Chapter Title: Future's Past
Series Title: Unlikely Brothers
POV: Dashen
Ages in this chapter: Tanner (9) Dashen (15)
Chapter Summary: The final night of the Scarlett Moon Festival has Dashen walking through difficult memories, but realizing how important those memories really are. Story takes place after the events of Chapter 39 - "Traditions".
Seventh night. Final night. Scarlett Moon Festival. We'd had a week. My best week in a very long time. From discovering new traditions to trying weird and delicious foods to laughing until our sides hurt to falling asleep with my newfound brother's head on my lap under the stars on our rooftop terrace.
It was the best week I'd had since before Kossi died. For a short time, it made me forget about some of that embedded heartbreak that never seemed to go away.
Today was the final night of the festival and almost as if on cue, the winds changed and a brisk chill descended over the town. Winter on Terra. It wasn't brutal, but it could be cold and messy at times.
We had spent the evening on the terrace where we'd begun the festival. Star gazing, stuffing our bellies with junk food, and smiling the entire time.
Colton had given up on us after day two, having to get back to business, but Tanner and I were in it for the full gala. Day seven was always the quietest of the time, celebrated with the silence and beauty of the final natural light show. Less colorful and more subdued than the one that began the festival, the closing show was about peace and life and solace. Reflections of the past. Hope for the future. It was meaningful, at least for the evening and few that followed.
After that, we all reverted to our normal lives, no matter the one we lived.
At some point, after the junk food, I'd forgone the chair for the floor, leaning back against the wall, looking up to see the lights begin over Kaolin in the distance. Tanner with me. His eyes were on the same. And like my own, I suspected his mind was floating back to his past.
That was confirmed when he asked me, "Hey Dash, how did you and your brother celebrate the festival? You never said."
Loaded question. Not so much for the answer, but for the emotion. If anything was grueling for me to talk about, it was Kossi. I'd lost him over two years ago and it still hurt every damn day. Talking about it was mostly impossible, not that I'd ever had anyone actually interested. Tanner was though. And not to dig into my past for information, but because he genuinely cared. For that reason, I gave him only the truth.
"Before our parents died, we'd do all seven days. Walk the town, watch the lights. Enjoy the music and food. After they passed and it was just me and him for those two years, our celebration was smaller, but we still did it. Mostly we watched the lights. They fascinated him. Kossi loved gazing at the stars, he liked to use the word mesmerize a lot. Not sure why, but the lights were his main joy this time of year. Always told me that one day he'd be flying into those stars. Through them. He never did get that ride on a starship he always longed for. The final night - tonight - we'd get our favorite meal, take it to the hillside out beyond the main city and watch the lights from there. I'd fall asleep and he'd shake me awake, not wanting me to miss a single second. Kossi would eventually fall asleep laying in my lap and I'd carry him home. There was this silly grin that never left his face the whole time. They were good days."
I fell into the memory. The little brother I'd adored and loved more than my own life.
Then my thoughts turned forward. To now. Looking around me. Instead of being on a hillside - we were on the roof. Instead of eating our favorite meal - we were eating junk food. Instead of Kossi next to me amazed at the stars as the lights flashed around them, it was Tanner. But he was watching those same stars with that same dreamy upward gaze. It wasn't Kossi latched to me, it was Tanner, having now slumped against me so that he lay backwards against my chest.
The innocent parallels were as strange as they were comforting.
I gave a huh under my breath and reached around to pull Tanner closer to me. Tanner wasn't Kossi. He would never be. But he'd moved into my life so quickly - and I'd allowed it just as quickly. I didn't know if, subconsciously, it because he reminded me so much of Kossi, or if it was just some type of weird destiny?
Whatever it was, it worked for the both of us.
"I'm glad you get to remember him and celebrate for him." Tanner went on. "You should never forget him. Not for one second."
Comforting of my fears, those words. I had such a difficult time not thinking about Kossi most days, I often worried that it would consume my life and long into the future, it would eventually eat me up. Either that or I'd feel so foolish for living in the memory of my dead little brother that I'd be judged for that and nothing else.
Tanner had no such concerns, encouraging me to remember always. A boy he'd never met. A boy he would never know.
I pulled Tanner tighter to me. "Thanks, Mouse. I needed to hear that."
He snuggled into my embrace. "I know."
Not the response I'd guessed, but I swear this kid understood me better in our short seven months together than I sometimes knew myself.
"I won't ever forget Master Ayden." He continued quietly. "I wish you could have met him, Dash. But that would never have been possible. If he hadn't died, I would have never met you."
Yup, and I'd be six feet under by now or rotting away in some deserted building somewhere. Good thoughts.
"Strange, huh? Guess we're stuck with each other."
"Yeah, you make a nice pillow."
"I'm good for something after all."
I'd said the last in jest, but there was some self-pitying truth to it. To his credit, Tanner jested back.
"Yeah, every now and then."
"Funny kid." He shivered slightly in the changing weather. "Hey, Mouse, maybe we should call it a festival and head inside?"
"Can we stay a bit longer? The lights are still going. Can we stay until the end? Did you and Kossi stay until the end?"
"We did." We always did. Kossi had insisted. Determined little thing that he was, he usually got his way too. Kossi savored every last second of the festival. So really who was I to deny Tanner the same? I nodded a chin onto the top of Tanner's head. "We can stay."
We settled in for the remaining hour of the light show, though I will admit to spending the entire time pushing back an annoying flood of tears. My thoughts wouldn't pull away from Kossi. Especially that final festival we shared together as brothers. Floating back to some of our conversation, there was some strange finality to it. Kossi spent part of the time wondering about my future and telling me that I'd be okay if anything ever happened to him. I shut him up from that kind of talk as he lay in my lap mesmerized by the lights and stars, my hand softly stroking his dark shaggy hair. It had gotten long in those two years since our parents had died, Kossi reminding me how much he wanted to be like his big brother. We shared the same color hair and eyes but were vastly different in most other ways, including our visions of the future. Kossi wanted to be in the stars. I wanted to keep feet planted on Terra. He never got his future. I got mine, but absent the most important part of that future.
It was strange, all of this was. My life. My past. My future. My now. Tanner and Kossi were so much more alike than I was with either. Not a clue what that meant or if it meant anything, but here I was with this Jedi kid that had adopted me as his big brother as much as I'd adopted him as my little brother. We had no history other than a traumatic past and yet I was here in some type of weird parallel two and a half years after losing Kossi.
It hurt my head as much as it kept me warm inside realizing I was fighting this thing with Tanner as much I was heartened by it. Mind pulled in both directions while knowing full well that Kossi would chastise me for pushing against the connection I now felt with Tanner.
What the hell did I know about life though? I was fifteen working on sixteen. I'd lost two loving parents and a brother that meant the whole entire galaxy to me. Now here I was working for a galaxy-class criminal and saving this boy who carried an Empire-sized target on his back. How I was even a functional human being at this point in time, well... it was beyond me. Tanner thought I was worth it. Colton too. I know Kossi would have as well. He always thought the best of me. Something else I was seeing that he and Tanner had in common. Why either of them looked up to me, hell if I knew. They apparently saw more than I did, more than a messed up kid who had quite the talent for screwing up his own life if given the opportunity.
Tanner. Kossi. They were both better people that I'd ever be.
I was hard on myself too. Always had been. Trying to live up to my father. My mother. They were hard working, decent people who lived for their family and their sons. Not sure I could claim the same. Colton would say differently though. He was convinced, just as Kossi and Tanner, that I was more than I believed myself to be.
One day maybe I'd believe the three of them.
Tanner moved some in my grasp. His head and eyes following the last
of the lights as they shot upward and over and around in patterns that seemed impossible. He was tired, I could feel his shoulders slumping further, but like Kossi, much to determined to ever give in until the end.
When the final lights went up and faded out, Tanner gently pushed up and off of me, then turned around the set his small arms around my neck, hugging with all his might. Some type of feeling washed over me, his magic I guess, and it warmed me as the temperature around us continued to drop.
"Love you, Dash. Thank you for sharing the festival with me. For sharing what you and Kossi had together."
Damn it.
This kid. This. Damn. Kid. Just...
My brain froze then. I said nothing. I couldn't.
But Tanner could and he broke the hug, clutching one of my hands.
"It's okay, Dash. It's hard to remember, but it's good to remember. Master Ayden always told me that emotions were not bad, it was what we did with them that mattered. It's true. You loved Kossi, but you put those emotions aside to save me. Save my life. Now you can remember him and you can be okay. I can help you. Colton can help you."
Nope, still no words. Still no movement except for the traitorous tears that rolled down my face. I felt like an idiot, which wasn't an unusual sensation for me, but at this moment? On this night?
I suspect seeing my inability to react like a normal human, Tanner got up and stayed connected to me through that same hand. He got me moving and inside the apartment and warm. I hadn't known I was chilled, having been worried about him and the falling temperatures. As I said, Tanner was rapidly coming to know me better than I knew myself.
To more of my surprise, once inside, Colton was there with a thick blanket to drape it over my shoulders and escort me to our couch.
My brain went foggy then. The cold or the emotion or both or none of the above. Did it even matter? I felt my legs being lifted off the floor and stretched out. A second blanket set over me. On the one side of me, Tanner sat. In the chair to the left of the couch, the large blond form of Colton. I was covered from both sides. Protected. Huh, I snorted to myself. Almost like Kossi had sent these two to look after me once he was gone.
And you know something? More and more I was beginning to think that was the case. He was eight years young when he passed, but wiser than his and my years put together.
I started fading through the fog, my eyes drying but closing. This stupid little smile ghosted across my face thinking once more of Kossi and all he apparently knew about me and my future of which I had no idea. He wasn't to be a part of it in the physical sense, but in every other way, I know it was he who steered me in the various directions. The directions where I needed to go in order to have the future he needed me to have without him.
This week that began with introducing Tanner to the Scarlett Moon Festival and new holiday traditions was ending, strangely enough, with me actually feeling a somewhat better about myself. The ghosted smile for Kossi morphed into one for Tanner as I felt his hand set on my shoulder.
I may have not always thought much of myself, but someone did. People I cared about. People who loved me.
Kossi knew I'd be okay. Maybe it was time I believed in that too.
END
