Fic: "Detention" -- Luke, Jacen, 1/1
Title: "Detention"
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Jacen Solo
Setting: Yavin 4 praxeum
Timeframe: Somewhere around the YJK/JJK era... before NJO, anyway.
Summary: Because the praxeum must have some equivalent to being sent to the headmaster's office.
A/N: I've had a hankering to write Jacen ever since finishing Invincible a few months ago. Starting with in the pre-traumatised-and-evil days seemed easiest, even if the YJK books are a hazy mist. (I seem to recall limb severings and a lot of bad puns...) Timeframe inaccuracies may therefore result. :p
X-posted @ TFN and swfanfic
He’d accounted for operational funds, equipment and plant purchase and maintenance, HoloNet access charges, shipment of uniforms - premade and customisable - and weapons supply and maintenance. He’d even included commercial passenger freight and hire of private vessels. So what had he missed?
“Uncle Luke?”
Luke keyed back to the top of the listing on his datapad. “Mm?”
Jacen rustled. “Do I have to stay much longer?”
“Have you finished your work?”
“Yes.”
Luke held up a hand, not looking up. “I’ll check it for you.”
“Mostly yes.”
“You mean, no?” Luke spared a reproving look in his nephew’s direction.
Jacen fidgeted. “I already know all of this.”
“All of it? That’s impressive. What are the main law systems in use in the Core?”
Jacen let forth an expressive sigh, which to Luke’s highly attuned ear sounded exactly like teenage petulance. He watched Jacen’s gaze edge back down toward his datapad, then flick back up. “Coruscant,” Jacen said, “Camaas, Corellia.”
Luke keyed to the next line of his figures. “Law systems, not planets.”
Jacen slumped. Then he straightened. “The main justice system,” he said with a hint of smugness, “is natural justice. And the light side of the Force. All law systems are in service to it.”
Luke looked over his datapad, his eyebrow quirked. “And who defines what natural justice is?”
“No one. It just is. Everyone follows their conscience, and it’s led by natural justice and the guidance of the Force. Which operates in all things-”
“Yes.” Luke cut off the beginnings of a familiar speech. “But what happens when you have one being whose culture and beliefs lead them to judge that revenge is honourable? Do you allow that their conscience is clear, and that natural justice is served? Or does natural justice rule that for one person to kill another is immoral, regardless of extenuating circumstance?”
“Well, revenge is wrong,” Jacen said, in the tones of the blatantly obvious.
“What if person killed was guilty of many deaths? And would continue to murder unless stopped? Their death would save the lives of future victims.”
Jacen opened his mouth, narrowed his eyes at nothing, and closed his mouth. “Well,” he said. “Maybe-” He stopped and chewed his bottom lip in thought. Then he rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, sinking back into the chair.
“You raise a worthwhile point,” Luke said, “but in service of a poor end.” He nodded to the ‘pad and cards on Jacen’s desk. “Back to work.”
“But don’t you think that justice is bigger than statutes and charters and… this?” Jacen waved the datapad.
“I think that I set the study of Core region law systems for a reason,” Luke said. “And I further think that you’re supposed to be in here as punishment.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not fair at all.”
“Pardon?” Luke said.
“Nothing,” Jacen muttered. He leaned over his datapad.
Luke tried to find where he’d been up to. He pulled one of the readouts from the desk over. Emergency funds available to Jedi in various planetary accounts-no, that was under operational expenses. Medical equipment and expenses? He flicked through, found nothing, sent off a message to Cilghal, then found the report she’d forwarded a week ago and cancelled his message.
“Uncle Luke?”
“Yes, Jacen?”
“What happens to a bantha if it goes into the rain?”
“It wouldn’t,” Luke said absently. “The fur’s protection against sandstorms, which is about the only real weather condition…” He looked up to meet an exasperated stare. “Oh. What, then?”
“It gets wet.”
Luke sighed.
“Tenel Ka thought that was funny.”
“Mm,” Luke said. “Keep working, Jacen, and you might get out of here in time to see her again before you go grey.”
Cilghal had sent him a confused response. Luke sent something placating back, and went back to his columns of figures, half-wishing that Mara were here. For all the normal reasons, and-if he was honest, and speaking in precise terms of right here and right now-because she was frighteningly good at this kind of thing.
Now if he took in asset depreciation …
“Uncle Luke,” Jacen said. “What do you get if you cross an eopie with a krayt dragon?”
Luke gave him a wary look. “I don’t know.”
“Me neither, no one wanted to get close enough to check.” Jacen marked a piece of flimsi and screwed up his nose. “I don’t know if that works. What are eopies, exactly?”
“They’re hairless things, ugly, eat weeds mostly,” Luke said. “Jacen, are you writing jokes over there?”
The flimsi slid under another sheet as Jacen assumed a highly guilty expression. “Jokes? I don’t write them, they come to me on the spot.”
“Right,” Luke said. “That piece of flimsi, please. You can have it back later.”
Jacen looked torn. “I won’t tell a soul,” Luke promised. “Can I have the flimsi?”
Dragging his feet, Jacen brought it over. Luke glanced over the scrawled writing, smiled, and put it under his sheets. “They’re good. Why the Tatooine theme?”
Jacen shrugged, not quite covering a pleased edge. “I was reading about Tatooine after what you said about the moisture vaporators the other day,” he said. “I thought it sounded interesting.”
“Ah,” Luke said, surprised.
“What are you working on?” Jacen said.
“The organisational budget report for the Senate,” Luke said.
“Oh,” Jacen said, losing all interest. “I’ll go back to work.”
“I won’t stop you,” Luke said.
Jacen re-took his seat, slouching low and glaring at his datapad. After a few minutes, he sighed loudly. Luke congenially ignored it. He glanced over a careful judged span of time later, eyed Jacen’s furrowed expression, and went back to his own datapad.
Jacen’s initial silence lasted about as long as Luke had expected, filtering to a rustling restlessness and a string of increasingly heavy sighs before twenty minutes had passed. He amiably ignored those too, and Jacen managed to contain himself for about another minute. “What system of law do they use on Tatooine?”
“Not much of one,” Luke said. “And last time I checked, Tatooine wasn’t in the Core.”
Jacen’s chair creaked as he rocked back on it. He lasted a few more minutes, then said, “What do clouds wear under their clothes?” He ignored Luke’s warning look. “Thunderwear!”
“Jacen,” Luke said, “you do realise that your being in my office, with me, is supposed to be imposing? That is the point of this whole exercise.”
Jacen looked unconvinced. “Coruscant’s laws are stupid.”
“I’m sure your mom would be overjoyed to hear that from you, considering the amount of work she’s contributed to their development over the years.”
Even mid-sulk, Jacen had enough sense to look embarrassed. “It’s completely unfair that I’m even here.”
“I think that’s for me to judge.”
“You can make the punishment, but I can still judge it as unfair. Which it is.”
“To you, maybe.”
“Why isn’t Anakin here? He was just as involved.”
“If you consider allowing himself to be goaded by his older brother, then perhaps.”
“I didn’t goad.”
“Don’t even try, Jacen.”
“Well, I am the senior apprentice. And he acts like he knows everything about the Force, but he doesn’t. He’s just a dumb kid who thinks he’s special.”
Luke lifted an eyebrow and turned over another page of his disordered collection of flimsi-plast sheets. “I don’t think you actually believe that.”
“I do.”
“You know, there is no reason at all for you to feel threatened by Anakin. You’re both very powerful, but your strongest areas are different to Anakin’s. Just as your personalities are very different, and as your interests and skills are different.”
Jacen spluttered. “I do not feel threatened.”
“Maybe threatened isn’t the right word. The only reason Anakin is at the praxeum earlier than you were is because the junior class wasn’t prudent when you and Jaina were younger. That’s it.”
“Tell him that.”
“I’m telling you. You need to learn not to allow insecurities about your own abilities to govern how you respond to others. Your insight and empathy are fine qualities, and I value them a great deal. But you need to serve them fully, in a way that feels right to you, not distort them to suit other purposes.”
There was an interested glimmer in Jacen’s expression. “What about Anakin?”
“I’m not talking about Anakin.”
Jacen exhaled. “I can’t just stand there while he acts like he’s prince of the Jedi.”
“You can open your eyes a little wider and see that your brother’s younger than you are, is just beginning his formal training in the Force, and tends to take a completely different approach to you in most things, which doesn’t make his course automatically wrong. And if you still think you can offer him advice, do it in a way that doesn’t say he’s stupid. No one ever learns by being told that.”
Jacen’s expression flickered as he thought through this. A frown crept back onto his face, probably because he couldn’t find a point to argue with in there. He sat back with a defeated air, though there was still enough indignation in the mix that Luke knew most of what he’d said had bounced off that storm front of sulk. “You’re lucky you didn’t have to grow up with siblings,” Jacen grumbled.
“I don’t know about that,” Luke said, dragging a file on currency analysis over to the calculation corner of the screen of his ‘pad. “It wasn’t what I’d call fun.”
“Was it lonely?”
“Very.”
Jacen went distant briefly, reaching out somewhere-not very far, Luke suspected. “Sometimes I forget that you and Mom didn’t grow up together,” Jacen said. “I can’t imagine not having Jaina there. Wasn’t it like-” He paused, clearly grasping for words to express something so strange he couldn’t articulate it. “Not being whole?” he finished with, helplessly.
“It’s a little different for you and Jaina,” Luke said gently. “You guys have always been together. And your mom and I did still have a connection, of sorts. We just never knew what it was, or that it was there.”
“Yeah, I think I know what that would feel like. Kind of.”
“Try to remember, too, that Anakin has always been on the outside looking at that bond you and Jaina share,” Luke said. “And that he looks up to both of you a great deal, but you especially, because Jaina is in many ways more like him than you are. He’s often reaching out to impress you in ways you don’t see.”
Jacen’s expression registered doubt. “Yeah, maybe.”
Luke checked his chrono. It was creeping into evening. Outside, the jungle would be cooling as the sun set, hunkering under the shadows of the orange twilit sky. “It’ll be mealtime soon,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve done so far.”
Jacen crossed and handed Luke his datapad. As Luke had expected, the sections of writing weren’t badly done, certainly not unacceptable, but they were far below Jacen’s usual standard. He lifted his gaze as Jacen shifted slightly, restless. He stood with his weight reasonably well balanced, at least. “Go,” Luke said, “but I want this finished and handed in to me the day after tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Jacen said.
Luke handed the datapad back. Jacen took it with a careless murmur of thanks and hastily swung around, stuffing the ‘pad into his tunic.
“Jacen,” Luke said, holding up the flimsi of jokes.
Jacen gave him a grin, half-embarrassed, and stepped back to take the sheet, folding it away into the same pocket.
“Enjoy the meal,” Luke said, as Jacen swung out of the door.
He looked back at his report, in the new and wonderfully peaceful silence. He was wondering how best to phrase I had the praxeum shuttles refitted because they handled worse than a heatsick rancor, when he suddenly straightened and cursed.
Food.
He’d left food out of the expense calculations.
Luke eyed the columns of data that were now completely invalidated, pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, then put his datapad aside. He was, he decided, going to see what the meal was, and then maybe he’d call his wife.
In the morning he’d redo the calculations-including the food.
Stopping to pick up Jacen’s jacket, strewn over the back of a chair and forgotten, Luke headed for the mess hall.
[end]
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Jacen Solo
Setting: Yavin 4 praxeum
Timeframe: Somewhere around the YJK/JJK era... before NJO, anyway.
Summary: Because the praxeum must have some equivalent to being sent to the headmaster's office.
A/N: I've had a hankering to write Jacen ever since finishing Invincible a few months ago. Starting with in the pre-traumatised-and-evil days seemed easiest, even if the YJK books are a hazy mist. (I seem to recall limb severings and a lot of bad puns...) Timeframe inaccuracies may therefore result. :p
X-posted @ TFN and swfanfic
He’d accounted for operational funds, equipment and plant purchase and maintenance, HoloNet access charges, shipment of uniforms - premade and customisable - and weapons supply and maintenance. He’d even included commercial passenger freight and hire of private vessels. So what had he missed?
“Uncle Luke?”
Luke keyed back to the top of the listing on his datapad. “Mm?”
Jacen rustled. “Do I have to stay much longer?”
“Have you finished your work?”
“Yes.”
Luke held up a hand, not looking up. “I’ll check it for you.”
“Mostly yes.”
“You mean, no?” Luke spared a reproving look in his nephew’s direction.
Jacen fidgeted. “I already know all of this.”
“All of it? That’s impressive. What are the main law systems in use in the Core?”
Jacen let forth an expressive sigh, which to Luke’s highly attuned ear sounded exactly like teenage petulance. He watched Jacen’s gaze edge back down toward his datapad, then flick back up. “Coruscant,” Jacen said, “Camaas, Corellia.”
Luke keyed to the next line of his figures. “Law systems, not planets.”
Jacen slumped. Then he straightened. “The main justice system,” he said with a hint of smugness, “is natural justice. And the light side of the Force. All law systems are in service to it.”
Luke looked over his datapad, his eyebrow quirked. “And who defines what natural justice is?”
“No one. It just is. Everyone follows their conscience, and it’s led by natural justice and the guidance of the Force. Which operates in all things-”
“Yes.” Luke cut off the beginnings of a familiar speech. “But what happens when you have one being whose culture and beliefs lead them to judge that revenge is honourable? Do you allow that their conscience is clear, and that natural justice is served? Or does natural justice rule that for one person to kill another is immoral, regardless of extenuating circumstance?”
“Well, revenge is wrong,” Jacen said, in the tones of the blatantly obvious.
“What if person killed was guilty of many deaths? And would continue to murder unless stopped? Their death would save the lives of future victims.”
Jacen opened his mouth, narrowed his eyes at nothing, and closed his mouth. “Well,” he said. “Maybe-” He stopped and chewed his bottom lip in thought. Then he rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, sinking back into the chair.
“You raise a worthwhile point,” Luke said, “but in service of a poor end.” He nodded to the ‘pad and cards on Jacen’s desk. “Back to work.”
“But don’t you think that justice is bigger than statutes and charters and… this?” Jacen waved the datapad.
“I think that I set the study of Core region law systems for a reason,” Luke said. “And I further think that you’re supposed to be in here as punishment.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not fair at all.”
“Pardon?” Luke said.
“Nothing,” Jacen muttered. He leaned over his datapad.
Luke tried to find where he’d been up to. He pulled one of the readouts from the desk over. Emergency funds available to Jedi in various planetary accounts-no, that was under operational expenses. Medical equipment and expenses? He flicked through, found nothing, sent off a message to Cilghal, then found the report she’d forwarded a week ago and cancelled his message.
“Uncle Luke?”
“Yes, Jacen?”
“What happens to a bantha if it goes into the rain?”
“It wouldn’t,” Luke said absently. “The fur’s protection against sandstorms, which is about the only real weather condition…” He looked up to meet an exasperated stare. “Oh. What, then?”
“It gets wet.”
Luke sighed.
“Tenel Ka thought that was funny.”
“Mm,” Luke said. “Keep working, Jacen, and you might get out of here in time to see her again before you go grey.”
Cilghal had sent him a confused response. Luke sent something placating back, and went back to his columns of figures, half-wishing that Mara were here. For all the normal reasons, and-if he was honest, and speaking in precise terms of right here and right now-because she was frighteningly good at this kind of thing.
Now if he took in asset depreciation …
“Uncle Luke,” Jacen said. “What do you get if you cross an eopie with a krayt dragon?”
Luke gave him a wary look. “I don’t know.”
“Me neither, no one wanted to get close enough to check.” Jacen marked a piece of flimsi and screwed up his nose. “I don’t know if that works. What are eopies, exactly?”
“They’re hairless things, ugly, eat weeds mostly,” Luke said. “Jacen, are you writing jokes over there?”
The flimsi slid under another sheet as Jacen assumed a highly guilty expression. “Jokes? I don’t write them, they come to me on the spot.”
“Right,” Luke said. “That piece of flimsi, please. You can have it back later.”
Jacen looked torn. “I won’t tell a soul,” Luke promised. “Can I have the flimsi?”
Dragging his feet, Jacen brought it over. Luke glanced over the scrawled writing, smiled, and put it under his sheets. “They’re good. Why the Tatooine theme?”
Jacen shrugged, not quite covering a pleased edge. “I was reading about Tatooine after what you said about the moisture vaporators the other day,” he said. “I thought it sounded interesting.”
“Ah,” Luke said, surprised.
“What are you working on?” Jacen said.
“The organisational budget report for the Senate,” Luke said.
“Oh,” Jacen said, losing all interest. “I’ll go back to work.”
“I won’t stop you,” Luke said.
Jacen re-took his seat, slouching low and glaring at his datapad. After a few minutes, he sighed loudly. Luke congenially ignored it. He glanced over a careful judged span of time later, eyed Jacen’s furrowed expression, and went back to his own datapad.
Jacen’s initial silence lasted about as long as Luke had expected, filtering to a rustling restlessness and a string of increasingly heavy sighs before twenty minutes had passed. He amiably ignored those too, and Jacen managed to contain himself for about another minute. “What system of law do they use on Tatooine?”
“Not much of one,” Luke said. “And last time I checked, Tatooine wasn’t in the Core.”
Jacen’s chair creaked as he rocked back on it. He lasted a few more minutes, then said, “What do clouds wear under their clothes?” He ignored Luke’s warning look. “Thunderwear!”
“Jacen,” Luke said, “you do realise that your being in my office, with me, is supposed to be imposing? That is the point of this whole exercise.”
Jacen looked unconvinced. “Coruscant’s laws are stupid.”
“I’m sure your mom would be overjoyed to hear that from you, considering the amount of work she’s contributed to their development over the years.”
Even mid-sulk, Jacen had enough sense to look embarrassed. “It’s completely unfair that I’m even here.”
“I think that’s for me to judge.”
“You can make the punishment, but I can still judge it as unfair. Which it is.”
“To you, maybe.”
“Why isn’t Anakin here? He was just as involved.”
“If you consider allowing himself to be goaded by his older brother, then perhaps.”
“I didn’t goad.”
“Don’t even try, Jacen.”
“Well, I am the senior apprentice. And he acts like he knows everything about the Force, but he doesn’t. He’s just a dumb kid who thinks he’s special.”
Luke lifted an eyebrow and turned over another page of his disordered collection of flimsi-plast sheets. “I don’t think you actually believe that.”
“I do.”
“You know, there is no reason at all for you to feel threatened by Anakin. You’re both very powerful, but your strongest areas are different to Anakin’s. Just as your personalities are very different, and as your interests and skills are different.”
Jacen spluttered. “I do not feel threatened.”
“Maybe threatened isn’t the right word. The only reason Anakin is at the praxeum earlier than you were is because the junior class wasn’t prudent when you and Jaina were younger. That’s it.”
“Tell him that.”
“I’m telling you. You need to learn not to allow insecurities about your own abilities to govern how you respond to others. Your insight and empathy are fine qualities, and I value them a great deal. But you need to serve them fully, in a way that feels right to you, not distort them to suit other purposes.”
There was an interested glimmer in Jacen’s expression. “What about Anakin?”
“I’m not talking about Anakin.”
Jacen exhaled. “I can’t just stand there while he acts like he’s prince of the Jedi.”
“You can open your eyes a little wider and see that your brother’s younger than you are, is just beginning his formal training in the Force, and tends to take a completely different approach to you in most things, which doesn’t make his course automatically wrong. And if you still think you can offer him advice, do it in a way that doesn’t say he’s stupid. No one ever learns by being told that.”
Jacen’s expression flickered as he thought through this. A frown crept back onto his face, probably because he couldn’t find a point to argue with in there. He sat back with a defeated air, though there was still enough indignation in the mix that Luke knew most of what he’d said had bounced off that storm front of sulk. “You’re lucky you didn’t have to grow up with siblings,” Jacen grumbled.
“I don’t know about that,” Luke said, dragging a file on currency analysis over to the calculation corner of the screen of his ‘pad. “It wasn’t what I’d call fun.”
“Was it lonely?”
“Very.”
Jacen went distant briefly, reaching out somewhere-not very far, Luke suspected. “Sometimes I forget that you and Mom didn’t grow up together,” Jacen said. “I can’t imagine not having Jaina there. Wasn’t it like-” He paused, clearly grasping for words to express something so strange he couldn’t articulate it. “Not being whole?” he finished with, helplessly.
“It’s a little different for you and Jaina,” Luke said gently. “You guys have always been together. And your mom and I did still have a connection, of sorts. We just never knew what it was, or that it was there.”
“Yeah, I think I know what that would feel like. Kind of.”
“Try to remember, too, that Anakin has always been on the outside looking at that bond you and Jaina share,” Luke said. “And that he looks up to both of you a great deal, but you especially, because Jaina is in many ways more like him than you are. He’s often reaching out to impress you in ways you don’t see.”
Jacen’s expression registered doubt. “Yeah, maybe.”
Luke checked his chrono. It was creeping into evening. Outside, the jungle would be cooling as the sun set, hunkering under the shadows of the orange twilit sky. “It’ll be mealtime soon,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve done so far.”
Jacen crossed and handed Luke his datapad. As Luke had expected, the sections of writing weren’t badly done, certainly not unacceptable, but they were far below Jacen’s usual standard. He lifted his gaze as Jacen shifted slightly, restless. He stood with his weight reasonably well balanced, at least. “Go,” Luke said, “but I want this finished and handed in to me the day after tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Jacen said.
Luke handed the datapad back. Jacen took it with a careless murmur of thanks and hastily swung around, stuffing the ‘pad into his tunic.
“Jacen,” Luke said, holding up the flimsi of jokes.
Jacen gave him a grin, half-embarrassed, and stepped back to take the sheet, folding it away into the same pocket.
“Enjoy the meal,” Luke said, as Jacen swung out of the door.
He looked back at his report, in the new and wonderfully peaceful silence. He was wondering how best to phrase I had the praxeum shuttles refitted because they handled worse than a heatsick rancor, when he suddenly straightened and cursed.
Food.
He’d left food out of the expense calculations.
Luke eyed the columns of data that were now completely invalidated, pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, then put his datapad aside. He was, he decided, going to see what the meal was, and then maybe he’d call his wife.
In the morning he’d redo the calculations-including the food.
Stopping to pick up Jacen’s jacket, strewn over the back of a chair and forgotten, Luke headed for the mess hall.
[end]