Chapter Title: Braid
Series Title: Unlikely Brothers
POV: Dashen
Ages in this chapter: Tanner (9) Dashen (15)
Chapter Summary: Eight weeks into the their fake brother relationship, Dashen finally understands that Tanner will never let go of his Jedi braid.
I'd promised him that I would figure out a way to hide the thing. That damn braid that had the potential to get him killed or worse. He'd pleaded with me so hard. Colton too. About how a Master Jedi when he accepted an apprentice - a padawan - would tie the braid with a colored band. A unspeaking moment that bonded the pair within the Force. I didn't understand it all. Never would. Probably didn't want to, but it was this kid's world. And the devastation on his face when I asked him to cut it off for his own safety, for mine, for the safety of Colton's criminal operation...well...that devastation about broke me.
I gave in, assuring Colton that I would figure it out. Telling the kid that I had no desire to stab him in his already broken nine-year-old heart. We were only eight weeks into this thing - but who was counting - and I barely knew the kid, really, despite our improvised fake brother story of the last month. But I knew his pain. I knew his loss. I knew it all far too well. And I realized that there was no possible way that I could take away that one solitary thing he had left. I just couldn't do it.
He had retreated to his bed now. I'd tucked him in. With eyes rimmed in tears, he'd claimed he was too old for that, but I did it anyway, feeling so badly for what I'd asked of him. Curled into his sheets, one hand covering his braid, the other clutching a small piece of dark brown material. The tear from his Master Ayden's robe. The one he'd asked me to pull from his dead teacher before we'd left the basement of death where the man had been killed. I found he often kept the cloth close when he was feeling his worst. And certainly, this was one of those times, thanks to me and my boneheaded suggestion that he do the impossible.
His blanket was pushed off to the side, I straightened it and pulled it around his shoulders. He was so damned small. So much like my baby brother Kossi.
Kossi...I paused to stifle the fast-rising emotion that always came with thinking about him. Sometimes I just hated this. What I'd gotten myself into with this kid here. It made me feel so many things that I had tried hard to put behind me in the last two years. It made me care about someone other than myself for the first time since Kossi died. And part of me...yeah, it was foolish to think so...but part of me thought I was doing injustice to Kossi's memory by helping this kid. Almost as if Tannerlin was taking my baby brother's place in my heart.
That, in reality, was my mind playing with me, aiming to make me believe things that weren't true. Tanner only wanted the same thing I had sought after losing the one closest to him. Someone to help. Someone to care.
His small hand fell limply away from the braid. Such a simple thing. Just hair twisted together with a single band around it. Tanner had told me also that a lock of the master's hair was always woven in. A piece of his Master Ayden would literally always be with him as long as he wore it. How the hell could I ask him...ugh! I was getting angry with myself now as I reached down and gently held the end of the braid. I ran a finger over the white band and the feathered end.
"I'm sorry Tanner," I said to him as he slept. "You can keep this thing as long as you want. We'll find a way to hide it or camouflage it or whatever it takes. I promise that I won't let you lose that final piece of your Jedi family. Even if i don't understand it all...I do. In my own way. I understand. I'll get Colton to agree too, so don't you go worrying about him."
The kid reached back toward the braid again. I wasn't quick enough to get my own hand out of the way and his set on top of mine, fingers grabbing hold.
His forgiveness for my stupidity. For my ignorance at thinking that he could let go of his own as I never could with mine. The two of us were so different, yet so alike in the profound pain we felt every day of our lives.
A pain that we endured in whatever ways we could. Be it an ugly finger painting hanging on your bedroom wall, one that your five year old baby brother made for you so long ago...
...or a piece of soft brown cloth from the robe of the one person you loved with all your heart...
...or maybe just something as simple...as an unadorned braid of brown hair.
END
