Chapter Title: Adjusting

Series Title: Unlikely Brothers

Ages in this chapter: Tanner (9) Dashen (15)

POV: Dashen

Chapter Summary: Not long into their new lives as fake brothers, after the Jedi Purge, Tanner still has trouble sleeping through nights.


Adjustment was tough.

When you were a Jedi apprentice alone in the galaxy for the first time ever, your entire people - including the one closest to you - slaughtered? Adjustment was practically impossible.

Tanner had some crappy days to say the least. He was nervous around Colton - rightfully so - the man was intimidating in about eight different ways. He wasn't sure about his new surroundings; the apartment, the city, the planet. He had latched himself to me, but I knew it was more out of desperation than actual attachment.

As crappy as his days had been, nights were an entirely different story. Nights were straight up challenging.

Within our borrowed apartment on the second floor of Colton's massive residence, we each had our own decent-sized bedrooms. The kid though, he spent a majority of those first apartment nights on the couch in the main living area mindlessly flipping through the holo-net channels searching for something to take his heartache away.

I often found myself sitting next to him. Not that I'd been asked, but I felt for him and couldn't just let him torture himself alone when everything around him was unfamiliar. I was the thing most familiar to him and I'd know him for what...barely weeks at this point?

This particular night, he was up. I knew it. But he didn't go straight to the couch. Instead he came to stand in my bedroom doorway with his wavering voice and compact form.

"Dashen."

My back was facing the door, but I wasn't asleep. He probably knew that, could feel it or something. I didn't pretend to know how all the Jedi Force stuff worked.

"I'm awake, Tanner." I flipped over to face him. "What's wrong?" My tone stayed patient, as I had worked hard to not be irritated that my own world had just been turned upside down by the entry of this Jedi kid into it. Full disclosure though, at times, I was irritated. Very much so. Then, a simple look at his heartbroken face and hollow eyes, and that aggravation would simply vanish into parts unknown.

"My stomach hurts." He said wearily.

It didn't really. Not in any illness type of way. It was anxiety and stress and all those negatively sad emotions churning things up inside that made him feel that way. I wasn't about to tell him that though. Make him feel worse than he already did.

"How bad does it hurt?"

"Really bad."

Not an unusual response from him, so his answer didn't raise any alarms in me. I knew what he was after and I really didn't want to get out of bed this time. I'd had a long dramatic day working and my tall, lean body truly wasn't meant to sleep on couches in awkward positions. It longed for it's own soft comfy bed from time to time.

He waited. Waited for me to move and follow him to the couch.

Not tonight, I just couldn't do it.

"Tanner, I can't do the couch tonight. It's not all that comfortable for me and I need to sleep a little bit. It's been a day today." My tone stayed patient. Quiet, but honest.

"Okay, that's okay," he said, despondent, turning to walk away from my door.

No, damn it. Not what I wanted. Gah! "Tanner, wait." I motioned to him to come closer as I scooted to one side of my bed. "Here. We can't make this a habit, but you're having a rough time, so here." I patted the empty spot on the bed. "Hang out with me for a while."

Hesitant at first, he eventually crawled in next to me. I gave him one of my two pillows and shared the thick blanket. Tanner lay on his back, eyes opening and closing, trying hard to settle his unsettled breathing.

"Stomach still sick?" I asked.

"Not as bad."

Uh huh. As I suspected. The kid just needed the company, someone to fill a place in an empty world.

"Good. Try some of that boring meditation crap you enjoy so much."

"S'not boring. Or crap."

"Yeah, well, you and I will have to stay on opposite sides of the fence on that one, huh?"

"And I can't meditate in bed."

"Maybe you can sleep then. I need sleep, kid. It's been a crazy day and an extremely long week, you know that right?"

"I do. I didn't mean for it to be. It's just hard. It's really hard, Dash."

"Trust me, I know." I knew all too well from personal experience. "It'll be that way for a time. But it gets better as long as you have someone to help you." I knew that from experience too.

"Just like you will help me?" That voice. So small. So scared to death; despite the heroic attempt to not appear as terrified as he was...trying so hard to live up to his partial Jedi training.

"Exactly." Me, trying to be reassuring. "I just can't always promise to be up in the middle of the night."

"I know. I'll try to do better. I promise. But maybe...sometimes."

I grinned. "Yeah. Sometimes. I can do sometimes, Mouse."

His head turned and he smiled at me, using his nickname that I'd given him when I'd found first him...not so long ago. There was a contented sigh and he adjusted on the bed so that he faced toward me.

"I'm glad you found me, Dashen."

There's a sentence I'd never heard before. Other than my brother, Kossi, I expect there'd never been another who was ever really glad to hang out with me. I had no friends, not really. I had this Jedi kid. A criminal boss/landlord. A few people in town knew of me, none particularly liked me though. That was my life. Two people in it. Pathetic and sad, but the fewer who knew and liked me, the fewer I had to explain about my painful past. So, in a skewed way, it worked.

Of course, I had no idea what would happen with this kid. At his point, I didn't know if this was a long term thing with us, or if he'd come to terms with his loss and decide to move on and find a life for himself elsewhere. Personally, I couldn't imagine him running off. He seemed the type that needed someone. The type who wanted structure in his life. Where he could be comfortable.

This, where we were now, there was some protection. I mean, let's be honest, being a not-dead Jedi, the kid had a target on his back as big as a space cruiser. Was it best for him to go out roaming the galaxy as nine year old partially trained child? My guess was big old fat 'no'.

What did I want in all of this? Hell if I knew. It did feel good to have someone to care about again. Tanner could never fill the hole that the loss of Kossi had left in me, but it gave me focus. Something other than work and just surviving. And I had been just surviving - barely - before this kid.

He was glad I had found him. I was beginning to think it should be the other way around.

"Glad I found you too, Tanner. Or you found me. However it was meant to be. How about we both find a little sleep now, yeah?"

Head mushed into the pillow, he agreed with a subdued, "Okay."

Impulsively, I stretched an arm out toward him. "Come'ere, Mouse."

Almost as if he'd been wishing for it, he shrugged over in my direction and curled into me, my arm tucked around to pull him close.

"How's the stomach now?"

A long second passed as the tension melted out of him. "Doesn't feel sick anymore." Yup. As I thought. Not sick. Just needy. Weren't we all?

Breathing slowed as his mind morphed toward sleep. Small body snuggling in. Contented. Comfortable.

It's what I could offer. It's all I had. Experience with a little brother. Kossi taught me lessons in life and in death. Calling on those lessons now, was what I needed to do for this kid. To help him. To help me. To help us.

Adjusting to our new lives.

Together, we'd figure it out.


END