Padmé hugged Anakin tightly and they return to the Naberrie estate to enjoy another fine meal with his in-laws. Anakin sensed great tension when he came around his nieces however; they were both sitting in chairs opposite from each other with a stern warning from Sola not to dare get out of those chairs until dinner. They were both sulking and glaring fiercely at each other. Anakin could pickup their thoughts as he entered the room.
"I told you we would get caught." Ryoo was brooding.
"Only because you wouldn't do exactly what I had told you." Pooja admonished.
Anakin sat on the sofa still holding Luke in his lap; he was playing with his father's tunic fingering the soft leather inlays.
"Ladies." Anakin greeted.
"Hi, Uncle Anakin." Pooja and Ryoo acknowledged.
"Do you want to tell me what this is all about?" Anakin quietly asked.
Both girls simultaneously started yelling and Anakin shouted, "Whoa, one at a time. Ryoo, you go first."
"We were outside in the garden, playing in the gazebo, when I had a wonderful plan to surprise our mother with some flowers."
"Okay, that sounds nice."
"But we aren't allowed to get the snips to cut the roses, because they were in the garden shed and there are a lot of dangerous tools in there."
"I see, go on."
"Well, Pooja decided that I should stand as lookout and warn her if anyone approached the garden shed. I told her that we weren't allowed to go in there. She told me that nobody is the wiser, she'd just get the snips and we could go cut the roses for mom."
"Well our gardener started to approach the shed to return a wheelbarrow, I whispered to Pooja to hide. I then ran on the opposite side of the shed."
"Okay, Pooja, you may continue." Anakin stated.
"Well, I managed to get caught between the lawnmower droid and the wall, I couldn't move. I yelled for Ryoo to help me and what does she do? She runs to the house to get our mother! She betrayed me!" Pooja yelled as she jumped from her chair to attack Ryoo or would have if Anakin hadn't lifted his hand to stop her in mid-air with her feet dangling helplessly.
"I didn't betray you Pooja, I didn't want to get us into any trouble, but I was afraid that you would get hurt." Ryoo cried. Sola entered the living room to see Anakin sitting calmly on the sofa with his son in his lap, and Pooja hanging in mid-air, if the girls weren't in serious trouble, this scene might be hilarious. Anakin lowered Pooja to her feet and Sola told them to get washed up for dinner.
"Sorry, Anakin that you had to witness their bad behavior."
"No problem, Sola. I've got a method to help them work through their frustrations with your permission of course."
"What's that?"
"Work." Anakin smiled devilishly.
"What kind of work?"
"The house is just about completed and new furniture will be arriving next week. I need some assistance in sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping floors. Master Yoda said work is good for the soul, it helps to alleviate negative emotions such as fear, anger, and aggression."
"Okay, they're yours, Anakin. Why do I have a feeling that you had first hand experience in this philosophy?"
Anakin looked away guiltily, "I wasn't exactly a model padawan, milady. My pranks would get me into the most trouble that and my late night excursions to the lower levels of Coruscant. Obi-Wan was the most creative in his lessons."
Sola laughed.
Ryoo and Pooja returned to the dining room to sit when the felt a stone in their chairs, they both yelped.
Anakin laughed as both girls glared at him, he returned the favor, and both girls squirmed and quickly looked down at their plates. "Works every time." Anakin thought to himself. After dinner, Sola told the girls that they would be working with Anakin the next day as their punishment for messing around in the garden shed. "No, we don't want to." Ryoo and Pooja whined.
"Sorry, ladies, you have no choice. It's time for bed; Uncle Anakin will be waking you up at the crack of dawn." Both girls sighed realizing their fate and went to bed as told.
The next morning, Anakin awoke and kissed Padmé on the cheek and told her to have a good day.
"Good luck with the girls, Ani." Padmé sleepily stated.
Sola awoke both girls and dressed them in work clothes and braided their hair into pigtails, Anakin arrived as the sun began to crack just above the horizon. Sola fixed a small breakfast and Darred left to go to work so he could get off work early that afternoon. Anakin loaded both girls into the speeder and went to the house, he handed the girls each a broom and a carry-all with cleaning supplies. He took them upstairs to the first bedroom. He instructed them to first dust, wash the windows, sweep the floor and throw the dust into the trash bag.
"What are you going to be doing?"
"Don't worry about my activities young ones, get started you both have a long day ahead of you."
Anakin went downstairs to his garage to continue cleaning his work area. He kept an open beacon on his nieces through the Force.
They were working silently he could of course feel the tension between the both of them, it would ease as the time went by and they realized who their common enemy was, which is what Anakin had planned all along. He continued to work on making two necklaces for his favorite nieces. He found a piece of leather twine to hang the jabor snippet from and would give these to them if the work they did was satisfactory.
"Why did mother agree to this?" Ryoo asked disgusted as she swept the dust into a neat pile.
"I don't know, but this is insulting. This is why we have servants."
Anakin came into the room, "Servants are people too, Pooja. Sometimes you aren't always going to have people to do the dirty work; you need to learn how to do it yourselves." Anakin replied.
"What would you know about servants? You probably had them your entire life." Pooja yelled indignantly.
"Is that what you think, young one?" Anakin calmly asked.
"Yes, we know that Jedi Temple isn't cleaned by Jedi Masters."
"No you are right about that, normally disobedient padawans had the intense pleasure of scrubbing the floors or worse cleaning the refreshers." Anakin sarcastically stated.
"This is slavery here! You are making us do your dirty work, it isn't fair." Ryoo yelled.
"Life is rarely fair, Ryoo. There is no comparison to doing some work for disobedience and slavery."
"How would you know?" Pooja asked huffily.
Anakin felt his temper increase from the very depth of his soul and a dark look appeared in his eyes. He put his hands on his hips and felt the great fear of his nieces as he towered over them. As he called upon the Force for calm he very sternly replied, "I have first-hand experience as slave, which involved doing everything that my master commanded without question and without disobedience. Disobedience was rewarded with a most thorough whipping that would leave you in such pain that you every time you took a single breath it would multiple the agonies of every moment. So to ask my ungrateful nieces to help me with clean my home does not even come close to slavery."
Anakin turned and left the room with Ryoo and Pooja were utterly speechless and they hugged each other for comfort and felt incredibly guilty for daring to challenge their uncle. They never realized that he had been a slave prior to becoming a Jedi; he rarely spoke of his life prior to meeting their Aunt Padmé. They assumed that he had a pleasant upbringing because he spoke of his mother with honor and obvious love. Anakin returned to his garage to start working on his speeder, he felt the presence of his two nieces coming toward him before they even knocked on the door.
Anakin ignored them as he continued to modify the engine, fixing things always had soothing calming effect on him he allowed his anger to slip away into the Force, but his nieces didn't know that, they stood holding hands afraid to say anything.
"Yes, what is it?" He sternly asked.
"Uncle Anakin?"
"Yes?"
"We're so sorry for being ungrateful and for saying those things to you." Ryoo cried.
"We didn't mean to be so spoiled." Pooja murmured as tears came to her eyes.
Anakin put his tool down and walked over to them, allowing them to feel his disappointment as he as he folded his arms across his chest. The two girls started to cry and it was obvious to Anakin that they were truly sorrowful. The only weakness he had was that he couldn't stand to see women or girls crying; he crouched to them and pulled them into a large embrace. The two girls cried even more, but only out of relief, they thought he would be angry at them forever. He carried them to the room they were cleaning and was impressed. The rest of the house they cleaned together and after eating a light lunch, he took the girls fishing.
"Uncle Anakin?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
"You're welcome." Anakin smiled as a fish yanked on his line and he pulled it off and placed it in the bucket.
"Uncle Anakin?"
"Hmm?"
"Did you know that you are really scary when you get mad?" Ryoo questioned.
Anakin had to laugh and said, "Yes, I've been told."
"I don't think Luke or Leia will ever cross you." Pooja admitted.
"We will warn them so that they won't have to do chores." Ryoo replied.
Anakin laughed again and pulled his nieces into an embrace, "You girls are very quick learners."
After the fishing trip he cleaned the fish and they would eat them for dinner with the Naberrie family. Padmé saw the difference in her nieces, they were no longer sulking and even seemed to enjoy the time they spent with their uncle. The following few days went quickly as Padmé and Anakin set up the house with the new furniture.