last_kallig (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
last_kallig) wrote2020-09-18 06:42 pm
last_kallig) wrote2020-09-18 06:42 pm
Au: Kid Ibani-Tatooine Era Obi-Wan Kenobi
(OOC: Content warning for mention of torture, harm done by and to children, suicidal ideation and quite possibly suicide attempt.)
Ibani is a fourteen year old Sith Acolyte and her life of pain is written in her body for those who can read it. The scars of a slave collar on her neck, the letters and numbers carved under one eye like a bantha brand, those were only the beginning. She's been shocked regularly with force lightning for years as well as being subjected to more primitive methods of torture, and all have left their mark. Scars from teeth, claws and blades mark her skin, the echoes of broken bones still visible if you look the right way in the Force.
She should be dead, and she might be shortly, despite her struggles. She doesn't know how she got HERE, wherever this hot desert is, instead of the cold desert of Korriban. The gravity is wrong, the temperature is wrong, and while the Force shouted just before she landed here it is strangely silent now. (She might be insane, in which case she should put herself down before she harms anyone, but she's waiting for more evidence on that one way or the other.) She's dying by inches of heat and thirst and she can't push her body any further, even with all the Force tricks she knows.
She crawls on her belly under an overhang of rock, collapses. She can enter a trance, reduce her need for water, but that means that without help she will simply fail to ever wake, will slip away into the Force in death. It's a long shot, but she's worth more alive than dead even to the most nefarious of persons. (She knows better than to expect mercy or kindness from strangers.)
Ibani sinks into the Force, awaiting aid or death.
Ibani is a fourteen year old Sith Acolyte and her life of pain is written in her body for those who can read it. The scars of a slave collar on her neck, the letters and numbers carved under one eye like a bantha brand, those were only the beginning. She's been shocked regularly with force lightning for years as well as being subjected to more primitive methods of torture, and all have left their mark. Scars from teeth, claws and blades mark her skin, the echoes of broken bones still visible if you look the right way in the Force.
She should be dead, and she might be shortly, despite her struggles. She doesn't know how she got HERE, wherever this hot desert is, instead of the cold desert of Korriban. The gravity is wrong, the temperature is wrong, and while the Force shouted just before she landed here it is strangely silent now. (She might be insane, in which case she should put herself down before she harms anyone, but she's waiting for more evidence on that one way or the other.) She's dying by inches of heat and thirst and she can't push her body any further, even with all the Force tricks she knows.
She crawls on her belly under an overhang of rock, collapses. She can enter a trance, reduce her need for water, but that means that without help she will simply fail to ever wake, will slip away into the Force in death. It's a long shot, but she's worth more alive than dead even to the most nefarious of persons. (She knows better than to expect mercy or kindness from strangers.)
Ibani sinks into the Force, awaiting aid or death.
no subject
There're a couple of Faybo sniffing around Ben's hut when they return. They glance over at the humans with what could be interpreted as a hopeful expression.
Ben just shakes his head with tolerant disbelief. "We haven't even started preparing. Come back in an hour."
And they scurry off, just like that.
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She helps carry their finds into the hut, curious as to what the prep work will involve. She's never cooked before, so the process is something of a mystery.
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Inside he starts up the heater and breaks a piece of cactus into a pot. "Okay, let's see what you remember. Which pieces of this are edible?" He picks out some of the plants they've gathers and starts going through them again, making a conversation about it and repeating what they already discussed.
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Ibani gets most of what he asks right, her memory is pretty good! She doesn't flinch when she makes mistakes, doesn't feel distressed in the Force, but her muscles tense anyway. Her body remembers punishment, even though her mind has no reason to believe he will hurt her.
no subject
His Force presence is undetectable of course, but occasionally when Ibani tenses, she might find herself untensing quicker than she'd expect.
They got through all the vegetables in order: he shows her how to cut and prepare each one, gives information about nutrition where he knows it, and occasionally tells her what not to do.
But they all go into the pot together. There's not enough moisture for a stew, but it'll come together in something resembling a passable stir fry.
He even has spices in one of the pots lying around the place.
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"And now we let that cook for a bit while we train?"
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"I want to start from the beginning, if you don't mind. It might seem like I'm asknig you to do very basic things, I just want to get a feel for you."
Which means they'll be levitating cooking pots mostly this evening, sorry!
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Ibani doesn't mind moving pots around with the Force. Her approach though, is different than a Jedi's would be. She uses positive emotion to reach for the Force, but she always keeps control, she rides the wave and does not drown.
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"Don't reach so much," he says, regarding that very thing. "The Force is always there, just let it flow through you."
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It's just that Ben is asking her to do the exact opposite of what her previous instructors have pounded into her for years. It feels wrong, to not reach out to metaphorically meet the Force halfway.
Eventually, she makes a frustrated noise and says, "I don't, I don't understand." She doesn't like admitting that, for multiple reasons.
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"We'll get there. Just remember, there's no hurry."
But there will be meditation practice on this.
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"I think that's enough for tonight then," he says. "The food is ready."
They will take it slowly for now: perhaps more so that even he's comfortable with, to reinforce that above everything else, here she is safe.
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It will take a while, possibly a long while, for Ibani to believe in her bones that she's safe here.
But maybe they can manage that, together.