This is a story challenge put to me by PrincessMeg over at LP's wonderful H/L site, The Princess and the Scoundrel. I was to write a story in which Jacen and Jaina say their first words, different from each other and finishing an adult's sentence.
Thanks go out to PrincessMeg for the challenge, and to Meg for beta-ing very late last night!
"Lucky"
KnightedRogue
Han Solo considered himself a very lucky man.
With paperwork piled up past his head on the desk where he should be working, a ship that direly needed his attention redirected towards the starboard alluvial damper, and an irate Wookiee hanging off him at every step of the stressful way, Han was beyond overworked. He was tired. He was frustrated. He was bored.
He was lucky.
After ignoring the paperwork, the flux capacitor, and the giant hairball that was his best friend all day, he came home.
It was a strange concept to a man that had lived up to his surname in every action and attitude. Solo meant independence. In his case, it meant a willingness to engage in nothing but his own interests and an overwhelming desire to only participate in fleeting relationships that, more than once, he ended before the girl even knew he was a pilot. They were usually uninteresting, unintelligent, and undressed rather quickly.
And that was why it scared the hell out of him when he realized who it was that had made his surname completely void. Some sassy little diplomat. Fascinating, bright, and resolutely angry at him for the better part of three years.
She was Reason Number One for his luckiness. The beginning of the whole mess.
And from that entirely unpredicted relationship had come the home he was now close to entering. That impressive apartment he thought he'd never see. The one with the tall viewports in the dining room looking out onto the Coruscant Banking Tower and the skylanes. He'd always thought he'd scored it rich when he'd won the Falcon. That was apparently only the first step for him. And as he strolled down to his home, best friend in tow, he thought about the third (and fourth) bit of luck he had managed sometime in the past thirty-eight years.
And as he opened up the door, he remembered why he sometimes considered it a mixed blessing.
The twins were crying somewhere in the vicinity of their nursery (screaming was a less euphemistic, but more realistic, term) and he caught a brief glimpse of brown and gold as the blur he assumed to be his wife and droid ran from the kitchen.
"Leia?" He first tried to top the noise his children were currently creating, then lowered his voice considerably when he realized what would happen if she knew he was present in the apartment.
Han was stealthily backing up towards the master bedroom, prepared to close the door and check the smashball scores, when Leia literally ran out of the nursery and knocked into him.
"Ow! Warn me the next time you're planning on assaulting me, huh, sweetheart?"
She stepped back and quickly pecked him on the check. "Sorry. How're you?" And without waiting for a reply, she sidestepped him and was in the kitchen.
Following her, Han walked into the room and watched as Leia checked the containment storage unit and turned back towards him. "Han, can you help? Threepio is driving me crazy and if he says one more comment about washing Force-flown food off the ceiling, I'll dismantle him myself."
Suppressing a knowing grin, Han grabbed the units she held out to him. "I take it the Bothan Conference wasn't good?"
"Urgh. I don't even want to think about it. How'd the CDFR go?"
Picturing the rather large stack of unread Coruscant Defense Force Reports that currently resided on his desk, Han shuddered. "Why'd you have to bring it up?" He shook his head. "The Report was written by those stupid Bothans just to screw the two of us up, I know it."
Leia smiled as she led the way into the nursery. "Care to covertly assassinate Fey'lya for me?"
"Only if you take out Madine first. Hi, there, Jace." Reaching into the rocking repulsor-crib, Han took his vociferous son and held him against his left shoulder. "What are you doing, huh, kid? You wanna make everyone hate us?"
"Han, I think it's a bit too late for that." Depositing the units on a table beside the cribs, Leia began to rock Jaina side to side, shh-ing her as quietly as she could.
Fifteen minutes later, the twins seemed to run out of that inexhaustible energy of theirs, and their wearied parents collapsed simultaneously onto the form-fitting sofa, their quieted children still in their arms. The twins, though no longer screaming, were nowhere near tired and found themselves entertainment by their own devices, Jacen fascinated by Han's nose and Jaina pulling on one of Leia's braids. In the midst of this relative peace, Han took a moment to inventory his wife's appearance.
By no means was Leia Organa Solo considered a large woman; she was petite and slim in comparison to most humans, and Han often wondered how she had managed to carry the twins through the full term. Her body had regained its slender shape following the birth rather quickly, and he was apt to annoy her with his incessant comments on her diet. She didn't eat nearly enough, Han believed, and while he was adjusted to her strange sleeping cycles, he also wished her to spend more time at home or rest. He knew it was a losing battle; Leia hardly ever stopped. Period. It was part of who she was. And to force her to give up a role she obviously needed to play in the Republic's Senate would be tantamount to her forcing him to sell the Falcon. He knew she would never do that to him. He also knew that she was much more restrained than he. So he nagged her constantly about her diet, rest, and work.
"You look tired, Sweetheart."
"Yeah, well, you don't look so hot yourself," she shot back.
Han half-smiled. "Ah, Princess, you are tired."
"You are so predictable," Leia turned to face him. "We can continue this discussion, if you want. You'll say something along the lines of, 'Let's go on vacation' and I'll tell you no, and I'll stop talking to you until you decide that it's not worth asking me anymore. And that decision will last until tomorrow night, when the whole thing will just repeat itself." Her eyes told him that she was only half serious. "Shall we skip the not-talking part?"
"I dunno. Where's the fun in that?"
Leia was interrupted in her reply when Jaina decided that her mother's hair was no longer interesting and switched to her earrings instead.
"Jaina, Jaina – ow! Come on, Sweetheart, let go of Mommy's earring . . . Please, Jaina, stop!" Hoping to find some relief, Leia stooped down and placed Jaina on the floor. Jaina, finding the scattered toys littering the floor to be far more amusing than her mother's jewelry, crawled off surprisingly fast to a stack of plasticubes. Jacen squirmed in Han's arms, and Han put him down as well. The two children began to converse with each other, as they so often did, in their own soft, inimitable way and pushed around the cubes together.
Han, sensing that his children were occupied for the moment, stood up and extended a hand to his wife. "Hey, I'm starved. Goldenrod?" he yelled across to the protocol droid in the kitchen. "How much longer you gonna take?"
Leia accepted his hand and pulled herself off the sofa. "It's only been fifteen minutes, Han. Give him some time."
"It's Threepio, Leia! I've always abused him like this. It's part of the warm human-droid relationship that we share."
Leia snorted. "Warm? You mean Hoth-warm?"
He nodded. "Sure. Just like that." Han glanced at the kitchen and released Leia's hand. "I'm gonna check on the professor, see if he's blown anything up yet."
Han went to the kitchen and watched See-Threepio fiddle around with some sort of salad arrangement, then reached into a cupboard and pulled out a glass and a bottle of Whyren's Reserve. Pouring the whiskey into the glass, and another full of a sweet wine that he couldn't stand, Han strolled back into the living room, where Leia was standing over the twins, gaping at the assortment of cubes. Han moved over to her side, and felt his jaw drop.
The twins stood by a circular conglomeration of plasticubes, stacked on top of each other to form a very familiar shape to the Solos. It was jagged and a bit confused, but Han could pick out the distinctive cockpit issuing out of the cylinder and let out an amazed gasp. Leia echoed the sentiment.
"Wha - ? Leia do you know - ?"
"No! But you don't really think - ?"
"How? They've never really been on the stupid thing – "
"So you agree?"
"I got a bad feeling about this – "
"I mean, Han, it looks just like the – "
"Faclun! Falcun!"
Han felt his neck crick in his haste to look at his daughter. He turned quickly back to look at Leia's face, inches from his own, and share a look of absolute bafflement. Eventually, Han turned back to Jaina and leaned toward her. "What did you say, Sweetheart?"
"Falcun!"
"Han! Did she just –
"I don't know! What is that? It sounded like – "
They chimed together. "The Falcon." Then stared at the other. Then grinned.
Leia was up and clutching her daughter before Han could even react. "Jaina! Jaina! You talked! You spoke! Sweetheart!" Han shook his head at the string of endearing names Leia was shooting off at her daughter, as Jaina tried her hardest to squirm out of her mother's arms. She didn't speak anymore, but once Leia put her down, she smiled brilliantly and obviously knew that she should be proud of herself.
Finding the rest of the evening uneventful as far as first words were concerned, Han found himself lounging on the large repulsorchair in the corner of the nursery, watching his children, his third and fourth bits of luck, sit together on the floor. He was constantly surprised by their complete lack of condemnation for him; they weren't accusatory or critical of their father at all. Jacen and Jaina might be the first truly accepting people he had ever known. Even Luke and Leia had misjudged him upon their first meetings respectively, and he considered the Skywalker twins to be incredible in almost every aspect of their lives. His twins even surpassed their mother and uncle in that sense; they were completely helpless and totally his responsibility.
His responsibility.
Responsibility was not a concept for which Han had ever held any respect. It tied people down, caused them to think in routine ways, act with bias and without sense. He had seen responsibility as the catalyst for death; one did not survive in his prior career having responsibilities. Lando Calrissian had always had this problem in his business ventures, and Han himself had seen how it limited life in general in his interrupted dealings with Bria. Responsibility was evil, unkind, painful.
But his children were a different matter entirely. Children. He still had difficulties considering himself a father. He had immediately changed his stance on responsibility once the twins were born, and, he would admit to himself, even upon learning of their impending existence. There was no one else, besides Leia and himself, he trusted to give Jacen and Jaina what they needed, and responsibility had become a type of blessing, not a curse.
Han Solo, paternal mentor and responsible leader in the New Republic? Never in a million years would he have imagined such a turnaround.
He was lucky.
The twins themselves appeared to become tired somewhere in his mental musings, and he assumed it was time for them to be put in their cribs. He called out to Leia, who abandoned her tirade on Threepio and joined him immediately. They put the twins in their cribs and stood back, Han's arms coming up from behind Leia to fold around her waist. Han let his chin rest on her head as they watched the twins move around in their cribs.
"Need to sleep," he yawned.
"Need to quit working so hard, General."
"Whadd'ya talking about? I don't work! Have you seen my desk lately?"
"Force, no. Security is trying to keep me away from Republic declared disaster areas." Leia smirked. "Although, to be honest, our apartment isn't exactly spotless, either."
Han gently prodded her to turn in his arms until she was facing him. Pulling her closer, he rested his cheek on the top of her head. "Sweetheart, with these two, I'd say our chances of ever having a clean apartment are completely shot to hell."
"Han!" she quietly chastised. "They're still awake. Try not to say things like that in front of them. Who knows what they'll pick up from you?"
"Or you." He smirked. "You're not exactly free from vulgar insults yourself."
"I'm nothing compared to you."
"Yeah, but you've got three more languages than me. You can insult in three more dimensions."
"You think our children are going to be speaking Xuf, Mythos or ancient Alderaanian anytime soon?"
"Hey, you never know. Kids've got brilliant parents, after all."
She laughed and inched forward. "Right. Never know what they'll pick up."
"Of course." Han prevented her sarcastic reply the best way he knew how. And seeing as how she responded to the kiss, Han wasn't entirely convinced that she hadn't predicted his action. Kissing Leia was an experience Han vowed never to take for granted, and too often, these moments were interrupted by Senate calls, obnoxious protocol droids or loud children. So it was with great delight, and no small amount of shared surprise, that they pulled apart of their own volition. Smiling up at him, Leia smoothed the hair off his forehead and flicked the dust off his shoulder. Then she buried her face into his neck, and sighed.
"Han?"
"Yeah?"
"You need a haircut." She chuckled.
"Coming from a woman whose hair is nearly longer than her, that comment is less than convincing."
"Right." She pulled away and looked up at him again. "I love you – "
"Neferder!"
Leia shrieked and pushed his arms away from her waist. "Jacen? Jacen! Han, did you hear that? He said, 'nerfherder'!" She stopped and looked back at him.
"Han, what does it say about us that our children's first words are the name of your ship and an insult?"
Taking Leia's hand and guiding her over to Jacen's smiling face in the crib, Han leaned over and whispered, "I wouldn't read into it too much, Sweetheart. It just means that Jaina's going to be a flying genius and that Jacen's way too observant for his own good."
He grinned.
"And that they're lucky enough to be exactly like their parents."
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KR