apparare | i found something in the woods somewhere.

i found something in the woods somewhere.

open post.
▬ action
▬ prompts
▬ continuing threads
▬ force shenanigans

[ Anger like Rey's—or more accurately, the potential for it—can only be controlled in one way; it needs direction, and like any wave, it will relax and quell given enough time and distance. On Jakku, she turned it into a mantra: they'll come back. As long as she subverted her anger with that simple statement, she could not allow the anger at her parents' abandonment to overtake her and mould her into some huddled, bitter creature.

She does the same now in the way she accepts that she has said her piece, expelled her discontent as far as it's safe to do so, and her mind should be redirected to the task they have at hand instead of her own ill will. After all, they have a body to burn, supplies to gather, and injuries to sleep off. When there's work to do, there's no room for thinking and hating—a good lesson, even if she came by it in an awful way.

But his tone snaps her attention up off the stinking mass of flaming flesh, and Rey's expression sours. ]

I have a name, you know.

[ The question, she doesn't bother with; it's better not to engage something like that for neither of them would enjoy the result of the answer. She won't correct him, dismiss the monstrous label, and she certainly won't lie and claim that she is content to remain in his company, but they don't have options, and Rey doesn't make a habit of wasting time complaining about her circumstances when it won't change anything. She focuses on what she can change instead. ]

Don't go anywhere. [ She pulls the blaster rifle down off her shoulder, tucking the stock against the crook of her shoulder and stretching long arms down the body to rest at the trigger guard and on the barrel. ] I'll get bacta from the Falcon, but it's better that we camp away from her in case anyone else followed. They'll see the ship, and maybe we'll get a heads up that they're coming that way.

I'm quite aware of that. ( Is his immediate response. Kylo is not so quick to put past transgressions behind him, however resigned and accustomed to their presence he may become. The retaliation is childish and unnecessary, but if it bothers her enough to vocalize the displeasure she feels at being called such a thing - and he knows the implication behind it eclipses the literal nature of that nomenclature; he's not just calling her what she's factually been for her entire life but twisting the word around his tongue like an insult, made more apparent when he'd spoken her name aloud only moments before - then he is more than happy to use it.

He knows better than most the power that lies in the naming of things, however much she might dismiss it while failing to dismiss the moniker that he's afforded to himself. That, at least, in this moment, with the black mark of what happened in the mine shaft not long enough ago to be resigned to memory and memory alone, is an accurate assessment, never mind his protestations and the argument spent defending himself to her. )

Leave the helmet. ( He says in response to her commands, after a moment spent considering the business end of the blaster she holds as if he might suddenly find it trained on him. It's a fleeting notion, conceived of a lifetime spent looking over his shoulder rather than beside it. Whatever their stance toward one another, that default position between the two of them has shifted with the formation of what exists between them, a blessing and a curse in so many ways. As for the helmet, Kylo is loathe to allow it on the ship, regardless of how little love he has for a vessel that Han Solo, in turn, loved. Aurren may not have been Force sensitive, but that bucket of rust is teeming with ghosts already, and neither of them need to be in the market for one or two more.

Kylo says nothing else, lumbering over under the slow drain of adrenaline to sit on one of the broken, crumbling steps leading into the administrative office that they'd been hacking away at for close to two hours now. He looks at the spread of his knees as he sits, resolutely not examining the injury to his leg until Rey has left and occupying the time until instead by looking up at her, tracing the lines of her face and the way the light bends as if to allow room for encroaching shadow. Blood has stained the side of her tunic, and although he cannot see the gash that Ji left in her side, his own skin tingles in a faint reminder. His leg throbs, and he closes himself away from her. )

[ For a moment, Rey considers carrying it with her for spite, but the helmet is bulky and interferes with her grip on the stock of the blaster rifle; it clunks as it hits the dirt, a plume of dust carried up around it as it creates a hearty dip in the landscape where it falls. Let him stew. Sand grinds beneath her boots as she turns heel and paces away from him without another word; concern that he will vanish into the dark while she is gone surfaces briefly, but she drowns it out by fixing her awareness on the steady throb of his thigh where it echoes in her own.

The hike back to the Falcon is tedious if not overly long, made longer by the way the heat of her injury spreads from one single point between her ribs, out through her lung and around her back. As worrisome as it is, it doesn't flag her step, for she knows the answer lies up on the creaking pile of garbage that had sat under a tarp just miles from her for years without her ever realizing what it could be to her.

When she boards, she moves past the cargo bay where the medical supplies wait, settling her palms on the back of the cockpit seats and staring out at the woodlands revealed by the front viewscreen. She presses her lips tightly together, quietly wishes that its original owner were here to offer her something, or at least forgive her for absconding with his murderer and leaving the Resistance to whatever fate befalls them. She takes small comfort in knowing that he's done the same, willingly and not, though it doesn't escape her that he recognized his avoidance for what it was and returned with them.

Turning away from the pilot chair, she hastens back through the central winding corridor and gathers up the bacta, stuffs an economical but what she suspects is sufficient amount into the leather pouch at her side, then strips off the linen that wraps around her body, disentangling the bands of fabric from her belt so she can pile it in a corner.

Dark brown and deep red stain a third of her tunic, the ivory canvas absorbing everything from mud to blood, and she pulls it up to slap a bacta patch against the smeared and dirty wound over sweat and dust from the mine. The back of her hand wipes sweat from her forehead, and she turns to leave her home behind and return to the wild ghost town whence she came to sift and scavenge once again through the hollowed relics of an age past. ]

( As Rey retreats back to the canopy of the ship, Kylo watches the shadows swallow her back and shoulders until she is nothing but the vague suggestion of an off-white shape in the distance. The Falcon is not stationed far enough away for her to fade completely from sight, but the shadows of the overhang and the encroaching evening do their part to obscure her, blot her out and distort what he can make out of her withdrawing figure. He turns his gaze away after she disappears underneath the metal hull of the ship, letting some of the tension created as a result of holding himself together with wire and screws drain out of him now that he's alone.

Gloved hands peel apart the hole in his pant leg to inspect the damage done to his thigh but there's little to be done in the half-light and even less to be accomplished without the supplies that Rey has left to retrieve, so he does stew. He stews for three full minutes in a muck of self-doubt and chastisement, of lingering anger and frustration and inward disappointment, a cavalcade of vitriolic energy that wants to snap its jaws and lash out at the next person available while it slinks away to lick its wounds and bide its time until the next outburst. The air smells like charred flesh and burning hair and the melted fibers of the clothing that hadn't been removed from Aurren's frame. The helmet glints up at him where Rey had dropped it, and Kylo finally lumbers to his feet in order to stride toward it.

Ultimately, he leaves it, and for no reason other than to be contrary, he doesn't not go anywhere, as she'd instructed him. Rather, he wanders his way through some of the other buildings, entering none save one of the last ones, which appears to have served as an administrative barracks for the miners at one point. The floor seems solid, and none of the rafters overhead come down as he picks his way through the abandoned items, all of which seem useless and exhausted with age and disuse. It's something to do other than watch Aurren burn, but even wandering loses its shine once Kylo finds that there is nothing to procure. Rey, no doubt, will be able to find use for each and every item that she pulls from the dust, but he hasn't spent his life scavenging for parts. Just for Jedi.

Back at the fire, he waits for her to return, standing rather than sitting, leg outstretched, as if any pain could be so great as to incapacitate him when he had drawn such strength from it previously. Kylo stares down into the tarnished durasteel of Aurren's mask and considers what might happen were he to put it on, what transformation might take place as a result of the association so easily made with the disguising of his face. He has now spent more unbroken time without his helmet than he has in longer than he can remember. What that says about him, about what is happening, about Rey, is beyond Kylo's level of comprehension and equally beyond his level of attentiveness, concrete thoughts draining away like meltwater and leaving vague approximations and hints of ideas and concepts behind instead.

After a long moment, he bends to press the helmet between both palms, examining the weight and shape of it, the way the dust and grit has overtaken some of the seams and cracks that mar the visor. There isn't enough adequate lighting to show Kylo his own reflection in its totality, but he can see the outline of his hair, flattened to his head, and the protrusion of what he assumes is his nose in the visor as he turns the helmet to catch more of the firelight. Lighter and somehow less scuffed and dented than the one he left on Corellia, it seems to grin at him, beckoning.

Kylo dumps it into the fire at Aurren's feet. )

[ Absently, in the back of her mind, she can feel him stir and pace, an aimless sort of wandering that comes not from need for anything in particular, but from insolence and impatience, and for that reason, Rey doesn't let it rile her. Strangely, it offers something familiar and understandable in him, a reminder of the man that he claims is one with the monster she'd seen that had frightened her to defensiveness. This is something she recognizes, at least, so she lets the pendulum of his pacing search soothe her nerves with the familiar before she hikes down the ramp of the Falcon and back into view.

The effort of suppressing her injury keeps her gait stiff as she approaches, none of her breaths quite expanding her chest to its full capacity before the sting sets in and blocks her, but pride keeps her stubborn. She finds him there, pale face glowing orange as the flames reflect in his features, casting long shadows that exacerbate the already awkward proportions of his face, and she looks down at the crackling, mechanical sound of the circuits of the helmet frying, a death rattle of its own for the mask that Aurren Ren wore.

For the first time, it occurs to her that Kylo Ren never really chose to leave that particular symbol behind on Corellia, but was forced to by circumstance and her. She doesn't pity him or wish for anything less, but it does give her some idea of why he'd demanded she leave the other Knight of Ren's helmet on her disappearance.

Quite suddenly and without a word, she crouches in front of him, granules of dirt digging into scuffed and half-bared knees as she reaches for his pant leg to assess the wound for herself. Her head tilts briefly and she gets brief hold of the material—enough to see the hole left in it—and lifts her gaze, not bothering to straighten her spine or extend her legs, for she'd never reach near his height anyway. Instead, she just nods to the mound of earth beside her. ]

Sit down. [ She doesn't deliver it like a command, yet the advisement brokers no argument. ]

( Kylo senses her approach long before he hears it, but he makes no move to retreat from the circle of soft orange that casts a wide halo across the overturned dirt. Through the film of smoke and fire, he can see the open mouth of the mine shaft, a blacker scratch on a blackening evening, and not for the first time and surely not for the last while they remain on Concordia, he casts his senses out, doubt tickling the back of his neck, the sensation of being watched peeling down his spine like skin pulled back from the meat of a bright fruit. There is, as there was before, nothing there, no sign of anything, no disturbances that aren't rock formations breaking apart and beams splintering as the chain reaction of their damage ripples through the cavernous space.

Nothing. Just the two of them: Kylo blotting out a section of the fire and Rey bringing up the rear with heavy footfalls, the fuzzy sensation of her healing injury warming across his own ribs at temperature wholly different from the blaze that climbs high in front of him. Rey comes to stand next to him, and for a quick moment, Kylo studies the give and take of the shadows that play over her profile out of the corner of his eye before averting his gaze completely back to the disintegration of Aurren Ren. The smell has abated somewhat, given over more to the choke of black smoke and the popping of wood, sparks drifting up into the air and burning out before they can reach the navy blue of the oncoming dark.

The silence that stretches between them, pockmarked by these pops and shifts of kindling, is something less than comfortable but more than awkward. An acknowledgement of sorts that negates the need for actual words. Rey breaks it not by speaking but by grinding her heels into the dirt and swinging herself around in front of him to crouch down, taking him by surprise enough that she's able to gather the flapping material of his pant leg to peer beyond the frayed edges of dark fabric and get something of a look at what lies underneath. Kylo steps back automatically, the uneven ranginess of his gait as a result of the injury giving him an off-balance tilt and a stagger in his step that rights itself in the same manner, no matter how hard he tries not to favor the leg that sports the injury.

Rey hovers there in the dirt, and Kylo looks down at her for a long moment, weighing his options. He could refuse her assistance and take care of the injury himself, or refuse her assistance in its totality and treat the wound with the same care and attention he had allowed himself following Starkiller, sparing his pride at the expense of his thigh. Part of him enjoys the authoritative quality of her tone, enough to want to sit as directed while his curiosity is satiated by seeing what it is that she does next, and still part of him longs to stand if only to be contrary, the same way that he had wandered despite her clear instructions to stay put, to exert some control over himself if not over the situation in its entirety.

In the end, there is little choice but to sit down as instructed. Kylo manages it in one fluid motion despite the pain that it inspires, gritting his teeth and bending his knees until his backside smacks unceremoniously into the dirt. He eyes the length and width of her hands, her fingers, the sharp angles of her face, then kicks his leg out and digs his fingers into the tear in his trousers, widening the hole himself. )

[ The stench of burnt flesh and death are thick in the air around them, but if Rey smells it in the smoke, she doesn't react, keeping her expression set and duty-focused. While tending to injuries for a political prisoner does not precisely fall under the purview of her duties as a Jedi Knight (padawan, technically), it does help extend the lives of them both should another fight arise, and her experiences with Aurren and Ji do not give her considerable faith that she would fair as well without his aid.

She does not admit these practicalities out loud, as much to spare her pride as to avoid inflating his.

Instead, she allows him the dignity of widening the tear in his own clothing and pulls a canteen from her leather bag, shaking some of the water out over the bloodied puncture that lies beneath. The skin has puckered, layers of flesh turned up like corners pulled away from the wound by an invisible force, a removed blade, and fresh blood bubbles out of it as soon as the water from her canteen temporarily washes blood and dirt away.

He should never have tried walking on it. Just one glance would be enough to tell her how deep it is, if the crippling pain she'd felt transferred to her own thigh hadn't given her some indication already; as it stands, it confirms what she already knows, that flesh and muscle have torn straight down the bone, that even with the miracles of modern medicine, it will be some time—days, she guesses—before his leg is fully functional again.

The cap goes back on her canteen before she swaps it out for a tube of bacta, which she applies judiciously with a smear of her fingers, his blood staining them through mine soot. As she applies it, she grows more conscious of the steady tingle, the latent cool burn, of the patch on her side, and she wonders if it is the bond transferring the feeling of application and her mind simply referring it to where it expects the sensation to come from or if it's merely a natural empathic reaction.

Submerged in silence, Rey is the most comfortable she's felt around him since he tried to choke the life out of a Knight in the mineshaft, a reminder of years in isolation where she merely tended to the tasks that required her attention as they came up and worried about little else, so she does not break it with evaluations or platitudes. Instead, she sets about wrapping bandaging tape around his thigh once it's lathered in the skimpy portion of bacta she'd opted to use—conservation as a habit dies slowly, painfully, screaming each step of the way—and winds it tight around his thigh. She pretends that she doesn't take petty satisfaction in the discomfort she undoubtedly causes him. ]

( Where Rey falls naturally into comfortable silence, Kylo sits on pins and needles, tension thick as soup and gathered in the taut line of his shoulders and the clenched, hard shape of his fists. It has little to do with physical pain. The sensation of water washing away blood and dirt and sweat and whatever else has compounded around the gaping hole in his thigh is undoubtedly uncomfortable, but it isn't the worst injury that he's suffered, and the sting and dull throb that have set in as extensions of the appendage, seemingly, have nothing on the way that his face and shoulder had felt as if they'd been separate entities from his body when she'd torn the blue beam of her saber down the length and width of both of them. Pain, as he had commented previously, is instructive, and as such he finds merit in every twinge, every bubble of blood, every splash of red that mingles with the pale clarity of the water.

So it isn't the tremble in his thigh as he bites the inside of his cheek in an effort to keep perfectly still, settles his eyes hard on the glint of the fire rather than the slope of her neck as she bends over to inspect her work but rather her presence in general that leaves him feeling so at odds. The last time he needed assistance with an injury bestowed had been after Hux had escorted him - he refuses to think of it any other way, given the way that ginger bastard's lip had curled after Kylo for days following - from the collapse of Starkiller, and his recovery at the time had been a difficult endeavor, to say the least. But Rey is not a droid that he can mangle, and she isn't a med officer that he can just ignore or intimidate into promptness and efficiency just by breathing. The ties between them run too deep for that, and her distaste for him and her anger with him had been too palpable prior to retrieving supplies from the Falcon for Kylo to just forget it.

Her decision to see to him now, personally, is an odd choice, and prickles under his skin and along the back of his neck as he watches her slather bacta over his skin with dirty fingertips and the smell of stale sweat hanging around the both of them. Her fingers are not careful around the mean hole that Ji has carved into him, but they are not purposefully rough in any way either. Rey's touch reminds him of his own, perfunctory but cognizant, the touch of routine, and he can see in the indifference she trains her expression in the small amount of pleasure that she takes in undoubtedly causing him some amount of pain, however small, as if it were an adequate punishment for the things that he had done in an effort to keep them both alive.

He frowns, first at the bridge of her nose and then at the motion of her hands, the back and forth hard pull of a swathe of bandages encircling the meat of his thigh. It's the closest that anyone has ever been, the closest that he has ever let anyone, in a very long time, and after a couple of passes of the bandage over his skin, Kylo bumps her hands away in an effort to take on the task himself. )

I think I can handle it from here. ( His voice feels rough with momentary disuse, choked and blackened by the smoke that pours ever upward, disappearing into the darkness of the evening. Dark eyes made amber by the light of the fire, Kylo lets his gaze skip from her hands up to her face and down to where he knows her own injury stains her side. His own skin buzzes faintly. The question he asks is rhetorical. ) Sort yourself out?

[ Her hands recoil as soon as his make contact, like an electric shock has passed between them or a venomous creature has bitten her, and Rey lifts her gaze to meet his eyes in the immediate aftermath of the disproportionate reaction. Not, she realizes, disproportionate to either of them or their circumstances; he will see that, even if her instinct is to assume that no one else would.

It takes her a moment longer to stop her heart from racing from the steep surge of adrenaline that comes with a presumed attack, but she does it as she withdraws from him, remaining crouched there while she waits for him to stop staring and continue the wrapping of his bandage. She averts her gaze first, lowering it in a gesture that she realizes too late reeks of submission. ]

On the ship. [ She shakes her head. ] It wasn't deep.

[ A lie, but not a maliciously made one; dismissive, rather, for the purpose of keeping the focus on the way his own wound would hamper their progress. She'd seen people on Jakku get left out in the desert and stripped by the elements for less, by scavengers who wanted to divvy up the sparse possessions they had. In those days, she'd blamed neither: people did what they had to in order to survive. But she doesn't entertain the thought of leaving Ren here. ]

You can't do that again.

[ She says it firmly, insistently, schooling the emotion out of her voice, even if she can do nothing for the passionate intensity with which she establishes the rule. There is no need to specify what she means for it hangs between them like a tightrope for them each to walk in unsteady paths back towards one another. Worse than his thigh, she can feel the gouged flesh of their bond like a torn ligament, strained and limping as if it had been rent from the bone, and the thought of another pull so jarring as to shred through their sameness makes her stomach churn. Bile rises in her throat, but she ignores it. ]

I know you think you had to, that it was right, but if this is going to work at all, you can't. Killing someone in the heat of battle is one thing, but restraining her and then— [ The words sound like they put a strain on her breath, the very memory of how she'd felt Ji's windpipe crumpling under her own hand winding her. ] I can't be a part of it, and I have to be a part of you. Whether either of us likes it or not.

( His hands stutter on the wrapping, long fingers tangling through the tapestry of off-white bandage while the opposite hand ensures that the dressing lies tight and secure against his leg. Muscles twitch and flutter underneath surface level skin and deeper down, as if jumping straight off of the bone. The licks of pain are secondary now, little twinges that pale in comparison to this weeping, damaged thing that spans the distance between them, larger than a gulf and smaller that a breath all at once. Kylo gets the impression that were he to raise his hand absentmindedly to hold it palm up, the bones and tendons required to mirror the motion in Rey's own hand and arm in order to press their palms together would spring into action automatically.

It manifests as an image in his mind but does not present itself as an actualization as he winds the bandage around his leg once more, but he understands what it is that she's suggesting even without having to hear the rest of what she has to say, which of course he does have to hear, seeing as there is nowhere to run and even fewer places to go. They've let the bond become too tangled, a knot of sinew and marrow, a combination of twisting and twining light and dark and the spectrum between both extremes. Right now his slide back into the familiar overwhelms and pollutes it, so that every word and breath from Rey's throat sounds as if it is being ripped from her, as if his hands were squeezing her trachea in an effort to snuff her out.

The idea perturbs him more than it would have a year ago, before he was acutely aware of her existence, before she was a flesh and bone person as opposed to a far off feeling, a star on a horizon, just a girl. So he cuts it off, shunts it away, and ties off the ends of his bandaging without bothering to admire their respective handiwork. The binding is secure, that's all that matters, but he'll have to find something else without a gaping hole to wear eventually. For the time being, Kylo falls quiet, dragged down in the whirl of Rey's grief - if it could be called that - enough not to take inventory of the submissive way in which her eyes had lowered. If anything, his aversion and preoccupation with his injury displays a similar reluctance, although he is quick to cast his gaze toward her again once he's finished. )

I can't promise you that I won't. I can't even promise myself that I won't. ( He delivers it quietly, most of the authoritative edge of his tone and the anger from earlier drained out of him and smothered by the fire and his own weariness. Even men like him get tired; juggling two consciences is exhausting. Kylo's throat feels dry, and although his voice doesn't carry the same qualities that it had prior, that dryness makes it rougher than he intends, a scrape of stone over a slab of rock. He stretches his palm flat over the bandaging covering his thigh, biting back the urge, for whatever reason, to curl his fingers around her arm, recalling easily the way that she had recoiled from him only moments ago, her horror at what he had done. He's quiet for a long moment, looking at her, mulling over nothing and everything.

Starkiller and Corellia, Yaga Minor and the ice caves, long stretches of desert and the lush green on Takodana. He did this. His relentless, reckless pursuit, his desire to prove himself, prove his worth, prove to the darkness in him and to himself that he could do this. This is his responsibility, as much as it is her load to carry in turn. He did this on Starkiller and she finished it on Corellia. Rey dragged him the rest of the way under, but not before Kylo stuck his head below the water in a desperate bid to come back up breathing the moment that Han Solo's death punched a hole right through him and let the light back in. The struggle manifests this time as a sigh, tightly controlled, quiet, pinched at the end. ) I'm trying. I'm going to try. ( Because at the end of the day, that is what any of them are doing. Trying. So he'll try, for her, for himself, and - ) I'm sorry.

( It's an awkward endeavor but it exists all the same, brushed under the heavy popping of the fire and the creaks and groans of the encampment around them. He hasn't apologized to anyone in so long that even Kylo questions whether or not it's genuine but in that moment, with the sound of her voice choked still in his ears and this fragile but strong yet incredible wounded thing pulsing between them, he finds that it is, and that no one is more deserving of the first acknowledgement of genuine remorse in years than Rey. )

[ Even without the bond, Rey would be able to feel the weight of the words in the implicit haunting image of his lonely mindscape, a barren and icy wasteland that afforded few fond memories, all far off, of other people. If Snoke had ever earned an apology out of him, it was a bruising command, not something freely offered, not something rich in conciliatory regret for the resulting pain.

The words press Rey's eyes shut to stave off the threatening trickle of tears—both empathic and personal, a result of the memory of the mine and its effects on her as much as the relief of his honesty and the transferred inner turmoil he feels. She draws a deep breath before looking back up at him, amber eyes glinting with the smoldering fire beside them that scorches the remains of the crime, and she presses her lips tightly together to collect herself while she nods. ]

Try is good. I'll take try. [ A lopsided, grim bastardization of a smile touches on her lips, haunting in its failed efforts to become even a shadow of the expression's intent, but she gives up on it quickly, eyes turning skyward. Each star glitters like the end of a blaster barrel pointed down at them, either light traveling years to reach them from another system, or an incoming shuttle that's eager to carry them, injured and off their prime, out to the Unknown Regions were Snoke awaits. ]

We need to move the body somewhere. [ She points towards the sloping hills of the refinery further south in the crater of the mine, where silt is carried and piled and strained through chemical smelting into refined ore. Even in the dark, the various minerals glint in the light as though winking at them from artificial mountains that roll out of sight and obscure the rim of the crater where the treeline continues. ] Then head further in to set up a camp. If anyone comes looking to finish the job, it will be to our benefit that they find the Falcon empty and the Knights gone; it might even give us enough time to recover before they catch on.

[ Doubtful. But she isn't up to getting them off-planet in her present condition, and Kylo Ren isn't up for another melee bout. Better that they firm up their plan for rest and take another go at it when the sun touches Concordia's forgotten mines. ]

( The tightness in her chest that manifests in direct relation to the fan of her eyelashes across the dark circles marring the skin below manifests in his own as well, an echoed sentiment that brings the air in lungs down to a scratchy wheeze in his chest, though it doesn't exist as a reality in its own right. Or maybe it does, he can't be certain, as caught up and tangled within one another as they have become both since leaving the mines and before they ever entered them. There is a weight that settles behind his breastbone, stacking on top of itself to pile rocks in the pit of his throat, restrict the flow of that rattling breath that expands and contracts across his chest with every breath that he takes, and Kylo knows what that sensation is without ever having to stop and give it a name.

He doesn't now, and he doesn't bother with the thickness of his tongue and throat in an attempt to answer with any form of immediacy, not trusting himself to gather the conviction required to ensure that his voice does not waver in the wake of her acceptance, her approval. It's a different make and model and of a different caliber than anything Kylo is used to - from the people who had once been his parents, from the Jedi who had once been his uncle, from the shadow that had once been his master - and it rests heavy and burrows deep somewhere within him, a small, burning ember tucked among the blackened coals. His head tips forward in a nod at her acknowledgement, and something not at all like a reciprocated smile touches the corner of his mouth - more a grimace or a wince than anything overtly pleasant - and falls again as the heat of the fire rinses his face and a particularly loud pop draws his attention from the contours of her own, the bright ring of amber that eclipses the kaleidoscope of brown and green made darker by firelight.

Kylo doesn't follow the line of her sight up into the stars but stays attached to the fire until its brightness forces him to look away, out beyond the hills that she points to once he catches sight of her movement out of the corner of his eye. His initial response is little more than a grunt, flexing his fingers around the bandaging on his thigh, digging the pad of his thumb into a point just outside the radius of the wound, testing it. It's hardly pleasant. )

Maybe you should have considered that before lighting it on fire. ( There's no real heat behind his tone; if anything, despite evidence to the contrary, he sounds like he might be teasing her. Even so, Kylo can't deny that the suggestion has merit, as little as he wants to spend even a night lying on the ground, though sleeping in one of the cramped bunks on board the ship sounds just as appealing. ) We can pull a door off of one of the buildings and attach something to drag it with, make it somewhat easier on ourselves, considering - ( He gestures between the both of them, a vague indication toward Rey's ribs and his own leg. Dragging or propelling the smoldering remains of Aurren Ren via the Force seems like a waste of energy when the two of them together should be able to pull whatever is left of him behind them with less fanfare. As unenthusiastic as he is about spending what might amount to longer than one standard cycle on this moon, Kylo has to concede her point: neither of them are in any shape to do anything other than sit down, as much as Kylo might like to insist otherwise. )

I'm less comfortable leaving our only method of transport unattended, but there doesn't seem to be an overwhelming amount of alternative choices to be made. ( In the interest of speeding their production along and also limiting the chances of something else less productive, more quiet and subdued, from occurring, Kylo plants his hands in the dirt and rises ungainly to his feet. There is no room or place for pretense between them, not anymore. It's pride and duty that pushes him forward now. ) I'd rather get it over and done with, wouldn't you?

( He extends a hand in the interest of pulling her to her feet. )

[ A scowl answers him—he'd been the one to suggest a warrior's funeral of any kind—but it's less vicious than the looks she had fixed him with previously, and as such, manages to look almost good-natured in comparison despite the way her teeth clench and set like a strill's. The desert left her feral, and every inch of progress she makes in the opposite direction only proves to throw into starker relief how savage she still is.

Any distaste falls away when he pushes forward to the practical, something Rey can easily throw her support behind in full force, and she does so ignoring the gesture he makes to her injuries. She's dragged more weight with worse to account for. In fact, it had never occurred to her that he might aid her efforts; rather, she felt the need to get him on board with the plan, imagining a dozen ways he might combust if she were to simply begin dragging the corpse of his old ally away, but never considered his participation.

She grabs onto his hand and pulls herself to her feet with it, wary to avoid lending too much of her weight to him for she knows not to take his swelling bravado as a sign of what he can actually juggle on that leg. ]

Whatever's left. [ She corrects herself, turning her attention down at the smoldering pile of blackened flesh that has tightened around the bones below. For a brief moment, she misses the loose fabric that she used to wrap around her head as a hood and mask, wishing something could blot out the smell of burning flesh and hair, but the life of a scavenger is far behind her, even if the skills and urges are not too far to be recalled. ] Do what you can to put the flames out.

[ His command of the Force, while perhaps less innately powerful, is better refined, and she imagines that it will make the task simple; meanwhile, she heads for the administrative building with stiff but resolute steps where she lifts the hilt of her lightsaber for a moment. She thinks better of leaving such obvious burn scars in the building, though, and instead sets about prying the hinges loose and rattling the flimsy metal door free. ]

( The severity of her scowl sometimes catches him off guard for how familiar it is, a hearkening back to easier days, simpler times, when the mean, lean look of a survivor's hardened exterior, the quills and barbs of her shell, were the only things made accessible or offered to him. Now there are dips and valleys in between one glare and the next, catalogs of soften expressions and a new, broader spectrum of aching for the raw look in her eyes to travel along. They lean against a backdrop of deeper understanding on his part, an innate sense of knowing, manifested and fortified as a result of the connection between them, a continuous loop of feedback that plays uninterrupted and without request.

Rey's look now is certainly less scathing than what she has attempted to pin him in place with before, but it is still a return to something normal between them - and how strange that is, to think that there ever could or would exist something as benign and familiar between them as normal - and Kylo, glancing down at her with his hand extended, black leather catching and absorbing the light from the fire, he is unsure which extreme he prefers: that of normalcy or the thrill of the unknown. With sluggish work impeded by their own injuries, no doubt, to be done, he has little time to consider it, and with Rey's permanent residency in his head, he has even less room to reflect.

Kylo shuts it down before it can become more than what it is is, though its existence is criminal all by itself, and claps their hands together with a hollow sound that echoes down into the bones of his hands via the cup that his palm makes as he hauls her to her feet. He sways with her added weight, just a bit, leaning on his good leg in an active effort to spare the injured, though it's hardly enough to belie his depleted strength on the whole. The both of them standing, Kylo wonders why he bothers at all with the pretense of feeling no pain, no effects of such a wound, when it's plainly obvious she knows without having to ask or be told or mislead. )

What do you need from the ship before we leave the area? ( He asks, once she's wandered away and before he realizes that he's not spoken aloud but shouted down the winding rope that binds them together, mind to mind. It's a strange realization to stumble over, when he's done an overwhelming majority of things in his life with deliberation, however recklessly, and speaks more to the inherent issues Rey had addressed only moments ago, as they sat on the ground, to the instincts that he has to try hard to suppress in order not to drag her under the shifting, dark sands that he is still mired in. An equally strange realization, and Kylo wonders, briefly, vaguely, whether or not it will prove to be a guileless one in the end.

Present one moment and gone the next, he allows those thoughts to filter in and out like running water, and collects the Force between his fingers in much the same way. Despite its constant presence, the threads that weave and threaten to overwhelm at times, he finds the task as it stands momentarily laborious, and uses the bulk of his concentration to gather large clots of dirt above and below one hand with the express purpose of dumping the dirt onto the fire, smothering it. It has the added benefit of choking the high plume of smoke that wanders ever upward, though it takes him five solid passes to get the fire to extinguish completely. When he's finished, sweat has beaded underneath his hair and the high collar of his cowl once more, and the night air is cool as it licks him dry. The fire still smolders and glows orange in places, reduced to cinders and embers that do nothing to illuminate what's left of Aurren's body. An ally, maybe, but just as likely to kill him - kill them - as anything. )

[ It takes the leverage of her full weight, but the door comes off its hinges with a creak and, following it, a shrill sound of metal scraping against itself as she wrenches it free unceremoniously. Rey props it against the building, rubs a sweaty palm across her dirty forehead and is unsurprised to find that neither situation has improved by contact with the other when her hand comes away with dirt stuck to it. The physicality of the task relieves her of the burden of her own mind, allows her to evade the considerations of Kylo Ren's mental state, of her own in the wake of what he'd done and what ripples she'd felt coming from him. ]

I already got ration bars, water, and plenty of bacta. [ The reply comes automatically, and on its heels, a quick reel of considerations as she tries to ensure that she hasn't forgotten something critical in the assumption that she'd taken care of necessity. Only once she's sure of her strategy does she realize the implications of the question in the first place, and she looks up at the metal door in its considerable weight as though she intends to expedite the drag. ] You shouldn't go back to it on your own.

[ Not walking like he is, but he's stubborn and prideful and something about conveying that as she does is sure to set him off in some defensive flourish; Rey seizes the edges of the door and begins to drag it, hauling it with intermittently vibrating scraping noises as it skips along the dusty ground at an angle that elicits protest from her lower back. Anything else wouldn't get her the leverage she needs to move its weight: solid metal, as it turns out, is not light, but it is bulky, and Rey accounted for that well before she offered to take the door.

She waits until she's closer to turn around and leverage the door up to foist it onto her back, adjusting her grip to firmly tug it against the curve of her shoulder blades while she brings it the rest of the way. A few minutes see her back to the makeshift campfire where Aurren rests, and she drops the enormous steel plate with a clatter beside him. ]

( He hears her return before he actually sees her, the metallic scraping of the door echoing throughout the basin that they have found themselves in and startling a flock of birds roosting in the treeline not far off from where the Falcon fades into a shadow, large and looming. As if he would return to it on his own if he didn't absolutely have to: a thought that manifests within him as much as the scowl across his face does the moment that Rey had suggested he not go back to the ship as if it were at all a task he would assign himself in the first place, as if he were a child.

Stubborn pride wills him to return just to spite her, the way that he had wandered the barracks and administrative buildings when she was retrieving supplies from the ship's cargo if only to disobey her, but Kylo keeps himself in check with the reminder that the exertion of dragging Aurren's corpse and whatever slab of metal Rey has managed to find to suit their purposes is going to require a certain amount of energy and concentration that he can't afford to waste elsewhere. He certainly wouldn't waste it on a pointless excursion back to a ship that offers him nothing save for carefully constructed reminders and, maybe, a pair of trousers too small and too old and belonging too overtly to someone else for him to ever slip them on. There's nothing for him there.

So he waits for her to return, wishing that he were wearing something more conducive to rolling his sleeves back as he plunges his hands into the smoking remains of the fire that had burned Aurren down to black char. Kylo does not drag the body all of the way out of the pit but waits for Rey to return with the door so that they can haul the remains onto it as a unit, as opposed to taxing one another individual. Of course, this is a thought that is mostly squandered the moment Rey comes into view with the door slung over her back, looking as if it weighs twice what she does. Kylo makes no move to assist her, though he does drop the pretenses of their connection in order to open his mouth with a droll tone once she slams the thing down heavily. )

Why didn't you just use the Force to carry it? ( He already knows how much she's capable of lifting: she did carry him through Corellia, after all. )

[ The hesitation before she answers speaks to her inexperience, reveals the months of training substituted, in a moment of desperation, in place of years; while Kylo Ren has been studying the Force from birth, no doubt, Rey came to it after she was already a woman who had found a way to survive without it. She balks for a moment, realizes that he doesn't mean it as a scathing insult but rather that it becomes one only through her stiff realization that what he suggests should have been obvious, and finally collects herself. ]

There's no sense in using the Force for something I can do perfectly well for myself.

[ Disparaging and dismissive, she stomps over to where he stands near the ashen remains of the Knight of Ren, bending to help him lift the shell of a man from the dirt—she looks up at Kylo Ren to time it: one, two, three—onto the steel plate of the door. She should have gone looking for another emergency blanket instead of just listening to Kylo's suggestion, but it's too late now; some of the corpse crumbles when they drop it onto the slab of metal. Rey turns away to use the back of her hand to mask her nose and mouth from the dust on principle more than in any sense of squeamishness.

She steps over to where they'd grabbed him from, kicking around the dirt to stir away some of the scorch marks left behind, blackening silt to something charred and identifiable. It's impossible to keep the area from looking disturbed, but she can at least try to mask the scorched impression left behind in the earth. ] Do you use the Force for everything? Summoning blue milk to you in the morning?

( Not birth, not necessarily, or at least not in the way that she might envision in her mind. But then again, maybe. If there were anyone outside of his own self who might be able to attest to the terms and conditions of his introduction to the Force, it might be Rey, but there are certain things that Kylo keeps under lock and key and far away from even himself, let alone her and the access that she carries to the furthest corners of his mind. He had been present for her introduction into the concept himself, but despite asking the question, he isn't all surprised to have found her relying instinctively on physicality rather than the introduction - if it could even be called that anymore, considering how much time has passed - of her own abilities. A lifetime of sand and hard loneliness, of relying on her own strength and prowess, have molded her. )

Caf. ( He corrects, once they have displaced the remains and his hand has come away from his mouth in an attempt to shield his tongue and the back of his throat from the upward swirl of dust and ash and flaked, black skin that climbs higher than their heads once they deposit Aurren's body onto the metal slab. While Rey kicks her feet to disturb the dirt in an attempt to cover their tracks, so to speak, Kylo drops to a knee with a diagonal sort of lean, favoring the injury on his leg, to secure a bit of fibercord scavenged from the remains of the administrative buildings to the door so that they can drag it behind them. He looks up at her without a smile, though there's the suggestion of one hanging around his eyes. )

It's also helpful in making the bed and starting the morning shower. ( He arches an eyebrow and straightens back up with as much dignity and grace as he's able to, winding the fibercord into a tight circle around his palm. ) You haven't covered this in training?

I didn't say that. You did.

[ The loose wag of her finger that both deflects the accusation and hurls the implications of it back as if the assumption were some kind of reflection on him is reminiscent in an unsettling way of his dead father. A fast-talking, yet matter-of-fact slip out of a noose, and she dodges past it to grab a spare bit of fibercord to join him in hauling the weight of it.

Luke's training is parceled out in what he is comfortable deliberating to her despite his greatest reservations, despite the spark of anger and the possessive, protective urges within her that too greatly resemble some of Kylo Ren's ambitions. She understands that, objectively. It's hard not to feel some sense of bitterness and struggle when the barricade to her further training is the one to call out its insufficiency. Better to bury all of that and keep her eye on the prize.

Rey doesn't wait for him; she just she yanks at it hard, dragging the not inconsiderable weight a foot or so all her own without any regard for the ghost she'd imitated. ]

( If Kylo notices any lasting similarities between Rey and the man she had so desperately wanted to view as some kind of father, the man that Kylo himself had cut down, he makes no mention or indication of it, but then drawing attention to the fact would be drawing attention to the fact, and they have barely come out of this last entanglement with both their bond and their fledgling, begrudging acceptance of one another intact. The last thing worth doing is exacerbating the tentativeness of their affiliation in the moments that Rey admonishes - teases? Kylo can barely be sure - him and he finishes securing the fibercord to the door on his end by opening old wounds and twisting the imitation of Rey's gesture in it. They have enough open wounds to deal with, as it is.

He had meant nothing serious in being sarcastic, anyway, but in knowing that lies a double-edged blade of comprehension. Sarcasm for only the sake of sarcasm, in an attempt to be humorous, to lighten a perpetually dour mood, is a strangely intimate realization to stumble across: a strange thing in and of itself, considering the nature of their association and the bond that pervades everything that they do, everything that they are. It's a far cry from the raised tones and strangled syllables that they had been lobbing at each other prior to undertaking this new task, but it's a brisk change of pace that Kylo finds, oddly, he prefers. That isn't to say that he doesn't find arguing with her both satisfying and relaxing in its own way, but it is much easier to deal with Rey when she doesn't want to take his head off or scream at him, whether through her tears or in spite of them. )

You have made it abundantly clear that you need no one's assistance more than once in the past. ( Kylo says, once he has caught up with her following her abrupt take off, dragging the door and Aurren's body behind her as if all of it were nothing more than a pile of scrap metal to be bartered. Her strength, as always, is startlingly impressive, though some of the novelty has worn off as his understanding of her has grown and changed. For a moment, he merely walks beside her, content to watch her haul the considerable weight behind her as he forces himself not to limp.

The similarity of their individual displays is not lost on him, and after a moment, Kylo wraps the remaining fibercord around his wrist and hand and strides along beside her, reaching down past the discomfort in order to see the task completed. It takes half the time it might were they doing it on their own for them to reach the safety of the trees. )

[ It does not serve her to correct him with some defense that she was not trying to make a point but rather leave his mention of her training behind in hauling the door off on her own (she grimaces to realize, then, the weight she pulls and permits herself the struggle of hauling it rather than berating herself for having difficulty); in fact, defensive is precisely what it would seem, and Rey has no interest in senseless, directionless bickering.

Instead, she's silent a moment, grateful for the relief his assistance provides and suddenly far more capable of making great strides—or as great of strides as her short stature will allow, anyway. Rey has never considered herself particularly small—not in a desert filled with Teedo and mechanics—but next to Kylo Ren, she cannot ignore the way she is dwarfed. She tries to shove out of her mind any questions about how her stride length might slow him down, thinks instead how his lesser strength is slowing her down, and grits her teeth accordingly.

Just because they're allies (for now) doesn't mean she has lost her spirited desire to prove herself his better.

The trees envelop them quickly enough for her to stomach his company, and Rey loosens her grip on the fibercord to look around for a good spot to bury the remains and start hiking upward and out of the crater for better vantage. The co-opted sniper rifle hangs heavy around her. She hasn't ruled out the possibility of using it. Privately, she wishes she'd opted for more sessions training in blasters with Finn in between meditation with Luke. ]

Good enough. [ She waves a hand to demand Kylo lower the door. Not because she's spotted any particularly good burial ground, but rather because she knows that there is no way that the squatting pull will do any favors to his injury, even if she is grateful for the aid. ] We can dig here, then hike up that way. [ She points to a cliff face that is made of more rocks than dirt, harder to slide down, and resigns herself to the climb; already, she calculates how she can convince Kylo Ren to clip himself to her lest his leg give out and try to take him back down into the crater with the mine. ] If we camp up there, we're almost guaranteed to get the jump on anyone following.

( Even without the bond, Rey's desire to prove her superior worth and strength would be visible from a mile away, and even without that perception, Kylo would still do his best in order to prove her wrong. His best is operating at about half the speed and stamina as is typically only means that his outward exertion is greater than it should be despite the circumstances, despite the flap in his trousers and the steady pulse up and down the pillar of his leg with every step that he takes. The pain is not as great as the discomfort, but he grits his teeth and casts a sidelong glance at Rey as they move all the same, unwilling and uninterested in opening up a line of conversation while they work.

He does have to shorten his strides somewhat in order for them to match evenly with one another, but it's less an acquiescence to her lead and more an acknowledgement of necessity. It also isn't the first time that he has done this without question, though their current circumstances are somewhat different than trudging across the muddy grounds of the temporary Resistance camp following the First Order's defeat on Corellia, to say the least. Part of him categorizes their pissing contest as ridiculous given the situation they find themselves in - and not just the absurdity and bleakness of Concordia but the whole of it: the war and the bond and their undeniable tether to one another despite either of those things - but still the rest of him is not at all surprised or disappointed to find that they are both eager to prove themselves all the way to the treeline.

Kylo straightens up once they break into the shadowy canopy, wiping sweat off the back of his neck with one gloved hand. It's darker underneath the trees than beyond them, surely, but the light is still enough that he can make out Rey's expression and the line her gaze traces up the hillside, rocky and uneven. His thoughts follow hers almost to a T, though he deviates from that course of consideration in order to prioritize on the task at hand. It seems a safer course than questioning her with something scathing that will do nothing more than annoy and needle her. For as irritated with the entire situation as he feels underneath the heavy layer of exhaustion, which in turn is nestled underneath their shared responsibility in seeing all of this done, there is little point in continuing to put them further at odds. )

It won't be an easy climb up. ( The door hits the dirt and sends a scattering of earth and other detritus flying in a puff. What's left of Aurren Ren shifts and shudders on the slab of metal; the weak point of his wrist snaps and the charred remains of a hand lolls sideways. Kylo barely notices, too busy eyeing the rifle where it hangs over Rey's shoulder and back. He has never used the Force to dig, though it doesn't seem like an impossibility, especially as the ground seems somewhat forgiving in this area. On the tail end of a hasty decision, the warm leather of his glove comes down a little harder than intended, as if out of practice, on her shoulder. ) One thing at a time, come on.

( They'll have to use their hands - and the Force - but the pit does not have to be particularly deep for their purposes. )

[ The moment his hand is on her, Rey snaps her attention back at him, her gaze cool, sharp, probing, but she never verbally challenges its place on her shoulder: more than anything else, her reaction speaks to the fact that his movement, not his words, are the real surprise. Slowly, the muscles of her shoulders relax, sag, and she steps out from under his touch to crouch around a spot beside the door that she estimates as more loosely packed than the rest. (The decision is arbitrary, but she does not allow that to pass through the membrane of their bond—or so she hopes.)

In the past when Rey's fingers have sprawled through dirt, it was a dry, thin veil that had sifted on top of some monolith of a time long ago—one, apparently, of Jedi. But she's not digging anything up this time; she's burying it. She tries to shovel the soil as if it were sand, but quickly realizes that she has to burrow down first, and makes spades of her hands to dive deep and pull handfuls of dirt up into a rim around the burial plot.

The task is a grim reminder of what the bond between her and Kylo Ren has resigned her to, but Rey does not allow such thoughts to slow her progress, shutting them definitively out and keeping her attention laser focused on the task at hand as she so often endeavors to. There is emotional confusion down that path, feelings that demand some kind of reckoning and realization that she won't give them because they are too alien to the desert rat who lived for so long on her own.

It should be harder than it is to dig Aurren Ren's grave, but all Rey gets from it are familiar callouses worn anew and dirt under her blunt-clipped fingernails blackening them. This is not her first time burying a body, and certainly, those that she'd found wasted away in the Jakku desert, scorched and boiled by the heat, smelled even worse than the burnt mass that rested beside them, which Rey had by now acclimated to, but this is different. She hadn't been responsible for any of those deaths. ] You fought with him once, didn't you? [ She looks up at Kylo Ren as they work. ] Don't you want to say something?

( He considers asking her to hand him the rifle so that he might turn the butt of it downward and break the earth up at their fee that way, but something in the way that her focus fixates and snaps to attention the moment that his hand touches her shoulder puts a stopper in the question and bottles it up enough for him to tuck it away. The ground they tread is uneven and mired with ice, cracks and fissures breaking across the surface with every heavy step. Kylo knows that Rey's trust in him - if it could be even be called that, but because he lacks the vocabulary to define it as anything else and because it certainly couldn't be construed as faith - is shaky at best and following his actions in the tunnel, currently climbing its way back from the bottom of a pit, and while that might not bother him any other given day, their continued survival means cooperation, and that won't happen if they're at odds.

It doesn't mean that they have to agree on everything, but the one thing they can agree on now, at least, is the need to get their hands dirty. Kylo's are much larger than Rey's, but Rey is more experienced at sticking her fingers into the earth and finding something worthwhile lodged within it. They even one another out and meet somewhere in the middle, with Rey's fingers making the indentations necessary to deepen the hole while Kylo leans forward and scoops out a much larger amount than she might be capable of otherwise. It still takes long enough for him to sit back on his haunches and stretch his leg out next to him, wipe sweat from his neck and admire his own preference for wearing gloves. )

Not to any particular degree, no. ( If Rey's comment perturbs him in any way, Kylo doesn't let it show, and if the act that they perpetuate bothers him at all, that doesn't show either. His face is a carefully arranged mask of neutrality, buried underneath the weight of the day that they both feel, the weight of everything they have done up to this point. ) It isn't as if we were friends.

( Or even friendly. )

Right. That makes sense.

[ The words are functional and hollow to the point that it makes it too obvious that Rey has no empathy for what he must be feeling right now, despite her efforts to reach out and understand—in her own right, if not through the bond. Nothing that she experienced on Jakku can be conflated or compared to what constructs the relationship between the Knights of Ren, and she has no measuring tool to examine it in any sensible fashion.

More to the point, she should have no reason to want to, but the fact that she finds it so inscrutable piques her curiosity in a way that she can dismiss as passing interest in the structure and organization itself rather than in the demon that she has inextricably linked herself to—by choice, inasmuch as her circumstances could really be called free will, with the dam holding Leia's grief threatening to shatter, Luke's cautions about surrender to the darkness of her revenge and his unwillingness to assist, and Rey's own uncomfortable and conflicting position resulting from her relationship with Han.

She wipes her forehead and, in doing so, smears dirt against her sweat and allows it to stick there; it has been a long time since she has recalled any feeling but the fine layer of dirt caking her skin. ]

That's probably enough. [ Though she doesn't want to appear too eager to leave the subject behind, lest it keep him from sharing (as if he ever would) any other insights about how things were between the lot of them—not in tactics and facts and evaluations, but in personal matters—she cannot bear the silence of his refusal of her previous effort. Her hands force some more of the dirt away, packing it against the edge of the hole as though trying to form a wall of it. ]

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this is the worst tag i'm so sorry this weekend has been insanely busy and it's only saturday

NO WORRIES my life is a blur right now i'm so unreliable omg

MINE TOO it's fine it's fine. prayer circle for me and you. i hope you're surviving!!!!!

just barely./stares into the middle distance. why is the end of the semester so hard

i have never understood. i think making it to the end means things should be easier

finals week is finally here i can see the light

YOU ARE ALMOST THERE YOU CAN DO IT. also i apologize for short/crap tags i've been sick this week

i feel like the six days this tag took is enough of a "don't even worry about it"