Standard Disclaimer: These characters belong to G. Lucas and T. Zahn. In other words: not mine.
Dedication: To anyone who loves hot chocolate.
Rating: M (just to be on the safe side)
Spoilers/Timeline: After The Corellian Trilogy but before "Vision of the Future".
A/N: Do read and review.
Lightheaded
Chapter 4: Millennia Meetings
Luke never knew there could be so many colours of food. How could there be so many toppings available for a single nerf-sausage burger? Chocolate rice and onions on a tomato-based pastry? How could one stand to eat sugar clouds that were pink, or blue, or green, and not be immediately sick to the stomach? How could one drink cafs that were purple in colour, with bubbles of carbon dioxide in them, and still live to tell the tale?
And more importantly, how had he lived without all this in his life?
Questions like these filled his mind throughout his afternoon spent with Jaina and Jacen at the Millennia Square Carnival. It was a toss-up who was more excited, the twins, or Luke – the closest he had ever been to a carnival was… well, maybe the huge party that occurred when Leia and Han got married, Luke thought with a squint.
"Aren't you guys tired yet? Why don't we sit down at the caf stand for a bit?"
"But Uncle Luke, you said we could go ride the Terrible Twisting Turn after the Caf Cup ride!" Jaina whined. Jacen picked up the refrain. "Yeah Uncle Luke, you said so, and the queue's really long, so we'll have to wait in line. Come on, you can rest while we queue, right?"
"Or you could use the Force to make them all want to go on other rides!" Jaina giggled, but Jacen nudged her hard in the ribs and shushed her. "She didn't mean it, Uncle Luke, really, honest. She was just joking, right Jaina?" Glaring at his twin, he sent her rudimentary feelings of dissatisfaction and annoyance over the Force, which Luke picked up.
"Jaina, you know that that's not the right attitude to take, and I'm surprised at you. How could you say such a thing?" Luke paused after his rhetorical question, knowing instinctively that she wouldn't have an answer for him, but needing to make her sweat a little after her small misdemeanour. Quite frankly, he was disappointed, but he wasn't surprised at her attitude. She was, after all, only eight. To her, the Force was probably a sixth sense that made her feel special, and was to be made use of.
He turned to his nephew. "Jacen, control your temper better. Remember the Jedi teaching I mentioned? Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and…"
"…and hate leads to suffering. I remember, Uncle Luke. I'm sorry." Jacen chewed on his lower lip, looking pensive. With another upturned eyebrow from his uncle, his mouth shaped a silent 'oh', and he turned to his sister. "I'm sorry too, Jaina."
"Me too."
The little party took a little breather from the sudden change in mood. Jaina, impatient to be gone, decided to break the little impasse.
"Can we go queue up for Terrible Twisting Turn now, please? With no Jedi tricks, of course," she added quickly, with a swift glance at her uncle.
Deciding that they needed a break from each other, and that the Noghri bodyguards would stick by even closer to the children if they were alone, Luke decided to let them queue on their own.
"Jacen, you've got the ten credits for the ride?" Jacen nodded. "And your comlink?" Another nod from him. "Then why don't you and Jaina go queue for the ride. Com me just before you get to the head of the queue so that I can see you guys turning green," Luke tousled the boy's hair and gave him a gentle nudge toward the ride. "I'll sit here and meditate in the Force and try to predict who pukes the most from the ride."
"Thanks Uncle Luke! C'mon Jaina!" The joke lost on him, Jacen grabbed his twin and took off without a second glance. Luke gave Gharrbsh, the head of the childrens' Noghri security force a nod. Gharrbsh nodded back once, then disappeared from behind the large tent where he was keeping an eye on the twins from. Luke knew that he probably just called for his backup team to active duty, now that the twins were without his protection, but he also knew two things: one, that if twenty Noghri weren't enough to take down whatever harm might befall the twins, another Jedi Master wouldn't make a difference, and two, the twins really did need a short break away from him after another Jedi teaching episode.
Luke sighed as he sat down. He ordered a cold chocolate drink from the droid that came to serve him, and sat back to ponder on the events that had just transpired. How he had to be both Uncle Luke, as well as the Jedi Master, looking after two very young apprentices. He closed his eyes tightly as the sudden cold from the drink crept up his sinuses to his temples.
How had the Masters from the Old Republic done this, Luke wondered, not for the first time. There was such a delicate balance between making the children understand the importance and the power of their Jedi heritage, and allowing them to have their childhood.
'That is why we are a Republic, and not an Empire,' Luke thought. 'So that we could have our children, and they could have their childhoods.' He reached out to check on their auras. All he could feel was a general feeling of excitement, with a tinge of boredom underlying from both of them. He smiled. 'Probably because waiting in line is absolutely no fun,' he thought. 'Why hasn't anyone come up with a good way of entertaining children while they wait in lines?' he wondered. Half-opening his eyes, he looked around.
And saw someone sitting at his table, directly across from him.
"Jade."
"Skywalker."
"I didn't hear you sit down."
"That's because I didn't want you to."
"You're good."
"I know."
"That's some thick skin you've got there, Jade."
"All the better to shrug off knife attacks, Skywalker. And you've got," she reached over the table as Luke tried not to flinch, "extremely burnt skin." She gestured towards his collarbones. "Getting yourself in trouble again, I see."
He raised both his eyebrows in mock surprise. "It's the midday Coruscant sun and a carnival without much shade. And when have you known me not to be in trouble, Jade?"
She gave a half-shrug, noncommittal, and sat back in her seat, giving him a brief respite from their rapid-fire conversation, and a chance for him to appraise her critically. She was dressed very differently from her normal gear. Today, she was in a loose pair of black pants, and an equally loose tunic. A hat of some sort sat on the seat beside her, and her normally red-gold hair was covered up with a straight, black-haired wig. She was also carrying a boxy sort of bag, the sort that looked vaguely like what a holographer would carry.
"What are you doing here anyway?"
"I could ask the same of you, Jedi," she countered smoothly.
Deciding that childishness was the way to play it, he replied, "I asked you first."
"I asked you second." She looked calmly at him, the only hint that she was enjoying their exchange being an extremely minute tic by the side of her right eye, almost undetectable except to those who knew where to look.
"Carnival. Jaina. Jacen. Me, Uncle. You?"
"Carnival. Client. Meeting. Me, working."
"No wonder the hideous wig."
"It's not hideous, it's incognito."
"It couldn't be incognito; anyone who's seen it probably remembers it as the most hideous-looking wig in the whole galaxy."
"You're just jealous because your hair's such a boring colour."
"Hey, I'll have you know it that on some worlds, blondes apparently have the most fun," Luke retorted.
"And I'll have you know on some other worlds, blondes are considered the galaxy's airheads." She gestured to the serving droid who had been cleaning the next table. "I'll have what he's having." She waved her hand at Luke's drink. The droid dispensed the drink and left. She picked up the drink and waited.
"What?" He asked.
"No comeback?"
"You spoiled the momentum!"
"You stopped replying!"
That stopped him short.
"But… you spoiled the momentum… ordering your drink," he finished lamely, knowing that he was beaten.
"Why are you really here?" He asked her hurriedly, to cover up the fact that he had, in a sense, lost their verbal sparring match.
"Oh, business. We had to provide some information to someone who needed confirmation on something." She tossed her fake hair over her shoulder, and sipped her drink.
He smiled. "That's as vague as you can get. I know exactly what you are referring to."
"Oh you do, do you?" Taken aback by her careless attitude, he tried to look at her more closely without appearing to be staring at her or scrutinising her.
Putting a sabacc face on, he smiled. "Of course I do."
Jade put down her drink and leaned forward. "I think you're bluffing, Jedi. Because I think if you knew what I was doing here, you wouldn't like it one bit."
Maintaining his façade, he didn't drop his grin as he too, put down his drink and leaned forward. "Oh really, Jade? Then why don't you enlighten me as to what you, successful trader, are doing here in the middle of the afternoon, at a children's carnival, dressed hideously," he paused to give the wig a look of distaste. " – and carrying what looks like a holographer's bag?"
She sat back with a smug look on her face. "You're digging for information rather poorly, Skywalker. Are you forgetting that I trained with the best?"
Luke smiled, and dropped his act. "Alright, so I don't have your skill for interrogation techniques. So I'll just ask you, as an ignorant blonde wanting to know the truth: why are you here, Jade? I'm really curious."
She sighed. "I told you, someone wanted information, and wanted it passed to them in public to ensure their safety. That's all I can tell you. The information was traded when I gave him my holocam, in exchange for another holocam."
Luke raised his eyebrows in appreciation of the method of information delivery. "That's a novel way of exchanging information…I never thought that holocams could be used as a method of delivery."
"Who says that the messages were in the holocams?"
"But you just said…"
"Think about it a bit, Jedi. Or don't, it's not important. Is that your comlink or mine?"
Luke looked down at his comlink, which had started sounding. "Mine. The twins are about to get on the Terrible Twisting Turn now." He finished his drink quickly. "Would you like to come see them throw their guts out after they get off?"
Jade grinned, and finished her drink. "And me, with a real holocam at the ready to capture the future of the Jedi Order, getting sick." She stood up, and threw a couple of credits on the table. "Lead the way."
"I was going to pay for the drinks, you know."
"I know."