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

[3ofswords]

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]

Comments

[theroadremains]

Ren's death had set something in motion with Kira that Casey both understood and tried to avoid. He had not specifically tried to avoid Kira, but he had given his roommate his space. Casey had not known what to do, or how to do anything. He had feared reaching out, and the implications that would exist around anything he said or did. He had distanced himself from the kind of loss Kira was suffering for too long.

When Kira doesn't return for breakfast, and still wasn't there as lunch came around, Casey had risked everything to take a tiny bit of the rations from the kitchen and slip out of the inn in search of Kira. He didn't have cards to lead him, and it was only through chance and wandering that he found Kira at all.

He stood for a moment, and watched Kira sobbing in the hole he had made in the ground, a conflict warring within him over what to do now that he had found him. He said nothing, he had no words to offer, and he instead stepped down into the hole and crouched beside Kira, gently removing the shovel from his possession and replacing it with the bit of food.

He didn't ask what Kira was doing, or why. Whatever he was doing, it was clearly important to him, and not something he could continue in his current state. In silence, he left Kira to cry in the hole he had made, while Casey continued the work he had started.

[repressings]

Ren is dead.

Credence doesn't cry. He feels bad--he feels awful, that there's someone he knows in the village that's now gone--but Credence remains stonefaced, surprisingly stoic. A selfish part of him--a cruel part of him--is glad it wasn't brought on by him. That it was lightning, and not his Obscurus. This isn't his first brush with death and what it brings about. It surrounds Credence in a peculiar way, and this is no different. This also isn't about him, though, it never was. This is about his friend.

He finds Kira where he was when he first noticed the other wasn't doing his chores. That had been a while ago, when there had been nothing but Kira and a shovel and no other progress. Credence had politely given him time. Now, just like how he pokes his head into Kira's room at noon to make sure Kira's alive, he metaphorically pokes his head into Kira's personal life.

When he arrives, Kira is crying. Kira is strong--so, so strong, and Credence's heart thumps in his chest, mouth dry with worry. He'd expected Kira to cry, sure--he expected most people to--but expecting and actually seeing are completely different things.

"Mr. Kira." Credence's words are hushed. He doesn't address the exact situation because Kira had never with him, during one of his moments. Instead, he has a small bag.

"I thought maybe you were hungry," he says eventually, He holds up a fruit--the very last apple from the gifted bag.

"And maybe I could keep you company."

You don't have to be alone.

[kestreldawn]

Jyn might have been asleep the moment before her head had landed with a thump on the pillow. It felt strange, lush, even luxurious to be coddled in such a thing after what she'd been through. Not just her arrival, but everything that came before it - although her injuries were somehow healed when she'd crawled out of the fountain, the invisible scars, the deeper injuries remained. She had remembered the strange, floating realization that she would never experience another dream, never lay her head down to explore far off worlds and memories - no more Galen, or Lyra, or Cassian. No more imagined words and stolen kisses bound to the sanctity of her mind.

Although she isn't sure if her mind had the ability to dream (she can't remember any from throughout the night), the sound of movement forces her awake. It's instinct, needing to be hyper-vigilant - she remembers her cellmate Kennel, her obnoxious breathing, the promises she'd made to see Jyn's life taken. And for a moment, she almost thinks she's back on Wobani - the only thing that snaps her out of the hallucination and the spectral image of Kennel is the bed. She doesn't budge, not right away, instead allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim light and rustling of bodies, items. She sees Kira, clutching something in his hand, and before she can make a sound, his form has disappeared, slipped out between a crack in the doorway.

There's a faint tickling at the back of her mind, urging her to follow. She can't make heads or tails of it, understand why her curiosity has suddenly piqued. Perhaps it was the bare, desolate melody of his punctuated words, or the utterly empty gaze as his body went through familiar motions without any conviction. Perhaps there's a vague sense of worry, concern for the stranger who'd shown her nothing but kindness.

When she's sure that there's been some time to allow him headway, she swings her legs over the bed and hoists herself up. Every joint, muscle, bone in her body screams and aches, pleading for more time to rest.

"Shh," she hisses at herself, shoes on and body out the door. She hugs her coat in tightly around her slight frame, making her way out of the inn. She follows the path he's taken, keen eyes tracking his silhouette that's up ahead. When he stops underneath a large tree, using what appears to be some kind of shovel, she slows. Digging? What could be digging for?

She watches for a minute or two, thinking that perhaps it's nothing of concern. And yet .. there's a desperation in his actions, in the strain of his muscles and the furious movement of his limbs. She turns, deciding to leave him be - for now. Perhaps a few more hours, just a few, to gather more strength. Then, if he's still digging, perhaps he'd desire help of some kind. She isn't entirely sure what he's digging up or for, but it would be the least she could do to repay him for his generosity.

--

Jyn manages to sleep a few more hours, once she's back in the haven of her bed. She savors the split second upon waking, where nothing hurts quite yet and the suffocating reminder of where she is has not hit her. It only last a moment, a second, a breath - but she lives in it for as long as she can.

When she glances around and sees Kira's empty bed, she remembers him digging. Remembers the decision to go back and see if he would want assistance. She lifts herself off the bed, this time with a fraction less of the pain she felt earlier, and retraces her steps towards the large tree.

Kira is still there, still shoveling - only she can see he's tired, weary. She can see the sloppy, uncontrolled movements of his arms as she continues to hack away at the frigid earth. She's moving at a casual pace - determined, but far from rushing. It's when she's about half-way there when she sees him fall - and in an instant, Jyn's feet are hurdling towards him, no longer concerned with a quiet approach.