A/N: Posted a new chapter of The Silent Song an hour and a half ago and thought, why not more of Silent Measures?
I know I promised one of you a Pacific Rim AU ages ago, but this plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone. So get ready for three baby chapters – baby Ezhno, baby Huei, and baby Obi-Wan. All "canon" to TSS.
Ezhno of Shili
The Togruta child is born one heady summer evening, when the six moons of Shili are strung across the sky like waxing and waning pearls.
The village head visits the family, marking the forehead of the young, squalling baby with the mark of a newborn, a fresher white marking against the blurred, undefined white shapes on the child's cheeks. Those white shapes will later grow sharp and elegant on cheekbones lean with the ancestry of hunting Togruta; but at present they are largely ignored, for the whisper goes around the surrounding villages, sweeping through the tall turu-grasses like a wind-fed fire:
A child with golden head-stripes!
It is unheard of; while dark blue is the most prominent colour of montral stripes, with occasional earthy purples and browns heard of here and there, gold is a treasure so rare that even the legends do not speak of it.
The Togruta child is cleaned, and swaddled in warm plant-fibre cloth, with great care. He is named on his third day with great ceremony, shushed and held when he cries at the unfamiliar touch, and held before the gathered village so that the clear honey-gold stripes on his stubby lekku and montrals shine brilliantly in the setting sun.
So for a few, bright months, the child is given only the best.
The best clothing, with turu-grass in intricate red-white patterns lacing over the edges; the best food, once he is old enough to tolerate mush. The best wood to gnaw on from the forest valleys half a world away, once he begins to teeth at four months – a little early, they all say, but quite normal for what will likely be a strong Togruta male in the future. He's getting ahead of himself, they laugh. He does not respond much when they call his name, but that causes no worry. He is young, after all.
And then comes the day, very soon after, when his father carves a rattle for him, and shakes it behind the child's head to surprise him.
And the child does not turn his head.
His father shakes the rattle harder. It is shaped like an Akul; painted the dusky orange of its camouflaged fur, that one day this child will hunt, and take the teeth of the Akul for himself to make a warrior-necklace in a test of bravery and skill.
The child giggles to himself, and continues scratching drawings in the earth of his playpen. He has learnt to sit barely a week ago, and is very much enjoying the new point of view.
The rattle drops to the floor.
The child does not hear it.
They rename him soon after.
He learns to walk by his eleventh month, not because he is particularly gifted, but because crawling is all well and good but food is often not as plenty at this point and standing allows him to reach further up the shelves.
They say that his name suits him. There is no need to whisper now.
At eighteen months, when the child has learnt to run in his dirty, too-small clothes, stumbling a little because of his lack of echolocation, they send him away.
The government of Shili do with him what they do for most abandoned children they receive. They put him in a planetary-government-run orphanage, where the staff teach him how to say his name.
Ez-no. Ezhno.
He who walks alone.
Ezhno discovers a new world he had not understood before, and decides he will learn as much of it as he can.
They send him to school on Shili, where he is taught to lip-read, though speaking is taught much less, and he learns by experimentation through a datapad program more than anything else; he has no friends to speak with. Eventually the program gives him a pronunciation score of seventy percent accuracy.
He reckons seventy percent is good enough.
He finds a love for datapads and holo-consoles. They are easier to communicate with than his teachers, at least. The holonet is a better teacher than they are, and learning to slice into networks is fun.
And then at the age of eleven he is expelled, because he hacked into the school security systems.
Upon reflection, it had been rather stupid of him. If he did go into as much trouble as hacking into the school security systems, he should at least have planned to do something.
Ezhno stays in a centre for older children for a year or two, while the government decides what to do with him. No family has offered fostering or adoption. The staff at his new school watches him with the distrust of hunting rock-vultures. He barely learns a thing there; they have even fewer measures for the hearing-impaired than his previous school did.
And then when Ezhno is thirteen, the opportunity comes.
A new institution opens on Ventrux; the Zan Arbor Academy for Gifted Children. A school that prides itself on its acceptance and support of disabled students, its public relations team says. Funded with the generosity of the Zan Arbor Research Foundation.
The government of Shili is allotted three places.
And Ezhno is chosen.
To this day, he has no idea why.
He only knows that he is put on a transport to Ventrux with a social worker who looks seven parts annoyed and three parts frustrated. He is dropped off like baggage at a building that looks more like frozen fluid than solid material, and is given a smart grey uniform and told to be careful with it. He will not be given another unless he outgrows it.
And then he is put into a dorm room alone, and that is that.
Ezhno remains there for two and a half years.
He learns, to be sure. The ZAAGC take the education of their children seriously. Ezhno may be a bit older than the other children in his year, but he tries his best, though he admits that academics are not one of his strong points. He hacks the system, a couple of times. Just for fun. Not deep enough to be detected, he is sure.
But he remains alone.
And then one day, when he is almost sixteen, he is called to the front office, and told something.
Something momentous.
He has been assigned a roommate.
Ezhno lugs the three huge bags towards his room – their room, now – with eager anticipation.
He kicks the door open hard enough that it sends tremors up his ankles. The smartly-dressed human boy sitting on a newly-made bed startles at the sound.
Or at least Ezhno assumes it is the sound. It could be the sight of him. Ezhno smiles, and introduces himself with far more confidence than he is really feeling. There are too many uncertainties here to be sure of the result.
The human boy certainly seems small. And polite, too – is that a blasted bow? And he does not seem to like speaking at all–
Oh.
Obi-Wan is the name, and he cannot speak.
And Ezhno cannot hear.
Oh.
"Git over 'ere," Ezhno says, spitting into his hand and grinning widely at Obi-Wan's disgusted expression. "This is 'ow we become friends 'ere."
They shake on it.
Ezhno grins at the boy opposite him, and knows with a feeling of utmost surety that they are going to be the best of friends, lil' Obi and he.
And Obi-Wan smiles in return.
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Next up: A very young Huei Tori (with Dooku making an appearance, of course).
