AU Kid!Ibani - The Wind

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut doesn't often ask things of the Force, but as the fall edges its way into winter, he has been asking for one thing daily. He prays that this year, the winds don't come. Life with Ibani has settled down into a comfortable routine, and he doesn't want that broken up. He doesn't want her to see him hanging on to his temper with his teeth, doesn't want her to see the spectacle of him needing to be beaten down like a feral creature.

He's afraid of what would happen then.




The Force does not grant him his wish.

One morning he awakes with his skin already crawling, the thin high whistle of the oncoming winter wind already ripping at his peace. He works hard to ignore it - harder than he ever has in his life, even more than the year after the disastrous match with Baze and Eiko.

He makes it through breakfast before he starts to feel his temper fraying. He wants to beg Baze to take Ibani away, somewhere far away, but it's getting to be too cold to go out of the city on frivolous pursuits. It will only lead to a fight.

Chirrut knows despair then. He's not getting past this day without being bloodied.

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[iprotectyou]

Baze has been watching for this day. He knew the winter wind would come whistling over the mesa to torture his friend again, knew that Chirrut would be climbing the walls to escape it. Baze is sad that this day has come, sad--and resigned. He knows the only way to cage him back into his bones is to beat on him, but Baze is reluctant to start. What if Ibani sees? What will she think?

Baze throws caution to the wind--Ibani will understand, she has to--and drags Chirrut to the training hall for the most vicious fight they've had in years.

[last_kallig]

Ibani has been distracted all day. The Force tells her something is wrong with Chirrut, but it doesn't tell her WHY.

Every time she's checked on him throughout the day with the Force he's been worse, so as soon as her classes are finished for the day she heads toward his Force Presence at a dead run.

She finds them in the training hall, stands and stares at them sparring viciously. The Force is full of her fear, her worry, her confusion, and it roils with her distress.

She knows she shouldn't interrupt a spar, should just watch, but this isn't like the spars she's seen before. It's not going to be long before she can't stand it anymore and demands to know what's going on.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut is grace itself, grace given fangs. He'd managed to apologize before they got started, made sure someone went to find Master Sheotar just in case...

But it was too hard to hang on to anything other than fury as the incessant whine of the wind dug its claws deeper.

His mouth is already bloodied thanks to a blow Baze landed earlier, one that almost staggered him early in the March. Thus his mad-dog grin is crimson as he whirls, his staff cracking against Baze's like thunder.

[iprotectyou]

Baze can barely keep up when Chirrut is like this, but the larger Guardian was prepared for some of it, at least. The winter wind is brutal on Chirrut, and he channels that brutality into the sparring match.

Baze takes kicks to the chest and staff hits to the ribs and strikes to the head. He spins his staff and goes on the offensive and generally gives as good as he gets. Forty-five years of fighting with Chirrut has honed Baze's skills to a razor edge, and he dances along with him in a violent attack-counter attack-block pattern. If Master Sheotar doesn't pull them apart soon, one of them will end up bloodied and unconscious on the mat.

[last_kallig]

Ibani can't take it anymore. She doesn't know why Master Sheotar isn't interfering, but right now she doesn't care.

Her dads, the only people she has left in the world, are hurting each other, and she wants to know what the flark is going on!

"DAD!" she screams, "Why are you hurting each other?!" Then the Force reacts to her fear, her anger, her worry, and pushes the two of them apart violently. She doesn't want to hurt them, but they'll likely go sprawling quite a distance.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut doesn't move from where he's landed for a long moment. For that blessed moment, his head is almost clear. He doesn't know what sent him flying, only that something did.

There's no staff pinning him to the ground, no snapped warning not to move. That's... wrong. On days like this, that is wrong. Baze should be there, or Master Sheotar. It's not over yet, he can tell, the fire in his veins only tamped down, not smothered.

Baze. He needs to find out where Baze is. It's been a long time since he's managed to seriously hurt anyone in these fights, but...

The wind howls, and he flinches as the sound rings through his head.

[iprotectyou]

Baze scrambles to his feet a lot quicker than Chirrut does, and is momentarily torn as to which person to run to. He chooses Ibani.

"No, we're okay," he babbles, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. His nose is bloodied, as are his teeth, and he's wheezing from the pain of a few cracked ribs, but he tries to be a calming influence. "Your dad just... Gets angry in the winter. The wind bothers him something fierce."

[last_kallig]

Ibani's still on edge, though not as much. "And the fighting helps, with the wind?" she asks, sounding lost and confused.

"Can't we make the wind stop?" She doesn't like seeing her dads hurt!

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut regains his feet, shaking his head like a maddened bull trying to shake off a fly. One of the acolytes watching shouts a warning, but doesn't try to join the fight. They've been too well trained to do such a foolish thing.

[iprotectyou]

"I wish it were that easy, Ibani," Baze says mournfully, and then whirls to face the approaching Chirrut, staff at the ready. The larger Guardian wishes Ibani didn't have to see this, and just knows Chirrut will regret it once he's out of his agitated state, but there's nothing Baze can do about it now but beat on him some more.

With a yell--to prepare Chirrut for his charge, of course--Baze rushes forward to meet him, jabbing his staff at his nose.

[last_kallig]

Ibani sits, and waits, out of the fight. It's the hardest thing she's ever done.

She feels every blow echo in the Force, feels a shadow of the pain, feels the emotional storm raging through Chirrut. It's not fair that his home should hurt him so, but Ibani learned long ago that the galaxy isn't fair.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut snarls, pushed beyond his vain attempt to maintain some facade of calm. He can hear Master Sheotar's steady tread coming into the hall. He doesn't really recognize it as her, just as the tread of one who can match him in this chaos. He will be flanked soon.

He attacks harder, a whirling dervish of mad anger. He both fights and welcomes the oblivion of exhaustion, of being beaten down.

[iprotectyou]

Baze is so wrapped up in staying on his feet under Chirrut's attacks that the larger Guardian doesn't even notice Master Sheotar until she joins the fight. She sweeps in, all controlled fury and liquid grace, and forces her way past Chirrut's guard, slamming him in the stomach. Baze follows up with a sweep attack to his kneecaps while Chirrut's heaving and folded over her staff. She whirls, jerking her staff away from his abdomen and bashing him in the temple, dropping him.

She grounds her staff, offering the prone Chirrut a cool, assessing stare. "Guardian Malbus," she says, and Baze snaps to attention, despite the way he aches, "take him to the infirmary."

She strides powerfully off the mat, and pauses at Ibani's side. "I suspect you and I need to have a chat," Master Sheotar says, resting her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Do you have any questions for me?"

Baze scraps Chirrut off the mat and carts him away, leaving their staves behind.

[last_kallig]

There are so many things she could ask right now, but only one matters. "Will he be okay?" she asks, her voice small and quiet.

[idontneedluck]

Master Sheotar's smile is only as warm as it ever manages, but her caring flares in the Force.

"Your father is a stubborn man, Ibani. Both of them are. They will be fine, given time to rest and recover."




Chirrut only rouses, fitfully, once already in the infirmary. They have him pinned to the bed, still wary until he can prove he's done - there was one year he hadn't been worn down, but struck down early in the fight.

That'd been an exciting day.

"Baze?" He murmurs, slurred.

[iprotectyou]

Baze has just finished getting his ribs taped up and a bacta patch applied to his nose when Chirrut calls. The larger Guardian gently shoves the infirmary technician with the roll of tape out of the way to hustle to Chirrut's side as fast as Baze's injuries will allow.

"Chirrut," Baze says, taking one of his hands, the one that isn't completely strapped to the bed and with splinted fingers. "I'm here, but I have to go find Ibani. I have to tell her we're okay. Wait for me, all right?"

And then he dashes off to find their little girl and apologize profusely.

[last_kallig]

Ibani takes a deep breath at Master Sheotar's answer. "Good," she says at last. The feeling of caring in the Force helps, a little. "Can I see them?" She's worried about both of them, and wants to see for herself that they're, well, as okay as they can be right now.

[idontneedluck]

"I do not..." Master Sheotar pauses, looking towards the hallway. "Here comes tour father now, he will be able to tell you more."

She, for one, would not subject a child to the sight of a battered Chirrut Imwe.

Chirrut, back in the infirmary, is fretting. What is wrong with Ibani, that Baze needs to run off and tend to her?

[iprotectyou]

Baze skids to a stop in front of the pair. He's quite the sight, with a bacta patch on his nose and bruises all up and down his arms, but at least all the blood is cleaned off. He catches Master Sheotar's eye and nods.

"Ibani, thank the Force you're still here," Baze says, kneeling down to offer her a hug. "I'm so sorry that we worried you."

[last_kallig]

Ibani grabs Baze in as strong of a hug as she can manage, and it doesn't seem like she's going to let go anytime soon.

"I was scared I was going to lose both of you, like I lost Ma'Vena," she says quietly, trying not to cry and only mostly succeeding.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut, meanwhile, has gotten into a fight with the infirmary techs. It's not much of a battle - he can barely pretend to stand, and they are armed with sedatives.

There is a brief flare of fury and worry in the Force, and then Chirrut is taking a drug-assisted nap.

[iprotectyou]

Guilt stabs through Baze, and he reaches up to wipe the tears that have escaped off her cheeks with his thumbs.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, pressing his forehead to hers and wrapping his arms around her. There's nothing more he can say, really, nothing that will take away the pain they inflicted on her. Seeing them fight like that... Baze is sorry. Sorrow and guilt needle at his heart, piercing him through.

"Chirrut... just... The wind, it makes him wild," Baze says. Words fail him. How can he explain this to an eight-year-old? "Sometimes he needs violence to cage him back into his bones."

[last_kallig]

Ibani holds Baze tightly, sniffling. "It's, it's like medicine? He'll be better, once he heals?"

It's still horribly unfair, and if she could she'd drive the wind away forever, but she can't.

[iprotectyou]

"Yes, sweetheart," Baze says, squeezing her firmly. He draws back to look her in the eyes, holding her shoulders. "But the wind lasts all winter. We might need more fighting than just today."

And she is not allowed to watch. Baze doesn't think he even needs to spell that out.

[last_kallig]

Ibani scowls ferociously. Not at Baze, but at the galaxy. "It's not fair that the wind hurts him, it's not!"

She takes a deep breath. "I won't be so scared, when you have to fight again, now that I know." Which isn't to say she won't be a little scared, that would probably be asking too much.

"Please, I need to see him."