frozenfractals | (no subject)

(no subject)

Elsa loves the spring. Oh, the allergies that flare up cause little frozen problems if she forgets to take medication for it, so she's ever vigilant about that, but it's a beautiful time to work at The Secret Garden. The world is slowly coming back to life and new flowers are showing themselves all the time. She's having fun with the new arrangements, and they even have a new coworker. Her nights can get busy, even dangerous; the calm of the flower shop is a welcome respite, however much she enjoys her evening patrols and Drembleydrop games with Jess.

Most afternoons are quiet here, with other people still at work. She relaxes into the peace of it, behind the counter, filling arrangement orders. It takes her a moment even to notice someone else has entered the room, and she jumps a little when she does, surprised, so absorbed she hardly heard the footsteps as they approached. "Hello. I didn't see you there."

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He must not be from here either, Elsa thinks. There's always an odd moment of kinship when she comes to that conclusion, a sort of relief. Here is another stranger in a strange land, lost somewhere new, somewhere overwhelming and bizarre. Even with Anna at her side, Darrow proved almost too much for her at first. The apartment that's now become a home was then so bereft of anything, it only felt depressing.

"You should take some flowers home with you," she suggests. "I found it helpful to have some color around when I first arrived. It makes things feel more alive."

"Alive," Bodhi echoes, hardly even meaning to at first, but it brings a faint smile to his face.

Alive is what he wants to be. He'd decided that once he'd found Jyn and Cassian, once he'd realized he wasn't alone here. There's a reason now, to survive, to open his eyes each morning. Bodhi had accepted even before landing on Scarif that any mission in the name of the Rebel cause might be his last, that'd been something he'd been... well, maybe not at peace with but something he could grasp without letting it make him fall apart.

Here, though, Bodhi can have a family. It's what he calls Jyn and Cassian already, though he hasn't said it to them because for whatever reason, it feels a little too soon. There's still every possibility they'll decide they want nothing to do with him after all and stop answering the door when he calls or checking in on him with their devices they'd called phones. He doesn't want to lose that, he can't lose that because it's become his reason to keep going here rather than dwell on how things might have turned out in the world they'd left behind.

Maybe he'll take Jyn nad Cassian flowers, he thinks. Bring them some life.

"I think I like the sound of that," Bodhi tells her, glancing around at all the options. "The only problem is, I don't really know where to begin."

"Well, that's what I'm here for," Elsa says. He perks up, she thinks, looking around, and she likes to see it. It's amazing, she's found, the simple joy that a bouquet can give. The right flowers can make a room feel so much more cheerful, so much warmer. She's always rescuing the plants that get damaged; they can't be sold, but they still look lovely in her apartment for however long she can keep them alive.

"Why don't we take a look around and see what you like. What colors do you like?"

"Blue," Bodhi answers immediately.

There's a flash of guilt that comes with saying so, as unreasonable as that may be. Blue had been the color of the uniform he'd worn for so long, the uniform he'd worn because he'd needed a job and he'd wanted to fly and so, taking on the position of a cargo pilot had been good enough when he wasn't qualified for anything else. Blue had been the color of first shirt he thinks he can remember his mother making for him, one he'd grown out of but had been replaced just as quickly. Blue had been the color of Chirrut's eyes, milky but striking, and Bodhi wishes he could see his friend again.

"I don't know what might go well with that," he adds sheepishly, but she's the expert. She doesn't think she'll mind his ignorance in this particular circumstance.

"Blue's my favorite," Elsa says, smiling. She steps out from behind the counter, leaving behind the gloves she wears when she works, and looking around. "We have all sorts of beautiful blue flowers. I like the hydrangeas especially."

As she speaks, she leads him across the room toward a bouquet of blue hydrangeas, clusters of tiny flowers, baby's breath scattered amid them. It's simple, but she thinks it's one of the prettier ones they have set out today. Blue is a conflicting color for her, but it really is her favorite; it just took her time to come around to it, the color of all that ice in the castle she made years ago. "Something like this, maybe? White looks nice with blue. Or purple. We have some very lovely lavender."

Bodhi follows her, drawn by her voice and the grace with which she walks, and smiles softly when she points out the hydrangeas. They're not quite like any flower he's ever seen before, though flowers had been a luxury gift he'd never really been able to justify buying before. The nicer ones, made up of everlillies and blueblossoms and purple passions, had sometimes cost several days' pay of someone higher ranking than himself. Besides that, Bodhi hadn't ever really had a reason to buy a bouquet for anyone aside from the couple times he'd done it for his mother.

"We didn't have these at home," Bodhi tells her, tilting his head as he carefully traces his fingertips over the hydrangeas. "I like this, it's... simple, isn't it? But still beautiful. Maybe I can save the lavender for next time."

"For next time," Elsa agrees, smiling as she watches him with the hydrangeas. He has a light, gentle touch, and she instinctively likes those who are kind to flowers. They're such delicate things, but they bring so much joy. Perhaps he, like her, could use that in his home, some bright spark to help keep everything feeling alive. It's so hard still, some days, without Anna, and no plant could ever replace her sister, but it helps to have them around.

"In my day, we used flowers to send coded messages. Hydrangeas mean perseverance."

For just a moment, Bodhi glances at her, a hint of awe in his expression because he wonders if there's some way she can sense what he's thinking. She seems to touch on every part of him that needs something, anything to hold onto, because waking up is still a struggle. He hasn't been in Darrow long, hardly any time at all since waking up with his face in the sand, and Bodhi is glad to be Jyn and Cassian here but in spite of that, the pain is ever present.

It isn't just the burn still healing on his arm. It's knowing why it's there in the first place, what they'd all left behind, how they'd gotten there. This is a wound that will take time to close, if it ever does at all. Flowers may not be a fast-acting fix, it may not even bring him a great deal of relief, but it does provide what he'd lost in those seconds before the grenade had gone off. Hope.

"Perseverance," Bodhi echoes. "Strength, then." He nods firmly, decision made then. "I'll take them."

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