At first, he hadn’t been sure. A hologram had greeted him, which - well, the concept was kind of old hat at this point, but something about the place had set him on edge almost immediately. Unlike the crappy rooftop apartment he’d claimed as his own for the better part of five years, this house was too big, too pristine and far, far too clean. Being greeted by a blue sky through the windows only cemented that odd feeling. To a man who’d lived the past five years interchangeably in the pitch black of space, or in a city filled with so much smog and pollution that sun couldn’t get through on particularly bad days, it felt like a lukewarm welcome at best.
But his cracked shield greeted him from his bedroom corner, barely peeking past a dresser, and he fought the urge to reach for it like a thirsty man would for water. Then he noticed the rest of his worldly possessions - his favorite coat hanging in a cupboard, his energy gauntlet lying haphazardly across the nightstand, and the charger stand that he’d taken with him just about anywhere for the past five years. He hadn’t had much more, back in either of the New Yorks he'd called home. He'd had more clothes in the future, for sure, but he'd been positively Spartan about anything else. Just wasn't his hat.
Then he noticed the metal arm, put away in a drawer that had been left open. And he grimaced as he remembered - Alec Sadler, the man who'd created and outfitted him with a first prosthetic that hadn't been hammered together from bits scrap metal by a well-meaning sister, dead That first bionic arm had almost converted him to the wonders of technology, and nearly half a decade in the 24th century had done the rest.
He plugged in the charger, moved the arm on top of it, and left it to charge.
But compared to past behavior, he was already batting about a thousand. No walls bit the dust in a fit of misplaced anger, the windows stayed whole, and at long last, he figured out how to work the coffee maker - three spoons, nice and strong - and moved outside to watch his first sunset in he didn’t know how many years, with a cup of coffee in his hand. This wasn't really the life, though. That would have been hunkered around a campfire with his siblings - two of them who had shown up briefly, looking as young as he'd left them five years ago.
He'd grown up. Which was too fucking bad, because he really wanted to destroy something right about now. But he wouldn't. Countless hours of therapy had seen to that, Delenn's training had helped, and her quiet disappointment, well, that was best avoided. But drinking beer was a productive way of doing nothing, and he set out to house 196, only to find Jo on the porch, sipping from a beer.
"I'd kiss ya, but hammock," he called out as he set foot on the porch.