iprotectyou | OOM: First Meeting, part I

Baze starts passing some of his food over to his new friend, amazed at how quickly and sloppily he eats. The eight-year-old nibbles on his own dried fruits and soft cheeses, pausing every so often to wipe his mouth.

"I'm no Jedi, but they think I might be sensitive to the Force. That's why my parents--" Baze stops, napkin falling to the floor. Tears dampen his crackers and salt his cheeses. "Oh, no, I'll never see my mama again!"

Chirrut scrambles off his stool and back up one closer to Baze, baring his teeth fiercely in the direction of the nearest acolyte when her movements slow.

"Don't cry, don't cry... look, you'll be sick and you don't want to waste all this food." Chirrut chides gently, the prattle all-too-familiar in his mouth. "We'll take care of each other, alright?"

Baze dashes away at his eyes with the back of his hand. "It's not fair," he says, lip quivering. His eyes are hard, and his voice is tight. "They shouldn't have died. They shouldn't have left me like this."

He takes Chirrut's hand, seeking what comfort the other boy can provide. "Thank you," Baze says, sniffling.

"No. They're not supposed to leave." Chirrut agrees, but his tone registers only disapproval for adults in general. "But I won't, and..."

He pauses, his head cocked.

"Uh oh." He ducks behind Baze, as if the stares of curious acolytes were inconsequential. Masters Cabaril and Sheotar walk in, one looking highly amused by the situation, the other highly exasperated.

Master Cabaril expected a little more gratitude for being rescued from a life of poverty.

"We're going to have to take your friend away for a little bit, Acolyte Baze." Master Sheotar explains, pulling her sleeves up. She's heard... quite a lot about their newest member. "We'll send him back to you once he's clean."

Baze is beyond curious as to how Chirrut knew the masters were coming, but knows that now is not the time to ask. The eight-year-old bows his head, assenting even though he doesn't want to let his new friend go. "Yes," Baze says, squeezing Chirrut's hand. "You really could use the 'fresher. Go with them, but come back soon. I'll wait for you."

Tears dry into dusty trails on his cheeks, and his eyes are already red and puffy from crying.

Chirrut freezes in his (evidently, completely ineffectual, drat) shelter behind Baze's body, and considers his options. He can go, maybe get another chance to make a run for it...

But he just promised to stay. Chirrut Imwe might be a lot of things, but he isn't a liar. He squeezes Baze's hand back, then slips off his stool ungracefully.

With all of the stiff-necked pride of a man being marched to his death, Chirrut stomps out of the kitchens, head held high.

"... And he can't...?" Master Sheotar asks after a long moment, staring at the doorway Chirrut just left through.

"Not even a bit. As far as I can tell, no one has known him to be able to see." Master Cabaril replies. "You see why I had to bring him."

"As the Force wills." Master Sheotar agrees, and heads off to recapture her charge.

"Now then young Baze," Master Cabaril is much cheered now that Chirrut isn't his immediate responsibility. "What lessons have you been working on this week?"

The masters don't often pay attention to Baze, so it's only now that he considers it odd that Master Cabaril knows his name. The boy stands from his stool, at attention, his posture stiff and his hands at his sides.

"Well, sir, I've been learning to practice my breathing," he says, trying to recall which lessons have been drummed into him this week by the other Guardians. "And which seeds grow best in the winter time, and how to take care of a wound."

Then a horrible sound coming from the 'fresher room, interrupts Baze, startling him. He cocks his head, listening to something like the howls of the damned.

"What on Jedha is that?" he says, now worried about his new friend.

Master Sheotar is a warrior of renown. She has spawned more legends of peternatural skill than anyone her age has any right to.

She's having a hell of a time dealing with one wiry boy who started screaming as if he were being skinned the second the sonic cleaner was turned on. It takes two of her students fifteen minutes of frantic work to keep him contained and get him scrubbed, and cost them a fair amount of pride, two black eyes, and a bloodied nose.

For a blind kid, he has remarkable aim.

When the sonic is finally turned off, he stops howling, but he's well and truly riled at that point. His clothes have been stolen, so he drags on the robes he finds under his hands, haphazard and sloppy. He bats away their hands and stomps on their toes when they try to straighten the mess he created, and ducks away when the shears come out.

Chirrut comes back into the kitchens at a dead run, trailing robes and leaving chaos in his wake.

"Baze? Baze!" He yalps, intent on grabbing his new friend and getting out of this hideous place where they force kids into chambers that scream.

He doesn't see the box of apples in his way (of course). Chirrut... Chirrut hasn't ever been very good with temporary, small objects in his path. The results of him slamming into it are... predictable. At least the poor monks he left in the 'fresher have been avenged.

"Chirrut!" Baze says, leaping over to where his new friend sprawls inelegantly on the kitchen floor. The larger boy lifts the smaller one, helping him to his feet. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

Baze notes that Chirrut sure smells a lot better than he did, and Baze can now see what color his skin is now that all the grime has been scrubbed off.

Master Sheotar charges into the room, hustling as if her life depended on it. Baze subtly shifts positions until he stands in front of the younger boy.

"You still need a haircut," she says breathlessly, placing her hands on her hips and glaring at Chirrut.

Baze glances over his shoulder at his friend's tangled mane. "She's right, Chirrut. Can you sit still long enough for them to cut your hair?"

Chirrut, refusing to cry over the bruises he's earned, has one hand hooked into the back of Baze's robes, his head turning this way and that as he tries to find another way out.

(This adult is one sly lady, Chirrut will admit it - he doesn't intend to get back within arm's reach)

"I do not." He huffs - his hair is just fine, other than now being more clean than he's used to. "I can still get us out of here, I just... I just need to think." This isn't like his marketplace adventures, where there are more bolt-holes than he might ever need.

Baze turns to his friend, slowly, disengaging his hand from the older boy's robes to take it into his own. "Chirrut," he says, with all the weight of his eight years of life. "I don't want to leave. Do you? The Guardians... They can't keep you hers. But if you stay, they'll feed you and take care of you and teach you things. And we... We can be friends. Stay with me. Please."

He wants to leave. He wants to leave so much he could cry from longing. But...

But he promised.

He promised, and he keeps his promises. If Baze won't leave... then he'll stay.

(It doesn't hurt that something feels right about this, as right as knowing exactly when guards would be looking the other way, when food was free for the taking.)

"Fine." It's a bit disgruntled, and it ends with a snarl and a show of teeth when one of the acolytes doing the cooking giggles at the boy's reluctant acquiescence. "But I'm not going back in the screaming box."

Baze releases a breath he didn't know he was holding in. Relief floods him, and it's so sweet, he could cry. He smiles, instead, a boyish, happy smile that lights up his whole face. Baze didn't know how much he needed a friend until one fell in his lap.

But something Chirrut says catches Baze's attention. "Screaming box? You mean the sonic cleaner?" he says, erupting into giggles. He can't help it; screaming box is the best description he's ever heard for that. "Have you never been clean, Chirrut? How did you not get sick?"

Chirrut shoves him, disgruntled.

"It's too loud." He huffs as he sulks, and the strength of his ire is strong enough to cause him to miss Master Sheotar sneaking up on him.

A flurry of movements later he's pinned, held still by strong hands as the students he abused before keep him from lashing out again.
"Now, hold still and this will look decent. Flail like the mynock you are and you'll have bald spots." She warns an irate Chirrut, curtly. Potential Force-sensitive or no, she has figured out that she's going to have to put a lot of work into this one to bring him up to par.

Baze scoots closer to his friend, taking one of his hands. "Yes, stay still so they won't cut you, okay?" Baze tells the pissed off younger boy. "I'd hate to see you get hurt."

The eight-year-old hopes beyond hope that Chirrut will stay still. Baze prays to the Force in his head, thanking it for his new friend and that he won't resist the haircut any more than is necessary--which is to say, not at all.

Chirrut suddenly freezes, stock-still. Master Sheotar doesn't pause to count her blessings, but starts attacking the matted mane Chirrut calls hair.

Cautiously, as if approaching some sort of feral creature, Chirrut lifts his free hand to trace Baze's face with ghost-light fingers.

He doesn't know how, didn't know it was possible, but... this thing, this feeling, something no one talks about... it's changing around Baze. Changing, shifting... and around him, too.

Chirrut has never actually been around anyone who was actively calling on the Force before, user or no. It's... startling. Arresting. Captivating.

Baze stays as still as he can while Chirrut touches his face. It's... strange, to be frank, but apparently it's something his friend needs to do--and he's letting the Guardians cut his hair, so Baze allows him to explore at will.

"Thank the Force," Master Sheotar breathes after she and her students finish cropping Chirrut's hair. Her students release him at a gesture from her. "There, now. You look almost respectable. Would you like more food? It's almost dinner time."

Baze remains still.

Chirrut shakes himself, startled. His head feels bizarrely light, and cold.

He doesn't like it.

The mention of dinner, however, keeps him from grousing about it. Cautiously he moves on from exploring what his new friend is like and scrubs at his head, grimacing when he discovers just how short his hair is.

"Dinner would be good. Baze should eat." That's what he hears, from the old woman who does laundry in the square. Food, warm food for grief, hot tea to soothe the soul. He hasn't had much practice in actually applying this advice, but this place should be able to provide.

Dinner is a delicious butter chicken dish with a tomato-based sauce and flatbread. Master Sheotar allows Baze and Chirrut to eat in the kitchen tonight so that he won't feel overwhelmed being surrounded by so many new people.

Baze feels lighter after dinner, despite being full. More at peace. Everything is as the Force wills it. He sits at the counter with Chirrut, staring at his friend, committing his face to memory. "The Force is with me, and I am with the Force," Baze says, smiling a little. "It's a prayer you'll have to get used to saying around here."

"I've heard of the Force." This is... partially a lie, partially the truth. He's certainly heard of things being Force-forsaken, or Force-cursed, but...

Never as being part of a good thing. Never explained other than as part of a comprehensive and uncaring evil.

That certainly doesn't fit, except with the screaming box. The one he is definitely never going into ever again.

"... but people don't pray to it." He finally offers, after a few minutes of contemplation, because that's just weird.

Baze stares, his puffy eyes widening. "Of course people pray to the Force. The Force binds all living things. It's an energy field that some people can use to influence minds, or push things, or live on after death," he says. The words sound like he heard them from other sources and beat then into something resembling his usual speech patterns. "In life, there is the Force. In the Force, life."

"..." When it comes to facial expressions beyond smiling and snarling, Chirrut is... fairly inept. He doesn't know how they're supposed to go, that they're even a thing most times, so what Baze gets is a muddled approximation of confusion, more clearly reflected in his how Chirrut shifts, head cocked, as if to study him.

"The Force is... how did it go?" He thinks it's completely bantha poodoo (to put it politely), but his new friend seems committed... so.

Baze is relieved that his friend is at least willing to try. The older boy wants to be a Guardian so very badly, and he now wants Chirrut to want it, too. Baze shifts on his stool, hooking his feet under the top rung.

"The Force is with me," he says, "and I am with the Force."

Out in the hallway, Master Sheotar smiles.

"The Force is with me," He echos, for the first time in his life, "And I am with the Force."

For the record, the truth of the universe aren't immediately revealed, Chirrut doesn't suddenly realize where his capabilities are coming from, random objects don't go zooming around the room.

But Chirrut can tell his new friend is happy, and that makes any amount of praying worth it.

"Good, you got it!" Baze says, beaming at him. "The Guardians of the Whills--that's us--have all sorts of prayers to the Force, but that's the most common one. Whills is just another word for Force. Then there's the Church of the Force, which is another whole kettle of fish. Then there's the Jedi, which everyone knows about."

He quiets after his explanation, staring at his hands in his lap. "Ky parents..." Baze starts, and though his breathing hitches, he manages to keep his composure. "My parents sent me here two years ago, to see if I was Force sensitive. I don't know if I am, but I want to be. I want to be a Guardian when I grow up. I want to do them proud."

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