AN:An update at last.
Thanks to everyone for the insightful and helpful comments and reviews, I really appreciate them. To Sword Slinger:1) Yes, that was and still is the plan for "Book 3" 2)no. 3) several of the younger Skywalkers have love interests who are not Force-sensitive, so maybe. To Leyte: Mara and Luke's history is something I skirted around last time, so I agree, it should be covered more in depth. We shall see what the characters have to say about that, though. They are mostly busy dealing with the present, at the moment.
Chapter 6
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Landing pad, Bright Hope Ranger, 39:4:3
Luke walked over to the ship that Mara pointed out to him. Painted in neat white letters under the ship's identifying number were the words, "BRIGHT HOPE RANGER" but small enough that they would not be easily identified from another ship.
"We're going in this?" he asked; the ship didn't look all that different from the Millennium Falcon.
"Well, Farmboy, we won't all fit in the Firecracker, so we're stuck with your hauler," her tone was acid, but then softened, "You've done quite a bit of hunting in this ship, including your sister."
"The Firecracker?" he asked, and she pointed to a row of ARC-170s waiting for their pilots on the other side of the landing pad. ARC-170s were good ships, though he preferred X-wings. He could even tell the ship that she must have been referring to; painted orange and red, sitting next to a teal one and a blue one; the three were set apart from the rest of the line. "Was I alone?"
"Well, unless you count R2-H9 as company."
"Why not R2-D2?"
She rolled her eyes, "And deprive your father of his best friend?"
"I'm used to him," he said defensively. "And I don't remember R2-H9," he frowned and looked over at Mara. She wasn't looking at him, and he reached out to her through the Force. She was disappointed, predominantly. There were other emotions in her mind as well, but not in large enough quantities for him to identify readily. "I'm sorry," he said softly.
"It's not your fault you don't remember," she told him, a little angry, a little defiant. Finally, he thought as a small smile started to play at his lips, I was wondering when she was going to start to be herself. She started to look like she might actually get angry with him, and he sighed. "That's not why I apologized. I'm sorry because I keep throwing this in your face," and Luke saw that what he'd said had hurt her, but not in the same way. He brushed her hair back from her face as she looked up at him. He felt lost at what he was supposed to be doing with her, but she seemed to take comfort from his touch, and he didn't want to deny her the few comforts he could give her.
"It's just so easy to forget that you aren't yourself. That you aren't my Luke. You act so much the same, I don't know how to separate the two in my mind," she said, pressing her lips into his palm.
"This will work itself out."
"But will we still be together when it does?"
"Come on, you guys," Jasmine called from the inside of the ship, saving him from trying to answer a question he didn't have the answer for.
"Coming," he answered back, and started trudging toward the ramp. "We can talk later. Do we have R2-H9 with us this time?"
"Probably. He seems to like you. Most of the time we call him Hi-ny."
Luke shook his head and tried to keep from laughing as he got inside. He was mostly successful, but still earned a sideways glance from his Padawan.
"Everything's checked out," she said, and he felt the ship through the Force and knew the ship was running smoothly and wouldn't give them any problems as he glanced at the datapad she handed him. He dutifully scrolled through the checks, and found nothing amiss there either. The ship was in tip-top shape, and she was ready to roll. Mara slid her hand under his and took his bag from him and he sent thanks through the Force to her as he followed Jasmine up to the cockpit to do the preflight warm-up. "I called ahead to Coruscanti Control; no one from the Temple is scheduled to exit until after noon. I know Master Obi-Wan and Jae are supposed to leave today, but I guess they aren't going until later on."
"They'll be gone a while then," he commented idly.
"So she won't be here when we get back?"
He shrugged. "Depends on where they're going and how long they stay."
"They are going to New Ralltiir."
"Well, then, unless their mission turns out to be very short, no, she won't be here when we get back. New Ralltiir is even further from Coruscant than Ilum, even with hyperspace lanes." Jasmine shrugged philosophically and started for the co-pilot's chair. "No, you go there," he pointed at the pilot's chair, sitting as she hesitated.
"But, but I've never flown before," she looked at him with big blue eyes, and he knew that she was used to getting her way most of the time, and it appeared that her way meant not doing anything that would hurt other people, or involve her standing out. He wasn't having it though. It wasn't precisely that he was immune to her look, but he wasn't going to let her skimp on anything with her training. He had the feeling from some of what had been said that she did that far too often as it was. She was barely passing some of her classes, especially her Force-related classes, and as a Skywalker, she should have been able to breeze through those without lifting a finger, unless they were grading her by a higher standard. He would have to ask.
"You've done work in the simulators?" he asked as he fastened himself in and familiarized himself with the controls. As he had suspected, it was not much different than the Falcon.
"Well, yeah, but they aren't the same thing," she pleaded with him.
"What happens if I get hurt on a mission? You aren't going to have Mara around; you'll have to fly us out. It's time for you to get some practice time in."
A yellow domed R2 unit rolled up, beeping a cheerful hello. "Hi-ny!" Jasmine greeted the droid excitedly.
"Alright, looks like we're ready to head for Ilum," he said to both of them. The droid, independent, as most of the Temple droids tended to be, or at least, as Luke had seen Artoo be, took that to be his only indication of a destination and plugged into the hyper computer and began programming it.
Jasmine turned and started to go through the flight sequence. She was doing a bang up job, and he watched her carefully, knowing that he would have to fix any mistakes she made quickly and hoping that he wouldn't have to. There was little margin for error with a launch vector from Coruscant; he'd only been through this once before, with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, though he knew there would be countless incidences of this particular maneuver in memories he didn't have access to just now. "Engage maneuvering thrusters," the bored sounding traffic controller's voice sounded over the radio.
"Engaging maneuvering thrusters now," she confirmed, and he was a little surprised at just how confident she sounded as she confirmed each step in the process of take-off either with him or the controller. He watched her talk to Control again, telling them that they would be exiting in ten minutes, and his heart swelled with pride as she sounded every bit the Padawan that she was.
Coruscant, Senate Rotunda, Chancellor's Office, 39:4:3
Padmé walked into her office after the first hour of open session on the floor, and pulled her cloak off. Turning to hang it up, she looked over at Arrana, who seemed a bit flustered. She filed the thought away for consideration later. "What does my morning schedule look like, Arrana?"
She consulted her datapad studiously, perhaps a little much so, to Padmé's mind. "You have an appointment with one of Canthreta's aides, Madam Chancellor, I don't know which one. It would have been Cedric if you had been here yesterday, but he's leaving system today, so…"
"Well, good. I don't want to have to put together a real argument. Her getting Cedric in here usually means I have to think harder. I love him, but he's a tough customer in negotiations."
"Is that where he's being sent?" Arrana's curiosity piqued her interest a little. It wasn't really like her secretary to be so interested in the goings on of her household.
"I'm not sure. I haven't quite figured out where everyone is or is going. Liz left yesterday, and Cedric, Han, Luke, Mara, Jasmine and Jaedrea all leave today."
"Things are going to be quiet then?"
"Well, Anakin is still home," she said with a smile.
"He's something else, isn't he?"
She smiled, "Yes, he is. Celia should be home late tomorrow, and Julia is still home. Provided Leia doesn't go into labor, yes, things should be relatively quiet," she shook her head.
"I sympathize, my lady. I have four brothers myself," Padmé shook off the temptation to delve further into conversation with Arrana; if Arrana was interested in Cedric in some way that was not professional, she would hear about it soon enough, and Cedric did have a very different way of dealing with the rest of the world than any of her other children. It wouldn't be like him to get involved with someone he didn't know well, at least, she didn't think he would. He'd shown very little interest in females in general, especially in the last year or so. It worried her, but she didn't know how to approach the subject with him. "Well, when they are your children, it's a bit different," she continued, and firmly going in the direction of business, she asked, "What else?"
"You have a meeting with Senators Organa and Mothma about reforming the Constitution?"
"That's today?" she asked, mostly herself, and went over to her desk, pulling out her notes on the subject. "Anything else this morning?"
"No, Ma'am. You had a pretty light day scheduled both today and tomorrow, but with you having to stay home yesterday, you'll be quite busy both days now."
"Ah, that's just as well," she said, and they got down to business.
Coruscant system, X-Wing 379-C17, 39:4:3
Julia pulled up again, coming off a low run against a large trader. Her task today, along with the other 23 who were out today was to try not to scare the pants off the traders that were a steady stream to and from Coruscant, while still getting some practice in. Most systems allowed transit once you escaped the gravity wells, if you could plot your course. The problem with Coruscant was that you had to practically exit the system just to get a plot out that didn't involve hitting other ships. Most sub-light engines could make it out to the outer planet ring, where most Nav Computers were able to calculate the jumps, since the ships had thinned out enough to make those jumps, in less than a day.
Boss had cut four from the day before, and she knew it was that a couple of them had foolishly gotten into dogfights with her. And lost. She didn't know why the other two had been cut, but she didn't complain, as this had the fortunate happiness of evening the wings up, and they were running as two squads. Control had been fully informed of their comings and goings, and had even authorized them to make approaches on select ships, with prior approval.
"New ship to bead," Boss said, and the information was fed through his computer to all theirs. "Go in one at a time," he advised.
It was a YT-2000, something common throughout the galaxy, superseded only by other YT models that had been in production for longer. Like the 1300. She had no reason to think it was anything special. She was first to run low across it, and the ship felt familiar. "Boss, who's on that ship?"
"Didn't get details, Nugget Six. Why don't you hail them?"
"Aye, Rogue Leader," she said, and flipped to a commercial channel, turning her ship so she could read the ship's number, and settling it so it would stay in proximity to the other ship. "Freighter YT-2000-JT7192831, do you copy?" She thought she recognized the number, and 'JT' meant Jedi Temple. Number designations didn't include letters unless they were attached to some official body.
It took a moment for her to hear the crackle of their com picking up, but then she heard, "Come to say good-bye, Wings?"
"No," she laughed, "Just hanging out with the Rogues. I didn't see you yesterday at all."
"I was busy. Master Windu scared me to death pulling me out of class yesterday, and then everything happened in such a rush."
"I remember how it was for me. I forgive you, Little Bit. Say hi to your Master for me."
"I'm here," Luke's voice came over the com.
"Good; I was hoping you weren't letting her fly by herself."
"No, but I am making her fly."
"How'd you do getting out of the atmosphere?"
"I did ok, but I don't understand how you can possibly enjoy this."
"Aw, come on, Little Bit, give it a few goes. Once your nerves settle, you'll like it a whole lot more."
"Hey, Buddy," Biggs came over the com next. "Hope the Little Bit isn't making you need to change your drawers."
"Is that you Biggs?" Luke asked, sounding a little shocked to Julia.
"Who else would be riding herd on this group of womp rats?" Biggs answered.
Julia felt more than heard the pause before she heard her brother's voice again. "You'll whip them into shape soon enough, buddy. When we get back we'll have to get together for dinner or something. It's been a while."
"Yeah. I'll tell Sera to set something up with Mara."
There was a somewhat longer pause this time, and she didn't understand why. It confused her, so she dismissed it as irrelevant. "Sounds like a plan, Biggs. See you when we get home from Ilum."
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Solo Quarters, 39:4:3
"So," Leia said as she settled onto the pillow that Master Secura had insisted was a meditation cushion. "How does one meditate?" she asked as she unconsciously straightened her spine out, her body long accustomed to the position.
"Well, most people close their eyes," Master Secura said with a smile. She seemed to be constantly full of smiles and good cheer, though Leia thought that was mostly bravado at this point. She, too, had gone through some jarring changes in the last day. "And then stretch out with your feelings, finding the Force, and letting all the thoughts inside you come to rest, and all the emotions you are feeling go out into the Force. If you are having a particular problem, you can concentrate on it, letting the Force guide you to an answer, but let's just concentrate on the first part, shall we?"
"Yes, Master," Leia answered promptly, and she could feel peace around her, but she didn't exactly stretch out to it. It came to her. Her attention turned to her thoughts; a jumbled mess at best, especially with the last three weeks and learning that she was a Skywalker, the pain that she'd gone through with her brother and then her father; not knowing if what she thought of as her universe had trudged on without them, or if it had been obliterated the moment they had left. Settling for organizing them, she tried to sort her thoughts out, and to sort her thoughts from her emotions. That was harder, though not impossible, and if she could properly detach the emotions from a thought or a memory, it would melt away, into the Force, she supposed. She was actually starting to get somewhere with that aspect when Master Secura spoke again.
"Well, Leia'wa, this doesn't seem to be helping with your connection to the Force."
She opened her eyes and sighed. "It's not?"
"You don't seem to be trying to connect to the Force at all, and that was the first thing you should have been doing."
"Oh," she said, sounding defeated. "I thought I had it."
"I think you will know when you have it," Master Secura said.
"Yes, Master," she agreed, though she didn't entirely believe it, and she moved to get up, finding her legs rather stiff, which surprised her.
Master Secura smiled and offered her a hand up. "Perhaps it is time for a light walk about the Temple to familiarize yourself with the grounds?"
"That sounds like a good idea," she said.
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Crèche, 39:4:3
Master Yoda walked into the crèche with dignity and grace, at least that was what everyone else seemed to be thinking. He felt as though he was walking with fatigue and a heavy heart at not being able to go on any longer than he already had; he had given up more and more pieces of his life because he didn't feel that he was able to conduct them properly, now he only had two things left; watching over younglings, and watching over the Skywalkers.
The first was much easier than the second, though the second had its rewards. "Master Yoda," Master Sha Koon greeted him.
"Master Koon," he said in return.
"We have a family coming in today. Would you like to speak with them?"
"I would."
"Is there anything else that you need, Master?"
"No, look over the younglings I will until they arrive."
"Yes, Master," she said with a bow and left him.
He walked over to the room of younglings who were still smaller than he—the early toddler room. The late toddler room he was at even odds with the children there, at least in size. "Master Yoda," one of the younglings cried out to him.
"Young Kennis," he said, "A pleasure to see you again it is."
"Gwampa is going 'way."
"Know this I do," he said, "Return soon he will."
Satisfied with the answer, Kennis returned to an abandoned pile of blocks. Younglings at this level normally couldn't manipulate the blocks with the Force, but Kennis Burtola was, like most in the Skywalker-Kenobi clan, quite ahead of his age mates, and he enjoyed showing off. It wasn't encouraged, but it was hard to discourage such a notion without it repressing the child.
"Masta Yoda?"
"Larra."
"Will you pway wif us?"
"Hmmmm. Play I do not."
She looked crestfallen, "Why not?"
"Not proper, it is. Stoic and quiet must a Jedi be."
"But Masta Yoda," she said tugging on his tunic, "You pwayed wif us las' time."
"Hmmm. Going my memory must be. Remember this I do not," he said with a twinkle in his eye.
"We help you 'member," she said, tugging more urgently, and he let her drag him along to whatever game they were playing at the moment.
In transit to Ilum, Bright Hope Ranger, 39:4:3
Jasmine was glad that it hadn't taken Luke and Mara very long to get down to the launch pad after she'd left their apartment. She was still quivering inside with anticipation at the prospect of what she would be able to do as a Padawan. Luke was acting very strangely, but she tried not to question it. He was still Luke in all the ways that mattered no matter what changes had been wrought while he'd been away the last three months.
The strain she had felt between them the night before hadn't diminished, but it had dulled, fading into the background like a toothache. She could still feel it, sharp and unnatural, waiting to bloom into full force at any moment.
She had done the checks on the ship, and she was careful, because she didn't want him to catch something she should have, but he didn't check behind her. When it had come time to fly the ship, his ship, he had slipped into the copilot's seat, and made her take the ship up. It had been nerve wracking, but exhilarating. Once the hyperspace coordinates had been put in, and they'd gone into hyperspace, there was little to do, but she lingered in the cockpit, taking in the sight. She hadn't really understood why Julia and Jaedrea wanted to crowd into the cockpit the first moment that they could, but there was a peaceful serenity to it, and perhaps that was it. It was probably more likely that they were just so fly-mad that they wanted to spend any time they could in there whether they could do anything or not.
She breathed a sigh of relief as they left Coruscant behind, as she always did. The constant buzz in the back of her mind was something she always had to contend with, and its sudden absence made the sense of wrongness with Luke more acute, and less ignorable. She didn't know what she was supposed to do about it, and it didn't seem like Mara knew what to do about it either.
"Hey," Luke said from behind her. She turned to look at him, and he looked the same, at least physically. What the Force told her was another matter entirely. She smiled wanly at him, and then bit her lip, not sure how to approach the subject. "Did you want to talk about something?"
She nodded and he sat down. Deciding that the most pressing matter, even more than the strangeness that was going on with him was what was going on with her father. "What's wrong with Daddy?"
He smiled, and that weird emotional mix she'd felt from him the night before came through him once again. She hadn't had time to dissect it, and she didn't have time right then. "What makes you think there's something wrong with him?"
"He's acting funny," she said, "And it's not the way he usually acts funny," she paused, but he motioned for her to continue. "I don't know how to explain it better," she grimaced, "I've never told anyone this before. But I kind of know about stuff before it happens, sometimes."
"What do you mean?" he asked, patiently, like a good master would.
She smiled at the thought. "Well, mostly it's people I'm close to, like Jae, I can just tell when she's about to do something that will get her in trouble," she rolled her eyes, "I have quit trying to talk her out of it, but sometimes I try for damage control, if she's going too far. She doesn't mean to, I know it, but she just doesn't see how many lines she crosses."
"I see," Luke said, "What else?"
"Well, lots of little things, mostly. Things other people don't pick up on. But it was like everything shattered yesterday morning. I want to know what's going on."
He thought for a while before he answered her, "Well, that's kind of complicated."
"But you understand, don't you, Luke?"
"Yes, I understand, but understanding and being able to explain it to someone else are two different things, as you well know," he said, sitting back and sighing.
"Try?" she pleaded.
He reached over and ruffled her hair. "Yes, Little Bit, I will try to explain to you why this is all happening," he told her and she waited while he picked a place to start. "I suppose, the way you would see it, everything started 36 years ago, two weeks before Father became Obi-Wan's Padawan."
She tingled all over with the realization that this was going to be a story she hadn't heard before. Perhaps she'd heard aspects of it, like how her father had lost his arm in his first act as a Jedi, or how the Jedi Order had been changed by the arrival of two strangers, strangers she knew her father and Obi-Wan had known far more about than they had been letting on. She'd always wondered what the reason that the Council had said that they weren't to be spoken of. She had been given that bit of information when she'd pressed her father for details about his stories from that time.
The fact that Luke knew this story made her wonder just what had happened when she'd left for school the morning before. "Master Yoda received two visitors. He wasn't particularly happy about it, either; they appeared in his meditation chamber out of nowhere."
"Teleportation? I thought that was impossible!"
"It wasn't teleportation, at least not in the sense that you mean. We'll get to what it was in a minute," he said, and she nodded. She felt Mara's presence heading toward them well before she saw her, though Luke didn't seem to be inclined to acknowledge her. "One of them was on the brink of death, and it took many days in the Healer's for him to recover, despite all they could do for him. He was very lucky not to die in spite of being in such a premier facility."
When Mara put her hand on Luke's shoulder, he looked over and smiled at her. It was reassuring, but it still felt strained. "I've never known anyone to have to stay under the care of the Healers for more than a couple of days," Jasmine said.
"Well, that tells you how badly he was injured." Jasmine nodded and he considered for a long moment before he continued. "What I'm about to tell you cannot be told to anyone outside the family. Even most of the family doesn't know. Mother and Father know, and Leia and I, and now Han and Mara. The only reason I'm telling you is you are too curious and too smart to be kept in the dark, and you might as well know the whole story, so that you aren't operating on half-truths and false assumptions. But you are not to go around telling anyone."
"Jae," she started.
"Anyone." Jasmine swallowed. What Luke was telling her was big—bigger than she'd originally thought. She nodded that she was ready for him to continue, and he laid out the story of how he, Leia and their father had come to the past and changed history. There were moments when he hesitated, but she understood that it was not that he was leaving things out—perhaps some things, but only in the way that everyone left things out for thirteen-year-old ears—just choosing his words carefully.
She didn't interrupt him. He was thorough, which was just as well, because her mind was reeling from the impact this was going to make in the future. The part of her mind that always thought in paths and eddies and the flow of the future looked at this like a meteor crash. The idea that every decision made ripples in a pond had just been thrown out the window. Sometimes things just happened. It was going to be a long time—perhaps a year—before she could even begin to find ripples in the pond again. He looked at her, curious and concerned, and she focused back on the present. Master Yoda was usually right, and he'd told her time and again that the future would take care of itself. He would talk to her many afternoons when there was no one else around, though there were few people who knew how often she spoke with him. He would say that she was soothing to be around, and she really enjoyed his very different perspective on the way things were. "That's…a lot to be wrong with Daddy, Master Luke."
The words had felt strange rolling off her tongue, Master Luke, but that was who he was; he wasn't the brother that she'd grown up with. "I think he'll be ok; he's not a bad person."
"But how can you do horrible things and be a Sith and not be a bad person?"
"I think he's struggling with that very question, Jasmine, and the fact that the universe doesn't remember all the bad things that he did doesn't help him answer that."
"Why would that help?"
"Well, he could do things to make up for the things that went wrong; help widows of the people he murdered, help the galaxy restore democracy. I'm not sure what he could or would do if we hadn't gone into the past."
"What he probably would have done is died," Mara pointed out philosophically.
"But then he couldn't fix things," Jasmine said.
"True, but Leia and I would have still been around and would have helped the galaxy right itself. Leia was a leader in the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and I was the only person who had any Jedi training that I know about."
"The Temple wasn't here?"
"The building itself still stood, but at the creation of the Empire, the Jedi were all killed as traitors."
"All of them?" she asked, horrified.
"So far as I know. If they didn't die then, they were hunted. Jedi were the enemy of the Empire."
"I don't understand," Jasmine said. "How could that happen?"
"Palpatine was a powerful man and a master manipulator, and he changed public perceptions over the course of decades. I'm sure that not many people believed that the Jedi had turned on the Republic at first, but more and more evidence surfaced, most of it probably manufactured, and the Empire was tyrannical. Very few beings would even teach their children the truth of the Jedi Order, how it was good and just before the beginning of the Empire. Even I didn't learn much about the Order at all until I began my training as a Knight."
"So the Sith won?"
"For a while," he said with a smile, "But Father and I were able to destroy the Emperor, and that would have been the beginning of the end for the Empire."
"But I wouldn't have been there, or Mom, or any of the rest of us?"
He shook his head sadly. "Just Leia and me, and the Alliance. But we would have done alright, I think."
"Daddy will be ok, right?"
He hadn't gone into detail as to what their father had done as a Sith, but she had a rough idea of what a Sith was capable of. After all, Darth Maul had been openly active for 36 years. "I think he'll be ok, once he settles down," Luke told her. He had focused on mostly his time in the past, and the last four years, saying that he'd been raised on Tatooine with Owen and Beru, knowing little of their father and nothing of their mother, believing both to be dead.
"Did you know Nana?" she asked, realizing that their grandmother was absent from the story.
"Nana?"
"You know, Daddy's Mom?"
"Oh," he sighed. "She died before I was born," he told her with a shrug.
"Oh," she said, defeated for a moment. "She's coming in for your birthday this year."
"Why?" he asked, sitting back.
"Well, Leia's having her twins, and it's Mom and Dad's anniversary, and your birthday all in one month, but you would probably care more about them being here for your birthday."
"She's right, you know. She's supposed to be here for a month or more. Your Dad keeps trying to talk her into staying on Coruscant full time."
Luke smiled and shook his head. "He of all people should know how fast and deep Tatooine gets in your blood."
"That's what Nana says," Jasmine told him with a grin.
He smiled, and it was the first time he'd really, really smiled that day. He relaxed a little more than he had been. And Jasmine caught an oddness in the way that the Force swirled around him. It was so fleeting that she didn't know what to make of it. She didn't dismiss it, no matter the fact that it wasn't definable; things had changed too much for her to do that.
En route to Eriadu, Millennium Falcon, 39:4:3
Han sat looking at the object in his hands. He kept several such things around; some of them were children's games or puzzles, some just odd things he'd picked up that were interesting to look at while he thought. He just liked to have something to do with his hands while his mind was occupied with a problem. He'd fought like a Rancor when they had assigned him to this mission so close to Leia's due date, but he'd lost. Even Master Yoda had been more or less on his side. He didn't really have any choice in the matter, unless he wanted to resign his commission, and he didn't want that.
It wasn't like there were a whole lot of pilots to choose from. The whole of the Republic's Navy was involved in war games for two weeks out of every year, and the cream of the crop was taken every year and subjected to further testing. Some of them were then attached to the Temple. It took a special kind of pilot to be a Temple Pilot, apparently. There had always been some, but Master Yoda had greatly expanded the program in the last thirty-five years of his tenure as Grand Master of the Order. He had made quite a number of other stirring changes in that time as well, from allowing marriage to opening not one but three new Temples, and there was a talk of a fourth soon.
The Jedi's standards weren't precisely based on what you could do in the pilot's chair, but how much they could trust you. Master Yoda had been a big believer in checking the academy regularly for people he wanted in the Temple. Han had been one of those. He usually chose one or two; the year Han had come to the Temple, ten others had come with him.
Another thing that had bothered him at the time was that there were two classes of pilots; the ones that Master Yoda chose, and the ones that were there on their own merit. Each of the two groups seemed to keep to themselves more than they mingled, and the Jedi also seemed to trust the pilots Yoda had chosen far more than those that the Navy assigned as a privileged duty for ace pilots.
He knew there had to have been a reason he was chosen, and that Leia had been around him in the other lifetime was a pretty good one. According to one Jedi he'd cajoled into talking more openly, he was pure of heart, knowing his loyalties and not wavering from them, and that made him a good candidate for a Temple Pilot.
So he took the ribbing from the young hotshots, knowing that they wouldn't ever have the confidence of any of the Jedi. He understood what one of the older pilots had told him when he'd first signed on. Hotshots come and go, Solo, but if you're plucked up and kept, that's a whole different way of being. Sometimes the hotshots have the brains to know the difference, but only a handful of those ever have the heart to come over to our side. Don't worry about them, if they aren't gone in two years, they might amount to something, otherwise they aren't worth the air it would cost to space them.
Han had thought the attitude harsh then, but he understood where it came from now. He still thought it was harsh, even after a decade as a Temple Pilot, but he'd been on the seedy side of life, where he was everyone's punching bag, and turning that around and making something of himself made him feel like it had all been worth it. Being a part of the Temple Community had helped in that. They hadn't expected him to become a Jedi; they wanted him to experience a normal life. But his job, his duty, was to ferry Jedi around, at least that was what the public saw, the reality…was a little different.
He was part of the family. Master Yoda had seen to that by selecting him, and there was a loyalty that ran bone deep both from the Jedi, and from those like him, whose duties, oddly enough, included protecting those Jedi, more often than they would readily admit. His job was to fly, and fly well enough to get them out of harm's way, out of whatever gundark's nest they'd gotten into. And he loved it, and he loved being a part of the Temple Family, and now, part of the Skywalker family. He just wasn't quite sure who was in that family anymore.
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Tano Quarters, 39:4:3
Ahsoka blinked. She had wondered who Vader was, and she had wondered why she was seeing all of these now-not-so-nonsensical visions. She had wondered where Master Skywalker had been in all of it; now she knew. Whenever he had been in her dreams, he'd been a single figure, never interacting with the others, but now, knowing Vader and he were the same person, placed him firmly in the center of almost every vision. "Oh, Master," she said in the way she used to when, if he'd been caught by Master Obi-Wan, he would have gotten a lecture, She'd found him doing something very…Skywalker. Reckless didn't begin to cover what he did to get himself into binds. She'd domesticated him somewhat, but Ash still told her some hair-raising stories. Well, they would be if either of them had hair. Human idioms amused her most of the time, this one especially, because it didn't refer to the hair on their heads at all, but the fine hairs that covered the rest of their bodies.
He smiled, but there was no real warmth to it. "I don't know if I can do this."
"Yes, you do," she contradicted him. "You just don't want to because it's going to be like dragging a herd of Bantha through the Tatooine Desert at high noon."
That got her something closer to a real smile. "And what would you know about that?"
She rolled her eyes. "Only you could be so dense. I'm your Padawan. My family…didn't live through Master Koon finding me."
"I remember."
She shrugged. "I guess some things don't change. So when you went home during leave, I went with you. I spent a month or more every year on Tatooine for twelve years, and I still go for some of the time that you are there. I go with Nadina to her home, but I just don't feel as much at home there as I do with Nana Lars and everybody."
There was an emotional war inside him as she made another reference to his mother. "I think I need to go home," he said, and she nodded.
"I would say that you are right except for one thing."
"What?"
"She's going to be here for a month or so for Luke and Leia's birthday, and seeing her first great-grandchildren born, and your anniversary is coming up soon, and it's going to look weird if you go home now with all that going on."
"She's coming here?"
"Where else would she go to do all those things?" she asked, her tone teasing and slightly acidic. Master Skywalker really was being slow today.
"Why do you have to make sense?"
She shrugged. "I understand that you are feeling trapped. I do. Maybe better than you do, but I know you. You don't run away when things get hard. You never have, you've just plowed on through everything. I know that you've done some bad things; I've seen them. That doesn't mean that you can't do good things, or that you've forgotten how. You were the one that taught me the Code, and I know you still believe in it. Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force," she quoted the Jedi Code to him, and while he'd heard that version before, it wasn't the main one of the Temple.
"That isn't the version I was taught."
"I know. I didn't know if you'd ever even heard it before. There's been a lot of argument about it."
"I have, but not from any official source. I had to go looking to find it."
"So, somehow you've embodied that version of the code to such an extent that there are very few who will try to deny the validity of such a thing. I think it was something you said, that denying one's emotions is a fool's errand, that mostly shuts them up, but they still try sometimes."
He closed his eyes, and leaned back into the chair. She could sense flashes of emotion from him, and, in general, he was heading in a good direction, so she let him think.
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Kenobi Quarters, 39:4:3
Jaedrea had hoped to get going on their mission directly after breakfast, but Obi-Wan had promised Rain that he would have dinner with her. Fortunately, he hadn't meant evening, as her mother would have. She loved Kennis and Olisa, but that didn't mean she really wanted to spend time with them that she could have been heading out toward her mission. She understood, in principle at least, that it wouldn't matter if they left earlier; they would arrive in the middle of the New Ralltiir capital's night cycle if they left now.
"Gwampa," Kennis stormed her master's quarters, and they accepted him like a beleaguered castle. Mr. Horns was in tow, as always, except the last couple of miserable days. Obi-Wan swung the boy up, using the Force to subtly lighten the work on his old bones.
She didn't blame him, and if she thought she could get away with it, she would have done the same thing. Kennis was big for his age and he weighed nearly 15 kilos. He expended far too much energy for any of it to be fat; he was a bundle of energy. He just happened to be a big bundle. Fortunately for the rest of the Temple, there were plenty of Jedi willing to work crèche duty for an hour, a day, or, like Liz, a lifetime. Kennis had yet to run out of people willing to keep him contained and occupied.
Or Padawans in need of "time to think while occupying their hands." She'd spent quite a bit of time down there doing that herself, and, according to Obi-Wan's stories, so had her father. What was worse was that by the time he was her age he was actually enjoying it.
Perhaps that was why she had so many siblings. Their mother had loved them, but their father had always been the one in charge of mundane things like diaper changing, middle-of-the-night feedings, patching scraped knees, and kissing bruised elbows. Which was, when she thought about it, very odd. He was the one who was gone for sometimes months at a time, and was gone more than he was home, but he was still the person that all of them had cried for when they were hurt.
She had seen other families, and it was usually the father who was more distant, and the mother who kissed the hurts, but she just couldn't see her father being able to be so distant. Even Master Kenobi, while he loved his three now-grown children, wasn't hands-on the way her father was.
She still couldn't imagine her family any other way. Her mother was too passionate about the Republic to have quit the Senate, even when she was just a Senator, when they were younger. She really didn't remember much from before her mother had become Chancellor. She remembered her early Initiate training, but much of what happened at home during that time had blurred into a long string of events that were in a lot of ways disconnected from everything else, and politics wasn't exactly her favorite subject even now, so most of what her parents, or her mother and Cedric discussed went well over her head.
"Thinking about something, Padawan?" Obi-Wan's quiet question pulled her out of her reverie.
She shook her head, "Just thinking about how Daddy was always the one that I cried for when I got hurt, and how Mom was always there, but not, you know?"
"I know. I think it's some quality of your father's that he immerses himself into something so completely that it's impossible to separate him from it, once he sets his mind to it. That is how he approaches life, not just fatherhood. I see that quality in you, for good or ill."
She nodded. He'd said as much before, so this was not new territory, "Should I go get lunch?"
"Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea. Olisa, why don't you set the table?"
"Yes, Grandpa."
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Grand Entrance, 39:4:3
It was Aayla's opinion that Leia was going to have a difficult time with her new status. How difficult remained to be seen. She considered how to work through this with her as she began pointing out various features of the Temple to her Padawan. "In this part of the Temple, on every level there are staircases," she said, indicating the grand staircase to the ground floor, which they descended. "Not like this, of course, but the stairs are in this central area."
"What about the spires?" Leia asked, indicating the window behind them.
"Each of those has their own stairs and turbolifts. We will take the turbolift back up, I don't want you straining yourself."
"I'm pregnant, not helpless," she sounded exasperated.
"And I haven't been here to berate you at all about it. Not that it would have done any good at all."
"Why didn't you come home, at least when I got home?"
"Master Windu thought there was no need. I was the senior Jedi on the ground on Askaj; he was sending Quin along as soon as he could, but he hadn't gotten freed up from whatever it was he had been doing until the afternoon before I left," she said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. She angled her way around behind, where the stairs led down again.
Leia ignored the reference to a Jedi, or at least she assumed it was another Jedi, and asked instead, "Where to now?"
"The Room of a Thousand Fountains. It's peaceful there, and it might be somewhere we can try meditating later."
Leia followed her down the stairs wordlessly then as the stairs opened into the airy lightness of the gardens, she gasped, and stared for a long moment before speaking again. "It's so beautiful! I heard the stories growing up, but…they don't compare to the reality."
"You never made it down here when you were here before?" Aayla asked as they began strolling down the worn pathway.
"No, I was with my mother, so I stayed in the Diplomatic apartments, and it was a rather busy time."
"From what Master Yoda has told me, I think that is a bit of an understatement."
Leia closed her eyes, and seemed to feel…something flood her inner being. It felt right, natural. Yet at the same time it was completely alien. She also felt something inside her reaching for the feeling, like it needed it. Just before the sensations touched, her master's voice broke her out of her…trance? "Do be careful, Leia'wa, there are a few poisonous plants here." Leia pulled her hand back from one of the plants she was reaching out to touch.
"Why?" she asked, trying not to let annoyance into her voice. She was mostly successful.
"They are not poisonous to the ones for whom they are planted. There are a thousand fountains, each with its own garden, and some of those gardens are designed for non-humans. If it is possible, sacrifices are made to safety—we do have many younglings—but sometimes, what is poison to one is the sweetest perfume to the other. Some of the beings here can only tolerate the special gardens designed for their species."
She nodded. "Are there any warning signs? Surely you have visitors down here."
"No, visitors are not allowed. In fact, they are only allowed in the grand entrance, where we just were, and the several receiving chambers off of it."
"Oh," Leia said, and Aayla let the conversation die for a little while.
She felt rather than saw the approach of two beings, and said, "Someone's coming this way."
Leia turned unerringly toward the approaching pair. "Really?"
Aayla shook her head; the contradictions that seemed to be ever-present with Leia were getting to her. "Really. They will be here shortly."
It was not long before Aayla saw the Togruta's montrals. She knew that one of the people coming was a Skywalker, probably Anakin, but she couldn't think who would be there with him. "Aayla," Ahsoka greeted her as she came into view.
"I didn't know you were home," Aayla smiled in greeting.
"Just got in this morning. I suppose I can assume you got pulled in from the hinterlands as well?"
"How did you know?"
"I just got pulled in by Master Yoda himself. I figured he decided that this needed special handling."
"That, I believe, goes for all of us," Aayla said.
Aayla turned back to where Leia had been standing to find her gone, along with Anakin. "Guess some things are never going to change. How did they slip away?" Ahsoka asked.
Aayla frowned. "I cannot sense Leia's Force-presence at all, and, well, Anakin is Anakin."
Asoka grinned impudently then put her arm consolingly around Aayla's shoulders. "Don't worry, you'll eventually learn to think ahead of them, or get used to being behind."
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Room of a Thousand Fountains, 39:4:3
"Leia!" Anakin's voice was not particularly loud, but he held absolute authority in his voice that made Leia stop cold. She turned to face him and he gestured her over in another direction. "Here," he told her more gently.
She nodded her approval as she noticed a path that was very well hidden by the plants that grew up around the entrance. The path wound quite a ways back before opening into almost a cave made by the frondy plants that surrounded the clearing. "Thanks," she said to him quietly as they sat down. "I was starting to feel smothered."
"Aayla is a good Jedi," he told her noncommittally.
She smiled back wanly. "She makes me feel like I'm doing everything wrong."
"Like what?" Anakin asked her seriously, folding one knee up under his chin and facing her.
Leia felt her breath catch at the absolute perfection of the moment. She hadn't had that many alone moments with Bail; and this was the first time that she'd been able to steal away from her Jedi duties since they had come into the present that they had helped create. "Like meditating, and my pregnancy, and just figuring everything out. I know I had different experiences here than I did there, and everything is just so completely different and exactly the same at the same time. I haven't had time to breathe, much less think since we got here. I missed Han so much while we were in the past, and now he's here, and he's Han, but softer."
"Is that a bad thing? The Empire made everyone have to hide inside shells in order to survive; is being able to let you in, even in your altered state such a bad thing?"
"It's not bad, I guess, it's just that I'm not ready for everything to be so different."
"You cannot go back to the Organas; you know that."
"I know, and I don't want to, not really, but everything is new, and scary. And what isn't new, is completely different."
"You need to give this time. You've only been here a day and a half."
"I'm afraid I'm not going to have time."
Anakin cocked his head to the side as he looked at her, or rather seemed to be looking through her. "Leia, take the time that you need. Force the issue if you have to. You have had so much stripped from you, and it will take you time to process that. You were poised to become the leader of the known world, and now, you are one among many. You are an amazing young woman with a full life ahead of you. You will be uniquely able to distinguish yourself in this life, as a Jedi, or not, if you so choose. Fortunately, you have a lot of time off ahead of you, and while infants take a lot of your time, they don't usually take much in the way of mental work, so your mind will still be somewhat free, and you can spend this time working on your options. Do some research, talk with people. don't do anything really rash. Give it a couple of months. You have plenty of time. Perhaps you can think of your pregnancy as your buffer zone, so that you can ease back into your life and come to terms with everything."
In transit to Shiava, Valenthyne Farfalla, 39:4:3
Cedric unstrapped himself from the pilot's chair; Master Ti had let, well, insisted that he fly. He didn't think he was as bad as Luke or his father would be were they not permitted in the pilot's seat. He did have to admit to a certain amount of nervousness when someone else was flying, like an itch he couldn't scratch, he just wanted to take over. Not because he felt that another was incompetent, but because his reaction speed was just faster, no that wasn't it…it was because he was a Skywalker. Master Ti had made that point once, and he had rejected the theory out of hand, but he'd realized, as with so much, that his master was right. He could sit perfectly still, and even, for the most part, keep his annoyance from leaking out into the Force, but his Master knew him too well, and so she had given up the pilot's chair, keeping him distracted while she concentrated on the mission ahead of them, since he wouldn't if he were not piloting.
"So, what are the particulars of this mission?" he asked, turning away from the cloudy gray of hyperspace and facing his Master.
"We are going to Shiava, well, you knew that, but the capital city, to work out the final stages of a trade negotiation."
He wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Again?" it wasn't that he minded particularly negotiating; he was actually quite skilled in doing so, but he also liked variety in his missions.
"Yes, again. In fact, that's what Obi-Wan and Jaedrea are doing, and Master Mundi."
"Oh," he said, the gears in his mind already turning on why there would be so many trade negotiations in such a short span of time.
"I know that look, Padawan," she said, and he directed his attention to her, "What's going on in that overly-active head of yours?"
"I was wondering why so many trade negotiations right now, Master," he said, sharing because it was easier than trying to hide it from her; besides, she might have an idea.
"I don't know, Cedric, but that might be something that you could figure out. Why don't you configure a query for the Temple Database that you can send on a hyper-pulse back when we make our first vector change?"
His eyes opened wide, "But to do that I would need access to at least the descriptions of all the mission files in the last year, at the very least."
"Hmmm," Shaak Ti looked thoughtful for a moment. "I don't think that is a problem, considering the statistical nature of the question. I think you should go back further than one year, though."
"I'll set something up for you to take a look at. I don't think it should take more than an hour."
"Fine," she said. "I will review what you have done in an hour, and if it is suitable, I will transmit it to the database on my authorization."
In transit to Ilum, Bright Hope Ranger, 39:4:3
Mara was pacing, flitting about the cabin she would have shared with Luke, had he been in a mood to share. He wasn't acting any differently than she would have expected if Luke was completely normal, and that made her really not want to trust her instincts, because they were telling her two conflicting things. On one hand, Luke was being Luke, teaching Jasmine what she needed to know, and being ever so helpful. He was always cheerful and helpful, and that hadn't changed in the least. His Force presence, however, had changed significantly. It wasn't that he was any more powerful, but he was more aware of the Force and it was, in turn, more present around him.
She sighed, knowing that she was being spiteful inside her own head, but this whole situation was setting her on edge, and when that happened, it usually necessitated a fight-or-flight response. Which she now had to fight, because fighting Luke wasn't an option, and running from the situation would only make things worse. But it built up tension inside her that she didn't know what to do with. She was tense enough that she didn't know if she would be able to meditate at all, much less on this.
She didn't hear the cabin door open, so Luke's sudden appearance made her squeak with surprise. He smiled, saying, "I didn't mean to scare you."
She recovered sufficiently from her shock, and told him, "You just surprised me is all. I didn't hear you come in."
"Oh," he said, rubbing the hair on the back of his neck. "I wanted to talk to you."
She swallowed the fears that rose with his statement, "About what?" she forced herself to ask lightly.
"Well, about us."
"What about us?" she asked, sitting on the bed.
He sat on one of the meditation cushions near the foot of the bed. "I know that you want there to be an us, and I'm not sure how I feel about this whole mess yet. I want this to work out, and I feel like this should work out, but I want to take this slowly, and do it right. I need to know that you can be patient with me," he said, and it was so sincere and earnest that her heart went out to him once again. And that he had deduced his first big obstacle with her made her wonder if this was really going to take all that long. He saw her calculating look, and gave her a stony look that said she wasn't going to get around this until he was good and ready to let her in.
"Patience isn't something I'm big on, I admit," she told him finally. "But you aren't overly cautious either."
"Tell me about what you enjoy most about being with me," he said instead of directing his attention to her last comment.
She sighed, considering his request. She honestly hadn't put much thought into why they were together, only that they were supposed to be together. "I feel complete when I'm with you, and I'm happy. I know that most people think that being a Jedi brings its own sort of happiness, but for me it doesn't. It's just the job that I was born to do. I would miss it if I wasn't doing it, but it's not the reason I get up in the morning, it's not the reason I continue to do what I do. You are that for me."
"I would think that is true for most Jedi. I know it's true for my father."
"You think?"
"Of course, no individual is just one thing, Mara. Being a Jedi is important to me, but so is being a husband and a father. I don't know if I'll get my memory back ever, but you are the mother of my child. That means you have to be really special because I doubt I would've chosen you if you weren't. The last few days have convinced me that I wasn't much different before, and I found this," he produced a datapad from his pocket.
"The Journal your mother gave you when you became a Padawan?"
"Yes...the only day I haven't written in it is yesterday. There's a lot in here about you, but I got to know the me that you knew, at least in small part."
"And?"
"And he reminds me of what I was like on the farm, brash, eager. Yet to truly be tested in a way that REALLY matters; young."
"Young?"
"Yes, very young. You don't know how...different this timeline is. I've been at war since I was nineteen, Mara. That scars the soul. Your Luke hasn't had to be a soldier. He was a peace keeper, fully able to fight, but it's not like war. A real war."
"You sound like you find him lacking."
"No...he is me in every way, the only difference is I had to mature ten years in six months where he could take his time. I also think that I have a better understanding of the Force than he does, again, not a judgment, just an observation. Indeed I get the feeling that most Knights our age are a bit behind both of us in understanding of the Force. "
"Ok...that is interesting. And us?"
"Give me time...it will happen, I'm sure of it."
"I want to believe you, it's just hard." He nodded, and she looked up at him, wanting so much just for him to be her husband and knowing that that was the one thing she couldn't have, not until he decided he was ready. "I don't know how to fight this, Luke, and it's tearing me up inside. I just need to know what I can do to help."
He got up and sat down on the bed, and drawing her over beside him, "I think I know where you can start. I need you to help me understand this universe, and the Order, and my place in it. Where I come from, there is no Order; as far as I know, I am the only Jedi anywhere. I am sure I would have been able to find others, but it was going to take time. I don't know how to be around other Jedi."
She was quite relieved; he wasn't asking impossible things of her, and she trusted him not to start. She felt a tiny quiver in the Force, and she froze, holding her breath.
"What's going on?" Luke asked, concerned, and it was so…Luke, that she didn't know what to say to him for a moment.
"I'm not sure," she said, swallowing hard, "I felt something in the Force."
He bit his lip and she could feel him stretching out with the Force, it swirled around her like a swollen stream. "I don't sense anything amiss."
She felt it again, and she could tell that he had as well. "That, only it was a little stronger this time."
He smiled one of his smiles of radiant wonder. "That," he said, "Came from here," and he put his hand on her stomach.
She let out a surprised little 'o,' and put her small hands over his bigger one. The sensation came again, and she wasn't sure what to do about it. "Hmmm," she started, but she hadn't heard of anyone having something like this happen.
"Well, Jasmine did say we were upsetting the baby last night."
"She did. I just kind of dismissed it as her being tired or something."
"I wondered, but I don't know Jasmine well enough to judge if she's saying something out of exasperation or because she has evidence to back it up."
"Well," she paused as the…pulse? came again. "I don't understand this."
"Hmmm. If she were bigger I would guess that she had the hiccups."
"She?" Mara asked again as he sent small tendrils of the Force flowing through her toward the baby.
"Can't you tell? She's very definitely female, at least from what I can feel of her. Of course, you could just wait and find out when she's born."
"I hadn't thought about it," she said. "Do you know what Leia's having?"
He thought for a moment, "One of each," he said.
"You didn't even know she was having twins until you thought about the gender, did you?"
"No, actually," he said, surprised because she could read him so well.
"So what are you going to do about this one's Force-hiccups?"
"I put her to sleep," he said. "She's still upset about last night, I think, and her only sensitivity seems to be emotional thus far."
She pressed the back of his hand against her cheek, and let him go. Their daughter was sleeping. It filled her with both wonder and sadness, because she could tell that, while Luke cared about the wellbeing of their child, it still made him uncomfortable that she existed. "I don't think it's a good time to talk anymore," she was still wrapped up in misery, and she didn't know how to deal with him being so close and so distant. He nodded sadly.
"I'll go. You should get some rest."
She read the tension in his body, and she knew that he wanted to stay, to comfort her. He was Luke, and she loved him so much for that, but he wasn't hers anymore, which made her not know how to separate it in her mind.
He couldn't stand to see someone hurt. He never could, and that was just the way of things. It hurt him because he was hurting her, and she didn't know what to do to stop the cycle. Everything was not fine in the land of Skywalker, and he wasn't about to pretend that it was. And it hurt. It hurt that he looked at her and saw a stranger, but she was just going to have to get over that, somehow if she expected things to get better.
She closed her eyes against the pain, and her voice was rough when she said, "You should go check on Jasmine. I'll rest. It's a good idea."
She could see him, even with her eyes squeezed tight shut, even with her back turned. He dropped the hand that he'd been reaching out to her, and he got that sad puppy look and dropped his head just a little. "Alright," he said. The emotions had leached out of his voice as though he was reining them in tightly.
She heard the door open, and then close again, and she turned to see if he had really gone, half wishing he'd stayed. But he hadn't. She turned the sheets back on the bunk; he'd told her to rest, but hadn't said she needed to leave. She slipped under the covers, wrapping them around herself. He hadn't washed them since the last time he'd slept in the ship, it hadn't been that long, and the sheets still smelled like him.
The thought made her sad and lost for a moment, but she moved past it. The suddenness of the change, perhaps, had caught her off guard, but she would get through this, just as she had many other things. She wondered briefly if their daughter would understand what had happened, but she hoped it would never come up. She drifted into sleep, feeling comforted and whole, as she hadn't felt since she'd found out about this situation.
Caamas, Jedi Temple, Crèche, 39:4:3
Elizabeth was tired after her day with the Stryders. There were quite a number of adults in their family, and she had spent most of the day with them, and it made her wonder if she had been spending too much time in the crèche.
"It's alright, you know."
She turned to look at Deirdre, the older human who was in charge of the crèche in Caamas's Temple. "What's alright?"
"What you're thinking about. You are wondering if you don't get enough adult time, yes?" Deirdre asked her, picking up one of the fussy youngsters and handing her over to Liz. She had kind blue eyes, and her hair was mostly white, and if Liz stood on her knees instead of her feet, she was just a little taller than Deirdre.
"Yes," she admitted with a sigh.
"I wondered the same thing when I was about your age. I was still a Padawan, and I was here, talking to a prospective, much as you are, and the parents were much as the ones you're talking to, I imagine, all talk and going nowhere with it."
"I think I would be fine if it were just the parents."
"Ah, you got one of those sort. Strange, how big the clans will get in just a generation or two."
"So what's the difference?"
"Oh, it's the difference between the country folk and the city folk. The parents I was talking to were from the city. You headed pretty far out today, didn't you?"
"Yes, it was an hour or so trip."
"Not close enough to get to the nearest city then," she said, and patted the back of the baby she was holding as she thought for a moment. "Small talk is hard to come by after you've been doing it for hours. Don't worry. Tomorrow is for serious talk. You don't have any trouble with that, now do you?"
She smiled, mostly at the youngling she was holding, "No, that I can do. I've been doing that as much as Master Koon, of late."
"She's a good woman, your master. Her uncle, too."
"Yes, I appreciate having both of them in my life."
"And you are missing her?"
"I," she sighed, "I haven't even been gone for a week yet."
"Time doesn't matter to the heart. But there's something else bothering you."
"How do you know so much?"
"Fifty years of watching younglings teaches one a little about how younglings work, and you, my dear, are still just enough of a youngling for me to work my magic on you."
Liz huffed and sat down in a rocking chair, hoping the rhythm would soothe the fussy youngling in her arms. "Well," she said after a stern look from Deirdre, "There is one thing."
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Skywalker Central, 39:4:3
Anakin felt like he was walking in a dream. Walking through the Temple was surreal, and becoming more so. After a long discussion with Ahsoka, and a walk through the halls, he didn't feel any better about being where he was. Obi-Wan was on his way to New Ralltiir, and he wished that the universe hadn't been so cruel as to give him the whirlwind of his family, his Master, everything, and then pull it all out from under him.
Perhaps he was overreacting; he still had Padmé here, and she was still a Senator. He had Ahsoka back, and she was trying to convince him to cook dinner. She told him that Julia and Celia would be home soon; they had encountered Leia and Aayla Secura on their walk, he'd followed Leia as she'd stolen away, he could sense that she wanted some distance from her Master, but he didn't want her wandering about alone, so he'd taken her off to one of the more selcuded spots in the gardens.
Ahsoka looked at him, her arms crossed, and he could feel, predominantly, amusement and frustration coming from her through the Force.
"If you don't cook dinner, there won't be anything for us to eat," she said. "I don't know about you, but I'm not one for missing meals if I can avoid it. How did you manage dinner last night, anyway?"
"Um, I was with Obi-Wan?"
"Meaning that you left your poor defenseless children to fend for themselves. At least all of them have Masters to take pity on them now. Did the two of you at least feed Jae?"
He shrank a little, and admitted, "No, I only saw her at breakfast."
"Dear Force. It's a wonder that the Temple is still standing if you two left her without supervision all evening."
"She isn't really that bad, is she?"
"Well, there are some things that happened that can't be blamed on her. She wasn't born yet when the entire Council chamber was painted a shade of green that 'matched' Master Yoda."
He rubbed his hand across his face, and looked at her with disbelief. "You aren't kidding."
"No. I will very shamefully admit that I was the one who acquired the paint, but only after someone else had the idea."
"Of course," he said, then had a sudden thought. "I hope they didn't learn any of this from me."
"Other than feeling that they had to live up to your reputation?"
He squeezed his eyes shut. "What's the worst that could have happened?"
"Well, when the triplets were two they all got out of the crèche, and we were gone; it was not very long before I was knighted. Between the three of them, they somehow got out a window, and they were walking around on the outside of the Temple. We almost had several people crash when they realized that the…new ornaments on top of one of the spires were alive."
His eyes were wide. "And why didn't Obi-Wan inform me that we needed to take care of this?"
"Well, Padmé was home all day yesterday. Maybe she was home when Jae got home from school."
"That seems likely," he said. "If they were two when they did that…"
"Yes, and Jae is their mastermind. If there was every one of your children that required constant supervision, it would be her. So what are you fixing for dinner?"
He greeted the question with a glower, but he began rummaging through the kitchen for suitable ingredients. "I'm home," he heard a young female voice call.
"Hey, Wings, how was your training with Rogue Squadron today?" Ahsoka asked. He found Shurra fruit, and put it back. Alderaanian squash. Several leafy vegetables.
"Cool. I got to buzz some ships today. Boss cut four people from yesterday, so we went out in two full squads. We buzzed ships in the morning and did precision point exercises in the afternoon. I did better than over half the test subjects," Julia chattered on excitedly, and Anakin looked through a cabinet.
"Were you using the Force?" He found herbs and he closed the door, pulling another one open.
"No, I don't need to. If we were doing four-man runs like yesterday, I would if I needed it, but it's no fun if you win because you cheat," Julia was very wise, he thought, finding some interesting base staples in the cabinet he was currently looking through. "Daddy?" she asked, poking her head into the kitchen.
He looked at her. She had brown eyes, but her hair was straight, about the shade his had been when he had gotten home from the Clone Wars. His hair had grown darker than that since, but hers probably wouldn't. "Yes?"
"Hi."
"Hello."
"What's for dinner?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"Oh. Did you want some help?"
He almost said no. She looked so earnest, though, and so young and vulnerable. "Did you have an idea?"
"Yeah," she said, coming all the way into the kitchen, "Who's home?"
"Leia and Celia," he answered with authority.
"Celia won't be home 'til tomorrow, unless something has come up."
"No. Nothing's happened," he reassured her, "Aayla Secura is coming over as well."
Julia gasped excitedly, "She's home? We should make Terasaka. She loves that."
"Can I trust you to do that?"
She gulped. "I think so," she said, and Ahsoka grabbed a data disc from a store of them on the wall.
She handed the disc to Julia. "You need the recipe, though, don't you?"
Julia nodded and started chattering at a mile a minute, much to the amusement of both adults.