milliways_bar | (no subject)

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She doesn't look innocent when she sleeps. Far from in fact, she's curled far more akin to a hound than a human, cheek cradled on her towel. Her wet hair is spread in the grass like blood, her scarred back turned towards a small fire that leaps and jumps tiredly in the growing night.

There's a plate with lunch on it as well, a sandwich with a few bites taken, a bit of fruit...it seems that the call to sleep was too great after her swim though...so, Rachel is asleep by the lake, there's room enough at the fire for more though.

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"Were you treated kindly?" she asked, concern in her tone.

She fiddles. It's a Rachel thing really, one of the things she's able to show around her friends. Just say the word though and she'll stop.

He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. Someday, I'll go home, and none of this hardship will bother me."

He doesn't care if she's unwrapping his foot, though he does wonder at it. Anyone else, and he'd have gotten them to stop touching him.

Rachel? It'd be like asking him to refuse a campfire's warmth.

That causes her to pause, glancing up at him with flame and shadow licked eyes "No, you've too much heart for that..." she noted quietly. "It will fade, yes, but hardship always hurts...." something she knows well, her worlds having hounded her.

And the wrappings? Give her something to play with. Just something to keep her fingers occuppied really.

He has no answer. Just a wiggling of toes in his boot.

"And you?"

"Door still flickering, but growing more solid with each day...so I'm curious and worried, and a myriad other things..." she noted quietly, knottng and unknotting the straps absently.

"Are you going through?"

"Of course" she answered, not easily though. There's pain in the words, and fear.

"I'm needed"

What else is there?

He shifts closer, closing his hands over hers.

"... can I help?"

And it seems even held, her hands have trouble holding still, her palm turning upward so she could tap her fingers against his in some strange pattern.

"I don't even know where it goes, so I don't know" she admitted honestly.

He loosens his hand so she can, smiling at her.

"If you find out, let me know," he says with quiet sincerity.

She chuckled and smiled at that, a sadly sweet expression in the firelight as she continued to tap out rythyms. Were she ever to pay attention, she'd realize it was a cage lullaby, a hound song...but she doesn't.

"Probably won't know till I step through...no reality I know keeps me long so it's probably someplace strange and new..."

"Really? Why?" That doesn't make sese. But then, he doesn't know what it's like to be kin to a god, either.

She shrugged easily "I'm not sure. I helped destroy my own world...my second only held me for three years before I was lost, another I forgot, then I was truly lost for long years...and came back to another reality akin to my second...it seems I'm just needed in many places at different times."

...yeah that makes no sense.

"Oh."

He's lost.

She chuckled, hand stilling under his "Sorry, I forget how easily I confuse people" at least he never asked about her famnily though right? That's a headache in and of itself.

"I'm kinda loose in time? I drift in times and realities when I have to"

"Oh. Sort of like being lost at sea?" But... way bigger?

A good comparison actually, she nodded "Yeah with little islands in between where you have to do something, a quest or a task, then you're off again..."

"I know how that is..." He grimaces. "I spent years on a ship."

"Oh?" she asked curiously. She actually likes ships, and she doesn't get to hear adventure stories often...

"It's not very exciting," Zuko says. He does't want to talk about it, it's plain from his tone, the way his eyes drop. "It was a prison."

Shepulled on his hand gently, drawing him close enough to kiss his fngers, offered comfort andapology, then she offered a sad smile "I'm sorry, I just wonder about boats is all. Archie and I are suppose to build one...for the lake here. A little boat..."

"Really?" Zuko says, though his face contorts a little; she's so damn tactile, but yet, but yet--

It's-- the wrong signals. He knows she means one thing, but -- it makes him feel another. So he blushes, and looks away. "Why? Don't you like to swim?"

And as if picking up on the mild discomfort, which she very well may, her fingers go back to fiddling with the boot strap instead, giving a little space.

"I love it, but, it's something that Archie would like, and he has a little girl to take out on the water too" she admitted softly.

"Oh."

He doesn't like stories about good fathers. They tend to make him bitter.

"Besides, I bet I could build a boat" she switched the topic slightly with a grin "Never built anythng before really, but how hard can it be?"