Kessel Run Week Three Challenge: Write a story between 500 and 1,000 words in which you make up a new OC (original character). Your OC must interact with at least one EC (established character), and your story must include the following line of dialogue: "Something was bound to go right sometime today."
Repair (Balram Desna, Ronan Jade, Mara Jade Skywalker, Nakari Skywalker, Kaela Skywalker, approximately 20 ABY)
"Ow!"
"Steady there, friend," Balram Desna said, putting a hand on the landspeeder and leaning down to peer underneath. Ronan Jade slid from beneath the vehicle and sat up, shaking his hand and grimacing as the clanging echo died away. "Did you cut yourself?"
"No," Ronan replied, but before he could elaborate a different sort of echo rang out, the echo of small feet and a small voice.
"Grandpa, Grandpa!"
Ronan brightened, and Balram turned to look in the same direction. There, at the garage entrance, was his friend's eldest grandchild—how old was she now? Five standard years? Something like that—dancing impatiently at arm's length from her mother, who maintained a tight hold on the girl's hand while balancing her younger daughter on her hip.
"Nakari," Ronan's girl was saying firmly, "I've told you, absolutely no running in the shop. If you run, you can't see Grandpa at all. Is that what you want?"
"No," Nakari answered, but she tugged her mother forward nevertheless, hurling herself into her grandfather's arms as they came alongside the speeder.
Ronan winced a little and shifted her into his left arm, shaking his right hand anew as he did. "Careful, sweetie."
"Why?" Nakari demanded. "Do you have an owie?"
"It's not bad," Ronan assured her, then smiled up at his daughter. Mara was on the short side even for a human, but with Ronan sitting on the floor, she towered over him.
She returned his smile with a frown even as she tightened her arms around the little one, who was leaning as far forward as she could, as if to join her sister. Balram put one of his own hands in front of the child to help prevent a fall, and Mara flashed him a quick smile before continuing to frown at Ronan. "Dad, are you hurt?"
"Nothing worth mentioning," Ronan insisted. "The spanner slipped and I banged my hand on the undercarriage, that's all."
Mara's frown deepened, and Balram chuckled, the chuckle growing more expansive as Ronan raised an eyebrow and Mara turned her frown on him.
"What's so funny, Uncle Balram?" Nakari piped up from Ronan's lap.
"Not much, sweetling," Balram told her. "Only that your mama is the spitting image of your grandpa at times."
"Spitting?" Nakari looked thoughtful.
"No," Mara said firmly. "Do not spit. It's just a saying. Anyway, we have to sort out Grandpa's owie."
"It's nothing," Ronan told her again, but as Balram had noted countless times over the years since Mara's return to the family, she was her father's daughter in many ways, and that extended to having inherited his stubbornness.
Sure enough— "I'll be the judge of that," Mara said, handing her youngest off to Balram, who took her in his upper arms and beamed a big Besalisk grin at her. Little Kaela squealed with delight, just as he'd known she would.
Meanwhile, Mara crouched down beside her father and took his hand in hers, despite his protests, looking it over carefully.
"So what brings you here, Mara?" Balram asked, bouncing the little one.
"Luke's got a new line of research he's been dying to get into," Mara said, continuing to inspect Ronan's hand, much to his obvious exasperation. "Thought I'd get the girls out of his hair for a bit."
"And into your father's," Balram added with another chuckle.
"I could use the distraction," Ronan said with a sigh. "After all, something was bound to go right sometime today. I swear everything that could go wrong with this job has."
"You should take a break, then," Mara said briskly as she stood. "I'll get an ice pack for your hand, then you and Balram can watch the girls while I take over for a while."
"Not in your good clothes, Mara," Ronan protested, but as Balram could have told him, his girl was never going to be put off that easy.
"As if I didn't know there are coveralls in the supply closet," Mara replied, and strode off toward the cupboard that held the medkits.
"Spitting image," Balram said, and Ronan only grinned ruefully, an expression as familiar to Balram as the backs of his own hands after all this time.
Near on twenty years he'd known the family now; almost twenty years that he'd considered Ronan and Nadira like his own family, watched their hatchlings grow into fine adults with families of their own. But from the day he first hired Ronan on as a mechanic, it had been obvious to anyone with eyes that he was living with an unhealed wound. Balram had watched him and wondered and never asked, for some parts of people's lives you couldn't invite yourself into.
He'd finally understood the quiet pain that haunted his friend the day Ronan had told him about the lost child they'd never stopped hoping to recover, and grieved on their behalf for the loss that Ronan and Nadira could never accept but which surely was permanent despite that, for a galaxy was a big place, far too big to find a single person who'd been hidden away.
Never had Balram been so pleased to be proven wrong.
He remembered the first time he'd met Mara, soft spoken and tentative, clearly still learning how to settle into the family she barely remembered—but she was the child of both her parents, all right, and nothing would stop her once she'd decided on a course. Centimeter by centimeter, as steadily and inexorably as each new snowfall added a layer of strong ice that eventually formed a mighty glacier, Mara found her place and all of them healed together, until here they were now, as comfortable and happy as if she'd never been gone at all.
It was few who deserved that happiness more than his friend's family, Balram thought, and it was his privilege to have been a part of it, however slight.
"Come on, then," he told Ronan, grinning as he did so. "Your girl's spoken. Ours but to obey."