Note: Thanks to Ceillean for letting me borrow her OC Eliziya for this one!
More Cookies, More Chaos
Set in 19 ABY.)
The door opened to the sound of children's laughter. There was a shrill edge to it, which told Luke that at least one of the kids was hyper and overexcited. Judging by the volume, though, it was all three.
He looked down into the smiling face of Eliziya Thompson, who stood framed in the doorway. Her dark hair was tied back in a practical bun, a few loose strands falling into and around her face with its delicate features. Her cheeks fairly glowed, and her beautiful, brown eyes shone up at him. "Master Skywalker! Please come on in."
Luke smiled back. "Thank you, Liz." As he followed her into the apartment, he heard a man's voice mingling with the kids' excited voices, teasing and admonishing at the same time. Luke thought he made out the word "cookies".
The living area was a scene of happy chaos, and seeing it immediately broadened his smile.
Kyp Durron stood by the couch, a laughing Anakin Solo squirming in his arms. The Jedi Knight was mock-glaring down at the boy, hair falling into his face as he growled, "Did you steal one of my cookies? Hey?"
Anakin's face split in a wide grin. "No!"
"I did!" Jacen crowed, pulling at Kyp's shirt from behind. As Kyp lowered Anakin to the ground and turned, Jaina jumped onto the couch behind him and poked a finger into his back.
"No, I did!" she yelled, jumping up and down.
Kyp turned his glower on her. Beside Luke, Eliziya laughed, and Luke found himself joining in. Kyp Durron had faced down Sith Lords, tyrants, and crime lords; that glower had intimidated dozens, if not hundreds, into submission. In ten-year-old Jaina Solo, it just caused a delighted giggle as she stuck out her tongue at him.
The giggle turned into a shriek as he lunged forward and caught her, lifting her off the couch. Then he swung her around to face Luke. "I'm afraid I have to report at least one case of theft, Master Skywalker."
"Uncle Luke!" Jaina shouted. "Kyp—stop tickling m—Kyp is totally out of line!" The last two words were almost lost to giggling as Kyp, straight-faced, doled out tickly justice to the cookie thief.
"Yeah, the way of the Jedi is serenity!" Jacen added, an all-too-familiar glint in his eyes as he tried to poke Kyp in the ribs. "Serenity!"
Beside him, Eliziya was shaking with laughter, and it took some effort for Luke to keep a straight face. "If that's the case, you don't seem to be doing such a great job either, guys."
Anakin had made his way over and looked up at him, blue eyes wide open, totally deadpan. "We have a bad role model."
Luke lost the battle with his laughter as it welled up in his throat. When he had his voice back under control, he turned to Eliziya. "Have they been like this all day?"
"Pretty much." Eliziya laughed when he cringed. "They're lovely kids. We had a lot of fun."
Luke reached out to ruffle Anakin's hair. "I'm glad. I know three Jedi kids are a challenge."
"Three?" Eliziya raised a curved dark eyebrow. "You mean four, right?"
"I heard that!" came Kyp's voice, slightly muffled because Jaina had somehow clambered onto his shoulders and was now reaching out to Jacen behind him.
Eliziya's smile was radiant. "That's if you round Kyp's mental age up a little, of course," she said, raising her voice a little.
"Hey!"
Anakin laughed, his young face glowing with delight. Eliziya shook her head, still smiling, and turned back to Luke. "Dinner will be ready in a few minutes."
"Thank you so much for this," Luke said. He'd agreed to watch the kids for the week, but today had become unexpectedly busy. Kyp and Eliziya were lifesavers. Eliziya had even invited him to stay for dinner, which had made his day considerably less stressful than it otherwise would have been.
"It's no problem," Eliziya assured him. "Like I said, we had fun." She glanced fondly down at Anakin and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "So did you get one of his cookies?"
Anakin gave her a measuring glance, clearly debating whether or not to trust her, then he nodded. "Yeah. Just one, though." He grinned up at Luke. "Kyp gets real annoyed when you go near his cookies."
"He's very protective of them," Eliziya explained, her eyes sparking much like Anakin's. "When Jaina figured that out, it became the new game."
Luke nodded, a wry smile on his face. "That sounds about right."
"I'm impressed that they even got one." Eliziya ducked as a pillow came flying out from the living area. The twins had found ammunition to defend themselves against the Jedi Knight. "It's not easy."
Luke shook his head, thoroughly amused. The thought of Kyp Durron, one of the most gifted Knights of the Order, the stuff of nightmares for countless lawbreakers and corrupt politicians, having to fight children over cookies...
When another pillow sailed out of the living area, Eliziya led Luke into the kitchen. Anakin scampered back to rejoin the fight, but mere moments later, Jacen sauntered in instead. "Hey, Uncle Luke."
"Hi Jacen. You beat up Kyp already?"
Jacen's grin was almost an exact replica of Han's. "Nope. Jaina's doing a good job, though." He looked up at Eliziya. "Uh, can I just ask, when's dinner gonna be ready?"
Eliziya glanced over at the food-prep unit. "Right about now, actually. You want to help me lay the table?"
"Sure." Jacen accepted the stack of cutlery she handed him and began walking around the table, setting them out. "What're we having, by the way?"
"Nerf sausages with vrejate greens and mounder potato rice," Eliziya said. Luke smiled. It was a typical Corellian meal, one he'd had several times when visiting his sister and brother-in-law. Either Kyp had acquired a taste for Corellian cuisine from all the time he'd spent with Han, or Eliziya was even more thoughtful and observant than Luke had realised.
"Yummy," Jacen said. He had definitely acquired his tastes from Han, at least when it came to food and comfortable furniture. "Will I call the others?"
"Please do."
Luke and Eliziya finished setting out the food and utensils, and the kids came tumbling in just as Luke had taken his seat. Kyp strode in after them, looking for all the world as if he'd just been through an intense sparring session. His black shirt hung out over his faded denim pants, and it seemed to be missing buttons because it was wide open at the neck. His dark hair was mussed and tangled, and combined with the stubble shadowing his jaw to lend a rugged, roguish air to his sharply handsome features.
Eliziya seemed to share Luke's appraisal. "You look like you've just lost a war."
Kyp dropped onto the chair across the table corner from her and flashed a rogue's grin. "I'm telling you. Babysitting these little terrors puts the best Jedi mission to shame."
"Terrors?" Jaina echoed, indignant. "We're not terrors!"
"Yes you are." Kyp reached over to muss her hair, causing her to squirm. "Lively, lovable little terrors."
"Hah, then you're a big terror," Jacen said from beside his sister. "And a bad influence."
Kyp raised an eyebrow at him. "Oho, so it's my fault?"
Jacen's grin was pure Solo. "Of course!"
Anakin was staring at the food on the table as Eliziya doled it out. "Is that mounder potato rice?"
Luke knew that tone, and his heart sank a little. Anakin's taste was a bit trickier than the twins'. He was quite sure how it worked. As near as he could tell, his youngest nephew occasionally decided that he didn't like a particular food, and hung onto that decision until a while after everyone had stopped trying to persuade him otherwise.
"Yes," Eliziya said. "It's very good. It'll make you big and strong."
"I don't like it."
No couching it in diplomatic or hesitant terms, either, like Jacen or Jaina would have done. For all their rambunctiousness, the twins knew how to behave themselves. When they went against that knowledge, it was usually with full awareness of the consequences. Anakin, ensconced in his own little world as he so often seemed to be, seemed hardly aware of those consequences, never mind concerned with them.
Luke knew that nerf sausage and vrejite greens, in and of themselves, did not constitute a proper meal for a nine-year-old. And he knew that Anakin had no real problem with potato rice. The problem was getting the boy to remember and accept that. And for all his Jedi training, Luke had yet to figure out that trick.
But Eliziya only grinned. "Really? Well, I bet Kyp's happy to hear that. He loves mounder potato rice even more than he loves cookies."
Kyp's hesitation was so brief that Luke hardly noticed it, before he seemed to catch Eliziya's meaning. "Yep," he said. "And it's all mine."
Eliziya gave him a stern look. "You have to share this time, Kyp. You can't eat it all by yourself."
He crammed a forkful of the stuff into his mouth. "I can try." He glanced at the kids. "And then I'll get even bigger and stronger, and I'll be able to defend my food from all you little monsters."
Eliziya's eyes gleamed as she scooped potato rice onto the twins' plates and handed them over. "Here, quickly. Wouldn't it be great if we ate it all before he can come back for more?"
Jacen and Jaina gave her almost identical grins of conspiratorial delight, and tucked in.
"Oh, I'll help," Luke said, understanding the strategy. "That'll teach him to hoard his cookies!"
"Me too!" Anakin exclaimed, his dislike forgotten as he grinned at Eliziya. "I can eat lots!"
And just like that, the crisis was averted. Slightly disbelieving, Luke watched Anakin shovel potato rice into his mouth with occasional grins and laughs of delight as Kyp pretended to glare at them all. The Jedi played his role perfectly, timing it so that he finished his food after the kids, letting them win and jeer at him.
Luke sat by, watched, and took mental notes. Sometimes, you really didn't need Jedi tricks.
Afterwards, when they'd bundled the kids into their coats and stood out in the hallway saying goodbye, Luke told Eliziya, "You're very good with them."
She smiled. "They're good kids. It's not really my doing."
Luke laughed. "You should see what they've done to other babysitters."
"Yeah, me, for example." Kyp had his arm around his girlfriend, and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. "I think you might have saved my life today."
"Ugh," Jacen said, wrinkling his nose.
Jaina elbowed him in the side. "Oh, don't be such a prude." She ignored the grown-ups' laughter and held out her hand to Eliziya, a sweet smile on her face. It came straight from the Leia Organa repertoire of polite smiles, but somehow, Jaina always managed to imbue it with a subtle air of mischief. "It was nice to meet you."
They said their goodbyes then, and Luke led the kids out to where his speeder waited.
"I liked her," Jacen said after a while. "I hope Kyp keeps her around." He paused, considered what he'd said, and shook his head. "Or, well, probably I should say that I hope she keeps Kyp around. That's how it works, right, Uncle Luke?"
Luke chuckled on hearing that kind of wisdom from a ten-year-old. "Yeah, I think you're right there."
They were silent for a while as he started the speeder, Jaina and Anakin because they were watching, Jacen because he was apparently still pondering the day's experiences. But the silence didn't last for long.
"Uncle Luke?"
"Yes, Anakin?"
"Do you have cookies at home?"
Luke smiled. "Yes, and you can have some for dessert when we get there."
"Astral!"
There was another brief silence. The speeder hummed smoothly through the evening traffic. Then:
"Uncle Luke?"
"Yes, Jaina?"
He couldn't see her face, but when she spoke again, her voice gave away the very Leia-like, evil grin that must have lingered there. "When we get the cookies, can we call Kyp and show him?"
