AU Kid!Ibani - The Wind
Jun. 18th, 2017 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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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Date: 2017-06-20 03:50 am (UTC)She's not allowed to set foot in the infirmary. Can she sneak in? No, probably not, they'll be watching for her.
A memory stirs in the back of her mind, of when she was little, when she was very sick. She'd wanted Ma'Vena, but was too weak to stand and go to her. She'd....left her body, gone across the way to where Ma'Vena was. Could she do that here?
Ibani eats with her usual gusto, but she's clearly distracted. The distraction might be passed off as a reaction to, well, everything that's happened today.
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Date: 2017-06-20 04:14 am (UTC)Will Chirrut react poorly when he realizes that Ibani saw them fighting? Baze should be there for him. But the larger Guardian doesn't want to leave Ibani. What to do, what to do?
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Date: 2017-06-20 04:17 am (UTC)"I think I should go to bed," Ibani says at last, as they finish their meal. Not that she plans to SLEEP, of course.
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Date: 2017-06-20 04:32 am (UTC)"If you think that's best," he says, and carts their dishes to the sink. He'll get to them later. Baze leads her to their rooms and waits for her to get ready for bed. He tucks her in and kisses her forehead.
"Goodnight, sweetheart," he says, guilt stabbing at him again. "I'm going to check on your dad."
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Date: 2017-06-20 04:40 am (UTC)She shuts her eyes and falls into a meditative trance, going deeper and deeper into the Force, deeper than she ever has before. The song of the Kyber crystals fills the galaxy, brilliant prisms of white light dancing all around her.
"Can you help me, please?" she asks them. "I need to go and see Chirrut Imwe, my dad. I don't know that I'm strong enough to reach that far from my body."
They don't answer in words, what need do they have for such things? But their song quickens and she feels filled up with light, with strength. "Thank you!" she calls as she walks toward the presence of Chirrut Imwe.
The walls present no barrier, transparent things that they are to her Force sight. She dodges around the solid glow of living things, moving toward the infirmary faster than Baze without the constraints of a body.
She goes through the infirmary wall, and she sees Chirrut, lying there. It hurts, to see him so damaged, but it hurts less than the fear of not knowing.
"Oh, dad," she whispers, with voiceless worry and love. She moves beside Chirrut, hoping her presence will comfort him as much as his presence comforts her when she's ill.
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Date: 2017-06-20 05:01 am (UTC)Wait.
Something woke him up.
Something was important.
He lolls his head in her general direction, frowning muzzily.
"Ibani?"
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Date: 2017-06-20 05:08 am (UTC)Then he books it down to the infirmary as fast as his injuries will allow. He's getting too old to be beaten on like he was today; his knees ache and his back is sore and his nose hurts something fierce under the bacta patch. He rounds the corner to see Chirrut moving his head.
"Oh, you're awake," Baze says, scurrying to his friend's side. "Hello, handsome."
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Date: 2017-06-20 10:09 am (UTC)Ibani tries to say hello to Chirrut, then realizes she doesn't have lungs or anything else to speak with. Well, kark it. She settles for attempting to BE as as strongly as possible, shouting in the Force to Chirrut that she's here, and projecting feelings of love, concern, and the emotional equivalent of a hug.
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Date: 2017-06-20 02:17 pm (UTC)"I didn't hurt you?" It's his first question, or perhaps demand - it has been for years now. "They won't tell me..."
But his attention keeps drifting off. It's not just Baze here, but... Baze is solid in his senses, not just in the Force - the heat of him; the sound of his robes and the creak of leather as he shifts his weight, the soft sounds of breathing and fainter still at this distance a steady heartbeat; the smell of him - sweat and blood and bacta, the last two giving him grief knowing he caused it.
But still...
There's pain in his face as well as his voice as he asks, roughly, in Jedhan:
"You brought Ibani?"
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Date: 2017-06-20 05:48 pm (UTC)Baze can't lie to his friend. "You did, but I'm all right now," the larger Guardian says. Then he switches to Jedhan, surprise tinging his tone. "No, I didn't bring Ibani. I wouldn't do that to you."
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Date: 2017-06-20 10:57 pm (UTC)She scowls in frustration, that emotion echoing in the Force along with love and worry. Clearly, she needs to find another way to communicate!
Her eyes fall upon a sand garden with tiny stones, placed in the infirmary for some unknown purpose. There, that will work! She can push on the sand to write and both of them will be able to read it!
She reaches out to the sand garden and pulls, the Force flexing with her effort as the garden moves nearly off the counter where it's sitting all alone and well away from anything or anyone that might cause it to move. The garden thunks back down onto the counter.
Ibani swears profusely at it, as it's heavier than anything she's tried to move before and she's having difficulties.
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Date: 2017-06-21 06:35 am (UTC)"No, she's here." He contradicts in Jedhan, as sharply as his drug-fogged brain will allow, "Do you think I wouldn't know the sense of our own daughter? But I can't hear her. Why can't I hear her?" The machines' beeping becomes less tranquil and more warning as his disquiet grows.
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Date: 2017-06-21 06:41 am (UTC)"She's not here," Baze calls over his shoulder in Jedhan as he walks. "It's okay, Chirrut. She's safe in bed, where I left her. I told her not to set foot in the infirmary. It's probably just the drugs messing with your system."
The sand garden doesn't appear to be moving anymore. Huh. That's odd. Baze picks it up, and sets it down again, and then pokes the sand.
"There's a sand garden over here that moved by itself," Baze says, knowing how foolish he sounds.
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Date: 2017-06-21 11:44 am (UTC)After Baze pokes the sand, something very strange happens. The sand starts to move, as if someone were very slowly dragging a finger through it.
The words are crudely scrawled in Basic, because pushing with the Force with precision is tricky at best, but they're legible. The letters that form in the sand say "Give This Chirrut!" Ibani ran out of both space and patience to attempt more words while Chirrut is this upset.
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Date: 2017-06-21 08:22 pm (UTC)Ibani is here, he knows this as much as he knows that in a few days, or a few weeks, the wind's howl will become intolerable again.
Her body is not. There's no soft breath, no heartbeat to rapid to be Baze's.
He's up before he even fully realizes he was going to try, ripping loose monitoring equipment and medication drips alike. There's a noise like a wounded creature, something bleeding out and trampled, and it's only later he'll realize it was him.
Ibani is here.
Her body isn't.
He screams, because something, someone, killed his little girl.
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Date: 2017-06-21 08:31 pm (UTC)He picks up the garden to cart it over to Chirrut, but then he's getting up and screaming. Baze drops the sand garden back onto the counter and rushes to his friend--feeling that strange tingling feeling again as he runs. He pays it no mind.
"Chirrut! What's wrong? You shouldn't be up!" Baze shouts, pressing down on Chirrut's shoulders to try to force him back into bed. Janeth, the medical technician, comes running over with a syringe.
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Date: 2017-06-21 11:41 pm (UTC)This time, this time the Force answers her desperate prayer and her voice is audible to everyone in the room. "DAD! DAD, I'M NOT DEAD! PLEASE STOP SCREAMING!"
"I didn't....I just, they wouldn't let me in to see you, and I was so worried so I found a loophole, but I hurt you..." Her voice dissolves into hysterical sobbing.
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Date: 2017-06-22 03:20 am (UTC)Chirrut, pinned and half surrendered to the medications crawling through his veins, doesn't understand. He doesn't, but he can hear Ibani, his little girl, and she says she's alright.
She says she's alright, and that's enough for him to stop fighting and slump against the bed.
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Date: 2017-06-22 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-22 03:32 am (UTC)It's agony, but it's still less than what she feels she deserves. By the time Baze reaches her she's upright in her pajamas and slippers.
When she sees him, she does the only thing she can do. She submits, going slowly to her knees, then face down onto the floor.
She's still sobbing, because she feels terrible and she hurt both her dads, and there's nothing she can do to make up for all this pain.
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Date: 2017-06-22 03:43 am (UTC)"Ibani," he says, calm and measured, "what did you do?"
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Date: 2017-06-22 03:50 am (UTC)She swallows hard. "I left my body," she explains. "I left enough of me here to keep my body alive, but took the rest of me to the infirmary." And Force is she regretting that more than she thought possible!
"I'd done it once before, on accident, when I was little. I wanted Ma'Vena and I was too weak to stand and, and I was suddenly next to her."
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Date: 2017-06-22 03:59 am (UTC)Baze bites back a gasp, and tries to reign in his terror. If she had messed up the connection, if she hadn't returned to her body... He can't even think on the consequences. He squeezes her against his chest, where she can feel his heart beating a staccato rhythm.
"That," he says, just as calmly as before, "was dangerous. You could have hurt yourself. And you knew what I meant when I told you not to set foot in the infirmary."
Knew what he meant, and exploited his words. He'd almost be proud of her for finding a loophole if he weren't so upset.
"Your dad didn't want you to see him like that. Why did you do such a thing?"
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Date: 2017-06-22 04:03 am (UTC)"I didn't know he didn't want me to see him like that. I just, I wanted to know he was okay. I was so scared, and, and I knew he was hurting and I wanted to make him feel better. I feel better when he sits with me when I'm sick."
Ibani breaks down sobbing again.
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Date: 2017-06-22 04:12 am (UTC)He wraps his arms around her and rocks, humming a tuneless song. "Your dad is different than you. He doesn't like anyone to see him hurting. Even me. He needs privacy to heal."
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