11. Chapter 11 #2
He finishes chopping the onions and wipes his eyes and tells himself, firmly, that this changes nothing.
The dissonance between the man at the mast and the man at the railing is something Indrie cannot resolve, and maybe he doesn't have to.
Maybe people contain contradictions, and maybe the measure of a person is not the worst thing they're capable of but the best thing they choose.
He has taken a vow that he would hurt no living creature, and he's stood by that all his life.
To be with people who take a life so readily is crippling.
But it had not been unprovoked. The man had tried to kill them all, had wrapped his hands around Indrie's throat and squeezed with the intention of ending his life, and the bruises on his neck are proof of how close he came.
He can't make the violence comfortable. He probably never will. But the nausea has faded. The numbness has receded. What's left is something more complicated, not acceptance, but acknowledgment. The sea has rules he doesn't know and the people on it have codes he hasn't learned.
No one on this ship has raised a hand to him. They haven't even threatened it.
Gunnar feeds him. Dagny teaches him. Ermin follows him around with the earnest devotion of a shadow he never asked for.
Bohdi punched a man in the face and wrenched him off Indrie's body without hesitation.
And Eskil has touched him four times, and each time it has been gentle, and each time Indrie has wanted more.
He's grinding herbs into a sleeping draught for one of the men who has insomnia, a sailor named Kael who can't sleep on still nights and lies awake staring at the ceiling, which is a problem Indrie understands intimately, when Bohdi finds him.
The second-in-command appears in the doorway of the medical bay with casual ease, always exactly where he means to be. He leans against the frame, arms crossed, tattoos shifting across his forearms, and watches Indrie work for a moment before speaking.
"Is that for you?" Bohdi asks, nodding at the mortar in Indrie's hands.
His voice is light, conversational, but there's a layer beneath it that Indrie has learned to recognize.
Bohdi is checking on him. Bohdi is always checking on him.
"Maybe you should take it, if you've been having trouble sleeping. "
Indrie shakes his head. His throat is still sore, the bruises tender when he swallows, and he keeps his answer brief. "It's for Kael." A pause, and then, because honesty feels owed to the man who pulled a stranger's hands off his neck: "I'm not planning on staying up late anymore."
He doesn't mention that Eskil's concern has changed his mind about going over the railing.
He doesn't mention the warm hand or the low voice or how the stars had looked brighter through the lens of Eskil's attention.
He certainly doesn't mention how he lies in his bunk at night and presses his own fingers to the bruise on his throat, the same spot Eskil touched, and it's nothing, it's cold, it's just his own hand, and the absence of Eskil's is a deprivation he has no right to feel.
Bohdi probably knows anyway. Bohdi knows everything that happens on the ship. Indrie has stopped being surprised by how much the man perceives and started being surprised by how little he says about it.
Bohdi taps his nose thoughtfully, the gesture so characteristic it's practically a signature, and asks, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Indrie's chest aches.
He shakes his head. But he doesn't look up from his work, because if he looks up Bohdi will see his eyes and Bohdi sees everything and Indrie is not prepared to have anyone see the storm inside him right now.
He keeps his gaze on the herbs, on the steady circular motion of the pestle, on the green-brown powder forming in the mortar.
Bohdi doesn't leave.
He's quiet for a long moment, long enough that Indrie starts to think maybe he's accepted the dismissal and is just lingering before going, and then a hand covers his.
Indrie stills. The pestle stops. Bohdi's hand is large and steady and tattooed and it rests over Indrie's with a steadiness that isn't commanding. It's just there. Present. Undemanding.
He looks up.
Bohdi is looking at him patiently, still smiling.
Not his usual grin, the broad, mischievous one he uses as armor, but something quieter.
A smile that carries more pain than he lets on, worn by someone who decided, somewhere along the way, that the best response to a broken world is to be kind in it.
"No matter what occurs," Bohdi tells him, each word chosen with care and delivered at a pace that says he wants Indrie to understand every one, "no one on this ship will hurt you."
Indrie swallows hard. The motion pulls at the bruises on his throat and he doesn't care. He stares at Bohdi and the words hang between them, a promise, a vow, an oath spoken in a small room on a rocking ship by a man who means it with his whole chest, and Indrie doesn't say what he's thinking.
He doesn't say he wants to believe it. That he already half believes it, has been building that belief brick by careful brick since the day a tattooed warrior knocked him over in a hallway and then helped him up and asked if he was alright.
The belief is fragile, new-built and unsteady, and the flogging cracked its foundation but didn't shatter it, and Eskil's visit last night had started the repair.
He doesn't say he's scared anyway. That the fear is its own animal now, separate from the rational part of him that can weigh evidence and draw conclusions.
That he can know, intellectually, that these people mean him no harm, and still feel his body brace for impact every time a voice rises or a hand moves too fast. The knowing and the feeling live in different parts of him and they don't speak to each other and he doesn't know how to bridge the gap.
Finally, after a long moment, he nods.
Bohdi pats his hand. The gesture is brief and warm and final, and then he gets up and leaves, his boots quiet on the wooden floor, his broad frame disappearing through the doorway, unhurried, having said what he came to say and trusting it to do its work.
Indrie stares at the sleeping draught. The herbs in the mortar are ground to a fine powder, smoother than they need to be, overworked by hands that kept moving while his mind was elsewhere.
He adds water, measures the ratio from memory, stirs it until the liquid turns the pale green-gold of chamomile and valerian.
The smell is familiar, earthy, slightly bitter, the scent of sleep distilled into liquid.
He finishes it and pours it into a small clay vessel and stoppers it with a piece of cork.
Then he goes to find the sailor who needed it.