#featuring: aurora myranda.

[ofherbalisms]

closed starter to @mommabcar location: the greenhouse

   𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑫𝑨𝒀 𝑰𝑺 𝑬𝑿𝑷𝑰𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑮 and all of the aches and pains that revisit nightly have begun to reign again, slowly leeching their way down into the man's form. It had been a long few weeks since the mission was carried out, and Reuven wasn't sure what else to do but try to return back to business as usual, even if it all held a different tone to it now. Even if he felt like a stranger in this agrestal scene; as if his hands, calloused as his soul felt, had the right to treat a bundle of basil with more respect than another human life. The same fingertips that prodded at a rosemary plant's mound of soil to check its water levels... just a few weeks ago, they had been so drenched in blood it was streaming down—onto his boots, down to his elbow, depending on the movement.

   There was no explaining it—why he could not bring himself to look at Aurora's boy anymore. Some sick, horrid shame had snaked its way down into his heart and was eating him from the inside out. Perhaps it was not the same as when he had been out there, living amongst the dead, but on that day they rescued the scout, he had been an echo of that man he once was. That same man he could not recognize as himself. In some strange way, he felt now like he should shield Hasen from himself. As if he had become the monster in this story. Because he could remember, some decade ago, when his own little girl had looked up at him, terrified and uncomprehending, not recognizing him because he was covered in blood. That moment often came to him in his own nightmares. Since the mission, it had been a reoccurring daytime vision. He would be working on the farm, and then suddenly it would play out before his eyes like some horrible, unwanted clipshow, and when he'd come back to reality he would be lost as to what he was doing.

   The day was expiring and he hadn't managed to do much at all, and yet he couldn't bring himself to move. Hasen had been trying to get his attention all day, and he was trying—by god he was trying, but Reuven couldn't muster any more fatherliness than a smile here and there; a "that's great, buddy" or a "you're getting real good at that, keep it up". He ached down to his bones, and he wished he could disappear into thin air. Gaze had been unfocused and unseeing, staring at the oregano for an uncanny amount of time, when the boy's mother arrived to bring life back into the space—to be something for him to anchor to. As Hasen went running up to her, Reuven looked up, and took a moment, staring and then blinked, and reoriented into the present. "Aurora. Hey," he started, and then drew a deep inhale, one that prompted a coughing fit against a pain he refused to get checked out. A grunt brought him to his full height and he slipped hands into pockets: an unconscious gesture of his bashfulness. "He was great—on his way to becoming a little farmer. How was your day...?" Small talk wasn't exactly his idea of substantial and satiating, but he was starting to grow starved of interaction, with how much time he'd been reclusing. '