Bodhi Rook

[From here]

There rooms are a bit of a mess. Bodhi spend all night cooking and as much as he cleans as he goes, there's still a lot left to do. But it can wait. He puts the last ingredients away to be made into something else tomorrow.

He turns to Galen, shedding his jacket. "That was enjoyable. I missed markets like that."

{From here}

Bodhi's still sitting on the grass when Galen comes out; thick, angry tears drying on his cheeks. There's a core of rage in his gut but it's impudent rage. Too much he can't control, can't fix. Too much he can't undo.

{From here}

Bodhi woke after sleeping long and deep. The calmed undrugged sleep he has had since… since he died. Because he was no longer alone. Because he was loved. Because Galen was here.

Only, Galen wasn’t there any more.

Just an empty bed, cold sheets, and a note.

Autor was right -- I woke up to the realisation that I'm not Galen, but Hannibal Lecter, having been in the throes of that influenza induced identity dysphoria syndrome Autor had rightly been referring to. Words cannot confer how deeply sorry I am for causing you this pain all over again, and nothing that I might offer can possibly make amends.

However, please accept my deepest and most heartfelt apologies.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Hannibal Lecter

Three times he read the words, unable to believe them. And yet, unable to make them not true. He had wanted to believe Galen had finally come. Had wanted it so badly, he had ignored the signs, the small things Dr. Lecter had challenged him to see.

The lack of scars on Dr. Lecter’s hands. The shortness of his hair.

But his heart, his mind. They had been Galen’s.

How? Why? Why make him suffer this? Why give him back his reason to live and then take it from him?

He made it the few short strides to the fresher to vomit. Throwing up the only proper meal he had eaten in weeks. And kept throwing up until there was nothing left but pain.

Shivering on the cold duroplast floor of the fresher, despair overtook him.

There was no light left. This was the final cut, the last torment. He could take no more. The Force was done with him and he would suffer its whims no longer.

The knife was still where he kept it, tucked behind the bedhead. A talisman against the dark. The short blade was clean and sharp. Without hesitation, he rose to fetch it. There was indecision now, no shallow cuts, no transferred pain. He was done. It was time to embrace the darkness. To let all the colour left in the world drain out.

But his body betrayed him.

A cough rattled through his chest, so violent his weakened knees buckled and he fell onto the floor. The cough would not relent and he sucked air between fits like a man drowning between waves.

The cough grew so powerful he threw up again, nothing left in him but bile.

Too much pain, too little strength. It wasn’t long before he passed out, curled foetal on the floor.

And woke up a different man.

Bodhi didn’t intent to cut himself. It wasn’t an act of will.

He’d been using the knife to take the Imperial cog patches off his repaired flight-suit. The bar had given him other clothes. Simple clothes. But they weren’t his.

The fight-suit was his.

It was the only thing that was.

Even his own breath, his heartbeat. They didn’t belong to him anymore.

This place had taken him away. Away from whatever rest he had hoped for. Away from the Force.

Away from Galen.

All he wanted was to be with Galen. Even for a moment.

But this place had taken him.

Because there was something he had to do. Some task.

And no-one would tell him what it was.

He just had to wait.

A prisoner in an afterlife he didn’t want.

He had nothing. No control.

But he could control this. Change this one thing. He would wear the flight-suit.

Because it was his. And it was all he had.

But the patches had to go. He could change that one thing.

The rats had left the knife when they cleaned. It was stacked with a bowl and cup and the tea making thing the man he couldn’t bear to look at had given him. The man with Galen’s eyes. The man who made his heart break over and over. A wound that would never close. That kept being ripped open. Over and over.

He didn’t have scissors or a seam-ripper. Anything else he could use to remove the tiny stitches that helped the patches on. But he had the knife.

With that knife he could take back control. Even if it was only over that small thing.

It was fiddly, getting the tiny stitches to open. And every third one was a lock stitch so he couldn’t just pull it off once the thread was cut. So frustratedly he picked and cut, three stitches at a time.

It should have been easy, taking back that little part of himself. Shedding the power the Empire had over him, even if he couldn’t shed to power Milliways had over him.

But it wasn’t. And he soon grew reckless, yanking at the patches, and slashing at the fabric.

Which is how he slipped with the knife. And sliced across the meat of his palm.

It wasn’t a deep cut. It didn’t even hurt. Not really.

But then… he didn’t really feel anything. Not anymore.

There was no real pain. But there was blood. Quite a bit of it. It pooled in the hollow of his palm, red rivulets flowing down to his wrist before dripping off.

The sound as each drip hit the wooden floor was…

Loud. So loud.

As if he’d been deaf for years and it was the first sound he was hearing.

And the blood. It was so bright. So red. Somehow more real than anything else in existence. The only colour in a sea of grey.

He sat there, watching the blood pool, listening to it drip for what seemed like hours. Till the blood slowed and clotted.

He slept then, blood smearing on the pillow and sheets.

It was the deepest and cleanest sleep he could remember having in a very long time.

With that knife he could take back control.

***

Myrrh slipped in through the cat door the Bar had kindly installed in Bodhi’s door. The scent of blood was strong and she sniffed at the splatters on the floor. In alarm, she leapt onto the bed and nuzzled at Bodhi. He was warm. He was breathing. His chest still moved in the deep sleep he was lost to. His hand was a mess of blood but it was dry and flaking. She licked him fingers a little, trying to clean him up but there was too much of a mess for that. Instead she curled against his chest and purrs reassuringly. She would get help later. For now, he seemed to be a peace so she curled up, one paw over his heart and watched over him as he slept.

Bodhi hasn’t been back downstairs for the better part of a week.

And he doesn’t look good – deep shadows under his eyes, pallor under the olive of his skin. He’s losing weight and muscle tone.

He hasn’t really eaten – some fruit, mostly tea. The tea that makes him sleep. He asked the rats to bring him pills. Pills to make him sleep. And they do.

And he has. He’s safer in the drugged sleep. He doesn’t dream there.

When he’s not sleeping, he lays on the bed and looks at the knife.

It’s a little tomato knife. A red duroplast handle. A clean, simple blade, ever so slightly serrated.

He doesn’t cut himself. He hasn’t touched the knife at all.

The blade has been sitting there for days. Just… sitting.

He can’t take his eyes off it.

He doesn’t think doesn’t about cutting himself. Not exactly. He doesn’t think about the act of pressing the blade to his flesh. Or how the bright blood might well and flow.

But he does think about how it would feel. That it would feel.

He doesn’t feel. Not anymore.

The colours have bled out. Everything is grey.

He breathes. His heart beats in his chest.

But he’s not alive.

He doesn’t feel alive any more.

All the colours are gone.

Leaving the red of the handle. And the red under his skin.

Instead he takes the pills. And sleeps. And lets a little black cat watch over him.