Title: Gift of the Blarney
Author: pronker
Era: AU circa 15 BBY, except there was/will be no BY, read further to find out why!
Disclaimer: I make no profit from this fanfiction set in George Lucas' Star Wars, using its characters and settings as they were taken over by Disney. I do not own Star Wars and am neither George nor Walt. Just wait until my next life, though.
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Luc(retia) Skywalker-Kenobi, Donald Skywalker-Kenobi, OC
Summary: Obi-Wan changes careers. [Part Four of the Mudverse slash saga: Trailer Park Princess, As Clear As Mud, and Covalent Bonds.]
A/N: This is part four of the Mudverse slash saga. Any plot point questions cheerfully answered. The upshot is that Anakin and Obi-Wan and their five year-olds now live when post-Clone Wars financial concerns require the Jedi Temple to be partially self-supporting, because the heating and air conditioning bill is astronomical.
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In the wake of the Clone Wars, Supreme Chancellor Bail Organa pushed diplomatically for Vice Chancellor Amidala to use her warm feelings for her former significant other Master Yoda to persuade the revered troll to cut costs. In particular, the Jedi Order needed to 'help out' the secular administration by supporting its Temple thirty per cent. Master Yoda eased himself wisely towards retirement at this point, and the task of implementing such monumental changes to the monumental Temple fell to Master Mace Windu, formerly Jedi High General Master Mace Windu. Mace proved exemplary in applying military techniques to haul the Temple up by its pecuniary bootstraps. Some functions which had been solely for Jedi now brought in funds from non-Jedi appreciators of its style and facilities. Many of them had fond memories of the defunct Jedi Temple Annual Picnic and Open Temple Tour of pre-war vintage.
To show our appreciation of his managerial expertise, all of us contributed our slim earnings and presented him with a solid aurodium flimsiweight for his sixtieth Lifeday. We crowded into his cubicle to present it. He glared at it and at us for a moment, and then it struck me that spending all our ready cash on sentiment was an ante-bellum thing to do.
I had been selected for spokesJedi, and I hurried into a modest speech which I had been preparing for a week.
It made a hit. It was full of puns and limericks which brought down the house. Old Mace himself actually grinned, and the rest of us took our cue and roared.
My reputation as a humorist dates from half-past ninth hour on that morning.
For weeks afterward my fellow Jedi fanned the flame of my self-esteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever speech that was, old boy, and carefully explained to me the point of each of my jokes.
Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. From me something pithy and provoking was required; I was expected to crack wise about Senatorial goings-on and Temple gossip. Others could be sane and sober in discussing approaching deadlines and revolving credit statements with fifteen per cent penalties, but if I failed to show a bi-monthly inventory readout from Quartermaster K'aki without a killer joke, my fellow Jedi were disappointed.
By degrees my fame spread. The Galactic Enquirer often quoted my sayings. At social gatherings I was indispensable.
I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for banter. I strove through profound meditation to tone down my natural sarcasm and replaced it with a kinder, gentler style. Others saw me coming and broke into smiles, and I had a cheery word ready to turn smiles into laughter.
One day I received a comm from the editor of a famous weekly publication. She suggested that I write a humorous essay to fill a minute's scrolling length on a portable reader, hinting that it could become regular work. I did this. Two ten-days later, she offered me a contract for one year at a higher rate of pay than my between-missions temp work at the Quartermaster's offered.
I was filled with delight. His curly head in the clouds, Anakin already had me accepting the Nova Award For Journalism, and we toasted our future with Nabooan blossom wine that night. I talked over the matter very seriously with Anakin, swirling the Nabooan vintage in my glass and thinking of Padme and Anakin, how I came to be Anakin's significant other, and how much I wanted to remain so. We agreed that I must devote myself to humor.
I resigned from K'aki's employ. The speech from my farewell banquet was printed in full by the Galactic Enquirer. The next morning I awoke and looked at the chrono.
"Late!" I exclaimed, and Anakin threw my robes at my head. He reminded me that I was no longer a slave to K'aki's unreasonable punctuality, which was the curse of many a tentacled race. I was now a professional humorist.
After first-meal, he proudly led me to our minuscule pantry. Dear man! There was a fold-down table amid puffpackets of muja juice, plus a fold-up chair, mini-comm-station, and a little bag of Latli's signature bonbons to nibble between inspirations. Dear man!
I sat me to work, staring at last year's holo-calendar. It was patterned with trapezoids, or arabesques, or paisley. Upon one of the swirls I fixed my eyes. I thought of humor.
A voice startled me - Anakin's.
"If you aren't too busy, sweetheart," it said, "come to lunch."
I looked at the chrono. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the scythe of Time. I went to eat.
"You mustn't work too hard at first," said Anakin. "Duron Qel-Droma - or was it Grievous? - said five hours a day is enough for mental labor. How about taking Luc and Donald to the play gardens this afternoon?"
"I am a little tired," I admitted. So we went to the play gardens. I watched my little boy and girl jump in a pile of autumn leaves and thought how I could not fail them.
But I soon got into the swing. Within another ten-day I was turning out copy as regularly as I once replaced lost Jedi robes at K'aki's Quartermaster station for six credits a pop.
And I found success. My minute's worth of jocular scrolling in the weekly edition made a stir, and critics called me 'fresh' and 'inimitable.'
I picked up the tricks of my new trade. I could take a funny idea and make a two-line joke of it, earning eight credits if I came up with three more. With a feathered domino on, the idea would dress up as a quatrain, doubling its monetary value. By adding a cape and buccaneer boots, you would hardly recognize it.
I began to save up ten per cent of my adjusted income credits every week, and we ordered hand-knit antimacassars and a customized tantalus to salivate over. My laurels rested for a brief shining time upon my unlined brow.
The roaring winds of Splanch turned months later to the computer-regulated heat waves of Umbrot. The spontaneity seemed to depart from my humor. Quips no longer fell carelessly from my lips, and the deadly deadlines found me scrambling for material. I garnered ideas from my friends' conversations and sometimes I gazed at the outdated calendar's swirls for hours trying to build up some unstudied fun.
And then I became a veritable Anzati to my acquaintances. Fierce as the Maw Cluster when it inhales hapless spacecraft, I was after their every bright saying or witty simile. I turned aside to sneak notes down in my ever-present padd.
My friends regarded me in sorrow, because once I had furnished them entertainment and now I preyed upon them. I told no new jokes. They were precious. I could not afford to squander them as they were the means of my livelihood.
Nearly everyone avoided me and I even forgot how to smile. At Master Yoda's farewell banquet as he retired to Ragoon VI, Mace intoned a fair-to-middling speech yet I scarcely gathered its meaning, so occupied was I with wordsmithing: Mace spake golden years and I extracted golden-molten-melting-years-tears-ears-beers-deers. I was busy correcting deers to its proper plural on my padd when the present rushed in on me and I found myself alone in the banquet hall.
My own home burned to the ground, metaphorically. My Anakin is a singular creature, candid, sympathetic, and impulsive. Once his conversation was my delight, and his ideas a source of unfailing pleasure. Now I worked him. He was an aurodium mine of amusing but lovable inconsistencies.
I marketed those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched our own home. I encouraged him to talk and he, all unsuspecting, laid his heart bare.
I offered it in the marketplace of literary slavery, a minute's worth of scrolling confidences and follies dressed in bangles, whirling like a dervish for all to leer at.
Darling Anakin! I have bent over him as he slept in deepest trust beside me under our mauve duvet, cruel as an akk above a newly-birthed nerf. I hoped to catch a word of his nightly mutterings for my next day's grind.
There is worse to come.
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TBC