"How are you?" Gonou asks, pausing in the doorway to the bedroom for a moment before he enters. It does not look as if the answer is 'good.' Food wrappers in a pile beside him, all his skin hidden, sleeping on top of the covers on his bed... there's concern open in his expression.
"Sore," he says honestly, groaning a little as moving around tugs some of the tender places on his back. He hunches with his knees drawn partway up in front of me. "But I'll be fine soon."
Gonou nods, giving Jedao one last concerned glance before he decides to accept the evaluation at face value. He clears his throat and offers up the little pot in both hands, proper manners for a gift.
"I'd meant to let this root a little more, to be sure it would grow," he says with a tiny hint of a smile, "but I thought it might be a nice surprise now. Is there anything I can get for you? Glass of water, tidying up...?"
"Oh," his voice is soft with surprise, and although he reaches out with the sleeves of the oversized hoodie still balled over his hands, he lets the drawstring tug open far enough to see a little cookie-cutter version of his face, eyes wide and pleased. He takes the pot very carefully.
"Thank you," he says, only slightly choked. "Yes, um, water would be nice."
Gonou blinks, feeling something go tight in his chest at the startled pleasure on Jedao's face. It's such a little gift to get such a strong reaction; if he hadn't already been feeling a prickle of protectiveness at the way Jedao's curled up alone and hurting in his glossy room, he would be now.
"Of course," he murmurs, and reaches to gather up the food wrappers while he's at it. "And I can get these..."
"Yeah, sorry," he mutters, blushing a little. "There's a panel, there - you just kind of push it in and then it pops out." Normally servitors collect trash from there. Jedao wonders if he needs to carry it somewhere else now or if the barge will take care of it. "And - could you bring the onion in here, actually?"
"Oh, all right-" It turns out to be quite easy to work the panel, although without Jedao's directions he'd never have guessed it was there. He disposes of the trash, disappears into the other room (where it takes him a moment, too, to figure out where to find glasses and how to work Jedao's sink) and collects the onion in its pot, carrying the water glass in one hand and the onion in the other as he finally returns.
Gonou hands it over, dismissing the thanks with a little you're-welcome hum. He skirts the edge of Jedao's bed to set the onion next to the garlic pot.
"It's no trouble. I'm just glad you weren't killed," he says, mildly acerbic. People come back on the Barge, but Gonou's in no hurry to see his friend test that.
“I just got a little scraped up around the edges,” he says, with a smile that is about two-thirds quiet joy that Gonou cares, and only one-third smugness over his own pun. “I’ve survived much worse than this, promise.”
"Yes, well, that's very lucky," Gonou says, turning around enough to give Jedao the full one-eyebrow-raised treatment. "I've seen the library. That was a bad fire -- weren't some people killed?"
He sighs, a little performatively. "And here I'd just been asking people to settle for boutique murders instead of making a big mess...."
The smile drops, despite a small attempt at resurgence at the reminder of Gonou’s timely and tragically unheeded request. His shoulders hunch up and he sighs roughly.
“Fuck, I don’t know, probably. I helped pull two people out, and then the wardens with a million powers told me to sit down, they had it handled, so I did that.”
Gonou looks over at him, then ducks his chin, and reaches out to prod Jedao's ankle lightly with a fingertip.
"I don't know that anyone was," he says firmly. "All I've seen is the damage to the library. And that's bad enough that I'm glad you didn't go back in."
"I'd never seen fire before," he says quietly, looking down into his water glass, although he doesn't pull his ankle away. "Not up close like that, not for real. Except meditation candles and stuff, I mean."
"That's right," Gonou says, startled. "You've always lived in space, haven't you?" And that means, among other things, that campfires and hearth fires, much less dangerous conflagrations, certainly wouldn't have been normal for him.
"I've never been in a major fire," he adds. "Although I've seen burning buildings from a distance. They move... very fast."
"Flares, scatters, - waves, maybe. I didn't really think about it. I guess I expected it to move the way bombs propagate in space, radiating out in silence. I didn't expect - the way it stays, hunches over something and devours it, like an animal. I didn't expect it to surge and flicker and then - keep being there, just as much. And the noise."
"It's a runaway reaction, really." It's a lot, for someone who has never seen a fire bigger than a candle before. It's a lot even for someone who knows what a house fire can do, but running into it like that, not knowing--
There's a part of him that's tempted to curl up beside Jedao and hold him protectively. He classifies that part of him as probably the fault of Zhu Bajie, who was the touchy-feely sort, and also probably not that helpful.
"Big wildfires on a planet can even make their own weather," he adds, taking refuge in trivia instead. "They'll spawn vast clouds full of lightning."
Most of the time Jedao would very desperately like to be held, but not quite today, when he feels his inhumanity so keenly, when he has to be careful with his secrets and his pain in the same breath, lest the one reveal the other.
"I saw a hurricane from orbit, once. Hard to get a safer distance than that, and it was - incredible."
"A hurricane..." Gonou murmurs. "I've never seen one of those, either. Although I don't think it's possible to have a safe distance from one on the ground, and still see it.
"That's the sort of thing that the Enclosure would really be good for-- isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is. I showed Kyoko the view from some of the station windows a little while ago. Even without any weird weather, it's....pretty spectacular."
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Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"I'd meant to let this root a little more, to be sure it would grow," he says with a tiny hint of a smile, "but I thought it might be a nice surprise now. Is there anything I can get for you? Glass of water, tidying up...?"
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"Thank you," he says, only slightly choked. "Yes, um, water would be nice."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"Of course," he murmurs, and reaches to gather up the food wrappers while he's at it. "And I can get these..."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"Thanks."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"It's no trouble. I'm just glad you weren't killed," he says, mildly acerbic. People come back on the Barge, but Gonou's in no hurry to see his friend test that.
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
He sighs, a little performatively. "And here I'd just been asking people to settle for boutique murders instead of making a big mess...."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
“Fuck, I don’t know, probably. I helped pull two people out, and then the wardens with a million powers told me to sit down, they had it handled, so I did that.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have, though.
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"I don't know that anyone was," he says firmly. "All I've seen is the damage to the library. And that's bad enough that I'm glad you didn't go back in."
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Re: (the day after the library fire)
"I've never been in a major fire," he adds. "Although I've seen burning buildings from a distance. They move... very fast."
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The way it moved, the way it breathed, reshaping the rooms around itself.
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"What did you expect?"
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He didn't expect that at all.
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There's a part of him that's tempted to curl up beside Jedao and hold him protectively. He classifies that part of him as probably the fault of Zhu Bajie, who was the touchy-feely sort, and also probably not that helpful.
"Big wildfires on a planet can even make their own weather," he adds, taking refuge in trivia instead. "They'll spawn vast clouds full of lightning."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"No, I think I'd like to see it myself," he admits. "From a safe distance. I've only ever read about things like that."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"I saw a hurricane from orbit, once. Hard to get a safer distance than that, and it was - incredible."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"That's the sort of thing that the Enclosure would really be good for-- isn't it?"
Re: (the day after the library fire)
She'd seemed to calm down a little, at least.
"Give me a few days, and I'll take you?"
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