this is a disclaimer.
AN: part of the swallows and amazons verse; May and Lane feature in though all my kingdoms turn to sand.
find somewhere to go
The apartment's nearly silent this time of day; Reb is at lectures and the neighbours are all at work. The quiet surrounds May like a blanket, unobtrusively cheerful and welcoming. Hum of a dishwasher, distant footsteps in the halls outside the apartment, up and down the stairs. It's a rabbit warren, this place, a skyscraper of metal and soullessness shot through with threads of light: lovers, friends, familes, coming and going and nesting in the corners of the structure, lighting it up in a way that goes so far beyond mere lit windows at night that May can hardly grasp it sometimes.
Work done for now, she settles herself more comfortably on her cushion and sinks into meditation, watching the threads of light begin to gleam and shine, taking form out of the darkness and beckoning to her as she opens herself to the Force. There's Dad, talking to Wedge over at Command. There's Reb, bent over her notes with her hair sweeping down her back, face set in concentration. Utterly Force-blind, can't feel the slightest tingle of Maira's presence. May grins at her, completely in love. Dances on. There's Corran - brief answering touch from him, affection and amusement.
May opens herself wider, letting go of physical sensation and letting the threads take her where they will: Yavin, running efficiently if oddly subdued without any member of the Family there: a rare occurence, that. Whisper of Darkness far out in the Korriban system. A dark-skinned girl stands over a broken glass in a kitchen, staring. I moved it with my mind, Mama! Two boys stand on the edge of a canyon in the Jundland Wastes, peering down. See, the canyon narrows so suddenly behind this bend that taking it without getting clipped and being spun outta the canyon is called 'threading the needle'...
Further away even than that, Laina's presence blazes up in her sister's mind. For a moment, they cling tight, inseperable, flooding each other with light and love. Then a flicker of Aunt Leia: love you Maira-mine. Need your sister though. Love you too Aunt Leia.
Blow a mental kiss to her sister, have it returned. Mom, still asleep, loves to lie in whenever she can, but even unconscious Mara Jade Skywalker recognises the touch of her daughter's mind.
Something wrong? Go away and stop pestering me.
No, ma'am. Love you.
Translation: love you too.
The Force sends her skipping and spinning back across the galaxy, her awareness slowly returning from so far to slide back to her body. Coruscant again, and in the Force the lights of it are not traffic or smog or neon advertisements, they are people, bright and beckoning, endless maelstrom of life amongst the metal and the machinery.
(Poetic of you Maira-mine, smallest whisper in her ear, amused. She huffs at him, and he drops her back into her body with a nudge and a smile.)
Then: Ben, taking the stairs to her apartment two at a time.
May opens her eyes just as he flings open her front door.
"Come in, Benji," she shouts. "Don't bother to knock."
"Oughta lock your door," he says, slouching in. "Bad neighbourhood, this." Bright lazy grin, answered by her tongue sticking out at him. He tosses himself down beside her all loose limbs and too-long hair, and even when it is in fact perfectly combed something about Ben Skywalker makes people think his hair is tousled.
May stretches out on her back beside him, and they stare up at the ceiling in companionable silence.
"I brushed Lane just now."
"She's doin' great."
"Yeah."
"Mom still asleep?"
"Well, she said she meant to take a holiday while Laney was working her behind off learning Hapan diplomacy."
Ben shakes his head. "Mom, on a holiday."
"Ridiculous, isn't it?"
"Unless Dad talked her into it."
Dad.
Yes.
Brief silence again. Then Ben says, "is it just me, or has he been a little off lately?"
"Can't turn around without ticking him off anymore," May says mournfully. "He misses Mom."
"She misses him. They're impossible when they're apart for long periods of time."
May grins. "Pathetic."
Ben groans. "Pathetic I could deal with. It's the need to spread all the misery around -"
"Hey, listen, sunshine, I'm the one who had to sit through dinner yesterday with the two of you sniping at each other -"
"Dad and I don't snipe!"
"Yeah, right."
"Strewth. We have disagreements."
"Well, that certainly proves your maturity."
"I thought it would, actually," Ben says cheerfully. "By the way, I think my boot just hit your datapad."
May gasps. "Hand it over! My novel's on that."
"Your novel."
"It's an exposé. I'll make millions."
"And you still won't be as rich as Anakin."
May pulls a face. "I remain unconvinced that anyone in the galaxy is as rich as Anakin, no matter what the HoloNet says. You should've heard him and Jaina going at it over the price of the upgrades she wanted for our fighters."
Ben laughs. "I love how they pretend to separate their business dealings from their personal lives so completely, and then you listen in on one of those fights and it's like - "
"Well, you got my speedbike that I asked Dad for when you were fifteen!" May says, imitating Anakin's deep voice.
"Little brothers don't get speedbikes!" Ben joins in.
"And there was that time with the thing and the you-know-what that I never told Mom!"
"Are you blackmailing me, you little brat?"
They giggle helplessly. Jaina and Anakin will fight at the drop of a hat and forget the disagreement just as quickly; their similarities have become ever more pronounced as they both get older. Allana swears Jacen doesn't even notice his siblings' shouting matches anymore. They actually have to be pointed out to him. Uncle Han always says it's the only thing he really begrudges the kid: the ability to tune out the noise of his brother and sister yelling at each other.
At last May sighs and rests her forehead against her brother's shoulder. "It's Aunt Leia, too," she says, returning to the topic at hand, namely: Dad being off, and what to do about it.
"Doesn't bother you and Lane half as much," Ben says, meaning separation. "Or Jaina and Jacen."
"Yeah," May agrees, "but we didn't spend our childhoods struggling with a broken Force bond, either, did we?"
"True."
Not that they've ever told Dad or Aunt Leia what the six of them suspect about the Force bond between Anakin Skywalker's children. But experience of their own and careful observation and a few shrewd guesses as to what Master Yoda was really like back then have... implied things.
Silence again, contemplative. They're holding hands: not even twinned, and the idea of having their Force bond ripped away from them, either deliberately or by accident and distance, is like picturing themselves amputated, or losing some sense, sight or hearing perhaps. It could happen. They would deal if it did, and they would be all right in the end.
But the notion is still a terrible one.
Ben sighs. "Include that in your exposé," he says, almost sharp. Cruel to break down the last few vestiges of belief Dad still has in his former mentors, but May knows that Ben sometimes wants to do it, wants to do it with his whole soul, as if they have some kind of hold on Dad while he still carries those shreds of belief in him, and Ben wants him to be free of that kind of thing.
It doesn't work like that.
They both know it.
Still.
"You know that datapad you've got your feet on?" May says. "Open up the encyclopedia for me. Check what it says under ways to clandestinely kill your annoying older brother without your Jedi Master Father finding out."
"Hmm," Ben says. "Hang on. M for murder, clandestine... no. Brother, older... nothing there, just a load of stuff about how awesome I am. Um... New Jedi Order, Grand Master of. Aha. There it is. Omniscient."
May pales. "Force I hope not," she says. "The only reason I'm still alive today is that Dad still doesn't know for sure who set off those fireworks in the Grand Hall that time with the NR diplomats..."
"Yeah, well," Ben says. "They were all a bunch of bantha-brained bigots with their eyes on the top job and no respect -"
"How many times do I have to tell you to just punch Reddick Mosen in the kriffin' face and forget about him?" May says, impatient. "He's a thoroughly useless bit of bantha fodder who wouldn't know the meaning of the word redemption if it did a striptease in front of him and then gave him a lapdance dressed as Palpatine himself."
Ben sticks his nose in the air - not that that's difficult, lying on their backs as they are. "I will not. It's not the Jedi way."
"Not the Jedi way!" Maira shouts.
"I have the moral high ground, Maira-mine, and I'm keeping it, thank you very much."
May starts laughing so hard she nearly cries. "Oh dear Force. Holy Mother Goddess Asenan. Ben Skywalker - my big brother Benji Skywalker - thinks he has the moral high ground on something!"
"I don't see what's so damn funny about it," Ben says, wounded.
"I do," May retorts. "Benji Skywalker, moral high ground!" She giggles again. "Lemme tell you something, Ben, as someone who from a devastatingly young age was forced to endure your so-called sense of humour. You don't get the moral high ground on any issue. Ever."
"Look, OK," Ben says. "I played a few pranks..."
"You drowned my teddy bear in the water butt in the herb garden," May says, folding her arms over her chest.
"It was asking for it."
"Mr. Tiddlywinks never raised a paw against you his whole life!"
"The whole point of the sacrifice -"
"You sacrificed my teddy bear to the rainbow gods for absolutely no reason whatsoever, you great bully."
"Hey, Mom rescued him."
"Lane had to interrupt a Council meeting."
"You could have appealed to Higher Authority," Ben says.
May looks disgruntled. "I did," she says. "Higher Authority was laughing fit to bust a gut."
Ben bursts out laughing too. "He would!" he whoops.
"It was that stick you were waving around," maliciously.
"That was the magic wand of the High Priest of the Rainbow Gods," Ben says snootily.
"It was a flyswat, Benji."
Ben grins. "Same difference."
They have another laugh then, long and loud and helpless, delighted with their own banter and warm with memory. They're still holding hands, knees knocking together.
"About Dad," Ben says.
"Thought we'd throw a party," May says.
"A party?"
"Rogue Squadron only. And I mean only. No significant others, no kids, no honourary members. Just the squad, past and present."
Ben turns it over in his mind. Sounds harmless enough, of course, but May is a devious little witch, and he...
"You're gonna shake Dad outta his funk by setting Wes Janson and the Rogues on him."
"I don't know about setting," May says. "Not exactly setting. I mean, if I happen to mention to my former mentor and master that I was a bit worried about Dad..."
"Corran would be telling Wedge within seconds and then all Sith Hell would break loose."
"There'd be us there. And Jaina."
"Jaina, as you perfectly well know, is the worst of the lot."
She really is.
Ben thinks about it for another minute. "Well, well," he says. "My baby sister, all grown up and being a diabolical mastermind of evil genius. I'm so proud."
May pats his leg. "I'm glad you like it."
Ben looks at her. "May?"
"Yes, Benji?"
"Promise me we'll never tell Mom."
May grins. "On my honour as a Rogue."
They shake on it.
(And if Ben shows up at the party three days later with a suspiciously soft and squishy teddy-bear-shaped bundle wrapped in brown paper and presents it to his little sister with a flourish and a warm smile, no one - not even Laney - ever needs to know about that, either.)