Every time was more difficult than the last, but Nik refused to give up hope that someday it might be different. Early in the afternoon, every day, he shooed the droids out of the office and sat down at the little terminal at the little cluttered desk, and tried to meditate for strength before he dialed a vidcomm.
He'd calculated the time zone difference dozens of times, so he knew they'd be home from school. The first few comms were picked up and hung up right away, followed by weeks of the comm buzzing at length before ending up in vidmail. He tried to leave message every time, but often found himself so angry that they didn't pick it that it wouldn't have been wise to do so.
Still, even if Gina wouldn't talk to him, at least she would know he was trying. Yet reminding himself of that purpose seemed less and less important as more calls went unanswered. Nik was ready to start scratching the tickmarks into the furniture like some fool stranded on a deserted island and counting the days of abandonment.
Diddle diddle bing... Diddle diddle bing... Diddle diddle b-
"Hullow?" Ben's seven-year-old face flickered onto the screen. Blurry colors of blond hair and blue eyes. Sun-tanned white face. Baby cheeks. Ivory tunic.
Nik's heart exploded. He breathed a big smile. "Hey, scrapper! It's me. You're dad. How you doing?"
"Hi dad." He didn't seem affected by the sudden contact. "Where are you?"
"I'm... I'm with your Aunt Kess. Getting some help. I'm sorry I had to go away to get it."
"S'okay. Mom says you need it."
"I'm sure she does."
"She's outside with Miss Farad from next door."
"Oh. Okay. Good. It's good she's got friends to lean on."
"Miss Farad wants to buy the house."
Oh shit. Nik thought. "Well, um, we'll sort that out later. How are you?"
"I'm good." He looked away before the house door opened up. "Here she comes. I'll go get her." Ben scurried away from the open vid comm.
"N-no!" Nik tried to stop the lad, but the boy was already gone. He watched the still image of his empty living room with lament. She rearranged some of the furniture. And the place was really clean. Really clean.
Was she trying to sell it?
In seconds, he heard Ben's voice again in the background, and Gina came storming up to the vidscreen. All he saw was a part of her body as she approached the desk chair.
Nik tried a smile. He tried to sound gentle and happy, but he sounded weak and begging, "Hey-
Click.
The screen went blank.
Wedge wasn't in a hurry to go home, even though it was payday Zhellday, because he knew Yana wouldn't get off work to be ready to chat for another couple of hours. As knock-off rattled over the loud speakers and crew rushed to leave for the weekend, Wedge stood at the window of the office and looked out over Division One's pad at his crew excited to go home.
"Looks like it's gonna be a hell of a party," Garyn murmured icily behind him.
Wedge almost glanced back-almost-but his eyes remained on the crew out there. Ommis and Janson had surrounded Jewie to playfully convince her to join them to where ever they were headed, probably promising Rogan wouldn't be there, even though Wedge knew he probably would be anyway.
Yet four of the Imperial-era pilots were also smiling as they strutted away from a different part of the pad, clearly ready to seek out their own Zhellday night festivities. Wedge wasn't sure which group Garyn was talking about, but it really didn't matter.
Twee twee tweet. Wedge blindly pulled his commlink from his belt.
"See you Centaxday," Garyn said and turned to go home too, leaving him alone with his comm call.
Wedge ignored her and thumbed the link. "Antilles."
"Hey, it's me." He cleared his throat, "I need your help."
The voice was a man, familiar, but not instantly recognizable. Wedge's black brows scrunched over his nose. "Nik?"
"Yeah. You said I could comm you if I needed anything." His voice was rough, low. "You busy?"
Concerned, Wedge sat back down at his desk and gave the comm call his complete attention. "No. Not busy. What do you need?"
Nik seemed to struggled to say it. "I need to get out of here. Tayla's at her mom's tonight. Kess and Luke aren't home yet. And I just... I just can't do the Jedi thing today."
This seemed an odd request, but he couldn't blame the man. "What did you have in mind?"
"I don't know. I don't care. I just need to get away from this flat for a night. Y'know? Get out with real people. I'm going stir crazy in here."
"Yeah sure, man." Wedge thought to insist he wasn't going to take Nik drinking, but realized that this was probably the trouble Nik was trying to get himself into tonight. If Wedge demanded no drinking on the comm, Nik may hang up and seek out another potential enabler. Wedge decided quickly to help Jedi training in what rare capacity he could. It would be better to personally supervise Nik's escape to ensure there was no alcohol involved. "I'll come pick you up in a half."
"Great. Thanks." Click.
Wedge thought on this for a moment. The Jedi regimen was sure to be suffocating, especially for a man struggling with all that Nik had on his plate. Wedge decided the best thing he could do was show Nik how to have a night off, and a night out, without drinking a sip - even if alcohol was everywhere.
But he needed a trustworthy team to make that work.
The Commander shoved out of his chair and stepped quickly out the office door to the pad, shouting. "Yo, Janson!"
Janson looked over the same time Jewie and Ommis did, all lifting their brows at the old shipmate call.
Wedge strutted over with a rebel grin. "Where's the party?"
Luke buried himself in work, as usual, and distracted himself in calm for the rest of the day and into the evening, studying upcoming mediations, reviewing construction plans, fretting over the still missing pieces of putting this academy together. Even after they had it all built, even if they had plenty of funds to support them for years to come, Luke still had no definitive way to figure out if someone was Force sensitive or not. How would he find new students?
Especially if Kess decided not to breed any?
Finally exhausted, Luke tossed the datapad onto his cluttered desk and leaned back in the big black chair, sighing at the ceiling. Raól went home over an hour ago. Kess had been gone all afternoon. He was alone in the entire Jedi Office complex. It seemed such a huge leg-up when they established the place, but with more work than creature comforts, not even wall hangings in here, it felt like the whole New Jedi Order was a house of cards built on wobbly legs.
Stretched too thin too far. Somehow they needed to find a way to emotionally replenish.
Too bad the clearing was all the way back on Yavin 4.
Luke thought about that, about that place, and grinned wistfully. He recognized it wasn't just him that needed a place, nor that the clearing was the only place that was needed. How often did the girly girls go out to the Mash Pit? How often did the pilots run off to the Tower Lounge? And even with those usual hang outs, from time to time, all members of every clique converged like a family reunion at the South Base Warehouse.
Too bad they didn't have something like that here.
His eyes flicked aside.
Or did they?
His mouth parted with an idea and he sat up to his terminal to start a search. No one could go too long without a retreat of some kind. The Jedi were starting to crack under the pressure of these last five months; how was it possible the regular rebels weren't going bananas without already finding a retreat to replace the old hang outs?
Work ran late again, but Yana was wrapping up her last report of the day, eager to get home and link up with Wedge again tonight, when Ren Entada rushed over with a datapad in his hand. "Can you take a look at this for me please?"
Yana still didn't trust him entirely, but everything about him so far supported a real effort to protect the Lord Chamberlain. Besides, Yana still had to work with him even if he did have ulterior motives in mind. She took the datapad and sped-read through several unnamed communiqués. It certainly looked curious, someone seemed to be passionate about disrupting any rebel existence on Coruscant, but without the cipher to understand the true meanings behind the key words, it was impossible to know what the true message read.
Seeing she was finished, Ren gestured. "'Throwing a darverk'" is a slang term for 'sabotage'."
Green eyes absorbed the serious concern in his. She read the messages again with that understanding in mind, and shifted her feet to rush for a different set of communique's she saw earlier.
"You saw something too," he commented as she brought up the older message. He read it over her shoulder as she read it off the big screen. The passionate hate for rebel scum was hardly surprising, and without anything to connect this with anything else, it looked like simple Imperial troop bitching. This one however, obscured the term 'darverk' as pretending it to be the name of a person. 'A bunch of us are going to throw down with Darverk and crash a scum party tonight.'
"Do you know of such a party?" Ren asked with concern.
Yana shook her head, but both acted in unison to download and gather all these messages to report in their findings.
Moments later, the entire office team had gathered to hear of these clues with concern as Leia stood in front of her desk and read them for the first time. She absently rubbed her belly, but otherwise didn't look terribly concerned, just alert to take action as needed. "I guess the next question is if any of you know about a rebel party tonight?" She handed the datapad back to Yana by her side and quipped, "And why the heck wasn't I invited?"
Questah was the first to speak. "There's been some chatter lately about finding a new hangout in Coco Town, but I don't know the name of it."
Many nodded, thinking in silence, trying to remember any reference of any upcoming party. There was some small talk, but none of it seemed significant, only occasional reminiscent references of hangouts on former bases.
Leia tightened her eyes and scratched her chin in thought, then she lifted her finger, but not her eyes, and gestured at Questah. "Is there any place on Coruscant with the same name of our favorite establishments on Yavin's South Base? Any merchants move here with us?"
Questah knew instantly what Leia was getting at. She sat down and tucked her brown hair behind her ear to do a search on the padfolio already in her hand. And she wasn't the only admin in the room to brainstorm and search the networks for similar names of old places. Newly alerted, Questah sat up and read it aloud to the gathering. "'Grand Opening: The Black Tie Casino, once Coco Town's infamous TIE Fighter Pilot hang out, is now re-modeled and under new management as The South Base Warehouse.'"
Questah looked up. Yana looked over. Ren closed his mouth. Leia nodded slowly and motioned to the Purple Guard. "I need you to do me a favor."
Within minutes, Yana rushed into the data library to grab her bag, but motioned for Ren to wait a moment and turned her back to him. She pulled up the burner datalink to tell Wedge she wasn't going to be able to chat tonight but, in booting it up, found a message already waiting.
W Something came up. Not going to be able to chat tonight. Wish I could. Would rather talk to you. Tomorrow morning though. Benduday. 10 am.
Something came up? On a payday Zhellday? Yana instantly suspected what Wedge was going to go do instead. She braced herself for the possibility of walking in on him at this party and find him hanging on another woman. They weren't even dating yet, not officially, so she would have no right to be angry, but she was angry already, just in the anticipation of it. She stuffed the datalink into her bag, met eyes with Ren Entada and Questah, and nodded that she was ready to go.
Yana was ready for war.