On the fifth day of the new Senate, they voted, but there were too many contenders for one person to claim a legitimate majority. Arguments commenced about what form of majority should decide it, and Nik wondered at Luke and Kess about allowing another round of monitored speeches on the matter.

Luke and Kess considered this for a full minute, each of them eyeing the senators in the audience shouting and/or waiting for a decision. Luke's eyes found Leia out there with the rest of the crowd.

Leia had separated herself from Mon Mothma's team and was sitting a few seats away, now commanding her own senate seat with a few assistants of her own including Winter and Chewie behind her. Her face was firm, but as Luke looked at her, he could tell Leia already had what she felt was the right answer to this issue.

He couldn't reach out to her openly. The noise in here, both audibly and on the Force, cluttered his mind from a clear focus, not to mention that Leia's still lacked the training in Force Telekinesis. He looked down at nothing, trying to figure out how to communicate with her, and lifted his eyes at her again to realize he didn't have to, for he figured out from where she would have gotten her idea.

"How did the old Senate do it?" Luke asked Nik, his voice audible because he was standing so close to the mike.

Nik shrugged, but the audience was already trying to call out the answer. Luke could barely single out Leia's Force Print in this mess, but he could tell by her emotional shift that he was on the right path.

Nik saw one group trying the sticky trick of shouting politely, so he un-muted that one old politician so the man could speak a simple answer in a normal voice, "Sixty seven percent majority." Without further speech, the man kindly sat back down. Many others shot to their feet to demand they get mike time too, some yelling that it was a lie, but Nik didn't buckle under that pressure. He cleared the light board and asked them all to light yellow if they agreed with this man's report. Re-directed from their shouting, the room began to quiet down and yellow lights blinked on throughout the room . . . to the tune of about sixty-seven percent in agreement.

"Done."

Because of the competitive bids, there was no way anyone would get a 67% majority until they narrowed down the list of nominees, so the Jedi agreed to take the top 67% of the votes and whatever nominees those included, shave off the defeated names, and present a new vote with fewer contenders.

It worked like a charm.

By the end of the day, they had voted four times and narrowed the list of nominees to a manageable five, Leia and Jakobi included.

Kess could tell how badly Luke wanted to go see Leia, but in order to maintain his neutrality, he couldn't. Leia seemed to know it too, for she nodded at him as she stood at the closing bell. Kess wanted to send her soul out to the woman with some kind of Force Hug to support her. She must be suffering in terrible grief right now, and scant hints of the Force confirmed that she was, but she didn't outwardly seem like it. Leia walked out in strong silence, emanating calm, severity, and immense political power.

In truth, Kess was awed by Leia's inner strength.

Chewie stood to follow Leia, but he paused to catch the eyes of Luke and Kess staring out. He gave them a calm, distant croon, and then a deep nod of assurance. I've got her.

It helped, but it reminded Luke just how severed he was from his own family right now. This whole Senate procedure to figure out a Chamberlain felt like it was lasting forever. The three Jedi expected it to be done by now, but admitted in a shared murmur that none of them were politicians and had walked into this task with the innocence of simple citizens.

But the cease fire held.

The horrors of running the lobby gauntlet gradually decreased, but it was still a few guaranteed minutes of their day they had to be on their tightest guard. This promulgated an unplanned ritual every time the three of them climbed into the speeder. As soon as the doors closed out everyone else, Luke, Kess, and Nik sat in silence, often closing their eyes, for as much as a full minute, before they shifted their minds to the plan out the rest of the evening chores.

This time it was Kess in the pilot's seat and thumbed on the engine with a sad grin. "Is it weird that I want to go to the Mash Pit right now?"

Luke flashed a somber smile. He looked over and took her hand from her lap to hold it in his own.

When Nik sat in the back, he always sat sideways in the backwards facing seats so he could poke a shoulder between them and join the chat. "What's the Mash Pit?"

"Oh, just some cheap dive back on Yavin 4 where we used to hang out." Kess flew them up into traffic to go home, but the traffic was intense as everyone in the Senate Dome was also rushing to go home. "I miss the place more than I miss the food though."

Fond memories allowed them all to share a moment of reverie of such places. Just thinking about it lightened the mood a little.

"There was this place in Anchorhead," Luke said distantly, "that served the best dewback asada. Hot off the grill. The building was barely big enough for the kitchen. All the seating was outside under tarps." He smiled over at them, for these two would understand this better than most everyone he knew. "Shaved ice and hot asada. In three-ten Kelvin heat."

It brought a smile to Kess's face. "Damn, dewback asada sounds good right now, doesn't it?" Something simple. Something comfortable. Something 'home'. Something that distracted their minds away from all this for a little while.

Nik wrinkled his brow, "Hell, Coruscant is supposed to have everything, right? Let's challenge that. Let's see if there's a restaurant around here that serves dewback asada."

Luke and Kess both turned their necks back at him for this idea and met each other's eyes with a new light. Luke adjusted in his seat with agreement and pulled out his commlink. "That's a damn good idea."

Luke called Artoo to plug into a public directory for such a place and got an address from the droid. Kess tried to figure out the traffic lanes as all three worked together to figure out the directions against the reality, finding themselves in a working class area of town. Commercial signage and neon overwhelmed tastefully quiet street signs. The zoo of traffic both on the ground and in the air made it difficult to figure out where to park and how to walk back to the place. People gave them a double-take as the three walked down the street, but no one approached, and Luke held Kess's hand in public whether people recognized them or not.

The restaurant was hardly a hole in the wall, and access came by a dedicated elevator that sank into the city for dozens of levels. But it was big inside but mostly empty of patrons. The heat was cranked up so high that all three of them paused pleasantly and absorbed the warmth like lizards. Poorly spackled stucco tried to make the metal walls look like sand adobe. A beginner's attempt at mural covered the one with a painting of the Jundland Wastes and twin sunsets. But the part about it that made them all really smile was that 'TeeDee's Q' was owned and operated entirely by jawas.

The hosts were in full robes with lighted eyes just like their brethren, but these were very clean and very polite. At the gestured invitation of a waiter, they moved to a human-sized round table in the corner and shared new smiles to look this place over. It was all so fake, and cheap, and simple, but it still somehow helped them enjoy a momentary feeling of home. Luke looked over at Nik in true friendliness. "This was a good idea."

A jawa came over peeping in its own language and began to hand out translated menus, but Nik politely waved it all off. "Three dewback asadas with ice waters."

The jawa paused, aiming its bright eyes in surprise at each of them. "Tweedy bizo joo? Vando yee? Dabble kyo madala?"

Nik sat up and commanded it. "Dee."

The jawa nodded, took the menus, and turned away with a shrugging voice. "Abdo bee."

Still softly humored by this place, the three of them folded their elbows on the stone tabletop, causing Luke and Nik to share a smile across the table from each other. Luke said, "The real test is going to be how greasy it is."

"It needs to be dripping," Nik agreed as if this was a most serious matter.

And Luke agreed further, "Dripping so bad you can fuel a skyhopper with the puddle on the plate."

Nik narrowed his eyes and scratched the stubble on his chin to consider Luke in depth.

Kess braced herself with a grin. A testosterone contest was about to commence.

"Do you know how to do that?" Nik challenged, "Turn animal grease into fuel?"

Luke admitted. "I tried it once but it didn't come out pure enough. Gummed up the thrusters. It took me two months to take it apart and clean it all out."

Nik approved of this answer. "What kind of hopper did you have?"

The ice waters arrived, accompanied by communal flat bread fresh out of the oven.

The conversation continued. And though Kess had thoughts to contribute to this topic, she opted to stay out of it and let the two men verbally grope each other out. It didn't take the Force to know what this discussion was really about. Kess nibbled the bread in silence and listened to Nik say everything but, 'I know you're banging my little sister so you'd better prove your honorable intentions before I beat your ass, slaymo.'

And though Luke had little experience in this kind of test, he seemed educated enough in the tradition to handle this with poise, responding with everything but, 'I am banging your little sister, eyeta, and my intentions are so honorable that I'm not going to stop whether you like it or not, so bring it.'

But the actual words actually coming out of their mouths were things like:

"Did you ever thread the needle?"

"Yeah, I did. Once. And I almost killed myself doing it. You?"

"Nah. Never got into flying. Grandpa took me up once and scared the living shit out of me the way he flew that thing."

The food arrived on chipped ceramic plates. The dewback asada was still sizzling in its own liquid fat. Forks stabbed with fervor.

"I understand your grandfather was a pretty impressive pilot in his day."

"Yeah, but I didn't know that at the time," Nik chuckled. "I thought he was senile. I swore he was going to fly us right into a mountain. Nah, I was more partial to dune buggies."

Luke smiled as he chewed and nodded at his plate. "I had a few near-death experiences in those too."

"Sounds like you got a death wish."

"Nah. Just an adrenaline junkie. Back then, anyway."

Though his voice was light with humor, the words carried a different message. "Amazing what a Tat-boy will do to impress a girl, huh?"

And there it is. Kess thought.

Luke nodded thoughtfully at his plate as he scooped up the next bite. "Turns out Tat-girls are more impressed by safer stuff."

"Oh?" Nik's grinning eye peeked up. "And what would that be?"

Luke met the gaze. "Just tell 'em the truth."

Nik hitched and grumbled down at his plate. "Sometimes that ain't any safer."

"That much is true." Easy voice, but bold eyes. "But it's worth it."

Nik's eyes flicked back up.

"When it's the right one," Luke pointed out.

And there's the answer. Kess thought.

The conversation quieted for a moment as Nik absorbed this sub-conscious information. All three of them were busy eating anyway. The dewback asada was delicious. Luke said nothing more. It was Nik's turn to respond, but Kess could see Luke grinning with secret confidence to wait for Nik's final judgment.

Nik glanced over at Kess. "You're awfully quiet over there."

"I'm eating," Kess said around her chewing. Per the same set of sub-conscious rules, it was her duty to stay out of this pissing contest. If her man couldn't win on his own merits, he lost by default.

Nik eyed her, eyed Luke, and lifted his chin with a change of subject. "So I've got a question for you." He cleared his throat and squinted. "Do you have to lift your hand to do the Telekinesis thing?"

"No." Luke shrugged. "It's easier, but no, you don't have to. Why?"

"Because this has been bugging me for a while. Kay Kay swears it was a gust of wind, but I think Grandpa did it."

Luke began to smile. "What did he do?"

And now the story-telling starts. Kess scratched the corner of her eye to hide the grin over Nik's chosen form of approval.

Nik launched into the tale, "This one time we were supposed to be shoveling the sand out of the driveway after a big storm. We were twelve or something." He elbowed Kess. "You remember?"

She nodded and tried not to groan in spite of it.

"And we didn't feel like doing it. So we sat down against the wall to grab some shade and were still sitting there talking when Grandpa and Grandma came over for dinner that night."

Luke's eyes brightened to listen, not just at the tale, but also at the verdict that 'telling a tale' carried.

Nik straightened and imitated Old Ben pretty well. "'What are you two doing out here?' And Kay Kay over here tries to feed him a line of bullshit. 'We're shoveling the sand out of the driveway. Can't you tell?' So Grandpa looks at her, looks at me, and turns to look at all the sand, then the half-buried shovels next to the wall. And he looks at Kess with The Eyes."

"Yes, the You're Full Of Shit Eyes," Kess chortled. She could talk now that the competition was over.

Luke laughed at all this and nodded at his food. "I am familiar with The Eyes."

Nik grew boisterous to tell the tale. "So Kess tells him, 'We're in Jedi school. This is our homework in a lesson about moving things with our brain.'"

Kess hid her silent laughter with her hand and Luke smiled big to imagine this memory.

Nik resumes his Old Ben imitation. "I see,' Grandpa says. 'So what are you trying to move: the sand? Or the shovel?' And Kess goes, 'Well the sand, of course, because that's what's supposed to get out of the driveway. Right?' So Grandpa says (again with The Eyes) 'And how's that working out for you?'"

All three of them curled over with giggles to relive the Obi Wan Kenobi 'You're Full Of Shit Eyes' with the quote.

Nik recovered to quote his sister. "So she looks him with a straight face and shakes her head. 'Meh, we're totally gonna fail this class.'"

Kess was hiding her hard-laughing face.

Nik was barely intelligible through his snickering. "Grandpa just kinda shrugged a little smile and went inside, but as soon as he left—I shit you not—both shovels lifted out of the sand and fell over specifically to knock Kess in the head."

"The wind blew them over," Kess groaned.

Nik squeaked at her. "They were buried in the drift by a full meter! Even if a new storm blew through they would not have just 'fallen over'."

Kess rolled her eyes at this ancient argument.

"You always said he couldn't have done it just because he didn't lift his hand."

She rolled her eyes over at her brother. "The wind blew them over."

Nik lifted his voice and gestured hard. "You still believe that?" He pointed at Luke. "With this man sitting at this table? With that thing hanging off your hip? After all the truth you found out about Grandpa? You still believe those things didn't have help hitting you in the noggin?"

Luke watched Kess grin bashfully. Her brown eyes shifted to the ceiling to admit defeat in a years old debate. "Okay, fine. You made your point." Curled in on herself with smiling humility, she focused on her next bite of asada.

It was good to see her smile again. It felt good for Luke himself to smile again. This dinner was a momentary reprieve from the madness and sorrow of the last few days. They needed this. Nik was alive with the same vim and vigor as when Luke met him the first time back in Mos Eisley, but this time Nik knew that Luke and Kess were seeing each other, so the story-telling meant so much more.

They finished the meal without a bite left on their plates but puddles of 'skyhopper fuel'. Their stomachs ached from being stuffed after hardly eating for so long. They went back to the apartment chatting about water showers and air-conditioning. Nik bid them good night and separated to the office to make his nightly comm call to Gina. Luke and Kess moved into their bedroom and Luke offered again for her to take her shower first.

And he paid attention to see if she noticed he was always inviting her to take her shower first.

Because Luke had fallen into a temporary ritual: as soon as he heard her step into the water, he pulled off his boots and fished the locket out of his sock so it could hide out the night inside an empty shoe.

This time, Luke risked an extra moment to look at it.

It didn't have a string yet, nor the loops for one. The carving was still too sparse. He'd left the chinkle tool on the Mon Icarus. But the meld was holding. And the few carvings it had were already growing darker from the sweat and dirt of hiding next to his ankle.

This last week could likely be the worst they would ever endure, but Luke grinned distantly to think on how strongly glued they'd become to face it together, soldered securely into one object, just like the two nuggets of bone.

Marriage.

His heart swelled to think of it now. He grinned some more, brushing his thumb over the incomplete carving, and decided it was time to start looking out for a new chinkle tool.