Lightheaded: Chapter 5: Home Sweet Home
Standard Disclaimer: These characters belong to G. Lucas and T. Zahn. In other words: not mine.
Dedication: To anyone who loves hot chocolate.
Rating: NC-17/M
Spoilers/Timeline: After The Corellian Trilogy but before "Vision of the Future".
A/N: Do read and review.
Lightheaded
Chapter 05: Home Sweet Home
Mara stayed as long as it took to take a few holos of both the twins with wobbly legs. They obliged her, but were reticent after the wild ride, and they didn’t know her well enough to feel comfortable around her. Luke was sorry to see her leave, but she had to file the final report with Karrde for the transaction that just transpired, and had to return to their Coruscant office in order to do so.
“Goodbye Jacen, Jaina.” She shook hands solemnly with the twins. “Skywalker.” She gave him a nod as an informal farewell.
“How long more will you be on planet?” Luke called out after her retreating form.
She turned her head and replied cryptically, “I’ll be around.” Without losing her stride, she disappeared into the carnival crowd.
‘Well, that’s that.’ Luke thought. He turned to his charges. “Is it time to go home yet?” The twins, looking a little green around the gills, nodded weakly in unison. Taking pity on their conditions, Luke picked up his comlink to call for a pickup from Leia’s transport. They didn’t look like they would survive a trip on the inter-city shuttle, Luke thought with a fond look at the twins.
Out loud, he said to them, “That’s what you get when you eat two sugar clouds, a nerf-burger with all the toppings, and then go on a twister ride.”
Jacen groaned, and clutched at his stomach, while Jaina sat down on the ground abruptly. “I want to go home now, please,” she said to Luke faintly.
Luke looked around for Gharrbsh, and gestured for him to come over. Picking Jaina gently up, and Gharrbsh doing the same for Jacen, the party walked off in the direction of the transport pickup point.
-----
Luke wasn’t surprised to find the apartment empty except for Artoo. Leia was naturally at work, and Han had mentioned something about running diagnostic tests on some new equipment that the military was considering purchasing for the fleet, and Ackbar had wanted his opinion on them. He assumed that Anakin probably begged successfully to be brought along.
He and Gharrbsh laid the twins down on their beds in their shared bedroom (they had fallen asleep on the ride back home), and Luke went to his own room after they were settled. Deciding to wash off the dirt and grime from the carnival and the droid testing (had it only been that same morning? he wondered to himself), he stripped off his clothes and took a long, leisurely shower. He had just stepped out of the shower and was towelling off his hair when Leia returned.
“Hello! Anyone home?” Luke smiled at the mundanity of her greeting. Who knew the figureheads of the one-time rebellion lived such regular lives? He padded barefoot toward the living room.
“Stretch those Force muscles, dear sister, and tell me: how many of us are home?” Leia started at his voice, then smacked his arm. “Luke! Don’t scare me like that! I thought no one was home!”
Indignant at being smacked for no good reason, Luke exclaimed, “You just asked if there was anyone home! What’s the point of asking that if there’s no one around to answer it?”
“Well, it could have been a rhetorical question, or I could have been waiting for Artoo to answer it instead, you know.” Leia made an impatient sound in her throat, and then Luke felt her stretch out in the Force. She stopped quicker than he anticipated.
“Jaina and Jacen and you. That’s all I can feel.” She closed her eyes and checked once more. “Yes. That’s all I can feel… in my apartment, anyway. And they’re tired. And…sick?” She opened her eyes and looked at him, an unasked question in her eyes.
Luke was pleased. “That’s right! You’re really getting good at sensing people, Leia. The twins are fine,” he hurried to inform her. “Just a few too many sugar clouds, and a ride on the twister.”
“You let them go on that thing? No wonder they’re sick.” Leia shook her head and half smiled. “At least they’ll stop asking me next time a twister comes around, now that they know it’s like navigating the Maw in zero-G.” She stuck her tongue out, pretending to throw up.
Luke laughed at his sister’s antics. “You’re in a good mood this evening, what happened? Fey’lya resigned?”
Leia made another face. “Don’t spoil my good mood by mentioning that Bothan. I’m happy because we made a major breakthrough with another world which was part of the Imperial Remnant forces. Their world is extremely rich in metals, and goodness knows we’re never in excess of those, now that we’ve got the Navy-Shipyard agreement signed.” She stretched, then continued her explanation. “They’ve been waffling about with the NR agreement for about a week now, and we couldn’t figure out why they were nitpicking. It seemed like they were stalling for time, but we just didn’t know what they wanted.”
“A better trade agreement, perhaps?”
Leia shook her head. “The trade agreements are negotiated separately from the NR-Alliance agreement. The NR agreement is basically nothing more than a document stating that a world’s political allegiance lies with the NR, nothing more. Trade agreements are specific to worlds due to the idiosyncrasies of each world’s economic systems. And trade agreements take forever to detail, which is why we decided to separate the two agreements in the first place.”
Now it was Luke’s turn to shake his head. “That sounds simple enough. How come you take so long to do your work if it’s all so easy?” He sat down on the couch and switched on the holotube, then muted the sound.
“My dear brother, I’m not even going to justify that with an answer.” She sat down beside Luke and started to flip idly through the selection of channels. “Oh, by the way, the conclusion of this trade agreement means that there’ll be a reception.”
Luke picked up a cushion and smothered his groan. “No, no, no, no, no, no…”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, dear brother.” Leia pulled the cushion away from him.
Luke groaned. “Can’t you tell them that I’m on vacation on the planet? With my nephews and niece? Look - they’ve even got us on the holotube!” And suddenly realised that he was ON the holotube. Scrabbling around on the couch for the controller, he found it and un-muted the sound.
“…and then the Solo twins decided that it was time for an escapade! Leaving their Uncle at the caf stand, here is a shot of the twins after they got off from the carnival ride… looks like they had a rollicking good time, judging from the green of their faces! Ha-ha! Now you might have thought that the Jedi master might have been simply taking a breather from taking care of the children, but it looks like he had a secret agenda of his own! More when we return…”
Leia stared at the holotube in disbelief. “They’re eight! They don’t warrant any attention like this…what has gotten into these people? Is it a slow news day?” She stood up, her face showing warring emotions - halfway between a burst of hysterical laugher, and grave concern for the new security threat this sort of intense media attention would place on her children.
Luke turned off the holotube. “I guess they really didn’t have anything else to put on tonight, Leia. It’s not as if the twins are celebrities; they’re not going to end up in the gossip pages everyday. Don’t worry, we’ll probably never see anything like this ever again,” he said in a soothing voice to his sister.
“Don’t try to tell me that this is nothing, it reeks of the potential to become a really great big something.” Leia switched the holotube back on to the same channel, intent of watching the rest of the new report.
“…while the Jedi Master was cooling his heels with an unnamed brunette over at the caf stand! You can only see her profile from this shot that we have, but we know that all you single girls out there are dying to know who this lucky girl is, and our reporters are working overtime to dig that information out for you, so tune in again this time tomorrow for more!”
The Jedi Master was left watching the credits roll with his mouth wide open, while Leia smirked.
“Brother mine, I think I can safely say that the twins are safe from the holopress for now.”