nobody knows what's going on

When Sifo-Dyas woke, it was not because a sound disturbed him, but rather the absence of sound: the perception of movement deliberately muted to conceal even the slightest noise. Perhaps it was the lingering ease from last night, but he did not feel alarmed by it, only aware. He did not open his eyes, but lay there, stretching with his senses while his mind still curled lazily within the bounds of himself.

He felt a soft weight atop him. Apparently, at some time in the night, someone – what a coy little word, ‘someone’, as if he did not know exactly who – had covered him with a heavier duvet, but air still breezed in through the open window, pleasantly cool on his face. The contrast of the two sensations was ridiculously comfortable. The movement that had woken him resolved into sense: a cup was being placed by the side of his bed by silent, familiar hands. 

“How late is it?” Sifo-Dyas asked, before Dooku could creep off again. The light from the window seemed washed and too bright for early morning. The weather must have cleared while he slept. 

“It doesn’t matter. Your body wanted the rest.” Dooku’s low voice was pitched to ultimate softness, as if there were a sick child nearby. Sifo-Dyas was inclined to take the cue and lower his own voice to match until he realized he was himself the actual reason for it. 

He had to confront again the uncomfortable fact of how well Dooku knew him. Your body wanted the rest, as if it were something out of either of their control, like the will of the tides or passing storm. No one's fault. No cause for embarrassment.

“What is that?” he nodded toward the cup. 

“It’s only water.”

Sifo-Dyas reached for the cup, pleased by the way that he could manage to hold it without help. The water tasted as cold as the fresh air from the window and he gulped it gratefully. Actually, thirst was the one physical discomfort he noticed; all the soreness and trembling had dissolved in the night, courtesy of that rest he so clearly needed. It wasn’t just the absence of pain; he felt actually good, better than he had in a long, long while. 

…He ruefully admitted to himself that possibly, Dooku holding him down and spending what had felt like hours pouring Force healing muscle-by-muscle into him had something to do with the lack of aches and pains.  

“There is caf.” 

“...caf sounds good.” 

Sifo-Dyas said it more to himself than to Dooku, but he bowed his head in acknowledgement and went off to fetch it, as if he were staff at some luxury resort, and Sifo-Dyas the celebrity guest of honor. That left him in the room alone, feeling rather more than perplexed. 

He pushed his pillows together to make a prop for his back and sat up in bed. He drank a little more of the water. He tried not to reflect on the surrealness of this scene, but rather to simply be, as Lene had instructed him. He had not anticipated this would be the manner of that centering she was talking about, and yet, it had been such a long time since he felt so quiet inside himself. He could exist in it a little longer before the spell broke. 

It seemed like a long time had passed before Dooku came back with the caf and, more surprisingly, a small dish of red berries.

“Strawberries?” Sifo-Dyas asked when he saw them, forgetting to be wretched and sarcastic, to build the armor of irreverence up around the strange vulnerability underpinning this moment. 

“I believe so.”  Dooku put the caf down and sat gingerly on the edge of his bed, as if expecting to be ordered to leave at any moment. Perhaps that was why Sifo-Dyas didn’t tell him to. Instead, he selected a berry from the proferred bowl. 

Putting one in his mouth was like biting into the living, red heart of memory. Sweetness, for once, and all the forgotten joy of firsts. He swallowed the fruit along with the odd emotion that rose in his throat. “Where did you even find them?” 

“They are growing in the weeds outside the temple. There must have been a garden there once.”