iprotectyou | OOM: All the colors of the rainbow

"No." Chirrut refuses to move, his tone almost as dry as the air. "I am just sleeping with my eyes open."

That's actually not a half-bad idea, he realizes, if he could only sleep while being slowly frozen to death.

"I don't know why I bother to read to you, then," Baze says, groaning a little as he stretches. He sets the scroll aside. "What are you thinking? You're squishing your face up in that way you always do when you have something on your mind."

"If we did this the other way around we wouldn't get much of the reading done." Since he isn't going to be allowed to die in peace, Chirrut decides he might as well go on living. Questing fingers find his tea thermos tucked into the crevice along the wall.
"I overheard someone mentioning the new initiate who came in last week - how she looked odd, but he didn't elaborate as to why he thought that."

"She's an albino; they're very rare," Baze says, yawning. He rolls over onto his belly, propping himself up on his elbows. "Her skin is pure white, and her eyes are red."

Chirrut frowns as he opens his thermos, and then huffs in frustration.

With one hand he lightly cuffs Baze upside the head before returning to the fine art of carefully negotiating drinking from the thermos without splashing the precious tea everywhere.

"That tells me nothing." He informs his friend once done, wiping the back of his mouth with his sleeve.

Baze hooks his fingers around his own tea thermos, popping the top. He takes a long gulp from it before saying anything, trying to order his words.

"Well, red is... red... Red is a color," he finishes, and then tries to give the topic more consideration. "Red is the color of heat. It's the color of peppers in spicy food, or of a burn, or of blood. I know you don't blush, but if you did, that heat in your cheeks would be red."

He toys with his thermos, swishing the liquid back and forth. "And white is the presence of light. It's the opposite of black, which is of darkness. It's the color of clean sheets, or beach sand."

"The color of Kyber." He has no idea if that's the actual color they are for those who can see, but the absence of darkness is Light, and for him the closest he can imagine is the Force, and the Kyber crystals is where it seems to move most strongly.

It makes sense to him, anyway.

"And... these two things together, that is odd?"

"The color of Kyber, yes," Baze says, and he's sure Chirrut can feel his smile as Baze says it. "They're usually clear, the absence of color."

He stretches his toes. "My skin is brown, and yours is pinkish-yellowish," Baze says, shrugging. "Most people have a range of those colors, not white. It's something to do with a lack of melanin in the skin; I don't understand all of it, but albinos lack pigments that are useful for not getting burned in the sun."

Chirrut unhooks a small bundle of dried fruit he had stashed in his robes and pitches it at Baze's head. It was for snacking on later, since meals seem to come entirely too far apart for his liking, but it can be sacrificed to fully demonstrate his annoyance with this whole color mess.

"This still tells me nothing, and now your colors are ish. What is ish?"

Baze sighs, and gives the fruit back in a return volley aimed at Chirrut's face. "Ish is... Well, it's not a pure color. It's not very bright; it's like a mixture of colors. Brown is the color of dust, or dead leaves, or tree bark. Pink is light red, and the color of warm things rather than hot. Yellow is the color of lemons or bananas; they can taste sour or sweet, and they're always bright and happy."

There's a long silence as Chirrut absorbs this, and makes sure to put the returned fruit (after nearly fumbling the catch) back where it came from, to make it secure and find it again easily.

"So I am a happy warm banana?"

Baze cackles, resting his head on the mat. "I suppose so," he says, his laughter tapering off as he raises his face to look at his friend. "Your hair is black, so you've some darkness in you, apparently."

Chirrut scrubs at his bristly-short hair, self-consciously.

"Well, of course - I am no Jedi." The words come less bitterly than they once did, when the knowledge that feeling the Force and using it were two entirely different things was new.

"And this? What is this?" He asks, reaching out to tug at his friend's longer locks.

Baze sobers up at the pronouncement, catching Chirrut's hand and squeezing it. "My hair is black as well," Baze says, offering him a hollow smile. "When we are older, our hair will turn grey, which is the color of metal, or thunderstorms."

That earns a bewildered expression, even as he nudges Baze's leg with his sock-covered toes. His failed fanciful dreams are nothing he needs pity for.

"They can change color?" He always imagined color as static - blood is red, the sky is blue, and bananas are, evidently, a happy yellow. Unless they aren't?

"Hair often does," Baze says, scratching at his cheek. "People can even dye their hair different colors, if they want. Blues, or greens--which are the colors of water and of plants, respectively."

"You should dye your hair green." States the budding fashion expert, after giving this new information the consideration it is due. "You said brown is the color of bark, or leaves - so it would be... not odd, not like red, and white?"

"Dying leaves, yes," Baze says, popping his knuckles. "Red and white are not common for eye or skin colors. Red and white are fairly regularly found in nature, like in flowers, or birds."

Chirrut frowns, confused once more. This color mess is a lot more complicated than he assumed.

"... So a flower is not odd, but a girl is?" That seems... bizarre. "Wouldn't the colors still be as beautiful together?" He has heard of other color combinations being favorably compared - the colors of a sunset in a rock, the blue of a sky in someone's eyes, the glow of an ember to another's scale.

"I don't think she's odd," Baze says, a touch defensively. He shifts on the mat, trying to get more comfortable in the cold and failing miserably. "She is rather beautiful to look upon, despite her skin not being colored like people usually are."

Edited 2017-04-07 07:35 (UTC)

There is silence again, but this one has a flavor, almost as if the air picked up the scent of burning, of char.

"It is not the color that is odd, but that it is different?" He asks for clarification, his words picking up a sharpness like splintered obsidian.

Baze squirms on his mat. He cups his chin in his hand, and nudges Chirrut in the side with his elbow. "Essentially," he says. "The color is common, and pretty, just different for humans."

He understands the dislike for different. He did not know what blindness truly was until the day he found out that most other humans have a sense he cannot even comprehend fully, something called sight, and that he was considered different for not having it as well.

Different being a word for other. Being a word for outsider.

He could... sort of understand it, even if he didn't like it, and strove to disprove it. But this color... there seems no rhyme or reason, and no benefit to one color over the other. Baze is brown, or so he says, he is... ish, a happy warm banana ish, but both of them are near to being Guardians in the temple despite differences.

His scowl hardens into something colder. With a vaulting movement he's on his feet, stick in hand, tea and mat and manners forgotten in a moment of all-consuming righteous rage.

Edited 2017-04-07 07:43 (UTC)

"Chirrut?" Baze says, momentarily bewildered. "Chirrut, no--"

Baze scrambles to his feet a lot less gracefully than Chirrut did, and takes off after him. The bigger boy eats up distance with his long stride, but Chirrut's anger fuels his speed, so Baze can't catch up. Plus, Baze has no idea where his friend is going. All he can do is follow.

If Chirrut had more distance to cover, he might have calmed down in time. If his stick hadn't been at hand, the results might have been less dramatic.

The Force is not with Chirrut's target today.

The older acolytes look up at Chirrut's approach with something like confusion and amusement, but that changes when Chirrut goes on the attack. The stick in his hand blurs into whistling speed, landing with a heavy crack across the offending boy's ribs.
"She," Chirrut howls, his whirling step hooking behind the boy's foot and dropping him to the ground, "is a beautiful," the end of the stick thuds into the boy's gut, making him retch, "FLOWER."

That's about as far as he gets before the rest of the boys - older, far more skilled, and now over their surprise, come to their fellow's rescue.

It'd be funny if Chirrut weren't getting his ass handed to him. Baze has no choice but to join in, launching himself at the nearest boy to attack his friend. Baze throws out punches and kicks when he can, getting lost in the throng of flailing arms and legs.

The older boys are mean, and fight dirty, and Baze finds himself easily overwhelmed by them.

This attack, while stemming from good intentions and righteous defense of others, is not one of those Force-sent paths Chirrut has found himself on before. There's no clarity, none of the focused calm that comes from surrender to the power of the Force.

This is all rage and strikes that fail to connect and blows that arc fire and brilliant pain all at once and the feeling of losing ground with every breath. This is losing track of your target while no one else seems to have developed that particular problem. This is the taste of blood (red) in your mouth and pain (red) that has no reward and...

He hears a voice not his own, not the voice of one of those he attacked, and his heart sinks (down into the depths, down into blue). Baze, his Baze (brown, brown like the skin of the few strong stubborn trees this moon can produce), being hurt (red) and only because of his temper (red, red, red).

He turns, fumbling his step, reaching out to grab, guard, shield... but a kick comes out of the colorless void that is the world to catch him full alongside the head, ending his efforts short of that goal.

Baze, what color is the opposite of yellow?

Baze wakes up in the evening, groaning as he turns over in one of the infirmary beds. One of his eyes is swollen shut, and as he runs his tongue across his teeth, it catches, revealing that one of them is chipped. He notes with satisfaction the other boys in the beds, until his gaze falls on Chirrut.

Oh, Chirrut.

With a grunt, Baze swings his feet around, sitting up as he sets them on the floor. He climbs out of bed, padding over to his friend. With a gentle hand, he shakes his shoulder. "Chirrut," he whispers. "Hey, Chirrut."

There's a hand, on his shoulder, and a voice in his ear, and it's a combination he knows to answer out of habit now.

This is the first itme he's instantly regretted that decision, his groan coming out as more of a gasp as his various injuries make themselves known. There is a livid bruise spread down the side of his head. His chest is taped thoroughly to protect cracked ribs. His hands are battered and scraped where missed blows resulted in him driving his hands into or against more immovable objects. His feet, he decides, are fine.

He likes his feet, at the moment.

"We are in so much kriffing trouble," Baze whispers, settling himself on the bed next to Chirrut's knee. Baze closes his good eye, rubbing the back of his sore head. "What made you go on the warpath?"

"Baze?" His voice reverberates in his head unpleasantly. Chirrut scrunches his face against the sensation. "You are alright? I..."

The grimace deepens, twists into something like shame, something like regret, something like feeling it wasn't enough, he wasn't good enough today.

"We defend the Kyber crystals, they... they are so pure, and... I am different, they say, less than... them, I know it, and I must prove them wrong. She is not similar, but not... different, she has no fault but... arbitrary judgments. It wasn't fair." He mutters, the fierce protective rage still there, even if he can't do anything about it.

Baze listens, swallowing thickly. He takes his friend's hand. "I know, Chirrut," he says quietly. "I know."

He sighs, and flops back on his back, laying across Chirrut's legs. "It isn't fair. Judgment rarely is. But you know," Baze says, staring at the ceiling, "she can probably protect herself."

"Probably." Chirrut agrees, musing.

After a silence broken only by the snores of one the older boys (a broken nose that is refusing to set well despite all attempts), Chirrut slowly smiles, despite how the edges catch against his bruise and tug.

"But she can learn how to do so better."

Chirrut Imwe may be plotting to get the new initiate a stick of her very own.

OOM: All the colors of the rainbow

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