milliways_bar | (no subject)

Chirrut spends hours tending the tea plants today, replanting groupings of three or four into individual plants, arranging and re-arranging the pots to best find the warmth (and supposedly light) of the sun, making sure the watering system would cover the new arrangement of plants... there was a lot to do. It is peaceable work and the time flies by.

Baze isn't in his brewery when Chirrut is done, so he meanders upstairs to get cleaned up. While he cannot see muddy fingerprints, he has it on good authority that they're highly annoying.

The pain catches him once he's inside. Sudden loss, sharp and aching as a stab through the chest turns any scream into a shocked breath of air, almost silent in its agony.

Baze.

That sense of knowing where Baze is, that he's alright... it's gone. He's gone.

Chirrut isn't sure how long he spends on his knees, frozen in that moment, too stunned to figure out what comes next. He can only barely remember a time Baze wasn't by his side, not too far away. He's still not, Chirrut knows in his head, but his heart doesn't want to listen. His heart is too busy screaming.

Finally he picks himself up, dusting himself off by habit. Downstairs, he should head downstairs, ask Bar, she'd... well, she'd have the best chance of knowing. Then maybe X, if he doesn't find his answer. Then... Too much, that's enough of a plan. He turns back to the door, but... no.

Muddy fingerprints are annoying. He's been told this.

Washing his hands doesn't take long. There's... there's no rush now.

When Chirrut gets to the Bar, he is greeted with a note, written on paper that would have been painfully precious in NiJedha. To anyone watching, his expression does not change as he reads it over and over again, tracing the raised ink with gentle fingers.

This? Baze died for this? So senseless. Baze deserved more.

Chirrut has a quiet word with the Bar, and is rewarded with a stack of books and a copy of his reader, which he takes to one of the chairs by the fire, a rat following behind with a cup of tea. Not Sapir - a surprise tea. For Baze. The books are on brewing beer and moonshine, a project he's wholly unsuited for, but he intends to master.

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"Yes, Baze is feeling better now." Chirrut confirms, with an echo of a smile. "And he didn't give the cold to me, no matter how hard he tried."

"You sure? You don't look too good." Bonnie says.

"I made a big batch of soup the other day, if you'd like some?"

[ooc: Bedtime for me, but couldn't leave the poor chap on his own <3]

Edited 2017-09-12 23:49 (UTC)

Baze would be upset if Chirrut didn't eat. However, food almost sounds abhorrent at the moment. He knows it was difficult for weeks after Eiko died...

"No, but thank you, that is very kind." Chirrut replies politely, because Baze doesn't get to have a vote if he can't be here to give it.

She watches him for a moment. His look still doesn't seem quite right, brave and unreadable as he is, but she doesn't know him well enough to be pushy and maternal, so she looks around to see if Baze is around.

The rat arrives with the tea tray, the pot steaming with something spicy and utterly unlike his favored Sapir, two cups set up for service.

Two, not three.

Chirrut also doesn't have the tissues he usually kept around for Baze since this whole bizarre cold started, hasn't left a space for him near the fire.

"Milk or sugar?" Chirrut asks, politely, as he pours.

"Both, thank you." Bonnie says.

"If you ever want to talk, there's a support group here, meets at the start of the month usually."

Chirrut tilts his head in a gesture of confusion as he offers a cup to Bonnie.

"I.. am sorry, is there a code of silence here?" He didn't think so, the murmur of conversation throughout the bar continuing as always, but there's always the risk of missing some local custom."

Bonnie looks confused too for a moment, then thinks she understands what he means.

"I mean if you ever want to talk about things that are troubling you to people you can trust." she says.

This... doesn't actually help matters much, though he's glad no one expects him to be silent in general.

"Are people generally untrustworthy here?" While he can think of a couple people he'd add to that particular list off the top of his head, he's found the inhabitants of heaven to be on the whole decent folk.

"Oh dear, I ain't explainin' it very well." Bonnie says.

She tries again.

"On Earth, sometimes people like to talk about their problems because it makes them feel better. They can talk to friends and family of course, but sometimes they come together in groups, or they see a special healer, if they cain't talk to those they know, or they need more help."

"Oh, oh I understand." Chirrut nods, with a wry half-smile. "I do not need a healer, but thank you. I am quite well."

He's sure Baze would argue, seeing as Baze usually ran on the default that Chirrut was probably hiding some injury or other, but Baze doesn't get a vote right now.

Bonnie nods, and sips her tea.

"This tea is lovely. Would you like me to leave you be?"

"If you wish... did you need someone to speak to?" Chirrut asks, curious as to what drew her over in the first place. "You don't need to rush off."

"I'm always one fer company." Bonnie says. "I just came over because you were on yer lonesome and you usually ain't, and I wasn't sure if you weren't well or Baze was laid up in bed."

"If I wasn't well, I doubt I would have been allowed to get up. I've never said as much to his face, but Baze could be very much like a mother hen with only one chick, when I had some injury or illness when we were living." Chirrut explains, his voice exceedingly wry.

"I recognise the traits." Bonnie says. "He's like a big hairy version of me, huh."

She smiles slightly. "You two been together a long time?"

"Oh yes. He's owed me a life debt since he was twelve." Chirrut replies solemnly, sipping his tea.

If Baze is going to leave him to figure out heaven on his own, Chirrut is going to find his own ways to pass the time.

"A life debt? Dare I ask?" Bonnie asks.

"It is a long and only slightly sordid story, but at least at the end of the day he wasn't sold as a slave to the Hutt Syndicate." Chirrut avows, still very solemn. It's been a long time since his stories haven't been interrupted by Baze rushing to correct him.

"They sell children as slaves in yer world?"

"What, there is no slavery in yours? I have found slavers tend to care very little about ages, their focus being more on profit." Chirrut sounds astounded - an entire world where slavery doesn't exist, what a paradise.

"Not legally, in most places." Bonnie says. "I mean, there are kids that are pretty poor, and in poor working conditions, but we don't sell people in the US any more."

"Any more?" Chirrut echos, pouring himself more tea. "It was once an accepted practice?"

Bonnie nods.

"Not that long ago, really. About a hundred years back from my time. But some of my boys, foster kids, they were given to folks who put them to work on farms and things. Not slaves, as such, but cheap labour. I had quite a few ex-labour kids. Usually the ones who rebelled or ran away."

Chirrut notes the choice of words, and doesn't comment - that sort of semantics doesn't deserve a fight, unless he had a reason to champion the cause.

"So you have some frame of reference - anyway, he wasn't one of those."

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is_the_motion - 2017-09-21 21:36 (UTC) - Expand