Under a sky, no one sees Waiting Watching it happening

[onlyeverdoubted]

WHO: Bodhi
WHERE: Around town, the inn
WHEN: Forward-dated to March 18
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: None, will update
STATUS: Open

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The storms didn't bother him a bit--he had far more on his mind when he first arrived, and wild weather has always been a bit of a specialty of his. The odd little flickers of light excited his curiosity, but he's known planets with much odder bits of phenomena. The soft, wet cold is just as unusual by his standards. Fog is kind of fun. Not, it turns out, the best thing to wander into alone, not when he can't trust his memory to race away to unsafe places, when shifting shapes and unpredictable dimness can so easily evoke... Well, he learns not to stay too far after the first time out.

Aside from that, he doesn't give the little lights or insects or weather much thought. He has Jyn's crisis to deal with, after all, and while he has yet to really find his niche, he's always intent on staying busy, contributing enough with odd jobs to justify the time he spends meandering physically and mentally. He doesn't try to avoid the little lights.

He notices the fever itself. He was a sickly kid, and he's not particularly sturdy now, but what he lacks in immune system, he makes up for in resilience. He moves a little more slowly, takes a few more breaks, but he keeps going. The other symptoms come on more slowly, and these, Bodhi doesn't notice. He's always sure he's doing everything wrong and that if anyone knew the truth they'd hate him. He glances to the side too quickly to see shifting shadows that couldn't be there more often than he'd like to admit. It's a little bit of a bad day, but he's not feeling well. It'll work itself out.

There are slips he doesn't usually make, though, or not without checking carefully to see if anyone's around. Talking to himself--a low, constant murmur, hard to make out any individual pieces. Drumming his fingers in complicated patterns against each other and whatever satisfying surface is nearby (actually, he's done that all his life, but if people notice they sometimes ask, and he gets flustered by having no answer). Long moments that, left uninterrupted, stretch on and on of just being... absent. It's so easy to slip back under, let bor gullet have him. Keeping his head together is the hard part.

There's nowhere he really does belong, and he winds up in the trees and the fog over and over again, but once in a while he gets lost near the inn, his usual base of operations.

Comments

[candor1]

Cassian's chest and throat tighten… partly with… outrage. Not at Bodhi (he hopes). But that whatever's happening is doing so all at once… keeping him from taking enough care of either of his people at the expense of one another… how can he attend properly to Bodhi when doing so is keeping him from finding Jyn…

So it's the same solution as ever. Don't let anything divide us. In the face of threat, unite.

And if it whatever was going on was a reaction to Cassian himself (—which, rationally, he knew wasn't sufficient explanation, but with all his own guilt and revulsion for his past, how can he not entertain it being an element), then at the least maybe he could help both Jyn and Bodhi by getting them together. Getting them outside whatever was preying on their minds to focus on one another. They should have help and alliance, even if it wasn't his.

Cassian deliberately moved forward into Bodhi's sightline. Before that could provoke too big a reaction, Cassian kneeled. Putting himself lower than Bodhi, submission and attitude of service at once, and looking up at him.

More subliminally, he put his shoulders in an attitude mirroring Bodhi's, mirrored the placement of his hand, and also matched the rhythm of their breath. We're the same. You can trust me.

"Bodhi," he said quietly, intensely, "I need to find Jyn. She may be in trouble and need our help. Will you help?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi took a step back involuntarily, confused and more rattled because of it. Retreating was a slip. He was supposed to be doing what he was told. Not knowing what Cassian was trying to accomplish made his sense of inferiority flare up again.

And Jyn. He couldn't hold onto the details, but thinking of Jyn stung more than usual, and differently, not just the old, familiar ache of guilt and secrets and insecurity, but a sense of helplessness and worry that he couldn't tack firmly to any one memory. Helpless and worried sounded like him, though, flailing against something he was too weak and slow and stupid to fix. Jyn didn't want to see him. Because he was useless.

All of which didn't matter, his own tumultuous pondering or Cassian's elaborate, inscrutable manipulation. He was doing what he was told. He didn't dare do otherwise. "What do you want me to do?" He certainly didn't sound enthused, but he was trying. Be useful, do his job, don't become a piece to eliminate...

[candor1]

Cassian exhaled very, very slowly. Tentative result. Thank you, Bodhi.

"…Look for her with me?" Cassian said at last. The choice not to hide it was deliberate, but the vulnerability now in his face was all too real. "I only have one good arm at the moment. And I find this bewildering and need help focusing. And when—" when "—we do find her, I want her to know she's among friends. I'm not sure she recognized me before I lost her. Double the chances of her remembering if you're there too."

And while we're on the move, I can try to figure out what's going on with you, too… Because he very plainly was terrified and/or revolted by Cassian. Which stung, but having been given a shot in the arm of Jyn reacting to him that way, as bad as it was to get from a brother in arms, compared to her, it was easier to deal with.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"She doesn't want to talk to me either." The words are clearer and steadier than anything else he's managed to say, almost firm. His memories are a little scrambled, cooked by fever and rattled by fear, but he knows his last interaction with Jyn upset him, that the images he can call to mind--stinging truths and constant failure, thoughts of Jedha and Eadu and Galen--all make him want to run. Cassian told him to help, so it's not like he gets to decide, but he can't see this going well. The captain simply scares him, but with Jyn it's usually more of a cautious respect. Not not. He's afraid, and more of what she'll say than that what she'll do.

[candor1]

"How do you---have you seen her?"

Utter failure once more. Since meeting Jyn, he's never been able to recover full disinterest, disconnect, control. She makes him... human. Alive.

(Yes, Jedha. He had Bodhi. He should have taken him and left. Not risk all their lives--and more importantly, the Intel that only they carried--to take the time under threat and risk facing Saw to go after Jyn. But he'd simply needed to keep her alive. And with him.

And Eadu...)

That had worked out (...granting, y'know, death.) Here too, for the most part, it's a gift he couldn't possibly deserve. But in situations like this, Jyn, Bodhi, Cassian himself, would all be better served if he could stay dispassionate. The sudden new fire in his eyes and slight start forward were not likely to improve Bodhi's mindset.

"Where?" Cassian asked, trying and only half succeeding at not sounding urgent. "And when?"

Was whatever they were both experiencing something contagious? Transmitted from one to the other? Was Cassian about to deteriorate too? He looked piercingly into Bodhi's eyes, examining pupil dilation, capillary condition, sclera hue. "Has anything else unusual happened to you today? Please, Bodhi, talk to me."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Ordinary smalltalk can make Bodhi feel like he's being interrogated, even on a good day. Now, it's hard not to feel himself in the cold of Saw's holding cells again, not to remember every sore and bruise and the weakness of hunger and exhaustion that made it so hard to think, the desperation to cooperate and tell the truth that was only met with worse, the confusion before he understood what bor gullet was and the horrible, horrible moments during and the wreck of everything that came after. He shrinks miserably from Cassian's scrutiny, wanting escape desperately, not daring to run for it. His feverish, frightened gaze grows more distant as he spends a few seconds back underground in the dark.

He was never brave. He never bore up under it. He just tried and tried to give them what they wanted and it was never good enough and he was punished anyway. "I--a while ago, I don't..." As he reaches for the information it seems to vanish, burned out of his head by panic. "Near the fountain." That part he's sure of, because he's always nervous by the water like that, always aware, and he remembers, and please let that truth be accepted, he doesn't have it in him to protest and beg...

[candor1]

Grimacing, gritting back all the curses he's tempted to yell at himself, Cassian forces himself to sit back. Give Bodhi space.

He's being horrible to Bodhi. Prioritizing Jyn when Bodhi is in just as much distress. Using him as a means to an end rather than an end in of himself. And it took him too long and too large a provoked reaction from Bodhi in order to realize it.

"I'm sorry," Cassian says quietly. "Forgive me. …I just had my shoulder fixed by Rory Williams at the hospital… I think you'd like him." (It's hard to think of anybody who wouldn't like Rory. But Bodhi in particular is not being even slightly comforted by Cassian… deserves care Cassian clearly can't provide, on any level.) "Should we go back to see him? He might be able to help you too."

And we might be able to get insight as to what's…

Stop, damn you. Stop. Bodhi's important in of himself.

Cassian sat back further, onto his heels, prepped to stand, and extended his hand to Bodhi. Hopefully not in invasion, but in offer.

[onlyeverdoubted]

There's nothing personal in Bodhi not taking the hand. There are very few people he could bear touching him right now, and not one of them is here. Comfort would be a quiet cockpit he had all to himself, a melodramatic holovid with bad acting and no particular plot, a couple of strong mugs of caff and something greasy for them to wash down. He tells himself to take Cassian's offer and his hand refuses to move. He just can't. His hands stay stiffly at his sides.

Well, and he has no idea why Cassian would introduce an entirely new idea when there's already one in play. He can manage everything else, look for Jyn for whatever good that might do, but why are they talking about doctors now? It's not easy to tell fear from fever, but he's not processing things quickly, and he blinks owlishly. It takes a long moment to remember that he's sick, though he's bee using it to justify everything that's gone wrong since he noticed. "I... I get sick all the time. I don't--I don't know if she'd be, I mean, is there any point to, um, looking by the fountain again?"

[candor1]

Cassian shook his head. "No, Bodhi… I'm sorry. I said you should come with me because I didn't want to leave you alone. I thought you and Jyn… But this isn't helping either of us, is it? She was afraid of me too."

Cassian abruptly dropped his head to his chest, shut his eyes. Brought up his good hand to vice his temples.

Too many variables. Too many objectives. …Too many people…

One last try to reach a breaking point. Either positive—calling on a moment of common bond… or negative. What had come right after.

I'm compromised. I'm not in charge. I don't know the objective. Has to be your decision, Rook.

Cassian looked back up at Bodhi. The angle of his face, its expression, his intonation were all exact replicas of the last time. All that was missing was the pouring rain. "A hell of a few days."

[onlyeverdoubted]

The sense of being trapped flows back, and he tries to swallow the nerves down, dismiss the flickers at the edges of his vision. He's trying, he doesn't want to do anything other than what he's supposed to, and it's still not working. Those last words keep him from actually whimpering with the strain, soften him without him remembering the conversation nearly so clearly. He may not trust Cassian, but the man's always been more gentle with him than he needed to be.

With effort, he managed to move his hands, not toward Cassian, but deliberately to clasp behind his back, under the impression that that'd look less like deliberate avoidance. Kept him from trying curl in on himself too much, too. Sort of like trapping his ponytail between his shoulders and the chair so it'd catch him nodding off during boring lectures. Tricks to pass for essentially human. "Are... are we looking for Jyn then?"