settling in (open)

[load_aim_shoot]

Who: Raju and anyone!
What: being frustrated and falling into things
When: November, some time very soon after the newest batch of characters arrived
Where: the community hall at the center of town

Content Warnings: will add if anything comes up

i. Raju hates being cold and misses his diary

It's the cold. That must be why he doesn't have anything figured out about this place. It creeps into the mind, finding all the cracks in his composure and his attention and trying to freeze and grow and pry all of them open. He can't get warm. Not really. The only way to get moving enough to try to warm up is to go outside. Going out is supposed to be the way out of feeling this way, not the cause of it. Each time he tries to figure out whether or not he's died he just ends up back at the same place, thinking about how damned cold he is again.

He paces back and forth in front of the fireplace at the community hall, too much wanting to move and do and go sparking inside of him to make it worth chaining all that movement inside and slowing down, sitting down, and trying to look sensible. He's frowning, jaw tight, and his elbows are starting to ache from how much time his arms have spent wrapped around his chest, fists and forearms trying to hide as far as possible between his upper arms and sides beneath.

Raju paces, and tells himself he's too close to a fire to still be cold, and tries to make himself think.

If he'd died he would know, surely he would know, but the kind of hit to the head that might have lost him the memory of what time it would have taken to travel from Delhi to some place this freezing would have left injuries behind. If he could only write any of this down, maybe some part of it would become clear.

"Is there paper anywhere here?" he bursts out at the nearest passerby, finally, needing to know something. "A pen, ink, anything that I can use?"

ii. Something - or someone - is tripped over in the night

Raju sits up, habit swinging his legs off the side of the little bed before he regrets losing himself the cover of the blankets. It's cold now, colder, because the fire's gone out. It had seemed natural to sleep here tonight, still in the community hall where there'll be more people in the middle of all this bewildering emptiness, and he knew he wouldn't be dreaming deeply enough to worry about sleeping vulnerable surrounded by strangers, anyway. Not staying inside like this, not without being able to go out and spend the day doing enough to earn a night with a quiet mind.

The problem, anyway, here and now: the dark fireplace, and the creeping cold of the pitch-dark night. It isn't a surprise, that there's no electricity to light the place; this is hardly a city, after all. Hardly large enough to be worth the trouble of modernising. What's surprising is that he expects it, that he wakes expecting to stand in his familiar rooms, to walk the familiar paths around his books, to turn the familiar knobs beside the kitchen on the wall. It was never supposed to be familiar, those rooms in Delhi, it was never supposed to be—

All of that hardly matters now. He hadn't been able to sleep deeply enough for his mind to wander far. It's dark, is the actual problem, too dark to see, and no candle, and no lantern, and no way to light them if they were in his hands. The hall is simple, though, and he's spent too much time pacing inside it already and he's certain he knows the place, so if he walks just this direction he should be able—

Habit has Raju's throat tightening and jaw clenching over the sound he'd make otherwise but his body makes a heavy noise when it hits the floor and he rolls out of the way, in case whatever — or whoever — it is he'd walked right into in the dark is about to fall too and come down on top of where he'd been. Or maybe where he is now, depending on which direction whatever it is might fall. There's no way to tell when he can't actually see, but instinctively he tries moving, anyway.

Rolling away makes it even more difficult to tell where in the room he is now, he realises, grimacing and trying to push himself up on an elbow, squinting into the darkness as if that will let him see what he's fallen into. Damn. He'll have to feel in front of him until he finds something familiar. More time out of the blankets in the cold. Which doesn't matter, but he hates it, all the same.

Comments

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju's still looking distracted as Rorschach speaks but a second after Raju looks up, pen pausing, waiting—

And a second after that makes it clear that there's nothing happening to wait for. Perhaps, and that's going to be all. That's how this man is, Raju's realising. He shows as much of himself with his words as he does his face. It's strange. The mask certainly isn't worn to blend in, not looking the way it does, so why?

One mystery at a time. Raju's always been very good at prioritising. The 'plan' to head east with as much supplies as he can carry isn't a plan at all, only an idea, and set down on paper it will be an option to come back to. Now that he has the paper to put it down on, maybe everything else twisting itself around in knots inside him will start to untangle, too. Force it all to marching in ruthlessly organized lines back and forth over the page and it won't run rampant against his ribs any more, nor in the churning of his stomach, nor in the tingling at the tips of his fingers, needing to move, needing to solve the problem instead of sitting ignorant inside it.

None of that relief will come if he allows himself to get too distracted.

"Hm," he says, acknowledgement of the word and acknowledgement of the reticence there, Raju's thoughtful tone marking out Rorschach's reserve, his polite words afterward putting it away. "I'll keep it in mind. Thank you again, you've been very helpful."

He taps the end of one of the odd pens meaningfully against the notebook, and smiles. "And if you have a little favour to ask in the future, let me know about it. I owe you one now."

[moralabsolutism]

He listened as Raju told him he owed him a favor. He hadn't gathered up the supplies with the intent of having someone owe him one. He'd only done so because Raju had asked him and he felt sympathy for someone who also liked to studiously keep a journal. Despite his rough, brutal nature there were moments where Rorschach could still show genuine kindness to others. It was nice to know his efforts had been appreciated.

There was an odd shift on Rorschach's face just then, the black blots creating a pattern that remained a little more static than before, lasting a number of seconds before they dispersed. They conglomerated around his mouth and eye areas, with two parallel dots on his cheeks. It looked almost as if there was a smile on the mask. But it had to just be mere coincidence...couldn't it?

"Will keep that in mind." With that he went off to wander into other parts of the Community Hall, leaving Raju to get settled in.