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

---

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

[3ofswords]

Walking up the steps of the blue house, he puts the shell of the other at his back, weathering the moment where opening the door and crossing the threshold doesn't quite feel like entering anywhere he belongs. It feels strange to call a house his own that he hasn't slept in, that he's only made a claim on because it's closer to where they've set up than any other.

Close to Ren's grave, and further from the buildings where people tend to gather. It isn't supposed to feel like home, just an alternative to the inn, somewhere to rest.

For now, it can just be a shelter. The inside is near as damp and cold as the out, and he hovers a hand at the radiator, finally settling his palm against the cool surface. "I think the boiler's in the cellar out back? That's more what I'm worried about, something happening to it while we're gone. Have you ever used one before?"

Looking back at Bodhi, it isn't difficult to see that he's struggling with something--maybe he just hasn't shaken the overwhelming aspect of the place yet, or maybe it's the dull flush of him, a bad reaction to the damp, early signs of whatever plagued Jyn--but Kira doesn't press it. Tasks get him more than a fine, and if Bodhi grew too tired to keep up, they were at least now in some semblance of civilization, to deal with it. Still, Kira looks him over once more, and sympathizes: "It really is just as a favor, don't feel like you have to."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi never expects much of climate control, as long as it's within the range of human tolerance. And the cool in the air has been soothing and soft, keeping a little of the discomfort of the fever off. It makes him a little less reluctant to step through the door, though he does hesitate on the threshold, the near-silence of the trees calling him back to the unthreatening, uncomplicated promise of fog and silence. It's luck Kira keeps talking or he might have followed the momentary mad impulse to run for it, make good his escape. Escape from what, he isn't sure.

"The... boiler...? No, I..." If it's just supposed to regulate the air temperature, though, there are only a few energy efficient ways to do that, and none of those are very mechanically complicated. He's figured out a lot of odd little things over the years. It wasn't like podunk cargo routes had very steady maintenance crews, and if you couldn't pop on your goggles and make do, you risked a nasty, lonely death. "I'll take a look."

[3ofswords]

Kira can't tell if his hesitance is to refuse or to commit to any knowledge of the task, but he lets Bodhi decide either way, pointing him to the back of the house and following his own gesture through it. "It's out back, I can show you."

Through the kitchen there's a back door, a smaller porch than the one spanning the front of the house. Kira's never seen anything like it up close before this place. His life was the old brick and stone building over the shop, his idea of houses were neat rows with their own stoops, spaces stacked on top of each other to make room. Porches, single stories, shutters on the windows.

Dragging back the heavy door of the root cellar, he flips the switch on a cord, an old light casting an ugly glow against the walls and boiler. He looks at Bodhi, then thinks better of pointing anyone down into his fucking cellar on an errand. "Uh, I'll go with you, or if you want I'll just call up whatever advice I need." Giving Bodhi his back again, he climbs down into the shallow room, heading for the machine.

[onlyeverdoubted]

This is the first moment he's felt fairly confident and comfortable since... He's not sure how long. Time is one of those things that's gone very fuzzy. This is who he is, what he's for. Find an inconvenient task that he can probably muddle his way through and have him try it. Bonus points if it's messy and mechanical and will keep him out of the way for a bit. It's hard to be frightened of nothing in particular when everything seems so reasonable for once. "I--I'm coming," he says evenly, and heads down in turn. He doesn't know the machine specifically, it's true, but he's far more confident he can figure it out than he was. "Is, um, has it been having problems, or..."

[3ofswords]

"Honestly, I wouldn't know," the house has gotten warm enough when he's been in it, but that's only been a few days out of the month, when they dragged their haul of supplies out and sat with Veronica on the porch, sorting fair shares of the spoils, dividing tools from toiletries and clothes. The furnace is also even older than the one in his mother's building in Chelsea, which usually survived a few kicks in the side and started chugging again.

"It just needs attention to keep on," he clarifies, eyes adjusting in the dim light, the rest of him adjusting to the strangeness of being underground, in a very tight room. The low ceiling and creak of the door closing a bit on a draft is not his favorite combination, but he shrugs it off and starts poking and prodding at the furnace. "I think this does the heat and the water," he says, gesturing between where the top meets the ceiling, corresponding to a grate in the dining room, and the pipe that diverts further along before moving up into the house. "You have to feed wood into it to keep it going, I was kind of hoping you'd just keep the place warm and occupied until Casey gets the bug out of his ass and we come back."

He gives it a few days, between the fog and the insects. If they're keeping to the north of the canyon, he isn't as worried, but he knows he isn't built for life in the woods. "Or you can just stop by and poke around to make sure it's alright, if you follow the path outside north, it connects with the one that goes back to the inn." If he can't give Bodhi a place to weather out whatever was happening in the village, he can at least give him a landmark to follow back to its center.

[onlyeverdoubted]

He almost says something quietly scathing about ridiculously primitive systems, but he can't quite get his tongue around it and he's a bit more shy of sarcasm than usual. Usually his main source of wit is dry snark with enough calm for plausible deniability, but he's just not up to it. He lets the impulse slide by and keeps his attention on the machine, which is a generous term for what he's looking at. "Um, I... well, I can do that." The thought of having the whole building to himself is a bit ridiculous--he's never lived in a space so large alone. Kriff, he's hardly lived in a space so large at all--the Rook family home was sort of tucked above and around the shop. But he's used to his own space being a pilot's seat at best. It doesn't even feel like luxury, just strange, but the idea of always knowing exactly who's around, where his exits are and that if anything is amiss he'll know... "I... If you don't mind me staying..." People who invite you to do just that often do. Bodhi logic.

[3ofswords]

"I don't mind if you pick a room and live out the rest of your days in it," Kira answers airily, picking up some of the branches Casey had been storing next to the furnace and shoving them inside. "I mean, our room's open at the inn if you want that instead when this is over, but I think Casey likes having you around."

Ideally, he'd say we, but he hasn't spent that kind of time with the man, and there's nothing in the heat of Bodhi's presence to say if he cares one way or the other for either of them. Kira's never really wished to be able to read that deep into people, even with his abilities in full. "The stuff we're using to start fires is back at the camp, I'll have to bring you back a lit branch and get this going, and then it's up to you to keep it lit."

And if he disappeared into the trees or village, and let it go cold, they'd deal with it. "Come on back up for now, I can show you where stuff is. The only clothes we left were my worn out ones, but if you need something to wear while yours get a wash, I'll leave them out for you?"

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi takes that as polite hyperbole, but it's a nice thought. He does like Casey. Casey feels familiar and reasonable and he expects nothing that makes Bodhi uncomfortable to give, which so many people do without meaning any harm at all. Kira is less of a known quantity, but Bodhi certainly has nothing against him (Bodhi does not easily take against people, though some of them he avoids for everyone's sake). What's most important now is he has a task, a mission, a space where he's expected to do some fairly straightforward work and stay on top of it. Busy preoccupation is his safe space.

He'd really rather stay down here and see if he could get his head around the workings of the furnace, but he obediently climbs back up. He glances at his clothes for the first time in a while. They... aren't in great shape, no, and now that he's aware he's annoyed. He hates being dirty. Tidy, he couldn't care less--his hair and beard lost the bit of shaping he ever bothered with weeks ago without a razor around to take a few quick swipes every few days. The scrubs only annoy him because they seem a bit flimsy. He's perfectly happy in shapeless, impersonal uniforms. But actual dirt is a problem. "I, um, thank you, I might..."

[3ofswords]

As far as impressions go, fussiness isn't very stressful to stand beside, actually rolls Kira's lips into a smile. "Once the furnace is lit, you'll have hot water in the bathroom, the kitchen doesn't seem to get anything but cold."

Pulling his worn black scrubs from the front room closet, he hands them to Bodhi and carries on into the kitchen, the house surprisingly well-furnished--or not, considering the desks in the schoolhouse, the beds in the inn. It's as Raleigh said: a place where people seemed to have suddenly left, stripped of necessities but lived in at some point.

"There's cookware in here, we can get a fire in the stove for you too when I bring it for the furnace. And you're free to poke around everything, see what you can find. I think there's an attic you can get into from the hall."

Turning, he stands with hands on hips, surveying the quiet house and the quiet man within it. The preoccupation around him seems to at least have an external source, now, but Kira finds himself softening from the practical, asking again, "Are you sure you're alright? I can stay for a bit, if you need anything." At least if Bodhi dismisses him again, he can leave him in a dry house with a way back to the village center.

[onlyeverdoubted]

His jaw sets for a moment, entirely too distressed by the question, and in turn too sour about that distress. He's always a bit discomfited by repeated questions--personal questions, rather, he'll happily discuss engine specs and how to identify a decent bar and how moons work. Every sensitivity is high right now, and he doesn't want to answer that again. It seems unfair, it seems deliberately needling, even if Kira has no way to know what he's sensitive about. "Fine," he says, too short and sharp, though he knows perfectly well it's not true. He'll need to take all the work here slowly and carefully until the fever breaks, at least. He's sick a lot. It's fine. It'll be fine as soon as he's alone.

[3ofswords]

Kira lifts his head along the arc of both brows, drawing it just as slowly back down in a very calm nod. He's walking a line, his immediate reaction broadcasting more than he'd like--assent with a side of I'm not stupid.

But if he isn't, pressing Bodhi won't make his agenda. "Right, well, I'll just go get some kind of torch to help you with the furnace, and get out of your hair, I guess." It doesn't escape him that he's kicking himself out of his own house, but if it gets Bodhi to clean himself up and get some rest, he already knows what patch of dirt he's sleeping on tonight. "If Casey's caught anything extra, I'll bring it too."