sixthiterationlogs | Battered columns stand as silent monuments

Entry tags:

Battered columns stand as silent monuments

WHO: Bodhi Rook
WHERE: Cabin 39, around town
WHEN: After the Obscurial Event
OPEN TO: Everyone
WARNINGS: Reflections on Jedha, including everything that might reasonably be supposed from a war zone being destroyed by mysterious death from above
STATUS: Ongoing

Bodhi's heard a bit about the mysterious boxes, but never given them too much thought. He's been here for months and not been bothered by one, and when this one appears, he's too busy fussing about Credence's appearance and the general mood in town to even get to it right away. When he finally does, he finds excuses not to open it. Not for any very good reason. He's just already on edge and something unnerving has been added to that. Only when he gets tired of feeling silly does he actually get around to opening it.

It takes a long moment to realize what he's looking at. There was a time these tools were as familiar as an in-flight repair kit would be now, but so incongruous it takes a long time to believe what his eyes are telling him. Three neatly wrapped bricks of pressed tea; plain and refined, smoky and dark; spiced enough to scorch an unwary tongue. The tongs, whisk, and tiny brazier, all plain, elegant iron. A little jar of gray, crumbly rock sugar. Four cups, thin and ordinary, faintly red under a shiny glaze.

They'd be a precious piece of a lost world to any NiJedhan, but to Bodhi, they're more than heritage. The tea shop is a distant memory, dreamlike and outsized through the eyes of the child he was then. War zones do not have warm, delicate shops where nibbly bits of local cuisine are served alongside marked up blends that make somewhat spurious health claims, every cup individually and ceremonially prepared at the table for tourists and monks and dignitaries and a few neighborhood friends. The store remained, since they lived above it, descending from elegance and charm to quick and unsatisfying lunches for conscripted laborers and then to a junk shop, when Bodhi last visited, every hint of the pretty tchotchkes and delicate tables gone, the smell of fried bread and spices finally chased out of the walls.

He's processed his own death. He's tiptoed around the others who fell, on Scarif and before, in the line of duty. But he's fled from any hints of Jedha, backpeddling fiercely at ordinary conversation that strays too near home, refusing to even engage enough to acknowledge a retreat. How could anyone handle a city gone?

He spends the better part of an hour just staring, turning over the little pieces of the set, too numb to feel anything. Then he darts behind the house to find decent tree cover to curl up and sob. He hasn't let anything out since it all began, not Galen, not Saw and his men, not the horrors of the burning beach and the certainty of failure, not the Death Star itself, and it's not just Jedha that creeps in at this first real outburst.

It doesn't feel like an ending when the tears stop, just that he's out for now. He cleans up a bit and returns to the house, and once he's caught his housemates (permanent and temporary), he sets off for town. Part of him wants to save every drop for himself, but that wouldn't be right. He's already carrying Jedha. If he can, he should offer the taste of home to anyone who wants it, and the memory of a moon can go on a little longer.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kira and Bodhi have been ships in the night, even before Casey disappeared from the house. Now when they pass, it's to murmur about Credence in the halls: where he can sleep, who can be home for hours at a time, in case he needs anything. At one point, Kira offered his own bed to the man, though he's unsure if he's bothered to use it--that had been the point of letting Credence take the room at the back of the house, but Kira finds that when he does let himself sleep, it's back-to-back with Credence, the dog at their feet, or wit his arms cradling his head on the edge of the mattress, where he'd been sitting, just making sure Credence is still there.

It's been a week. Kira had continued to notch his bedpost until Casey disappeared: he's lost days to not caring, and it was only the sharpness of the back door opening and closing that stirred him from Credence and the dog.

When he stands at it, looking out into the trees behind the house, catching the sound on the wind, he leaves it alone. He's cried himself out in those woods enough times, he knows there's nothing his presence can add but embarrassment. But he does track back through the house for the source, the box an easy enough guess when he spots it on the counter. He only brushes the rims of the cups with his finger, lifts one brick to appreciate the smell.

By the time Bodhi comes back through, Kira's sitting on a stool, drinking water from one of their older mugs, the gift clearly within his range of sight but undisturbed. There's another mug between him and the set, already full of water. "That's for you," he clarifies, nodding to it, ignoring the state of Bodhi's face. He'll take Credence one on his way back to the bedroom.

Briefly, he considers trying to deny... Well, he's not sure what, but get out of this somehow, mutter something indistinct and flee the room. But it'd be pretty pointless, wouldn't it? And... maybe not useful. Bodhi has never been the least bit competent at managing feelings and talking about them as a coping mechanism is not in his wheelhouse. Who would want to hear?

He takes the mug and sits down quietly, red-rimmed eyes fixed on the middle distance. The water helps if only by giving him a small practical thing to be aware of. Can't be worlds away and still not spill everywhere.

After a few more quiet heartbeats he finds his voice. "Sorry." It's not even an apology, not really, just a reflexive don't be mad at me defense that comes mechanically when his resources for human interaction are at a low ebb.

Bodhi's never the steadiest presence, but Kira's learned to just wait it out when his mind wanders, or give him some task to accomplish like tossing a line to a drowner at sea.

"Nothing to be sorry for," he replies, finishing most of his mug by the time Bodhi mentally wanders back from where he's physically been. "Though if we're trading apologies, I'm sorry if I've put a lot of stress on you, with everything."

He doesn't just mean Credence, who mostly sleeps. Without Casey, they're sharing the load of house upkeep and basic survival, and Kira's own moods and ability to be present are kind of shot.

The morning after with Jyn might not have helped either: he isn't sure how close the pair is, or how Bodhi feels about Cassian's return. "Is this yours," he asks, nodding at the set instead of dwelling on his own ideas.

Bodhi hasn't been at all put out--chores are rather beyond him, but he's not used to having any help with everyday tasks, and he's not that sensitive a housekeeper. Too unused to having a house. And he's happiest knowing Credence is here and safe, anyway.

He's perfectly happy to be redirected, even to the box on the table. Ignoring it won't work, and Kira is... safe, though he's not quite sure of much beyond that. "I haven't, um, I never got one before. I guess I didn't expect..." Putting words together seems to not be happening, which doesn't surprise him at all. He's got no script for whatever this conversation is. "Would you like some?"

"I'd love some," he answers truthfully, no world so separate from his own that he can't recognize tea when he sees and smells it. It's nothing like what he drank at home, but it isn't entirely unfamiliar. Matching the spice and some of the style of the cups with Bodhi's reaction, he asks, "Your home...planet--is it a desert?"

The absurdities of this place never cease, but he hides the quirk of his mouth behind his mug, draining it entirely. "We don't have to talk about that either, if you prefer." Sometimes he suspects Bodhi would prefer they didn't speak period, but not in a way specific to Kira. Much of the time, they don't.

The question is completely natural, and he's not averse to answering it. He's too exhausted to be upset, and while talking is something he tends to avoid more than otherwise, there are times it's clearly called for. It'd be silly to expect to act like that and not be asked about it. He does take a deep breath, but that's all.

"Was." Not using the past tense feels like a betrayal. It's not that he's all that's left, exactly. Arguably, he's not left. This place is far, far away from home, whatever else is true about the quiet little valley. There were others offworld. He knows--knew--some of them. But he's the only one here to carry Jedha, and honoring the memory is important, whatever else he does. "A moon, actually, but... But yes, the--the cold kind." Since that seems to trip people up a lot.

Kira talks about New York in the past tense enough, the depth of was doesn't sink in until weighed against Bodhi, a depth of bereavement that is lunar sands and whistling winds. Who knows what manner of things can go wrong on a moon-city, to make it more than a place a person has left.

In their talks, Jyn hasn't quite offered that section of her life up for examination and commiseration--how she met the men she knows from home, where she actually decides to call home.

Lost to him as it clearly is, Kira's glad Bodhi thinks of a place when asked the question. "Did it have a name?" It seems hypocritical, to ask Bodhi to keep alive a thing in naming and describing it, when the most he's done is write Ty's name in Casey's notebook, added Casey's to the list of people left behind and closed it in his desk drawer.

"The moon was called Jedha, but I think that was the city's name, first. Jedha City, NiJedha, the Holy City--only... only settlement of any size, or that anyone really thought about." Bodhi's always choppy, tense delivery is more muddled than usual. Talking while everything is in such disarray is a struggle. He sees the city of his childhood, vibrant and bright and comfortable, full of pilgrims and emissaries and visiting knights mingling with Guardians and locals. The city he saw destroyed is there too, overlaid like a malfunctioning hologram playing two pieces of a message at once, wrecked and filthy, full of soldiers and freedom fighters and people just trying not to get in the way of either. The second city smells much too much of fear for tea and spices to penetrate.

Belatedly, he stands to put on water to boil. Even if he hadn't already offered, something needs to chase the taste of kyber dust and ozone away before it overwhelms him.

Watching him move, Kira studies the slope of his back: the hunch of his shoulders that holds his arms half-cocked at the elbow, like the legs of a crow unbending as it looks for a branch to hold against the winds. All of him is spindled, brittle, and there is a moment where Kira blinks away the fear that the mugs will crumble in his hands.

But they are never where Bodhi's mind wanders, vivid as his own world seems to be, and there are just the sounds of earthenware on counters, dry herbs separating for human hands.

Sitting back in his seat, Kira finds occupation for his own hands: fetching and shuffling the deck in his pocket, the art-deco cats winking from their illustrations. Bodhi isn't a thing to be fixed, just given patience and understanding. As he lets him sleep and wander, as he asks very little for the upkeep of the house, Kira lets him focus on the tea, letting the smell of the broken bricks spice the room. It isn't incense, and these aren't tarot cards, but it's close enough to feel like a morning before opening the shop. "Are you a religious man," he asks, just to keep them tethered to each other in conversation.

There are a lot of small pieces to the set. Bodhi plucks a glowing corner from the wood in the stove to drop into the tiny tabletop brazier, leaves it for a moment for the heat to make the air and iron shiver, while he considers his choices. His father could always tell what kind of tea a person needed, though he had far more than three to choose from, and as an adult Bodhi can intellectually grasp that the mysterious ability had more to do with knowing the locals and impressing the pilgrims than any intrinsic gift, most likely. He chooses the plainest tea after a moment's hesitation, fine and pure and lightly fermented, and breaks a corner off the block with tongs to toast. Woodsmoke isn't quite right for this blend, though he realizes belatedly it would have gone nicely with the caravan-style and been lost in the spice. Damn. He compensates by holding it over the heat only briefly and dropping it into the cup to grind the leaves to powder. A few crumbles of gray rock sugar on top, then the water, a quick, efficient swirl with a little whisk, and he pushes the cloudy, steaming cup toward Kira with a smooth, careless moment.

For all his internal wondering, Bodhi's expression as he moved through the ritual (as ritual it obviously was) was utterly serene, his hands graceful and competent with every fiddly little device. For all his natural clumsiness in big ways (rare is the day he doesn't knock himself off or over something), he tends to be good at any project calling for fine motor skills, but this is something else.

There's even less strain in preparing his own cup of the smoked, heady caravan tea, and he talks almost easily as he repeats the process for himself. "I... I try to be. I was barely six when, well, the war hit the temple first and hardest. No one prioritizes children's lessons when the monks have all been scattered or murdered." The scent that rises from Bodhi's cup is more smokehouse than teahouse, heavy and oddly savory. "Sort of... on my own."

"That's the best way to do it, in my opinion." Holding a mug of foreign tea in earthen mugs with Bodhi is shades of sitting in the church with Sonny, but also closer to his own sensibilities. It's the kind of thing he'd want to take to Ren's grave, a mug steaming next to him on the piled stones as he sips, letting the dead know they're still thought of as the companions they were in life. "Even if they had been around to teach you, you'd still have to figure out what it means to you specifically, what purpose it serves at all."

The tea, when it's cool enough to sip, reminds him of his mother's green tea kombucha, fermented at the back of the pantry and poured most often for those in the house who couldn't sleep.

He touches his tongue to the wet of his lip, testing the taste of it even as he lowers the mug to breathe in the steam. A little smoke's never bothered him--his preference has always been cheap bancha, roasted and bitter. "My mother always liked reading tea leaves best," he offers, past for past. "She said it was like the wreckage of a little world in a cup, everything washed up on the shore. And it smelled nice."

The look Bodhi gives him is decidedly unsure. He never had any trouble with figuring out his own feelings on the subject. He's a child of the Holy City. There are thousands of interpretations, and it doesn't seem to signify too much what precise path a walker takes, but the correct forms, the techniques of meditation and the history of temple and practice, those were lost with the temple, with Jedha.

Religion has a rather different significance when Jedi walked the streets when he was young. He's seen the Force at work. There's no question of faith, just principle and practice. Difficult to live, but not so hard to understand.

Easier to talk about the tea, though the practice doesn't work very well when tea is powdered. The idea isn't especially strange, just sounds logistically challenging. "What do tea leaves tell you?"

Only Kira's mother ever described him as his father's son, only she seemed to know Daichi well enough to see his roots under Kira's leaves, which reflected so much of her to the world. It was rare for him to bunker down in his father's silence, when it was easier to put on his mother's smile, enigmatic and terrible--he even cants his head as if he had her long hair to let gravity pull from his face, years of studying her in her readings, or her maddening persuasions beating the rocky shore of his father's will.

"What does a shore tell you about the sea," he asks, so close to something she would say that he aches for her, and hides it behind another sip of his tea. "What does a bank tell you about a river, or a canyon about the wind?"

As he sets his cup down though, he's back to himself, shrugging off her flamboyance with one shoulder. "You find shapes in what's left. You can do it with coffee or wine, if it leaves anything in the cup; then you interpret them."

It was a pretty amusing performance. Bodhi is a little unnerved for a moment, but when Kira breaks the character as quickly as he took it on, it just seems silly. "I'm not sure I, um, follow your analogy," he says, because he really can't pass up chances to be pedantic and precise no matter how unhelpful it is. It's a nice distraction from every feeling the tea brings forward, at least. "I know what wind has to do with a canyon."

"Then you know the rest," Kira comments, shrugging. "It's the same principle, just with water." His gaze slices over the mug, narrowed only a moment and smiling into the rim, wondering if Bodhi is fucking with him in the same mild way Kira fucks with everyone. Either way, he's not going to insult the man's intelligence breaking some grade-school geology down like he might for Credence.

Credence isn't stupid either, but, he levies his questions with enthusiasm. "Water makes canyons too, though. It cuts through everything eventually, and in my line of work we assign it a lot of power. I don't know how that works on a desert moon, though.

"What did you manage to learn from those monks, before they scattered," he asks, leaning into the table with genuine interest: Jyn had known The Force when he described Ren's teachings of it, and Bodhi is one of her companions.

He still doesn't get it, but he can accept that. Whatever Kira's talking about is presumably not his to get, some interpretation of the Force that he happens to not have encountered before. His education was interrupted, but he's still very Jedhan in his patterns of thinking. He doesn't need to understand the particulars, and lacking any real force sensitivity he probably wouldn't be able to do anything with the knowledge.

"Practical things," he says uncertainly. "Simple ones. I was--I was very young. Very basic meditation, the, um, the easy versions of stories and philosophies from some of the more regular visitors..." Many of them not that far away from statements like water cuts through everything eventually. "Mostly the Jedi, or the Church of the Force, but a little bit from everyone. You couldn't keep a... a room full of five year olds paying attention for long." It's easier to talk about the old Jedha, the one that was gone long before the planet killer.

"Practical things like tea," he asks, swirling the remnants in his mug a moment before letting the smallest motes of powder settle back to the bottom. When he drains it, he does so slowly, carefully, more out of habit than the idea that enough residue will remain for a reading. He'll have to find some of the leaves from the inn, or ask for a cup not ground so fine as this.

"The man who lived in the house across the way, whose grave I visit--he used to talk about the Force. When we met, I caught him out trying to do something to my mind, he was as weak as the rest of us with gifts." The next question is mostly philosophical, but also indulgent: "Your Church of the Force, what does it think happens to us when we die?"

"Tea was my parents," he clarifies absently. The tea ceremony doesn't have religious significance, or not in any of the religions he happens to be familiar with it doesn't. He just grew up in a teahouse.

Which seems a bit less important in light of the suggestion that someone was decidedly misusing the Force. Jedha belonged to more than the Jedi, but they were the most powerful, the most immediate, and it's hard not to see things through their eyes, hard not to think the words dark side and call to mind snatches of what to a child's mind were not much removed from ghost stories. Knowing how little power time seems to have here, it seems entirely possible there was a Sith in residence. Bodhi's not particularly distressed to hear that the man, whatever the story is, is in no position to be a threat.

He tempers that first response the best he can. Maybe there are benign things a Jedi can do to someone's mind? He's... not inclined to be charitable, but it's possible. "You rejoin the Force. If there's some... some great purpose, a, um, a consciousness can stay. After death, I mean, or because of imbalance or..." Well, there's that dark side explanation again. "Well, anyone force sensitive in particular could stay, for a lot of reasons, but, um, what-what you want is to return."

"So it is similar," he almost murmurs, setting his mug down and peering into the dregs. The village is such a strange mix of people and cultures that he's heard plenty of different religious talk, but somehow the tenants of Bodhi and Jyn's world, the things Ren used to say, make the most sense. Not a higher power, but a flow of energy, and tangible spirits, and a mechanic of lingering versus crossing over.

Sometimes he'd accompanied his mother or aunts on such jobs, separating ghosts from their sense of hurt or purpose so they could move on.

"I'd agree with that," he clarifies, raising his voice slightly to rejoin the conversation. It's thin, one wing crippled and faded, but the points and curves of a bat linger against the bottom of his mug. Reading one's self is never very fun, but not unproductive. "I learned a lot from my mother--cooking, tea reading. I miss her a great deal."

If he admits it, maybe it gives Bodhi permission to do the same. If he'd rather talk about The Force and tea strains, well, all the better for them both.

Bodhi's choice to share bits of the past only very carefully has been a deliberate one all along. Around Jyn and Cassian, still near strangers, there's a sense of inadequacy and irrelevance. Around everyone else, well, he just doesn't want to bother people. But he hasn't tried to hide the smaller pieces, the ones that could be from anybody's life. "I wasn't allowed to-to cook much. I don't think, well, knives. They didn't trust me much with knives." He was a clumsy, excitable child, too. It's not all the trauma of the last few weeks.

"It's too bad no one taught my parents... tea reading? It would--it sounds-sounds like it would have fit well in the teahouse." The place served locals and serious pilgrims, certainly, but the best money had come from visitors with a slightly more frivolous bent to them.

"Your hands seem steady enough to me," he says, lifting the mug just to indicate Bodhi's. He'd handled the tea set with calm and competence, perhaps a muscle memory that circumvented the fogs and squalls of his mind.

Looking into his mug, he ignores the shape at the bottom of his cup. "I could teach you both--about the symbols in the dregs, and if you want to help when I cook dinner, I wouldn't mind."

"I'm not really... I'm not force sensitive," he says simply. It's still a faint wrench to say it, which is ridiculous. He's not a child waiting for an adventure to come find him anymore. He found his own escape, and look where it got him. "I doubt I would--I do know the theory, anyway, when it comes to cooking." For once the abrupt change of subject is fairly deliberate. "I've just been out of practice for, um, ten years." Generously speaking. He didn't leave home quite that young, but comfortable domesticity wasn't on option in the last few years.

"Well, you're welcome to practice with me, any time you like." It's a line to walk--offering without making Bodhi feel like he's asking, like it's one more chore to shoulder between them. Kira doesn't mind cooking, and if he wants the help he can choose to do it at the inn and bring home the leftovers.

"As for the tea, well." He rolls his lips in and stares down into the mug, the little bat fully drained to a puddle of specks at the bottom. "The tea, the cards--they're just tools. Even people who don't have the gift can learn the symbols, and sometimes that's all it is. Just a way to make you think your problems through and figure out your own head or heart from how you keep interpreting the signs."

"Like meditation," he agrees. He can see the usefulness of it. He just doesn't want Kira to go having expectations of him or anything. "A kind of--I can help with the cooking." He didn't quite mean to switch topics mid sentence, but he was trying to think and talk at the same time and he has enough trouble with one or the other sometimes. "I just, um, the ingredients we have here..." The only attempts he ever made were at home.

Kira shrugs, letting one topic drop for the other. They're the same principal, really--lack of inherent talent doesn't mean a skill can't be passed on, or usefulness wrung from it. "Bodhi," he says, sometimes dropping the name between them just to center the conversation: "cooking is just a series of basic principles. Where I'm from, we boil water for tea, and it doesn't look so different when we make it. I'll teach you to do something before I ever expect you to handle it on your own."

He doesn't think he needs to be gentled along quite that much, but he probably brings it on himself, so he keeps the hint of pique hidden. It's well intentioned, obviously. "I can probably still... Fry bread, vegetables, simple things. Might need to, might need to practice a little again." Simple, yes, but it's been a while, and the stove is different.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Battered columns stand as silent monuments

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

no subject

no subject