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“Oh Leia,” Beru sighs as she takes in Leia’s split lip and her sullen shoulders. “Have you been fighting with the other children again, my fierce one?”
Leia sniffs. “They called my father a slave; said ‘Skywalker’ was a slave’s name. But they’re wrong.” She swipes at her face, her nose wrinkling to keep the tears at bay. “They are wrong, right Aunt Beru?”
Beru exchanges a glance with Owen where he lingers in the doorway. This isn’t the first fight their Leia has been in, nor is it likely to be the last, and Owen shakes his head as he always does and leaves to take care of the malfunctioning evaporator, leaving behind his unspoken words as clear as day: “She’s got too much of her father in her.”
“Of course they’re wrong, Leia-na,” she says, kneeling down and enfolding her niece’s twelve-year-old frame in as warm an embrace as she can manage. “Your father was as free as the moons, and so are you.”
Leia crumples then, sobbing into her shoulder, and Beru mentally plans a trip to Tosche station. She has a feeling she knows which children were involved, and if Leia’s – admittedly... energetic – reactions aren’t enough to get those children to leave the subject alone, then Beru knows a few parents who might like to be reminded of a few old stories.
————
Breha knows she’s late for Morning Court, but after the frantic comm from her son’s tutor, politics are just going to have to wait. With Bail gone back to the Senate, Luke’s been more withdrawn than ever. And now he’s skipping class, she muses, hiking up her skirts so she can move faster down the nearly-deserted corridor.
She doesn’t check his room, of course, her son is far too smart to be hiding there. Nor does she check the Library, despite having found Luke in there many nights long after bedtime with a small hand-lamp beside him and his nose buried in a datapad. Instead she goes to a small hangar that’s attached to the back wing of the palace and carefully keys in a code that only three people know.
The hangar, lit by sun-lamps imported from Naboo, is a haze of warm light and dust motes that dance across the surface of a sand-pitted, rust-marked speeder spread out in greasy pieces all over the floor. The scene would look idyllic (mostly) if it weren’t for the two grease-stained feet sticking out from under the speeder’s hull, rocking from side-to-side on their heels in barely contained excitement.
“Luke,” Breha warns, trying to put admonishment into her tone. (Bail is better at it, but that’s not saying much.) “I thought you were staying with your history tutor today.”
Luke pops out from under the decrepit speeder, eyes glowing with enthusiasm, grease smudges all over his face, and a faint coating of rust turning his usually blond hair a reddish clay color. “Mom! I think I’ve found out the problem with the repulsor engine!”
He darts over to her, his hand snagging hers with no thought for the dirt, and drags her through the maze of engine debris to point at the offending part. “See?”
Breha spares a thought for her undoubtedly now-frantic handmaidens (and the Council, and the Parliament) and winces internally. But she takes the tool Luke hands her and pulls back her sleeves with only the barest attention paid to the fine linen and silk. “Any ideas for making it work again?”
Luke grins – and how did he get oil on his teeth for Ancestors’ sakes? – “I have a few.”