Following on from 'The Anniversary Waltz' where a face from Leia's past led to her fainting. Was Jaizun's appearance just a shock as she claims, or is he set to bring more chaos to Han and Leia's life?
As a reminder, and because I sometimes forget what I write also, Han and Leia's daughter Jaina is married to Jagged Fel – they have a daughter, Lei, who is about 13 or 14 months old and a newborn daughter Jorja, now 2 or 3 weeks old. Their son, Jacen has a daughter Anais borne to and abandoned by his then girlfriend Tenel Ka (only child of Leia's one time suitor Prince Isolder of Hapes). Anais is a fraction younger than Lei and is being raising by Jacen and his partner Tilly, who the night before delivered twins.
If you've read any of my other stories and haven't guessed by now I write about family situations, not epic space battles or deep storylines. I write about things I can relate to, because sometimes it's the only way to give those things headspace.
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Han had been fussing for less than a standard minute and already Leia was considering drawing her lightsabre. "For goodness sake Han, I'm fine!" She insisted, slapping his hand away from tucking a blanket around her legs.
"Last night I found you passed out on the porch, so I think 'fine' is open to debate." He argued as Leia rolled her eyes. "Which is why, while I go fetch our son, his girl and their babies back from the medical centre, you are going to sit yourself down and you..." He pointed a long finger at Jaina. "...are going to make sure she doesn't move."
When Leia had failed to follow him to bed the night before, Han had gone in search of her and eventually discovered her slumped on the verandah floor. She had told him repeatedly that she had been overtired and that there was nothing more sinister than that, but Han knew her well enough to know when she was hiding something.
And she was definitely being economical with the truth.
"Maybe some stim tea?" Jaina offered.
"Thank you sweetheart." Leia smiled.
"You gonna stay put?" Han asked, after Jaina had left them.
"You gonna scare our son a little more, because he's hanging on by a thread." Leia said quietly.
Han glanced at Jorj, sitting to their dining table, who's attention wavered between his school work and his mother's palid complexion and agreed. "Point taken. Just promise me you'll take it easy."
"I promise." She confirmed.
"Well, okay then." Han exhaled, hitched his pants against his hips and sauntered over to Jorj. "How you doin' buddy?"
"Is Mama all right?" Jorj asked, lip trembling.
Han noticed the slip backwards from Mom to Mama and reassured the boy with a soft smile. "She's just fine son. Got herself a little over-excited at the party last night is all. Think you can help look out for her?"
"Always Papa." Jorj nodded.
"That's my boy." Han winked at Jorj, returning to Leia as Jaina handed her a mug of her favourite tea. "You want me to bring you anything from town? More tea? Sweet treat? Medic?"
"Just the rest of our family." Leia answered sweetly, resisting the urge to growl at him. Bowing his head, Han excused himself a fraction of a minute before Leia tossed the blanket to one side.
"He's just concerned Mom. You do look pale." Jaina offered.
"I'm fine." Leia repeated. "Look, I got a little tired, stepped outside for some fresh air and fainted. And that's all."
"Ahuh." Jaina said, sounding unconvinced. "Now, what really happened. Jedi to Jedi."
Leia sighed. "I fainted. Pure and simple."
"Yeah, I got that part. Now, how about we examine the moments leading up to you fainting?" Jaina pressed.
Leia sighed again and paused to gather her thoughts before her confession. "When I was a girl on Alderaan, we had this guy to come paint our portraits. He was the most incredible artist Jaina. Intuitive, you know? You only had to sit for him once, he could sketch an outline and then paint just from memory. And they were beautiful Jaina, so beautiful. He showed a..a..passion not just in every portrait, but behind every brush stroke. That's the only way I can describe it. Carty's talent was unsurpassed. He was...exceptional. Simply exceptional."
"Did we maybe have a teeny tiny crush on him Mom?" Jaina teased.
"Carty's wife died in childbirth." Leia went on. "She was infected by the same virus that killed Mother, so Carty was left with a son to raise alone. His son followed him everywhere, learning the same skills his father possessed whilst sitting at his father's side. He too showed promise, a talent for art that's more than just learned, it's inherited."
"Child genius. I get it." Jaina said, already tiring of the story.
"The Galaxy lost a rare gift when Alderaan was destroyed." Leia said, wistfully. "Or so I thought."
"They made it off the planet?" Jaina queried.
"One of them certainly did. He was here last night. He's responsible for the pieces of art your father so loves and for the nameplate out front." Leia told her.
"Carty made all these things..." Jaina's eyes darted from piece to piece.
"Not Carty. His son, Jaizun." Leia smiled as Jaina drew her knees under her and swung around to listen to her mother with renewed interest. "Jaizun was the same age as me with the same sense of curiosity, but a much deeper intensity than I ever exhibited."
"I find that hard to believe." Jaina quipped.
"When my studies allowed, Jaizun and I would spend time together discussing art and literature, among other things." Leia's smile made her seem like a young woman again.
"Like making out kind of things? I mean, I was named for Dad's mother and come to think of it, Jaizun does sound a whole lot like Jacen to the untrained ear." Jaina teased.
Leia meanwhile rose, crossed to a bookcase and ran her fingers across the half dozen written volumes before selecting a thin paperback and returning to the sofa. She handed the book to Jaina who flipped through its pages.
"You were his muse." Jaina gasped at page after page of drawings of her mother's younger self in various poses and locations.
"I'm not sure I'd go that far." Leia denied.
"I would!" Jaina turned one drawing to her mother for comment. One in which, on initial inspection, she appeared to be naked.
"That...that's very miss-leading." Leia wagged a finger from side to side. "The gown I was wearing skimmed my upper arms and the drawing is only from the shoulders up."
"Does Dad know about these?" Jaina asked.
"He's seen them." Leia confirmed with a nod. "He laughed."
"Does he know about Jaizun?" Jaina queried. Leia accepted the book of drawings back but failed to answer her question. "Were you in love with him?" She pressed.
"I was thirteen and being groomed for a life in the Senate, and as Alderaan's Queen. Love was not an item on my agenda." Leia stated. She rose and returned the book to its place on the shelf, aware that Jaina was watching her every move. She paused a moment then withdrew another book, located a page and pulled out a loose sheaf of flimsie which she carried back to the sofa.
"Is this the full nude?" Jaina asked with an arched eyebrow.
"Of sorts." Leia replied.
Jaina held the sheet as carefully as it had been handed to her. It was a sketch of a man, naked and curled on a sofa, facing away from the artist. "Carty?" She asked.
"Look again." Leia replied, shaking her head.
Jaina returned to examine the drawing further. The man was taller than could easily fit on the sofa and he had needed to draw in his knees and cross his ankles in order to lie flat. His hair, dark and tousled, hid any features but he appeared to be in a comfortable repose. The flesh was pale, so this was not Bail Organa, who's darker complexion clearly identified him as a native of the Alderaan system.
Jaina narrowed her eyes and drew the picture nearer for a closer examination. The man was scarred. His back bore the unmistakable markings of straps or whips. He was or had been a prisoner; perhaps a slave, even. Jaina looked up then at her mother for clarification.
"It's your father. You see, I was there the day Carty drew it. He used a small studio on the estate, one that Mother had used before she passed away." Leia explained. She went on to tell how she had seen the studio's window illuminated and knew that Carty was working. And where Carty was, Jaizun would be close by.
She had raced down to the studio expecting to find them preparing for another portrait session, to discover Carty teaching his son the nuances of drawing the human form. He had paid this man, the man Leia since recognised as her husband, some one hundred credits to sit..or rather lie..for him. He had agreed, providing his face remain hidden. After all, the man had insisted, he had a reputation to uphold.
Jaina laughed at that, hearing her father's words in her head.
Leia had sat quietly by while father and son had drawn and after, when Carty had made his own mental observations, she had been asked to describe what she saw by comparing the two versions side by side.
Leia had been honest in her appraisal. The one she believed to be Carty's showed a greater depth of feeling than the other, though a true critic might argue, the lighter hand revealed a sensitivity not immediately apparent.
"I thought I was being clever and truthful and encouraging at the same time. Turned out I had the artists the wrong way round. Carty's was the one that captured the man's natural lightness while Jaizun's showed the dark underbelly of his life." Leia lifted the drawing onto the palm of her hand. "It wasn't until after Jaizun gifted me his sketch that I saw it for what it truly was; a study in the way one man's life may evolve if the tide didn't turn away from the Empire. If the despots running the Galaxy could reduce one man to selling his time and his body for a hundred credits, what could it be doing to the rest of the population it was supposed to serve. That was when I decided to devote myself to the Rebel Alliance. You know, if you asked your father he'd say I changed him. But the truth is he, and this, changed me."
Leia held the drawing up for Jaina to see once more. There was something there she hadn't seen before. Something hidden in the layers of sketch-work.
Lettering! Jaina suddenly realised. The random scratches they appeared to depict on the artwork sitter's back was actually an early form of basic text.
"What does it say?" She breathed.
"The Alliance to Restore the Republic." Leia replied.
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"So now you feel conflicted. Torn between your feelings for Dad and this Jaizun character." Jaina suggested. They had gone to sit on the porch to await Han's return with Jacen, Tilly and the newborn babies.
"Did you spend the whole of your maternity furlough with your head in romance novels?" Leia laughed.
"Only the Delanora Weaver ones you sent me, she's the best! Now stop changing the subject!" Jaina demanded.
"You must never let your father know, you know how he can be." Leia begged. "As to the fainting, it really was just the shock. Seeing Jaizun again was so unexpected that I was caught off-guard. That's all and it really is nothing more than that. But then it started me wondering. If Jaizun and perhaps his father made it off world before it's destruction, then who else might there be scattered about the Galaxy? At first I wondered about Bail, though of course Father would never have left his people to perish while he made his escape. But there might have been others..." Her voice drifted as did her thoughts, to the beautiful world she had once called home. To Alderaan...
Leia threw her arms around her father's neck, squealing with delight. "Oh Father! It's everything I ever wanted and more!" She had exclaimed.
Bail Organa chuckled as he held his daughter in his arms. "It's just a dress little one." He had insisted.
"It's not just a dress. It's the latest fashion and it's all the way from Coruscant!" Leia had argued, admiring the gown at arm's length.
"My darling child, you could make the angels weep wearing a tablecloth." Bail had laughed.
"Not to my first time in the Senate. I will be representing Alderaan and all that she stands for. And, more importantly, I will be representing you." She had pointed out, very seriously. Bail had looked at her then, the love in his eyes replaced, or perhaps shared, with pride.
"Then you shall have new slippers to go with your gown." He had told her. "And, perhaps, a new hairstyle. Something more sophisticated, more suited to the occasion. Side buns, perhaps."
"Side buns! Seriously!" Leia had almost fainted at the idea.
Bail had laughed harder. "All right my love, why don't we look in your mother's book of hairstyles and accessories and find something appropriate." Bail had said.
…..The relief Leia had felt was transformed into the smile she now wore as Jaina spoke her name for the fourth time.
"Hell Mom! You need hearing implants or something?" Jaina queried.
"I'm sorry, I was remembering when Father first introduced me to the Senate." Leia said. "I hadn't even reached puberty properly and already I..."
"That's great Mom, but Dad's back." Jaina nodded in the direction of the landspeeder and the tall Corellian bounding from it's cockpit.
"Hey, hey, hey! Look what I got!" Han called.
Leia beamed and rose to greet them.
"No, no! Sit, sit!" Han waggled an arm for her to return to her seat. Climbing the steps with a double travel pouch, he proudly placed the sleeping newborns on the porch swing beside Leia.
"Oh my stars! Look how beautiful they are." Leia proclaimed.
"You wouldn't have said that when I changed their first diaper." Jacen moaned, following his father.
"First one's always the worst." Jaina offered.
"Second wasn't much better." Jacen added and helped Tilly to sit the other side of the swing, their offspring between mother and grandmother.
"You think the diaper was bad! You should have tried giving birth to 'em!" Tilly exhaled as she sat.
"Hey! This calls for a celebration." Han grabbed his son and yanked him into the house to help him.
"I swear, if Jacen ever comes near me again I'll kill him. I've got so many bacta strips holding me together I feel like a made to measure suit!" Tilly declared, hitching until she got comfortable.
"Warm baths and lots of fussing. Worked wonders for me when I had the twins." Leia offered.
"You hate Dad fussing." Jaina scowled.
"I hate his unnecessary fussing." Leia corrected. One baby stirred and rubbed a mitten over it's face.
"They got names yet?" Jaina enquired, peering at the twins.
"They sure do. Want me to do the introductions?" Han answered, returning with a bottle of whiskey while Jacen followed with the glasses.
"Go ahead Dad, I know you're itching to." Jacen sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Well, this little cutie is called Rey." Han said, indicating the girl. "And this wee fella, he's called Ren."
Jaina gave Jacen a mini eye roll. "One of each. You are so going to be the favoured twin from now on." She teased.
"None for me, thank you, I'm feeding." Tilly waved away Han's offered glass of whiskey.
"Han, it's not even ten in the morning." Leia shook her head, Jaina declining also.
"Corellian tradition. You'll have one with me won't you son? You know, wet the babies heads." Han grinned, sloshing whiskey into two glasses. The men clinked glasses and threw back their whiskey while the boy, Ren, stretched and smacked his lips.
"Oh great! Feeding time at the zoo!" Tilly mumbled.
"We should go inside. You'll be more comfortable and, if you don't mind an old woman's interference, I might be able to offer some feeding tips." Leia suggested, rising and offering a hand to Tilly.