Chapter Title: Migraine
Series Title: Unlikely Brothers
POV: Tanner
Ages in this chapter: Tanner (11) Dashen (17)
Chapter Summary: Tanner helps his brother through a suffering migraine.
I hugged him to me. Didn't know what else to do. Colton said he was in "eye-piercing" pain and said the best thing for him was me. He called
it a migraine. Said that Dash had suffered from them for a while now. Sometimes a minor annoyance, other times it could sideline him for an entire day or more. They were stress related and started not long after
his brother Kossi died.
Dashen had never told me that he suffered with them. Maybe not wanting to burden anyone. Not that my brother was a burden. In the time I had known him, he'd become everything to me. Saved my life and helped me start a new one.
Maybe now I could finally help him.
"It's okay, Dash." I whispered to him. Colton had told me not to talk, but I kept my voice soft as I tried to get my arms around him. He was a lot taller than me and I was quite small, so eventually he slid down until his head lay in my lap and he let me wrap an arm around his shoulder and I could touch my forehead to his face. "It'll be okay."
With the touch, I willed the Force to surround him. Being so young and not fully trained, my powers were limited, but using the Force to help calm ourselves and others was something we began learning as initiates and was a lesson that Master Ayden always practiced with me to improve. If I could help in the smallest way, I would.
After a few minutes, I felt Dashen relax some. He wasn't as tense and maybe the pain had lessened. My right hand moved to his head and set on his dark hair and stroked it. I wasn't sure what to do, but I did what he'd done for me when I'd been sick or hurt in this last year.
Dashen deserved to have someone to love him. Someone to take care of him. Sometimes annoying and cocky on the outside, inside he was all sort of broken emotions and lopsided layers. I knew those things. I was those things too at times.
A hand reached upwards, searching. I grabbed it in my own and squeezed tight. "I'm right here, big brother. I won't leave you, I promise."
"Tanner." Came his unsteady voice. "Missed your conference today. Wanted to be there."
Conference. The parent-teacher conferences at our school. Not that I had a parent, but Dashen was essentially my guardian and the closest I had to a parent. He'd agreed to come. When he didn't show, I got worried. Then Colton called and told me to meet him at his bar. The Rathskeller. Not the fanciest or friendliest of places, but the back room, which also doubled as Colton's office was spotless and stocked with everything from a sleep couch to a shower. Colton had taken me back to where Dashen was in agony on the couch.
Now I was here and he was calming a bit. Talking too. That had to be a good sign.
"Don't worry, Dash. I know how much you hate all things school, right?" I joked lightly, hoping he would find the humor in it.
"You know it, little brother. I'll make it up to you though. Promise."
"Figure it out later when you are better."
"Thanks for coming, Mouse."
"Colton called. Said you needed me."
"Yeah. Sorry, didn't mention the headaches."
Apology not needed. I'd never expected to know everything about Dashen Lesedi. He was still a bit of a mystery in certain areas and that was all right. Now though, now I could help him. It was exhausting, using the Force to calm, but a little tiredness was nothing compared to a back-breaking headache that kept you from even being able to open your eyes without pain.
"Felt you, Tanner. Your magic. Like some type of bubble or something surrounded me. Relaxing."
Magic. Dash always called it that. I usually argued back about it not being magic then tried to explain what the Force was, but he never wanted to hear it. It had become a running gag between us now.
"I'm glad it helped. Maybe it can help in the future too, the next time you get a migraine like that."
"Maybe so."
"Dashen." That was Colton. He'd been on the other side of the door way. "The sun is down. Won't hurt your eyes. We should get you home."
I saw Dashen nod against me and I helped him sit up. Unsteady. Wobbly. That was him. I felt lightheaded for a few seconds from the Force effort I'd put out, but it cleared. Physically though, I was a little slower than normal.
"Come on, kid." Colton bent and tucked hands under my brother to easily lift his long form into his arms and against his much larger person. "Won't be but a short ride."
Short it was and seemed only a few minutes and Dashen was carried to his room, tucked into his bed and blankets pulled over.
"I'll stay with him, Colt," I said, looking up at the big man. "He needs me to be with him right now."
"He does. If you need anything, Tannerlin, you know where to find me."
I did and I'd call if needed, but for now, I turned to my brother, crawled into the bed next him and tucked in close. It's what I could do. It's all I could do. Just be there.
"Tannerlin." Colton whispered from the door, adjusting his shoulder against the frame.
I toward him from my comfortable place against Dashen.
"You saved his life, kid. You know that. The very second you entered it."
I didn't know that. Not really.
"Just by giving him someone to care about again. He needed that more than anyone would ever understand."
I nodded, comprehending the power of Colton's statement.
"That it was him that found you after the Jedi died, it wasn't an accident. I don't pretend to know how or who or why, but he was meant to help you... to save you. And you were meant to be here with him in this next part of your lives."
It could be true, what he said. The Force did work in mysterious ways, Master Ayden always told me. Master Yoda too. If you listened to the Force and allowed it to truly guide you, it would take you to where you needed to be. Master Ayden and I were never scheduled to be here on Terra, in Kaolin that day of the Jedi Purge. We had subbed in for another team last moment. Had we not been here, we would have been executed elsewhere in the galaxy. Master Ayden had insisted that we go in the place of that other team. He volunteered us. Perhaps he'd known something subconsciously. Felt something. The Force guiding him in an unknown direction... toward Dashen. I couldn't begin to know why. Dash wasn't a Jedi or Force sensitive. Most of the time he didn't believe in or even understand it all. He was the furthest thing from the Force I could imagine.
If the Force had drawn us here, then it had meant for Master Ayden to perish and for him to save my life in the process. It had meant for Dashen to be the one to find me. To rescue me. It had meant to give him purpose again. It could be all of that was true or it could be that none of it was true. Colton seemed to appreciate the idea. Master Ayden had known something. So maybe...
I smiled at Colton, accepting his words as truth. He'd been around long enough and had seen many things in his life to know when to embrace something that was meant to be.
"Maybe then, Colt... maybe you were meant to be too. Part of us."
"Yeah. Maybe so, kid. You take care of him tonight, all right? I'm only downstairs."
Dashen slept hard. I slept harder.
Morning vanished and afternoon crept in. I was in my own bed. Not sure how that had happened. The last thought I recalled was being snuggled in next to my brother in his bed. Not anymore.
I squinted at the bright sunlight coming through my window as my mattress sagged on the left.
"Hey, little brother." Dashen was vertical with hair wet and clean from a recent shower.
"Hi Dash."
"Head is better. Just a dull ache now. Tolerable. Thanks for that. Sorry I didn't mention them. You've had your hands full this last year dealing with your own crap, I didn't want to throw my issues on top of yours. I'll give the history though if you want. Later. You missed school by the way."
Hadn't even crossed my mind, which was strange. Sure enough the wall chrono had us in early afternoon. Wow. I'd slept forever.
"I let your teacher know this morning. Told her the truth really. I was sick and my little brother was looking after me."
"I tried."
"You did. You can get up now. I'm sure you're hungry and your face is all creased from your head smashed onto the pillow for so many hours."
My legs kicked off my covers and swung over the side of the bed. "How'd I get here?"
"Your own bed? Me. I was up early this morning. Felt better. You were out cold. I mean solid cold plastered against me. Drooling and everything too."
Subconsciously, I wiped at the side of my lips. "I did not drool."
"Tell that to your pillow cover. You should wash that thing, Mouse."
"I did not drool, Dash, I..." I fluffed my pillow to see, well, yup. There is was. "Okay, so I drooled a little."
"More like a river of slime."
"That's disgusting and I did not. Move." I got up, hurled my pillow at him, with some assistance from the Force and left the room. Dash followed and when I tried to go into our kitchenette to eat, he grabbed my shoulders and pulled me toward the bathroom instead.
"Nope. Shower first. Then food."
I huffed at him, not really having to listen to him. I mean, he was only my fake brother. Not my parent or even legal guardian. But I did listen. I always did. My best interests were always at heart.
Hot water flowing over me, my thoughts did float back to Colton's words from yesterday. That maybe I had helped in giving him someone to care about after his brother died. That maybe he and I were destined to journey into this next part of our lives together. I was a freshly turned eleven years old, but I wasn't foolish enough to think that there wasn't some truth to that. How all of this played out to lead us to each other. There was something to it.
"Damn it, Tanner, I said a shower, not a day long deluge."
Dashen yelled at me from the bathroom entrance.
I yelled at him to get out of the bathroom. He yelled at me to stop setting galaxy records for longest showers. Our bickering went on. How my life had changed in such a short time. I closed my eyes as a fresh wave of pain washed through me for all that I'd lost. Master Ayden. I had bonded to him at such a young age, our Force bond unusually strong Master Yoda had said. Then ripped away at his death, leaving me empty and terrified. Then Dashen came along. Our own bond forming quickly, not by Force, but by necessity and loss.
And now, here I was, standing in a shower, in a house, in a town, on a planet I'd never heard of until a year ago, bickering with a boy who I hadn't known even existed until we were lead to be each other's lives. If Master Ayden could see me now. He'd probably be laughing hysterically once he got over the confusion of it all. He was always with the good sense of humor and quick to find the funny side of strange situations.
A clean version of me bounded out of the bathroom towel drying my almost-shoulder length hair and then towel-whipping my brother with the same. A trick he'd taught me by the way. It required no Force effort, just good aim and solid sting.
He jumped, yelped, and took off after me at a run, tackling me on our couch and proceeding to beat me up. Well, kinda. Like real brothers did apparently. Wrestle and carry on until one of them called mercy. Things we never did as Jedi. Things we never thought of as Jedi.
Eventually relenting and allow me to sit up right, he tossed an arm around me and kissed the top of my head. "Thanks, little brother." He tapped his head. "All clear now. No more ache. You did that. Let's go eat."
I'd done that? Made his migraine disappear? Probably not, but if I'd helped in even the smallest of ways, it was worth all the drool-filled pillows in the galaxy.
Dash leapt the couch and toward the kitchen. I hurried to follow. After all, it was what little brothers did, right? Followed on the heels of the big brothers they adored.
Right after they'd made their migraine headaches disappear.
END
