Never Far From The Wroshyr Tree
By Sabacc Gal
Never far from the wroshyr tree does the treasured seed-cone fall.
– Wookiee proverb
"Whatcha got there, buddy?" Han murmurs. He hikes Jacen up higher, eases a sticky fist away from the boy's mouth.
Fuzzy feet thump against Han's ribs. Jacen huffs and frowns, clinging stubbornly to his prize as Han gently pries it out of his grasp.
A howl of protest shatters the ambient buzz of diplomatic chit-chat.
With a mumbled, "Excuse me," Han tucks the baby against his shoulder, ignoring the looks – annoyed, sympathetic, or just plain amused – as he threads his way through the crowded conference hall.
In the relative quiet of the foyer he examines the golden medallion, glittering with the drool-guilded gems and insignia of the Valaajii Royal House.
"Han?" Leia has followed him out, Jaina on her hip. "What's wrong?"
"He's okay," he reassures her. Wordlessly he hands her Jacen's latest chew-toy, last seen nestled deep within the ample bosom of the visiting Empress Mother of Valaaj.
"Oh, no…" There's weariness in Leia's voice.
The Force is strong with this one, Luke would chuckle. But Han knows better; recalls, a lifetime ago, his own small fingers deftly relieving unsuspecting market-goers of their valuables.
"Luckily it's a little too gaudy to swallow."
"You were supposed to be watching him," Leia chides. Jacen sniffs, begins to sob again.
"She asked to hold him for a minute. I could hardly say no." He bounces Jacen lightly on his arm. "Can I help it if he's a scoundrel with the ladies?" He nuzzles Jacen's neck, eliciting a toothless, teary-eyed giggle. "You are a little scoundrel, aren't you. Lucky for us your mom's a sucker for scoundrels." Han grins up at Leia disarmingly.
Leia clucks, unamused, as she wipes the medallion on her shimmersilk blouse.
"You want me to put it back?" Han volunteers. "I'm a little out of practice but– "
"Don't even joke about it." She closes her hand over the pendant, not quite managing to conceal it within her palm. "I'll tell security I found it on the floor."
"Oh, yeah, that's much more honest, Princess." She has a point, though. If it turns out he's lost his touch, having to explain his wayward fingers could be politically disastrous.
He nuzzles his son again. "See what you've done?" he murmurs. "Now your mom's an accessory."
Jacen hiccups apologetically.
Leia gives them a long-suffering glance before heading back into the hall.
"Hey, guys. I thought it was naptime. Where's Threepio?"
"Naptime!" Jacen echoes.
"Yeah, naptime." Han scoops a giggling Jaina up one-handedly from the carpet of toys underfoot. "Where's Threepio?"
"Threepio! Naptime!"
"Uh huh. Where is he?" He heads for the door connecting the playroom to the nursery.
"Naptime!" There's triumph in Jaina's voice, pudgy arm pointing at the golden figure slumped forward over the crib railing, the droid's eyes dimmed in what might justifiably be deemed exhaustion.
He glances at the toddler slung happily upside-down over his arm. "Naptime, huh?"
"Naptime!" she shouts gleefully.
He leans over Threepio's crumpled form, hits the activation switch.
The prissy droid's eyes light up. "Captain Solo?" The droid struggles to right himself, doing a disturbingly convincing pretense of easing the kinks out of a stiff back. "Sir, I'm terribly sorry. I was putting Mistress Jaina down for her nap and I don't know what –"
"Forget it. Just go start dinner, will you?"
"Of course, sir."
Han sets Jaina down beside Jacen, crouching so he's eye-level with the twins. "Listen," he begins as the droid shuffles out of the room. "No more naptime for Threepio. Got it, guys?" He sighs conspiratorially at the kids. "Mom doesn't like it. Trust me on that one."
"How did they discover where the switch was, I wonder?" Leia mutters, as he spends the evening programming lock-out settings and grumbling about the uselessness of droids in general and Threepio in particular.
For their birthday the twins receive, courtesy of Mon Mothma, a Galaxy Toolkit For Little Engineers.
With a Working Fusion Cutter! the box proclaims proudly as the twins tear into it with delighted abandon.
Leia smiles her thanks to Mon, politely and a touch too brightly, while Han happily envisions Threepio parts scattered over the playroom floor – with Mothma, not him, to blame for a change.
But, after the twins are asleep, Leia makes the executive decision to "disappear" the fusion cutter from the toolkit.
"Come on, it's barely more than a toy," he protests on their behalf as he follows her into the master bedroom.
"They could hurt themselves," she insists. He watches her tuck the thing away on the highest shelf of the only lockable closet in the entire apartment.
"You think they won't guess where you hid it? That's when they might get hurt, sweetheart." And in a sudden flash of inspiration he recounts his childhood attempt at hotwiring a storeroom door using nothing but a bent spoon and a scrap of wire; bares his arms to show her the faded scars from the resulting blast of energy.
"If I'd had a fusion cutter at my disposal, that never would've happened," he asserts pointedly, ignoring the weary disbelief on her face as she pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to work through his logic.
He takes in the cards, the pile of crackers, the tumblers of fruit juice. "What are you guys doing?"
Jacen grins at him. "Playing sabacc."
Jaina, deep in concentration, doesn't even look up from her cards.
"Sabacc!" Anakin echoes happily, taking an enthusiastic swig from his cup. Juice dribbles down his chin and past the neck-clasp of the bantha-print bib draping uselessly down his back.
Han leans against the doorjamb and watches them affectionately; his chaotic little family. "Where'd you learn the rules?" Because they're doing a pretty amusing imitation of going through the motions.
A casual shrug from Jaina. "You and Lando." Absolutely sabacc-faced.
"Hey," Han protests mildly. "When did Lando and I ever teach you sabacc?"
Leia pokes her head in from the kitchen, her expression anything but sabacc-faced.
"I didn't say you taught us," Jaina clarifies. "I said we learned it."
"What do you mean, you learned it?"
"When Mom was at the Talus conference," Jacen pipes up helpfully. "Remember?"
Anakin proudly holds up his cup. "Jaya said I get to be Lando and drink brandy!"
Han glances at Leia, sees her eyebrows constricting dangerously.
"Huh." He shrugs, looking back at his brood. "Lando did drop by. But it was late. You guys were asleep."
Weren't they?
Suddenly Jaina slaps down a wild assortment of cards. "Pure sabacc!" she crows. "You said any ship on your lot, Lando. I'm taking the Falcon." She gathers up the crackers in triumph. "Hot damn!"
"Hot damn!" the vanquished Lando echoes happily, knocking over his brandy snifter in the excitement of the moment.
Jacen, ever-helpful, begins mopping the table with the little baron-administrator's bantha cape.
Han tries not to laugh; fails miserably.
"Could I speak to you a minute?" Leia says, just a little too evenly.
It doesn't help in the least to tell her that he learned sabacc much the same way, first watching Shrike and his men, and then playing for ration bars against the other kids.
It helps even less to remind her that if it wasn't for his sabacc skills, the Solo family wouldn't be the lucky owners of the fastest ship in the galaxy.
"I believe your daughter's been inspired by that story just a little too much already," Leia frowns.
The most recent tutor had come highly recommended, and had offered glowing references, and had dedicated his life's work to the unique needs of precocious kids, and had shown up with the latest paraphernalia for advanced pedagogy, and had lasted exactly fifty-seven minutes at the Solo household.
A new record.
Good riddance, Han had thought, echoing his children's sentiments as Leia wrung her hands in despair.
Bleary-eyed as they sift once again through the shrinking list of potential replacements, his mind keeps wandering to tomorrow's much-anticipated outing to the swoop track with the kids. "It'll be educational," he'd insisted to Leia. "Applied learning in a real-life setting: Physics. Mechanics. Math." He'd racked his brain. "Sociology, ethno-diversity. Uh, culinary –"
"You don't want us to grow up to be sheltered, do you Mom?" Jaina had hurriedly cut in, apparently sensing that her father's inspiration was teetering dangerously.
Jacen, more insightful, volunteered: "We'll write a report about it when we get home."
That had done the trick. To everyone's relief Leia had reluctantly agreed, and for the past three days the kids had talked of little else. They'd researched the physics of the swoop's design. They'd had animated discussions on the history and social implications of pod racing versus swoop racing. Just this afternoon, they'd spent hours pulling up schematics of the various track layouts, poring over facts and figures, calculating average velocities based on historical racing records while Han smugly raised his eyebrows at his wife.
"They're really fired up about tomorrow," he comments now, stretching back in his chair with a yawn.
"It's a miracle we were able to get them to bed," she nods distractedly.
"But they've learned more in three days than they did in three months with those damned tutors, don't you think?"
She glances up from her datapad. "Don't think for a second I can't see what you're up to, Han."
He motions to himself in mock innocence. Me?
"Han, a trip to the track isn't any kind of substitute for a formal education. We need a tutor, and soon." She gazes thoughtfully at the table. "Maybe if we hired three tutors, one for each of them…"
He snorts. Like that would go over well with their inseparable offspring, never mind the impossibility of finding three suitable candidates at this stage. "The kids hate these stuffed-up windbags, Leia."
"They need structure in their lives."
"Let me tell you, sweetheart, you've got structure enough for all of us."
"What's that supposed to mean?" There's an edge in her voice; they're both exhausted.
"Nothing." He shrugs. "Just… you could loosen up a little."
She frowns and turns back without a word to the flimsies scattered across the table. Silence settles over them, thick and oppressive.
"I ever tell you how I snuck my first joyride?" he hears himself chuckle a few minutes later, bored once again and hoping to lighten the mood. "No helmet, nothing. Just took off when no one was looking and –"
He realizes she's staring at him like he's just grown another head. He watches her put aside the references she's been so meticulously checking.
"No, I don't believe you have." The calm in her voice belies the concern he sees in her eyes.
Whoops.
Not daring to jeopardize tomorrow's plans – the kids would be so disappointed – he mumbles dismissively, "Well, uh… I was nine. A lot older than the kids," he assures her hastily.
"Go on."
"Well, I'd been hanging around the circuit half my life and… I figured I could… uh, I wanted to prove that I…" He pauses, scratches his chin. "Actually there's not much to tell." He shrugs and glances down at the table. "I survived, obviously."
He can feel her eyes on him. Given that the crumbs he's tossed out over the years would hardly feed a nanovole, any reference to his childhood usually has her eating out of the palm of his hand. But his timing is admittedly a little off on this one.
"Luke was driving his uncle's speeder when he was ten," he grumbles in a feeble effort to divert attention from himself. "It's really not that big a deal."
She's still staring at him in disbelief.
"Look, don't worry," he reassures her. "I'll make sure they don't do anything dumb tomorrow." He turns his attention to the file-strewn table, dutifully shuffles flimsies as the silence stretches uncomfortably.
"My childhood was very different from yours, Han."
"No kidding," he mutters under his breath.
Silence fills the room once again.
"That wasn't how I meant it." Her apologetic tone catches him off-guard. He looks up, sees affection in her eyes. "Han, you grew up in a fight for survival. And yet you managed to develop decency and self-discipline. And you carved out a life for yourself from nothing but the skills you'd picked up along the way." She shakes her head. "Do you know how remarkable that is?"
He shrugs, vaguely embarrassed now. "I think you're romanticizing things."
"Maybe," she acknowledges. "But by comparison I was every bit the spoiled, pampered princess I've often been accused of being." He opens his mouth to object but she cuts him off. "You did what you did out of necessity. I pulled the stunts that I did just for kicks; because I was stubborn and rebellious and bored."
"Stunts?"
"Well… mischief might be a better description."
He grins, intrigued. "What kind of mischief are we talking about, here?"
"Well," she hesitates. "When I was five, I… I borrowed the gardener's hover-cart."
He raises a bemused eyebrow, waits for her to elaborate.
"I could barely see over the controls," she continues. "I managed to evade the palace staff for twenty minutes before hitting a tree and shattering my collarbone."
He sees her, small and determined as she clings to the yoke, white gown flapping, a flustered flock of royal aunties gesticulating wildly in her wake.
"It's hardly funny, Han," she chides. "My parents were at wits' end with me. Luckily they found a tutor. A good one." She sighs. "I'm not sure how I would have fared without the tempering influence of that structured education."
"Come on," he chuckles. "You? The youngest senator in history? You would've done just fine without any tempering influence."
"Don't bet on it."
"Why?" His curiosity is piqued. "What else is on your royal rap sheet, princess? Using the wrong fork at dinnertime? Disobeying your hairdresser?"
She sniffs disdainfully.
"So what, then?" He eyes her provocatively. "You sneak out after curfew to party with the peasant boys?"
She crosses her arms in defiance. "You expect me to tell you? Captain Mysterious-Past-Is-My-Middle-Name?"
Well, shit.
He cocks his head, amused, and far too familiar with Her Stubbornness to expect any answers out of her now.
Maybe he can convince Winter to shed some light on the subject.
He grins and takes a different tack. "I'm starting to suspect I've been shouldering the parental blame unnecessarily here."
"I – " she begins with a frown when she's interrupted by a familiar whir, and suddenly the hover-vac swoops in low through the living room, trailing wires and electronics and their youngest son, his pajama legs flapping as he clings to the polished metal housing.
In a flash the curious sight has disappeared into the hall.
A furtive patter draws their attention to the doorway behind them, where two small, barefooted figures have materialized.
"Um…" Jaina begins. There are grease smudges on her nightgown and a multi-tool dangling from her fingers.
Han and Leia study the guilty pair for a long, silent moment, until finally Han gives a stern nod in the hover-vac's direction. The twins exchange a nervous glance, then race off after their brother.
From across the flimsi-strewn table, Han catches Leia's eye with a smirk. "I think your kids are up to some mischief."
His wife is rubbing her temples. "Laugh it up, flyboy," she mutters. "Because unless we find a suitable tutor, odds are we're relying on your genes being the tempering influence." She gets up from the table.
He sits in dumbfounded silence, surveying the woefully-inadequate list of applicants as the implications set in.
"And Winter swore an oath of secrecy years ago," she warns him over her shoulder as she heads down the hall in search of the children.
"Huh," is all he can manage, before a crashing noise echoes from the far end of the suite and he's scrambling after Leia to investigate.