JARIK WANTS A LIGHTSABER
Disclaimer: not mine.
The Falcon, as always, was in need of some minor repairs and 'upgrades.' The weekend day found Han and Jarik, now eight, at work on the old girl. Jaina, Jacen and Anakin were on Yavin at the Praxeum, and he missed his siblings mightily.
"Be careful with the torch!" Han called to his youngest son, who was swinging it about as though it were a lightsaber. Jarik was many things, but cautious was not a description that could be applied to him. Jarik had begged Han to teach him to weld. He'd taught Jaina and Anakin as well, but they'd been older and more respectful of fire.
"I was just seeing what it would do when the flames moved!" Jarik said as he attempted to justify his actions. "Like Jacen's lightsaber!" Jacen was Jarik's idol. Considering that for the past two years, Jacen had been battling a synth stim addiction that he at long last seemed to have under control. Han questioned his choice of role models, but he and Jacen had always been close.
"If you burn down the ship, you'll have a lot of flames to watch. Oh, and your life will be over," Han remarked.
"I wanna lightsaber," Jarik told his father.
"You can't," Han told him.
"Why not?"
"Because lightsabers are a Jedi weapon."
"So?"
"For one thing, you can't go out and buy one. You have to make it yourself."
"That can't be so hard." Despite Jarik's experimentation with tools, namely, using them for other than their intended purposes, he was very mechanical, even more so than Jaina and Anakin, who were no slouches in that department.
"It probably isn't, but it's not allowed."
"That's stupid!"
"It's the rules, buddy. Ask your Uncle Luke."
"I don't wanna. He says I don't have the Force. What's the Force?"
Why couldn't he have just asked me something simple, like where babies come from, Han moaned to himself.
"It's something you're born with. I dunno, it lets you look at the future, makes you feel stuff more intensely. Tell the truth, I don't always get it myself. But I'm not a Jedi."
"Mom's not a Jedi, either."
Han was not about to go into that. Leia was uneasy about the Force even to this day. If Jarik wanted to think his mom wasn't a Jedi, Han was fine with it.
"Would I like being a Jedi?" Jarik asked.
"Probably not. For one thing, they don't let you goof off in class." Jarik enjoyed a reputation at school as the class clown. He was energetic, unwilling to sit still for any subjects other than math and computer technology, both which he was very good at. His spelling was atrocious, he'd decided that there was no use for history or grammar, and his teachers always complained about him distracting other kids.
He's my boy, Han thought, and it amused him.
"Well, that sucks!"
"Actually, you're not supposed to goof off in regular school," Han said to him, trying not to laugh.
"But it's fun!"
Han looked at his eight year old son. His images of what he'd looked like at eight years old were hazy, but when he looked at Jarik, he was pretty sure that he'd had the same green-gold eyes, perpetually mussed brown hair, and the lopsided smile, along with being taller than average and all arms and legs. He also possessed a talent for making trouble just for the fun of it.
Out of all my kids, Han mused, he's the one most likely to get into a cantina fight. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing, so long as you beat down someone who really deserved it. Jarik was the kid who was willing to take his skateboard on some of the capital city's most dangerous routes, and as a result, there'd been a few emergency trips to the medcenter to have the boy sutured up and the occasional broken bone set. For Han and Leia, they were a headache; to Jarik, it gave him bragging rights.
"Where're the small hydrospanners?" Han demanded.
"I dunno," Jarik responded with a shrug.
"You had them when were putting the coils in the port stabilization mechanism, which was about ten minutes ago."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, I left 'em in the 'fresher."
"What are my tools doing in the 'fresher?"
"I hadda take a leak, okay?"
"Go get 'em."
Jarik rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay!"
Han returned to his work and noticed it seemed to be taking Jarik an inordinate amount of time to return from the 'fresher. "Jarik! What're you doing?" Han shouted out.
Jarik turned the corner, his jaws stuffed. "How many biscuits do I have in my mouth?" was what Han thought he said.
"Probably at least an entire container." Jarik also possessed a prodigious appetite. "You know, if you're gonna learn to fly this thing, the least you can do is help me get her fixed."
Jarik's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "For reals? I'm gonna get to fly the Falcon?" He was nearly ready to jump out of his skin.
"Yeah, assuming you can focus on something for more than two minutes," Han told him.
"I can do that!"
"Good. Get busy."
"So when are we gonna fly her?"
"It's gonna take another day of repairs and I've got a shipment this week, but I'd say next weekend, assuming that we don't get a call from your school demanding that we medicate you."
"Okay. Cool. But I still want a lightsaber."
"You know, buddy, lightsabers are nice and all that, but nothing beats a good blaster at your side."
"Can I learn to use one?" Jarik asked eagerly.
"When you're older."
"No fair! How'm I s'posed to defend myself without a weapon?"
"It's peacetime, kiddo."
"So why do you have a blaster?"
"Because sometimes I have to visit places where people don't exactly behave themselves."
"Like where? Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina?"
Han spun around sharply. "Who told you about that place?"
"Jaina."
Probably listening when she wasn't supposed to be, Han grumbled to himself.
"I wanna go there!"
"You have to be seventeen to get in."
"Why?"
"Because they serve intoxicants. And it's kind of rowdy." A polite way of saying, a bunch of drunk crazy sentients who leaned towards guns and fistfights as a means of solving their problems.
"So take me for my seventeenth birthday."
If I live that long, Han mused.
"And I'll bring my blaster!"
Sure you will, kiddo, sure you will.
"But I'd still like a lightsaber."
"You've mentioned this. C'mon, get those coils in but be gentle about it."
"Okay. So Dad, where do babies come from?"
Han rolled his eyes and sighed. "Ask your mom."