Chapter Title: The Kid is Not All Right

Series Title: Unlikely Brothers

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

POV: Dashen

Chapter Summary: Six months in, Dashen and Tanner struggle together.


"He's not all right. Do you think he's all right? I don't think he's all right."

"No, you idiot, he's not all right. Does anything about this look all right to you?"

"I've only known the kid for six months, Colt."

"Yeah, well, he looks lonely to me."

Colton and me. Pondering the kid from a distance. He'd been quiet all day. Not that he was a chatterbox, but he hadn't been so withdrawn since that first month into his post-Jedi life. It was curious. And confusing. The kid still confused me, to be honest. I didn't really understand all that he was in those first nine years of his life, living at the Jedi Temple, learning his magic ways. Applying that to his now seemed more difficult than I figured it might be.

He was an emotional kid. Deservedly so after all he'd lost, but I got the feeling that was that way prior to. Loved to hug. Loved to be near the people he cared about. Loved the idea of family, in whatever form it might be. But he had also gone from being a part of this huge group of people all with the same focus and similar abilities, training and learning together... to this. Me and Colton. Neither of us who completely understood the Jedi or their ways and neither of us looking for a tag-a-long.

Tanner was less a tag-a-long and more just a lost kid searching for purchase and purpose. I knew the feeling. I'd been there. Hell, I was still there. Wasn't long ago that I'd been a suicidal mess and would have done anything to call it a life. This kid, he wasn't to my extreme, but he needed a hand. He needed someone to care about him.

Again, been there, done that.

Colton, in a way, had been that savior for me.

So, now... "Yeah. This is on me, Colt. I got this."

Next to the kid, I sat on Colton's prized and giant couch. Oh and soft, so very soft. He'd never told me the story of the couch, but I'm sure he had it specially made and it cost more than my life is worth. Or maybe his own. All I know is that it was all kinds of comfortable. Tanner was tucked into one corner of it, brown fabric in hand - the piece of his Master's robe - rubbing his thumb over it in a repetitive petting motion. His other hand held one of his old paper books he thought he was reading, though he hadn't flipped a page in several minutes.

The second I sat down, the book set aside and he reached for me.

And that was it.

He held onto me so tight. Tears came. Sobs followed. I stayed quiet, letting actions speak where I couldn't. How and when he'd become so attached to me so quickly, no way to know. It had just happened and it's where we were.

A few minutes passed and Colton brought a blanket to toss around his shoulders. Tanner adjusted himself then to lay horizontal on the couch

with his head on my lap, one hand clutching the blanket, the other, his robe fabric piece. The tears still came, but the intensity of the sobbing

had slowed. The hitching of his breaths were less violent. I kept an arm

his shoulder and with the other, I began absently running fingers through his short hair. It's the same calming motion I'd used with my baby brother, Kossi, when he'd been sick or scared and it was pretty much all I had in my small arsenal.

Colton returned once more, this time with a pillow from Tanner's bed. Lifting the kid's head, he set the pillow on my lap. Tanner snugged into it, burying himself deeper into the couch and into my touch.

I guess Colton and I had an answer to our foolish question. Tanner was certainly not all right. Not even close. Would he be eventually? No way I could know. How broken was he after the death of his Master and the entire Jedi Order, his home on Coruscant? Was he as broken as I'd been after Kossi died? I didn't think so, but I hoped not. It was enough that I was still struggling with my own emotional issues; having the kid's issues piled on top of my own...

Okay, I had to focus. The future be damned right now, Tanner was hurting and I was what he had. The rest of his life was gone. Slaughtered. As my world crashed into nothing when Kossi died, Tanner's crashed with the death of the Jedi Order. Different in so many ways, but also the same in the most emotional of ways.

He shifted on my lap. Tucking in further, if that was even possible. My fingers still combed through his hair. Breathing slowed further. Gently leaving over him, the tracks were still there, but the fresh tears had stopped. His face, no longer clenched. I glanced at the wall chrono across the room. To my surprise, an hour had passed. No way I could get up though. Disturb the kid right now? Not a chance. A pillow found it's way behind me to support my head. Colton. Another blanket. This one for me.

"Let yourself sleep, Dash. You need it as much as he does."

I nodded to the big man as he came to stand in front of us.

"You mean we can stay on your massively expensive couch without a lecture?"

Colton gave me a look as he sat on the table a foot from me. "A funny, funny kid you are. Hilariously so." A pause. Then. "He's far from being all right, you know that."

"Yeah. But neither am I, so maybe it works. We can be not all right together."

"Maybe so. He has latched himself to you pretty damned quick."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing though, Colt?"

The big man pondered the question before he answered with an honest and legitimate question.

"The empty heart that devastated you when Kossi died, it's a little less empty now, isn't it?"

Looking down, this nine year old kid snuggled onto my lap, having nothing, needing everything. Tannerlin Vai wasn't Kossi. He would never be. No one could ever fill those shoes. Colton was right though. That hole in my heart... hell, the hole in my soul that was left when Kossi died, there was some filling there now. Not a lot. Certainly not complete. It would never be that. For his short time, Kossi had been my life, my world. There was no replacement for him. Just wouldn't happen.

This kid though... He wasn't all right. I wasn't all right. But maybe, just maybe that was what we both needed to figure out how to heal enough to find that good life we'd had before we had lost it all.

I offered Colton a wishful look as my fingers continued their soft stroke through Tanner's hair. My voice, when it came was a bit ragged and cracked. "Yeah," I answered him honestly, "It is a little less empty."

"Then that's what matters. You'll both be all right in time." Then he made sure Tanner's blanket was tucked and secure, and did the same with the one around my shoulders before standing behind me for a moment and cupping a hand on my neck. "You do good by him, kid. You cared when no one else did. He'll do okay. You'll see. See you in the morning."

One of the knots in the bundle that had been tight in my chest for the longest time, it unraveled then. Something felt better. I felt better.

Tanner relaxed deeper into my lap, into my life.

Yeah, maybe one day we would be all right.


END