Han Solo (ocorellia) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-01-05 21:18:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log, anakin skywalker, anakin solo, han solo |
Who: Han Solo & Anakin Solo
When: Monday, January 5
Where: Han Solo's apartment in Potts Tower, and sometimes Leia Organa's apartment, wherever.
What: What do you do when you're a father who is moving? You recruit your Jedi son to help with moving your stuff, of course.
Rating: Low.
Status: COMPLETE.
It was difficult for Anakin Solo to stay too melancholy for too long. December's arrivals had thrown him a bit for a loop, but that was beginning to settle back into something that was less constant brooding. He still had his moments, although he tended to think next to his brother he was positively cheery, and thus he could hardly even be counted as being in a bad mood at all. And truthfully, his reasons to be in a bad mood weren't very numerous. He had his sister here. He had a girlfriend. He had a 4.0 on his report card from the following semester. His Uncle was training him, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi had showed up a few days back. He had his mother and his father here, even if they neither of them remembered him. And if his Father knew what happened to Chewie at Sernpidal after Jacen's arrival, he hadn't said anything about it, nothing angry, nothing blameful, which was a good start. And his parents were married and moving in together and that was the point of today. Anakin had told his Dad that he'd help him move things over to his Mom's apartment. He suspected it wouldn't really take that long to do it, but it was honestly nice to have an excuse to hang out with his father, just his Father, which he really hadn't had recently. It had been all family things, and family things - had been stilted. So this was more relaxed than they'd been together since they'd decorated that Christmas tree after Thanksgiving. "So where should we start?" Han had decided that elopement felt pretty good. He had married the most amazing woman in the galaxy. And nothing -- not his son dying, his other son becoming a Sith, or even the potential loss of Chewie -- could dampen his mood. It was like he'd ingested all of that Christmas spirit, and now he was just willing to go with it. Because, really, if he lost Chewie, if his son fell to the dark side, if any of those things were to come to pass here, then maybe he'd be able to deal with them. But how did he handle a nebulous future, one that he'd yet to live? He shoved a few of the boxes closer to the door. "Here," he said. He didn't have that many, really. There were some books, repair manuals and things about their futures, and some clothes. But mostly, Han didn't own things. He spent too much time in the mindset of smuggler, Republic general, wayward vagabond to really accumulate possessions. There was, of course, the matter of his Christmas decorations. But he'd already (mostly) disassembled them into a heap closer to the sofa. "These boxes should be most of it, and then there's the tree, which I shoved in that box over there... You know, I think this moving thing might be one of the disadvantages to living on-world." "It's a lot easier when almost anything you really care about is in the Falcon," Anakin admitted. "Or portable. I mean, there's not a lot of stuff Jedi need, but if I were to move, probably I'd have boxes." And oddly enough it had been something he'd considered. The moving. Admittedly not particularly seriously. He did like living with his Uncle Luke. He'd like it more if Rikki felt more comfortable coming over. But it was nice to have his entire family on the same floor even if they weren't all in the same apartment. "All right, I'll start on these books then," he pulled the box next to him and begin setting things into them, looking at each one as he did just to see what his Dad had. He'd never really figured him as a book person but these seemed to make sense for his Dad to be interested in. He stared at one of the ones that covered his future, or his Dad's future, really, since likely they all were his past - or wouldn't be things he'd live. It was a depressing thought and he stuffed them into the box along with the repair manuals. "You know, it'll be less weird having you and Mom in the same apartment," he gave his Dad a grin. "Yea, I bet." He picked up one of those boxes and carried it to one of the storage areas that was attached to the main living area. Most of the stuff here wasn't his, but as he pushed passed all the coats and other things, he found a glow-in-the-dark skeleton that definitely was. And yea, Han had a thing for Earth holidays that didn't necessarily have galaxy-wide equivalents. Because Halloween? That was pretty cool. "Probably even less weird now that we're married, and you're no longer illegitimate." Least, his family seemed well-equipped to handle the unexpected. He didn't know many who'd be able to joke about how out-of-order all of this seemed to be. And really, that versatility was probably a gift, one that he'd gladly pass on to the next Solo generation. "You can have any of those books, if you want. I mean, I guess you've already lived through all of it…" He hadn't actually stopped to consider that they were all mostly from the end of the Empire, and that for Anakin that was more than likely the distant past. There was, of course, the one that had discussed Chewie's death -- but Han had brushed through most of that, not really wanting to dwell on that possibility. "But I don't need them. So if you want any, they're yours." "Is that how that works?" Anakin shook his head. "I didn't really consider myself illegitimate, cause you know, you're married at home. But, it's good to be legitimate in both universes I suppose." He picked up another set of books and stuck them in the box, stopping at his Father's last words and he gave the books about their future a more serious glance as he did so. Truthfully he hadn't read any of them -- he'd read the things online, but he knew that was just the brief look at what had happened in the future, the one he hadn't gotten to live, as well as the one he had. He knew how brief it was because he knew how brief what was said about him was. "Some of it anyway," Anakin said simply. The cover looked like a Yuuzhan Vong and he stared at it with a frown. If his Dad had read them then he knew about Chewie. That answered that particular question. He glanced over at his Dad for a moment. "I haven't read them. I don't know - the stuff I've lived it seemed ridiculous to read, and I don't know if the rest would help with Jacen or not. We fight all the time," he admitted and he covered the book with a repair manual and he shook his head, shaking the mood off. "We have for a while. You may have noticed." Han dropped the plastic skeleton and a few decks of cards in the box. He'd toss the rest of his Halloween decor, or leave it behind for Piper. She'd probably appreciate the souvenirs. "I don't know," Han agreed. "I thought it might provide -- context." He looked over at his son. That was, at least, what he had said to Mara. He'd needed to be able to place this alien war within the framework of his own life, and the books had helped. Sort of. "It's not just the Jacen stuff. I mean, it is, but it isn't." He shut the closet door behind him, thinking. Sometimes, it was hard to see himself as a dad. He was still a smuggler. On the run from the empire. In love, no, married to a princess. The thought alone made him grin. But the Tesseract brought with it other responsibilities, too, and these were not something that Han brushed aside lightly. "You're my son, Anakin. I should know more about your future than I do." He didn't say 'than I did.' The books were depressing enough without discussing them in the open. "So, you're saying we shouldn't lock the two of you in a room together and hope for the best? I'll keep that in mind." "Yeah," Anakin said thoughtfully. Context. Something he'd been avoiding, maybe actively so. And with his commitment to his Uncle and himself to start actively training as a Jedi, Anakin was slowly realizing that context might be helpful. That his brother knew things, had been through things, had learned things Anakin had no real understanding of on any level. The paths they had walked had - up until the point of Anakin's death - been different, but not so very different. They had come to different conclusions about things, but the journey had looked similar in the making of it. After Myrkr, Anakin suspected that even had he lived, his and Jacen's paths would have diverted so separately… He shook himself out of the more introspective mindset. He looked over at his dad and swallowed back a lump in his throat as he thought of Chewie. Anakin's eyes said a lot more than he was ever going to say aloud. But it all meant a lot to him, even if the man who stood in front of him wasn't the Father he knew at home. He supposed that most teenagers struggled with their parents, even if they weren't being thrust into a war that demanded impossible choices to be made. How much did his father know? Chewie? That Anakin would die on that mission to Myrkr? He supposed the books in front of him, if he knew what they covered, would give him those answers. Probably all of it. If it was rubbish for him, how much so must it suck for this man who wasn't old enough to remember even having had children - or any of the good moments the family had together over the years? He'd just gotten married. Anakin shook his head. "The future's a little overrated," he shrugged off everything he didn't want to say for the heart of what he did want to say: "Right now I'm good with just helping you move, and doing stuff together. It almost feels normal sometimes. And honestly, arguing with Jacen? It almost feels normal too." Han was as guilty as Anakin in his willingness to avoid the future. And while the arrival of Jacen had changed that, while it had seemingly shattered this almost mutual ignorance-is-bliss attitude, it hadn't changed everything. He was perfectly okay with pretending that everything was normal, if that's what needed to be done. He'd even be the one leading the way. After all, he'd suggested that they all have Christmas together. And he'd proposed to Leia. And he'd done all of that knowing how it ended. "Yea," he agreed. The future was overrated. "Normal's good. I like normal." Normal was things that he knew how to talk about, like gambling and starfights and space trade. The future didn't fit any of those categories. And how could it? And how did he bring up the subject of his son's death? He looked at Anakin, at the boy he'd yet to see grow up and that he now knew didn't. How did he open that conversation? But he already knew that answer: he didn't. It didn't matter what the future brought. What mattered was what they were doing now, and if Anakin brought it up, he'd listen. But until then… He picked up the half-empty box and set it next to the already packed ones. There weren't that many. "I think that's about everything in here. We can probably start taking these over to Leia's." "Sounds good," Anakin said, willingly taking the opportunity to switch the subject off of that of his future and Jacen's. He put a final set of manuals on the top and folded over the top of the box, standing up and picking up the box easily to carry it over to the others and then he bent down to stack it on top of and carry a second along with it. "Has mom gotten a lot of stuff?" Anakin asked. "Outside of the electronics I've been collecting for projects I really don't have much. Which I guess makes it easier to move if I ever should need to. Which probably not." "I thought you were eloping to a desert island," said Han, joking. He grabbed two of the nearest boxes, stacking one of top of the other to make them more manageable. Luckily, Leia's was only just down the hall. And with how little Han seemed to accumulate, it probably wouldn't take that long. He led the way down the hall. "You're going to need more than a few electronics to survive there. Your mom and I were in Hawaii… I think my feet are still sunburnt. And that was with civilization at the door." Balancing two boxes between the wall and his knee, he managed somehow to open the door to Leia's apartment and get the boxes inside. "But I don't know. Stuff kind of runs counterintuitive to making a quick getaway. We had to do a lot of that during the Rebellion." A fact, Han realized, that Anakin probably already knew. "Not that I'm expecting that here. I'm not even sure what counts as a quick getaway when you're planet-bound." Well, sort of planet-bound. He supposed that SWORD did have a few things up their sleeve, but he also knew that one spaceship couldn't hold that many people. Not for a long period of time, anyway. Anakin looked his dad and shook his head as he waited for his dad to open his mom's door. "No thanks, if I'm eloping off somewhere it'll be someplace nice, thank you very much. Preferably with Rikki." He grinned at his Dad and shrugged to say he wasn't serious. Mostly wasn't serious anyway. Anakin had decided to stop running for a while and focus on what was immediately in front of him, which unfortunately had a lot more to do with home than it had a few weeks prior. But he was beginning to make peace with that as well. If that was the card he'd been dealt than he was a Solo and he'd figure out how to make it a winning hand, even if he had to bluff his way through doing so. "Jedi don't really have much stuff either. It's I think that whole not-attachment thing. I mean, we've got a pretty good apartment on Coruscant. It's got a fair amount of things but I think they are few and far between the ones we'd actually miss if they were gone." He sat the boxes down on the floor beside his mom's sofa and glanced around. "I think having a plane, or a car of some variety would help," he looked over his dad. "Say, I've been thinking about trying to get licensed for the cars too. We could go try some out once I have?" "Yea, maybe. From what I've seen, traffic patterns here are worse than on Coruscant." He glanced at Anakin. "And a car license?" He'd been too busy looking at planes and spaceships to even consider the vehicles that lined that New York streets. "You think you can handle one of those?" He grinned. He knew that Anakin could probably handle just about anything thrown at him, including driving a car in New York City. "But yea, of course. Maybe I can give it a try, too." It wasn't for the first time that he realized how much he missed actually watching his kids grow-up. First flying lessons. Dropping out of hyperspace in the Falcon. The books might have provided context, but they weren't really the same as experiencing it. He started back towards his apartment to get the rest of the boxes. "Maybe we could rent a car for our field trip." That was a slightly ambitious plan, really. But if driving a car was anything like a spaceship, he thought they could manage it. And who would say no to a father-son roadtrip? That actually sounded pretty cool. It was possible some teenagers might not have liked the idea of a road-trip with their Father, but Anakin had kind of brought up the idea of the driving, and right now it seemed like a pretty decent notion. It wasn't nearly as cool as going planet hopping with the Millennium Falcon, but that wasn't really an option here and now. And to be honest, this seemed less prone to catastrophe than anywhere on the Falcon might. "Hey, if I can fly the Falcon, I'm pretty certain I can handle anything this rock can throw at me," Anakin said with a lopsided grin. And indeed so far it seemed that his pilot training had been going alright. When he finally got to a point where he didn't have to be in classes any longer Anakin wanted to be able to do something. Maybe join SWORD like his parents or Jaina, or maybe something else, but he figured being able to drive, fly, and generally get local transportation was probably essential to most anything he'd want to be able to do. He pushed the door of his father's old apartment open with his shoulder and pushed through, holding it open for his Dad. "So yeah, that'd be really great, let's do it." |