Chapter Thirteen
Hapes, Ta'a Chume'Dan
Royal Palace
Luke hugged his sister energetically in the Palace hallway, noting how thin she'd become since giving birth the year prior. Too thin, in his opinion and Luke felt a pang of worry since the last time she'd lost this much weight was after Yavin while she was recovering, emotionally and physically, from the Death Star and losing Alderaan. "Are you eating enough?"
The Princess-turned-Queen gave her brother a put-upon expression, although Luke noted the dark circles under her eyes. "I'm fine, Luke. I've just lost my pregnancy weight." She turned toward Mara. "Luke told me over the holocom about your engagement. Congratulations are in order. You're going to become a member of my family pretty soon, I hope?"
"We haven't set an actual date or location for the wedding, but you'll be the first to know," Mara replied. She gave a quick glance over to Luke, then asked, "Are you looking forward to the concert tomorrow evening?"
Leia bit her lip in consideration of the question. "I suppose so. I really don't pay much attention to singers or actors, both because of time constraints and lack of interest in the latest fad. The last time I got excited about a concert I was fourteen. His name was Teech Morduc. Do you remember him? Curly blond hair, dimples. I remember I had the biggest crush on him. When my father thought we were asleep, Winter and I would stay up late at night reading celebrity holo-zines just to get the latest gossip about Teech."
"I think I do remember him," Mara said thoughtfully. "Whatever happened to him?"
"He was on Alderaan," Leia replied softly, and Mara said nothing more, knowing that answered her question.
It was time to distract Leia, so Luke said, "Do you know which hotel Evin Daysun and his band are staying? He's got a pretty big contingent, a band, a small orchestra, six back-up singers..."
"You seem to know quite a bit about his operation," Leia said, amused. "Are you a fan?"
"Luke's his biggest fan in the galaxy," Mara said, smirking.
Mara had argued with Luke that he needed to tell Leia the truth, before the concert but the Jedi Master had kept telling her the Force would find a way to make the reveal, and besides, he'd made that stupid promise to Han. When Mara then pointed out Luke had already broken that promise by telling her the secret, Luke had replied, with a straight face, that was only because she was sleeping with him and that fact overrode anything he said to Han. Mara suspected the real truth was that Luke just couldn't figure out a good way to tell Leia and he didn't know how she would react. Males could be such cowards...even Jedi males, Mara had thought in annoyance.
Mara sometimes wanted to slug Luke, but this 'reveal' might be just as good, so she said, "In fact, I don't know if Luke has told you this, but Evin is building him his Jedi Academy on his private estate, and we've moved into Evin Daysun's house. Probably forever, from what I can surmise."
Luke glared at Mara, and Leia looked truly astonished. "Luke? Is that true?"
"I... um, Evin offered, and since he's nice - "
"Yes," Mara interrupted gleefully. "That's what Luke keeps telling me. Evin is doing all this for him because he's nice. Mind you, we've been around the guy for two entire days, but we're already indebted to him and we will be changing our forwarding address to his house." Mara grinned at Luke, who was actually flushed. "I'm starting to get worried about losing my fiance's heart to Evin."
"Mara!" Luke said, eyes wide. "Why are you saying that?"
"Because you aren't doing the right thing," Mara snapped back, suddenly angry. "And you know what I'm talking about, too."
"I can't! It's not my place!"
Leia cleared her throat. "Um, I'm not sure what you two are arguing about, but to answer your question, Luke, the entire Daysun party have been given rooms in the Palace for two nights. They've already started arriving, since the concert is tomorrow night and apparently there is a great deal of set up that needs to be done prior to the show."
"That is generous of you," Mara said.
"For some reason, Queen Filamina was quite insistent about it," Leia said. "I found it curious, since she has little interest in entertainers unless they are Hapan."
"Maybe she's crazy for Evin," Mara said. "I know Luke is."
"MARA!" Luke yelled out in shocked objection.
Mara Jade laughed, picked up her satchel and headed toward their room. It was so much fun teasing Luke, especially when he deserved it.
Leia turned her attention fully on Luke. "So this is all true?"
"Yes. I mean, the part about his building my Academy, and me and Mara moving in with him, not the part about being crazy about him. I'm not in love with Evin." He looked down the long, ornate palace hallway, trying to change the subject. "Will Evin's room be located in this hall?"
"Yes, it will be," Leia said slowly, starting to wonder if Mara was correct and Luke was losing his mind. "From what I've been told, Mr. Daysun won't be arriving until tomorrow afternoon. He's flying in on his own ship and will be taken directly from the space port by hover-limo to the dinner club arena." She hesitated, then asked, "Are you disappointed he's not already here? You seem to be."
"No, of course not."
She pursed her lips thoughtfully, wondering why Luke was so uneasy and why he seemed to be shielding his thoughts from her. "Lando's already here. And so is Wes Janson."
"That's nice," Luke mumbled distractedly. "I guess I'd better go check on Mara."
"Okay. Will I see you and Mara at dinner tonight?"
"Of course," Luke said, suddenly embracing his sister one more time and then said, almost as if he were convincing himself, "Everything will be alright."
The Next Night... at the Hapan Dinner Club arena...
Leia, her usually absent husband Isolder, the Queen Mother, Luke, and Mara were all sitting around a half-circle table in a dimly lit night club, facing the stage. Several rows of tables were in front of, and lower than, their table, but the table where they sat lined up perfectly with the platform of the stage, giving them the best view in the room. The opening act, an upcoming Corellian Country group named the Blue Tail Comets, were just finishing with their music set and the huge curtain was lowering to hide the change of sets. Leia was picking at what remained of her dessert, fully aware that Luke had been carefully watching her all evening,
"You haven't eaten very much," Luke remarked, pushing his own dessert aside. In fact, in the three meals Luke had with Leia since his arrival, dinner last night, breakfast this morning and now this meal, she had eaten about enough to keep a pitten alive.
"This food isn't very good," Isolder replied for his quiet wife. "No wonder Calrissian gave us the tickets free of charge." He waved toward the stage and added, "I despise Corellian Country."
"I didn't think the food was that bad," Luke replied, noting Leia's tight expression directed at her husband's complaints. Luke looked around and said, "I wonder where Lando went?"
Suddenly, Wes Janson's face popped around the corner of their table. "Hey! Lando's backstage and he wondered if any of you would like to meet Evin before the show. I told him that probably wasn't a good idea, because Evin likes to keep his concentration on his upcoming performance and doesn't much care to be distracted, but whoever listens to me, anyway? So, anyone interested in coming backstage?"
"No -" Luke started out, but was stopped by Leia suddenly speaking up.
"Yes, Wes, I'd love to go backstage."
Mara raised an eyebrow at Luke as he said to his sister, "You would?"
"Please scoot out and let me go with Wes, Luke."
Since Leia was seated in the center of the booth, both Luke and Mara moved to allow her to exit, and were startled when Isolder also moved out and stood up.
"You're coming, too?" Luke questioned, surprised.
"I wouldn't miss this for anything," Isolder said with a sniff as he followed both Leia and Wes down steps and toward the side of the stage.
Was it possible Isolder was jealous? Luke wondered and said aloud, "Wes is right. Evin probably won't like being distracted. This isn't a good idea."
"You should have listened to me and told her last night," Mara responded quietly, then followed the group leaving Luke to hurry and catch up.
The Queen Mother remained seated, annoyed at being the only one left sitting at the table.
Backstage
Han's face was red, both with embarrassment and anger. He waved a large white cloth object under Lando's nose, forcing his agent to take a step back or get whacked with the beaded fringes waving in his face.
"What. The. Fuck. IS... THIS?"
"It's your costume," Lando said nervously, sincerely hoping Evin's blaster had been left onboard the Wookiee Princess.
"I can see it's a costume! Why, in the nine hells of Corellia, would you have a costume made like this?"
"Well," Lando said, thinking back, "I was looking at those orange X-Wing flight suits, and then I started thinking that maybe you'd look good in a flight suit. But not orange, of course. Orange is a bad color for anyone, so seriously, I don't understand why those X-Wing pilots don't complain."
"It has BEADED TASSELS HANGING OFF IT!" Han shouted, looking down at the costume in utter contempt and horror.
"Those aren't tassels," Lando informed him. "Tassels are bunched together, with a tie at the top. Those are called fringes."
"Thank you so much for the education in asinine clothing styles," Han snarled sarcastically. "This piece of bantha crap doesn't look anything LIKE a flight suit!"
"Well, it's one piece."
"And it looks too small for me to even get into it!"
"No, I have your measurements. It will fit you exactly right. Nice and tight, but not too tight, You have to be able to do those moves of yours onstage or the ladies will be very disappointed. You do know those tassels...fringes will only emphasize those moves, right?" Lando paused and then added helpfully, "Oh, and make sure you first put on those under-tights that Wes left in the bag in your dressing room. You can't wear regular shorts or the pantie lines will show through with that outfit. We can't have that, can we?"
Tights? Pantie lines? "Where are my other stage clothes?" Han spluttered out indignantly, feeling more than a little light-headed at this point. Leia was going to be in the audience, for Kriff's sake, and Lando has to spring this on him now?
"You only have other flight suits to pick from. One of them is light blue and has lots of sparkles, and the other one is white, too, but it has cute, belt-like chains across the chest, and that suit comes with a tasseled belt." Lando smiled. "Would you like to wear one of those, instead? I'll have to see if Wes knows where he packed them, since I told him to only bring one for this show."
"NO! I want to wear my usual outfit of a silk shirt and black pants! That's my stage outfit... not this ...shit!"
"Well, that's all you have now, so be a good boy and go put it on."
"I'll wear my street clothes on stage before I put this on."
"No way!" Lando said, actually stomping his foot. "People expect Evin Daysun to look the part. Your street clothes are not stage clothes. They hardly qualify as decent clothes, and I don't understand why you don't wear what I have sent to your house as everyday clothing, anyway."
"Your idea of everyday clothing is -" All of a sudden, Han stopped his tirade mid-sentence, his eyes widening. He spun around. There, standing next to Luke and Mara, was the woman he loved, looking as beautiful as he remembered her.
"Leia...?" he gasped, dropping his hands to his side, the offending clothing forgotten.
All Leia could think was... Han before her vision darkened and her knees buckled.