fabric of her undergarments, but isn't bothered enough by it to move. She's slight, but there's a strength in her grip, a steadying, anchoring weight to it, one she hopes will keep him tethered to the ground - to stay there, sitting next to her. She presses her cheek to his shoulder, face angled down towards their feet in the water.

"I don't have to do anything," she murmurs gently, voice like a velvet blanket meant to envelop him. "I'm not offering because I feel obligated. I'm offering because I want to."

Edited 2017-03-01 03:34 (UTC)

She's touching him, more than fingers to fingers or hand in hand. Hugging him, like--like a friend would, maybe any caring person who doesn't know he'd rather hug himself and cry into his own knees. At least her intent is the thing that blankets him, and not the dregs of her hallowed passion, the ghastly fire that fueled her assault against the earth.

Count it back, the weight of an embrace, to distract from the wash of her against the ever dimming and reviving sense of himself. Jyn, Casey, Credence, Nicky--

Ty.

It's enough to strangle him, just thinking the name, thinking of it with any pair of arms around his shoulders, any cheek laid against him. He came here to rest, he brought her here to make her rest, and all he's done is find a new patch of earth on which to sit and cry. Ty starts it, and the fact that Ren isn't on the list--never will be, might have wanted or needed to be, and this is one more way Kira failed him--sinks the pair of knives to their hilts in his side. Her hand over the wound just holds them in place.

"I'm sorry," he chokes out, face in his hands, rocking forward against her grip and then back, as soft as his own voice as it repeats the words into a whisper.

"I'm so tired," he murmurs, almost mewls, one hand dropping to find hers again. To cling to it, grip it too tight and wish the world worked both ways. That he could send the feelings back along the touch, and be as understood as she was to him.

After Eadu.

In the cargo hold of the ship they'd stolen - the ship Bodhi and K2 had stolen in the hysteria of the Alliance attack on the base.

Her skin was slick and hot with the precipitation that had almost killed them on their descent, on fire with the ghost of her father's body in her hands. He'd known her, in those last moments - recognized her, somehow made peace with the little girl he'd once played silly games with and the shattered shell of a woman who was wiping the hair from his face the way he had when she was young.

She'd hated Cassian, then. Would have tossed him from the ship and into the dead, cold depths of space if she could have. Had held him responsible for the unbearable absence of her father - for the way he'd torn her from his corpse, even as she cried, 'I can't leave him!'

Jyn had holed herself up in the cargo hold of the ship after that - needing to find some solace, some sanctuary from the sorrow and pity in Chirrut's milky eyes, the avoidance of Bodhi's, the softness in Baze's. The rumbling tremors between she and Cassian. She'd curled herself up, wanting to curl more and more until she'd ceased to exist - until she could become nothing more than the Stardust her father always told her she was - until the shredded mass of her heart could somehow beat again.

She had cried like this, back then. She had rocked herself in her solitude, wanting nothing more than the safe harbor of her mother's arms, her father's touch. She had felt something like this, she thinks. There's a part of her that feels like an intruder, as though she has no right to be here - no right to hear the apologies and whimpers and pleas that stream forth from Kira's mouth. They're virtually strangers, after all, tied together only by their co-existence in this foreign place and the kindness he had shown her half a day earlier.

Yet -

Perhaps it's the echo of her empty chest to his, the wailing of one broken heart to another, that makes her feel connected to him. Two ghouls floating about through time and space, recognizing each other in separate flesh-and-bone cages, reaching out - stretching endlessly - to meet.

She hushes soothing, quieting sounds, arms firmly planted and unwavering. She motions to move their torsos back, feet still dangling in the water like lures, backs and sides pressed against the dense, soft moss underneath. She props her head on one bent arm, the other still across his chest and shoulders, still clinging onto him like an anchor. Her exhaustion still lingers, but it's a familiar friend - sleep has never been much of an ally in her life. If he wants to close his eyes, find whatever sleep he might be able to - she will let him - will stay with him, keep him safe. If it's only for a fleeting moment, to gather the pieces of himself back up into his exhausted arms, then she will help him - carry some of it for him.

Whatever it is, whatever he needs - she's there.

Edited 2017-03-01 06:07 (UTC)

There's a snatch of hysterics between the sobs, one ugly laugh through the phlegm--as the fog of his mind settles over the scene and takes stock. Fragments chained together: a magical clearing, a natural hot spring, a strange woman spooning him in her wet underwear on a bed of flowering moss.

It should be too much, too maudlin. Not cinematic or storybook, just stupid. A painting of a thing that doesn't really happen. But zoom in: find the scabs on their hands, see the crushed petals bleeding deeper blue. This is the bed he's made of this place, and he's laid in it, invited to sleep. In a story it would be a place to forget, to lift out of his body and walk away from it until there was no going back. Something would put it on like a suit, or the plants would grow over and through it, his spirit left to wander or join the procession of some forest god.

Those stories are and aren't real: spirits don't slip in and out of bodies in sleep, gods don't prey on men quite so specifically. But people do get lost, people do go into forests and never come back.

Someone, something, is watching them.

He's quieted by the time he sucks the last of his tears back, coughs, and goes still. They aren't in immediate danger, but his ability to know that would be cut off in sleep, and she wouldn't wake him right now. She might nod off at his back, and then there would be two bodies at the end of his trail, half a grave dug for a count of three. "If you're going to get me wet anyway," he says, sliding his hand down to her wrist and squeezing, "I guess I could give it a try."

She doesn't stir right away - not at the touch of his hand, the tightening around her wrist, the sound of his voice. The meeting of her lids slow, softening - the tension around her lips and nose dissipating with a gentle smile. For a woman who's never known intimacy in her life - who has never been anything but blaster bolts and the smell of ozone and the spark of war -

It all feels strange.

But perhaps the acceptance she'd had at the end - or what should have been the end - had filed away the jagged precipice of her life. Clutching onto Cassian, kneeling in the sand - the destruction of the earth in a retina-searing wave of light and energy herding closer like the fog - maybe she'd found absolution, then. Or something like it.

Maybe she'd been cleansed, forgiven -

Both by the man whose soul clutched onto hers, and the light itself.

She'd been kneeling at an altar that should never have existed.

But maybe that's why she's here - curled up gently behind a man she barely knows, trying her hardest to find and give him what she'd received back on Scarif: forgiveness. - Though she knows, it isn't hers to give.

She finally stirs, fingers finding his wrist to return the gentle squeeze. She moves, props herself up on her hand as she sits on her hip, eyes wafting down to the side of his face.

"Come on, then."

It's on the tip of his tongue, a spike to drive between them and let him look at her from a distance, again: you're the weirdest friend I've ever made. That's the theme, isn't it? With Casey, with Credence. A boy out of time, a boy out of ash, and a woman out of space. It feels like all he had to do was show them the palms of his hands, roll over with all his defenselessness behind claws too small and dull to do any harm, and now they follow him to the ends of the canyon.

They'd like it here, too. Credence was from the same city, and Casey got excited for leaves on trees. Would fall asleep easily on a patch of ground that smells this green, worry needlessly about the water.

Kira pushes himself up, knowing why he could never do what Casey does--people are rungs on a ladder, are the anchor at the top of the hole. Are the only thing to really climb out for. Without them there were just--duties, vengeances, oaths sworn to ghosts. He hadn't promised Ty anything, and Ty hadn't even promised to heed him, to live another day.

Just that they would go far away from New York, when it was over. Did it count as a promise, to follow him so deep in the hole that they both wound up in the ground, who knew how many miles or years or galaxies apart?

The answer should be more important to him. It should be harder to say no, and push himself up. Ty isn't the only person now: just one rung on a ladder, leading both up and down. The energy Kira finds is stubborn, a third wind that will break him when it ends, but he shrugs and struggles out of his dark shirt, slithers out of his worn pants, and crab walks his skinny hide into the water. "Jesus," he murmurs, sitting on a shelf of slippery stone that lets him soak to his shoulders.

He has his hands on the edge, his legs tucked beneath, all of him holding to the spot as the heat eases from searing to tolerable. There's far less muscle between the knobs of his bones and his skin, only what could be built scrubbing an inn and wandering the trees, but the water eases them all the same. "I'm never coming out again, I don't know how you did."

Freeing one hand, he lifts the water to his face, washing the dirt and tears from his cheeks.

Jyn stays off on the moss, allowing him full reign of the water for a few moments - giving him the solitude he deserves and she thinks he needs. For some reason, she remembers the toys of her childhood - Stormy, Lucky Hass Obluebitt, and -

Beeny.

Oh, poor Beeny - abandoned, left behind in the apartment on Coruscant.

How she'd cried for him. How she'd hated herself for leaving him behind. How she'd nightmare, imagine him back to life and back in the darkness of her room on Lah'mu, broken and battered and sobbing - weeping - because she'd abandoned him.

She'd left him.

She thinks of the stories she'd create, thinks of the tales she'd conjure - how she'd always fight to protect the weak, the nameless, the voiceless, the vulnerable. She remembers the girl in Jedha City, the penetrating vibrato of her wails - how it hadn't mattered, in the end, that Jyn had saved her. How she'd turned to ash with the rest of her city, hopefully - kriffing stars, please - in the arms of a loved one.

As she watches Kira re-absorbing some of the life that's evaporated from his skin, she thinks of them. She sees the same vulnerability, the same sadness she'd seen, imagined in all of them. She sees the fragile spirit, frayed threads and broken edges, fighting to keep its grip - cracking fingernails and tearing flesh - the way she'd had on Eadu. It doesn't take much for her to realize, then, what it is that drew her to him.

Once she's given him a few moments, she slides back in herself, exhaling a beautiful sound at the feeling of being once again enveloped by the almost torrid embrace of the spring. She wades near him, not wanting to be a more than centimeter away in case his head should slip under the water. She's made a promise.

She won't break it.

"I had to convince you somehow."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

let's take it to the grave [closed to several]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject