Au: Kid Ibani-Tatooine Era Obi-Wan Kenobi

[last_kallig]

(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.

Comments

[acertainpov]

Ben nods. It tracks, after all, with what the Sith are like now. He also gives her a quick look up and down to estimate how old she looks - it turns out he's not good with judging age. Older than Luke, is all he's got.

"They discovered you late, then?"

[last_kallig]

"Not especially late, I think. I was about the same age as the others who were first year acolytes."

Ibani starts to eat the stew. "Those born into Sith families receive training nearly from birth, but those who aren't come to it much later. Little ones wouldn't survive the training on Korriban."

[acertainpov]

He pauses in his eating to glance up at her thoughtfully, then resumes. Again, it makes sense. All the Sith he's known were trained as Jedi first.

But he has no questions, he's just happy to let her talk.

[last_kallig]

"Even as old as we are, a lot of us die," she continues, voice quiet. "Korriban makes monsters, or corpses, of us."

She puts her spoon down just before her hand starts to shake. "And now it's all for nothing," her voice turns bitter and angry, at herself and the universe.

[acertainpov]

Oh, he knows that despair, even in someone so young, he's seen it.

"Not for nothing," he says quietly. "For now, at least you're free of that place."

[last_kallig]

"To what end?" Ibani asks him, looking up to meet his eyes, her gaze shadowed.

She laughs bitterly. "You don't know what I am, what I've DONE, Ben."

[acertainpov]

"No I don't," Ben admits.

He can guess, but he doesn't know.

"But I do know that what you've done doesn't dictate who you are now."

He finishes his stew and stands, glancing at hers. "Finish that off, I'm going to get our transport ready."

[last_kallig]

Ibani looks as though she's about to argue with him for a moment, then she forces her posture to relax.

No point in arguing now, after all. (What could he do to stop her, anyway, one force-blind old man?)

Ibani nods and works on finishing the stew. She's curious about what kind of transport Ben has, despite herself.

[acertainpov]

He keeps an eye on her until she visibly reacts, and then turns and walks out of the hut into the rising dawn.

(She's not fooling him, but he continues to act as if she is.)

From inside the hut she can probably hear him talking softly, familiarly to someone in the same gentle tones he usually uses. She'd be forgiven in thinking he was discussing the loan of a sandspeeder. When she does come outside she'll discover a small herd of banthas working through the sparse vegetation around his hut.

One of them, an aged female with massive double curled horns, is standing patiently while Ben slings a few supplies over her back. She has her head turned towards him, but when Ibani emerges she turns her head in that direction and gives a low bellow.

Ben glances over.

"Yes, this is the one. Her name is Ibani and she's visiting for now." It's a statement that offers no argument. "Ibani, come and meet Dolo, she'll be taking us to Mos Eisley."

[last_kallig]

It's his interaction with the animals that prompts Ibani to wonder, for the first time, if Ben is actually Force-blind. His communication with them seems too complete to be merely verbal. (And she has training as an assassin, she knows you can hide yourself completely with the Force, it's not THAT much of a stretch.) There's a feeling of suspicion as she meets his gaze, then she pushes it away.

"Hello, Dolo," Ibani says, reaching one hand out carefully toward the Bantha. She reaches out with the Force and projects 'not threat' and 'safe'.

[acertainpov]

Ben's beard twitches when the gaze is met. It could mean nothing, but it could also mean he was wondering when she would start getting suspicious.

Dolo moves her giant head toward the hand, nudges it once and makes a low rumbling noise. Ben finishes loading her up with his small load of black melons and empty goards, and turns a warmer smile to Ibani.

"She likes you," he tells her, and pats Dolo's side affectionately. The bantha slowly lowers so she's kneeling on her front legs and Ben offers a hand. "Can you climb up?"

[last_kallig]

Ibani pats the Bantha when her hand is nudged. That's what you do with animals, isn't it?

"I can," Ibani replies, judging the height. She takes Ben's offered hand, but it will be very easy for him to help her up onto Dolo, as if she weighs almost nothing. The Force can be useful like that.

[acertainpov]

Very easy, yes. He helps her up, and then climbs up behind her - though being the old Force-blind man he isn't, this takes a bit more effort.

He has it down to an art, just enough Force to make things possible, not enough to actually be distinguishable from the normal ebb and flow of the Force, and not enough to prevent a grunt of effort as he settles down directly behind her.

Dolo wears no muzzle, Ben rides her as a Tusken rider does, by sitting astride her and giving directions through the movement of his legs against her thick hide. Once he's settled, she lumbers up and starts to head away towards the Dune Sea. Behind them, the rest of the bantha herd begin to move way looking for food.

Ben leans behind him after a moment and produces a woven cloak for Ibani, which he drapes around her shoulders. "Best to keep the sun off while we ride."

[last_kallig]

"Thank you," she says quietly when he drapes the cloak around her shoulders.

"Will my being with you raise questions in Mos Eisley?" Unless Ben takes in strays all the time, people might expect him to be alone.

[acertainpov]

"I doubt it," Ben says. "No one knows me well enough to question another person accompanying me. It's a big town, relative for around here."

Also people don't tend to repeat questions around him. Funny that.

[last_kallig]

"That's good, although I do have means of making myself unnoticeable, if it turns out to be necessary."

There is a tiny flare of pride at that statement. The only purely positive emotion Ibani has felt about herself since she's been with Ben.

[acertainpov]

"Really?" He sounds ready to be very impressed. "Well maybe that would be useful. I'd like to see that at some point."

He knows he's going to have to hide her, as well as himself, as well as he hides Luke's presence, when they get there. He's not worried about today, but he's beginning to see a future stretching ahead of him that includes a teenage Sith apprentice, and he's going to need to make longer term plans for that.

[last_kallig]

"I can show you now, if you like?" Ibani offers.

If Ben assents, Ibani will seemingly vanish into thin air, gone from physical senses and the Force. (There are ways to detect a force cloak, if you know precisely what you're looking for.)

[acertainpov]

Ben raises an eyebrow, which takes the place of a full on double take on someone more prone to expressing emotions. He smiles softly and places a hand where he remembers her shoulder had been just a few seconds ago.

"Well isn't that something?"

He really is impressed. "I've never seen that before."

[last_kallig]

"It's not a common skill, even in my time," Ibani explains, after dropping the cloak. "It's a beast if you don't have a natural inclination for it. Technically, I'm not supposed to know how to use it yet."

"Even works on things without brains, like cameras and sensors, since you're bending light and sound and not just pushing at people's minds."

She's pleased at him being impressed with her, actually happy if only for a little while.

[acertainpov]

He smiles at her, determined to keep that positive feeling in her for as long as it can stay.

"You obviously have a very strong natural inclination for it."

And reliable against even a strong force user, he thinks. Very useful indeed.

[last_kallig]

She's actually smiling when she turns to face him. "I do. I think I was using the lesser cloak, the one that pushes on people's minds, before I even had any training in the Force."

"I could teach you how it's done, if you were force sensitive," she remarks idly, but she's watching him out of the corner of her eye. The suns are rising and the desert is starting to heat up as they make their way toward Mos Eisley.

[acertainpov]

Ben grins at her from under his hood.

"What use would I have for that?" he asks, lying in his tone. Obviously the uses for hiding himself, maybe even Luke or someone else, from prying eyes, would be numerous. But he's doing so well here.

[last_kallig]

Ibani grins back.

"Always good to have more options," Ibani quips. "And someone who lives all alone in the middle of nowhere might have more reasons to hide than most, no? There's always a bigger fish."

[acertainpov]

"I don't think of myself as a fish," he admits. "Not in this environment.

Dolo draws up eventually near a rock that protuded form the dunes and forms a small overhang with some shadow.

"Here's where you arrived. Did you want to look for something?"