Chapter Title: Pillow Toss
Series Title: Unlikely Brothers
Author: Obi the Kid
POV: Tanner (Tanner is 10, Dashen is 16)
Series Summary: A series of non-chronological stories taking place in the world of my OC's, Dashen and Tannerlin.
Chapter Summary: Tanner practices his Force skills.
Rating: PG
Characters: Dashen Lesedi, Tannerlin Vai (Jedi)
"Kid, you hit me with one more pillow and I swear I will smother you with it. Enough with the Force crap already!"
"They don't hurt, Dash. They're just giant fluffy pillows and how else can I practice? At least I stopped practicing with breakables."
I had, but only because Colton threatened to kick us out on the street if one more piece of glass or stone crashed into a wall, floor or ceiling. Pillows were safer. They couldn't break. But they could annoy. And right now, annoy was what I did best. I was practicing my levitation skills. Skills that weren't very good right now, although the last try had been my best. Instead of flinging it up and at Dashen, I gently lifted it and smacked him over the head with it. I thought it was funny. He didn't. He was ready to plot my demise.
Big brothers can be such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes. I put the pillow down.
"Thank you. You really need to do this outside."
"I can't. People want to kill me, remember?"
Not all people, just the evil Empire-y type ones. Being one of the last Jedi alive in the galaxy had its disadvantages. And I had no desire to die as a ten-year-old, especially now that I'd just learned the true secrets in how to levitate objects. I'd learned it from another Jedi on Tatooine. Ben Kenobi had told me that as long as I practiced and was dedicated that things would come. He gave me a few secrets too. Unfortunately, he didn't tell me how to deal with a whiny big brother who kept complaining about pillows being tossed at his head.
Speaking of, Dashen came to stand over me. He was tall. I wasn't. He had black hair, I had brown. He had green eyes, I had pale brown. He was a thief, I was a Jedi. We weren't related by birth and had barely known each other for a year, but still…we were brothers and I loved my brother more than anything else on the planet…but not right now.
"Tanner, seriously. We can't keep doing this. Things are broken. Pillows are disappearing. I need to study and plan my run routes for the week and you should be doing your home school assignments."
"I know, but I need to learn this."
"All in a two week period? I think you have plenty of time. I'm pretty sure that your new Jedi pal, Ben, didn't intend for you to stop everything else in your life so you could hurl things around the apartment."
He didn't understand. Not really. Dash tried, but he couldn't grasp the Jedi ways and why it was so important that I continue them. I didn't blame him. He'd only ever met a couple Jedi the past, and they were Council members he'd come across in passing. Not representative of the Order as a whole. We weren't all pompous and arrogant. I just wish he'd be able to understand better; then he'd see that I wasn't just tossing pillows around. As fun as it was, there was a purpose for it.
And so it was that I meant every single syllable of my next words.
"It's important, Dash. At least to me, it is."
"I know, Tanner. Believe me, I know. But can't you slow it down just a bit? How about set aside two days a week for practice…and I swear I won't harass you anymore about this self-training stuff that you're doing. But this every day crap, from the time you get home from school until bed, it's not healthy. To be honest, it's a little obsessive."
Hmmm…was I that bad? I didn't think so. Since we'd gotten home from Tatooine, I'd been practicing - a lot. Trying to remember everything Ben had told me. It was how a Jedi learned. Information passed down from mentor to apprentice and then you practiced and practiced until it became second nature and you could do these things almost without thought. Classes in the Temple had revolved around the Force, unlike here on my new home where everything from literature to engine building to construction was on the lesson schedule. These things were valuable and important of course, but they left me needing more. They fed my mind, but they didn't' feed the Jedi side of me. All of that condensed energy seemed to ball up inside and once I got home and it was safe…it all sort of poured out at once. And all in the ten days since we'd found Ben. And, I guess…well, I guess I was being a little obsessive.
"Sorry," I said, as the green eyes over me lessened their glare. "It's hard to keep this hidden. I mean, not hard to keep it hidden, but hard to keep it inside. All bottled up. At the Temple we would practice Force exercises all the time – it was constant - even when we were just walking and talking or even eating at the cafeteria, even the tiniest of lessons we would try to apply and learn and…"
Dashen stopped towering over me and sat down, nudging my knee with his. "You're not there anymore, Tanner. You can never be again. And I know you miss it. I know more than you realize, but you have to adjust to the now. And the now is not the Jedi Temple. It's an apartment on the second floor of a mansion owned by a master criminal that we happen to work for, and who pays for your pricey schooling. And I'm fairly confident that he doesn't appreciate us busting up the place. And…wait…you didn't throw pillows at other Jedi…did you?"
"Well, no. Not really. I couldn't really lift pillows then and the only time I managed to actually get one into the air, it swatted Master Ayden in his face and he threw it back and knocked me off the couch. I stopped the pillow thing after that."
My brother laughed at me. I don't think he really meant to, but he did. I shrugged at him. When he finally regained control he apologized, sort of.
"Sorry, Mouse, but the image of you being nailed with a high speed pillow and booted off the couch, is pretty damn funny. You did laugh at the time, right?"
I remember half-smiling as I lay there on my backside the floor; not so much laughing. Master Ayden had laughed though and picked me up, hugged me and sent me off to bed. I guess it was kind of funny though.
"Okay, how about three days a week?" I finally pleaded after Dashen stopped grinning.
"Deal. You need to stay on your studies though. You can't be a teacher one day if you fail your first year at the school, especially since you are in with kids a year older. Keep your scores up and it'll work. If you start stumbling in classes though, we might have to go from three days of practice to two. Understood?"
I nodded. Technically, Dashen had no authority over me. There was no actual relation between us. He wasn't a parent and he wasn't my teacher as Master Ayden had been, he was just an older kid who had saved me and pulled me into his life without knowing what he was in for. Now sixteen, a large chunk of the last year of his life had been spent raising me, looking after me and keeping me safe. I pretty much owed him my existence and my sanity. And at this point in my life, having no one else, Dashen lived as my parent, my protector, my big brother and my best friend. There was no legal authority, but I listened to him and I obeyed his rules, because I still needed that in my life. It's what I'd known in my nine years living as part of the Jedi. I needed the structure and the boundaries. I needed the rules and conventions. I needed someone to care about me and for me to care about.
But most of all, I needed someone at whom I could toss big fluffy pillows. I smiled evilly at Dashen and said, "Okay, it's a deal. But part of the deal is that I get to practice on you. Incoming!"
Pillow launched. Target nailed.
"Damn it, Tanner!"
I ran. He chased me. Pillow tossing was turning out to be very entertaining.
The End
