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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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."

Bonnie nods.

"Well, the idea of fosterin' or adoptin' is not really to get cheap labour, it's to provide a lovin' home as part of a family, like gainin' a son or daughter." she says. "But there are bad apples in every bunch. Bill and I never asked the boys to do more than light chores to help around the house."