Embers: Sequel to Crash and Burn

Allana was at the Academy, Anakin was at work after hours, and Jacen was shopping. He didn’t have a lot of money, even then, but he’d sold some old trinkets at the pawn shop, and his rent was already paid for by the Jedi Order through the New Republic. Anakin had half-heartedly filled out an application to get approval for his own living space, and neither were surprised – or upset – when they got the notification that it had been submitted into a queue and was currently the seventy-eighth application in the review line. Anakin said that he was sure someone needed it more than him – after all, many of the new Jedi were alone, without family or friends to stay with, and it wouldn’t exactly be right of him to fill a space that someone else could use. Jacen did not complain.

Their time together was limited, though, because of their fear of detection. Allana was a lighter sleeper than Jacen had expected her to be, and even though he made sure to lock his bedroom door, he felt funny about having sex while his daughter was asleep in the next room. He told himself that he’d get over it eventually, and that most people didn’t worry about it overmuch, or there wouldn’t be very many people in the galaxy with younger siblings.

However, most parents also accepted that their children would eventually figure out what was going on behind the door. The kids would probably be a little grossed out, but accept it. Jacen didn’t need Allana finding out any more than she already had. He guessed that she would forget about what she saw, especially since it was a time in which she saw and heard a lot of new things, too much for her mind to capture everything. But just like he was needing to keep Allana’s identity a secret, except for with a few people who needed to know, he also needed to keep his actions with Anakin a secret. It was a scandal he just didn’t want to deal with.

Which made him occasionally question the idea of getting into the relationship in the first place. Was he ashamed of what he was doing, or was he just afraid of the backlash if it came to the attention of the general public? Unlike most people, he really DID have to worry about what the rest of the galaxy would think. Marrying and divorcing the Chume Ta’ of Hapes (now the Queen Mother) wasn’t much of a big deal; he had the holocam operators in his face a few times in the beginning, and had to willfully ignore the drama-laden gossip on the less-reputable news stations, but it was the kind of thing that blew over when the next celebrity did something dumb and got caught. Jacen and Tenel Ka’s divorce became yesterday’s news, and not something that political wankers pointed to and shouted about when they came up with their hysterical reasons for why people should buy the particular flavor of rycrit dung that they were selling.

But a Jedi Knight being openly homosexual was something completely different. Too much of the galaxy was already waxing nostalgic about the good old days when men were heads of their households, women stayed home to cook, there was no need for a powerful navy, and boys never, ever made eyes at other boys, especially if they were Jedi Knights. Not that those good old days existed outside of holodramas; faked history and real history didn’t really differ in helpful ways if most people couldn’t tell the difference. And if any news reporters caught wind of the hometown heroes of the Stellar Imperial War, the lost and found sons of General and Senator Solo, being in bed not just with other men but with each other – that might be enough to scare easily bullied parents into keeping their talented children out of the Jedi Academy.

Why does everything have to be so complicated? We love each other, we need each other, and nobody’s hurting anybody – so why the kriff does anybody else care? It wasn’t like they were going to start a family and have a bunch of three-eyed mutant children with inherited illness. He didn’t even know if there were any serious diseases running in the family that could be passed down to their children, and even if there were, neither Jacen nor Anakin, lacking wombs, could get pregnant.

Jacen’s mind conjured up a picture of Anakin, dressed in his usual Jedi outfit of white leggings, a long white shirt wrapped around him and tucked into his pants, a brown vest with its hem at mid-thigh, and a loose brown robe over everything. Except that in this picture, Anakin’s belt was fastened just under his chest, and his shirt was untucked and not doing a good job at all of hiding his belly bulge. He stood in the kitchen with a box of ice cream and a spoon, and glared at Jacen.

The image washed away when Jacen started laughing right in the middle of the food court. Without serious technological intervention, that particular outcome of their intimate evenings was never going to happen, and they had no inclination to seek those interventions out.

A few people turned to look at him, and he put on a straight face and got up to throw away his sandwich wrapper. Still, he needed to come to terms with who and what he was. Pretending to be the same little boy that he’d been ten years ago, before the war, wasn’t working; it was time to grow up. And he knew just the place to go to begin.

Jacen wandered to the lowest level of the shopping center. It was still considered the “upper levels” of Coruscant, above the grubby and absolutely crime-invested middle levels and the horrors whose names were never spoken of the lower levels. Still, it wasn’t a great place to be, and somewhere that he would never take Allana. He walked past a group of kids – well, they had to be around twenty – passing around a glass pipe through a haze of pink smoke, and refused to make eye contact with a nearly naked Zeltron that came walking his way in high-heeled shoes.

The shop he was looking for had ridiculously decorated windows, and he could see posters of old-fashioned pin-up models in short gowns that were supposed to look erotic, but instead looked quaint and silly from a post-war perspective. And that was the Clone War era, not the Stellar Imperial War era. The shop did its best to look classy and appeal to mature, refined sensibilities, and failed miserably on all counts. He pushed the door open and walked inside.

“Good afternoon and welcome to Love Mart,” the smiling, plump clerk said. “Now, sir, I need to see your identification. We have to check everybody now. Now with the new restrictions and all.” She rolled her eyes.

Jacen reached for his wallet, but then he remembered that his ID card was in the back left pocket of his black pants – and those were at home. “I’m twenty-eight,” he said. “You don’t need to see my identification.”

“Yes, I do,” she protested. “It’s not my fault, really. I’d let you past the desk but if I don’t check we could get fined.”

Jacen waved his hand across her face at a distance of about two meters, and put a little bit of Force suggestion into his voice. “No, you really don’t need to see my identification cards.”

“No, I really don’t need to see your identification cards.”

“You’ll let me past you into the shop.”

“I’ll let you past me into the shop.” She helpfully stepped backwards and gave him a clear path.

The interior of the store was split into two sections. On the left, there was a room of shelves and rotating end displays. Most of those were videos, although there was a sizable collection of audio titles for discreet listening in a standard headset. Porn! It came in many varieties, from fairly banal and vanilla stories of boy-meets-girl and does her, to the slightly harder boy-meets-girl-and-another-girl and does them both, and onwards. Wookiee/Toydarian porn? Jacen thought as he picked up one of the cases and puzzled over it. And it’s the fifth in the series? And... blaster bolts! There’s a dianoga in this episode! Ugh, there really is a market for everything.

He put the plastic case back on the shelf and wiped his hands on his trousers, just in case. This particular aisle had the effect of making him feel... well, normal. Sucking Anakin off was nothing compared to Juicy Tales from Jabba’s Rancor Pit - or Mustafar Magic, which boasted a new and novel use for molten lava. From the expression on the actor’s face on the cover, it apparently made excellent lube. Flaming good time, indeed.

But he wasn’t there for porn. He didn’t need actors with childlike, shaven bottoms and actresses with impossibly large bosoms to get him going; all he needed was Anakin and a private, reasonably quiet place.

He was really more there for his own peace of mind, to convince himself that he truly was at ease with himself and his sexuality. And the reassurance that there were plenty of people out there who were as far off from the mainstream as he was, or even more so, was a nice bonus. He found himself blushing at first as he looked at the titles, but then he relaxed, mainly when he convinced himself that there weren’t any cameras on him and nobody was likely to catch him there. And if he really needed to, he could convince the clerks that he was never there.

It wasn’t that he used his powers for that kind of thing often, but the mere knowledge that he could had a calming influence on him. He thought it was dangerous to even be thinking of doing something like that, but he wasn’t really hurting anyone; he wasn’t going to steal, and he could even say that what he was doing by hiding his presence was a good thing. It kept the Jedi in high standing in an era when they couldn’t afford not to be. He hoped that some day nobody would really care about what they did with other adults in the privacy of their own homes, but that day wasn’t there yet, and until then, he had no choice but to work with the situation that he was in.

Jacen finished browsing the videos and audio cards and then went into the other room. This one looked like it might be more interesting, at least; there were some racks of clothes, mostly costume pieces of one sort or another, and a few dancing outfits. Beyond that, there were all kinds of bottles and strange-looking devices in various colors for purposes that he could only guess at. And a lot of the guessing would be cheating because he knew the kind of store he was in.

Too much of the clothing was marketed to girls, and analogs of girls in species that had different sexes than humans did. He frowned at a triple-tiered corset that was clearly not designed with humans in mind, and went past that rack to see what was on the other side. There were a few skimpy leather outfits that were made for men, but he noted sadly that the sizes were picked over, and all that was left was one particular set of straps that would be much too small even on Anakin, and a few that both of them could have fit in at the same time.

He looked over the condom display – that was one thing he didn’t need to worry about, although it had occurred to him that it might be a good idea to use them at first. He trusted Anakin, but he had no idea what kind of viruses Dyar might have brought to him. However, Anakin was healthy, and would have known if there was something wrong with him, so Jacen didn’t have to think about it. And babies were still a non-issue.

Still, they had berry-flavored condoms. And cinnamon, and vanilla, and plenty of exotic flavors meant to appeal to members of other species. They thought of everything, thought Jacen, and he went on to the next aisle.

He breezed right past the vibrators before he realized that they might have potential anyway. And they were only twenty credits, except for some of the fancier styles clearly designed for women. He didn’t have any use for those extra attachments. Just the standard model, a false penis of average size, connected to a handle. Jacen noted that they came in different colors, not all of them human flesh tones. Bone-white, bright red, blue… he picked up a plastic package that housed a purple one with a simple silver-coated plastic handle. It didn’t look too fancy, but it might be fun. Fun didn’t have to be complex.

Yeah, it would be worth twenty credits for a little bit of experimenting. He nodded to himself and took the small package with him as he continued to browse.

Jacen’s eye caught on a row of familiar handles, and he wondered briefly why a porn and adult goods shop was selling lightsabers. They couldn’t really work, could they? If they did, why in the world would anybody actually make them and sell them to the shop? He certainly wouldn’t sink that low. Lightsabers weren’t meant to be used by anybody who had the money for them – and at only ten credits, that was a lot of people!

Then he looked at the print on the package. They weren’t actual lightsabers; they were special dildo handles, crafted to mimic the lightsabers used in holodramas. Jacen rolled his eyes, especially after he recognized a few of the designs. There was a Darth Vador... a Luke Skywakker... even an Emperor Palpatyne. He would have laughed if he wasn’t so stunned by the ridiculousness of the idea. What, did people pretend they were doing naughty things with famous people’s weapons?

“We’re out of stock on a few of those,” the clerk said. “There aren’t any more Darth Mawl Double Twisters, and we’re fresh out of Ayla Sekura saber handles, too.” She looked apologetic.

“What about Jacen Solo saber handles?” he asked.

“We don’t carry them,” she told him. Jacen breathed a sigh of relief. Then she continued: “And they’re actually Jacen Sollo, you know. That way the manufacturer doesn’t get sued. We can special-order Jacen handles, but I didn’t think there would be enough demand and they’d end up on the clearance rack.”

Jacen scowled and was trying to think of a retort when he saw the Anikan Sollo model sitting right next to the Anikan Skywakker, a generic knockoff of the Vador. It really did look almost exactly like Anakin’s lightsaber handle, except that the base was black instead of silver. Someone really paid a lot of attention to detail for something that was going to hold an object meant to be placed inside a vagina or an ass.

It was the last one on the hanging peg.

He was so buying it.

The clerk smiled again when he brought his items to the front desk. “Ah, yes, fantasies of celebrities,” she said. “This for a special lady friend? Here, let me show you something.” She pulled out a large, thick binder. “These are all the things we can special-order. If you need any costumes – like maybe a robe and vest set with shirt and leggings – we can get them for you, in any size. You look like about an 85-centimeter, and those sell fast. Mostly guys who think they’re 85s and haven’t figured out they’ve gone up to 100.” The clerk winked at him.

“No, not interested in any costumes,” he said. He handed over his money and left the shop with his two plastic cases housed in a simple brown paper bag.

---

Allana came into the apartment later that evening carrying a large glass box, and Anakin carried a few bags and a flowerpot. “Put those down and come with me,” she said to Jacen. Jacen hastily shoved his parcel under a torn pillow on the couch and followed Allana into her room.

She put the box on the floor and carefully emptied a bag of dirt into the box. Then she took the flowerpot and stuck the large purple flowers right into the dirt. Jacen frowned but watched her as she opened up a second bag and very slowly and gently shook out its contents onto the dirt. The little items inside looked, at first, like a bag of polished but uncut gemstones mixed with rocks, and one large stone with diagonal stripes and fine luster. But then the stones started to scurry over the dirt.

“I got a whole colony of shoba beetles,” said Allana. “That way they don’t get sad when they’re away from their family because the whole family is together. See, there’s the queen, and there are all the workers. I picked extra blue ones. And there are the boy beetles.” She pointed to the small gray lumps. “I don’t really like the boys very much but they need boys or there won’t be any little eggs.”

Jacen raised an eyebrow. “How do you know this?”

“Tionne told us. She said that boy beetles help the queen lay eggs and then there are baby beetles.” Allana pulled out a large gray cone from the beetle bag – a cone about as big as her fist – and then she put it in the middle of the dirt, right underneath the biggest flower. “That’s the egg cone. See? And there are baby beetles in the bottom of it. I think they're called larvas or something.” They clung to the base of the cone like little globs of crystallized glass.

“I told you the Academy would be good for her,” Anakin said.

“I never argued,” Jacen pointed out.

“Now I need a towel to wash my hands,” Allana announced. “Go get it for me, Uncle Anakin.”

Jacen shrugged helplessly and pointed to the kitchen. Anakin went to get the towel, grumbling under his breath the whole way.

That night, Jacen showed Anakin his new acquisition, and Anakin thought it was mightily funny. “Good thing the base is a different color,” he said, and held the extending vibrator, now in its unextended position, up to his real lightsaber. The two were almost indistinguishable to someone who didn’t feel the Force flowing through the lightsaber crystals. “It could get really messy if we grabbed the wrong one.” He grinned and kissed Jacen hard. “Now bend over, boy. I’m going to show you just what a Jedi can do with his lightsaber.”

---

Jacen barely had the energy to pull on his bedclothes after they were finished; he was spent, and still feeling the afterglow draw out his strength and leave him sleepy and satisfied. It wasn’t until the next morning that he realized that making himself climb out of bed and step into his pajamas was one of the best moves he made. Flopping into bed without thinking about the morning – not so much.

He woke to the sound of someone banging on the door. When he opened it, Allana was there, in her green dress. “You need to wake up,” she said. “I’m late for school. And Jaina is here and she’s mad at you.”

“Jaina? School? What time is it?” He looked at the chrono on the wall. “Damn it, Anakin, it’s ten o’clock! We forgot to set the alarm!”

Allana folded her arms and flopped down on the couch. Jaina stood behind her, not looking happy in the slightest. “Your class was canceled because you never showed up,” she scolded. “And here you are, still in your bedclothes, and it’s almost lunchtime. What were you doing last night?”

Anakin stumbled out of the room, barely awake. “Hi, Jaina,” he mumbled, and then squinted at the bright lights and retreated back to the bedroom.

Jaina’s nostrils flared and she stood even more stiffly. “I see,” she said. “I really ought to go and tell Tenel Ka about this. It was supposed to be over, Jacen. Over. Some silly idea you two got in your head when you were missing, and then you grew up and moved on. Now you’re starting the same old shavit again, and with Allana right here. You have a lot of nerve, Jacen. And I don’t mean that in a good way.”

“Jaina, please. Don’t tell Tenel Ka anything. It’s only going to hurt her, and where else does Allana have to go but here?”

“I could go to Dathomir,” Allana said helpfully, “but then I would miss Nilla too much.”

“You and Zekk do stuff like we do, all the time,” Jacen said. “At least you used to. We were making bets on when you’d get pregnant for the second time. Numa was the only one who bet for anything over six months and she got the pool.”

“That is an entirely different situation, for three reasons. First of all, we’re married. Second, I’m not a man. Third, I’m not Zekk’s brother.”

“You’re too short to be Zekk’s brother. I met his sister and she’s a lot bigger than you are,” said Allana. “She’s as big as Daddy.”

“Allana, this conversation isn’t about you, so please don’t butt in,” Jacen told her. “Jaina, it’s none of your business, either. We’re not kids anymore, and we can do what we want.”

“I think you’re taking advantage of Anakin.”

“Daddy, are you Uncle Anakin’s husband?” Allana asked.

“No, Allana, I’m not, and for the second time, be quiet. Better yet, go to your room.”

Allana huffed and puffed and stomped away.

“What the hell was that?” Jaina demanded. “Exactly how much has Allana seen?”

“Nothing,” Jacen lied. “And if you’re asking if she’s involved at all, the answer is no. Absolutely not. What do you think I am, Jaina?”

“I don’t know, Jacen. I just don’t know anymore.” She shook her head, then lowered her voice and continued. “He’s had bad luck with relationships. He’s weaker than he acts and he thinks he’s the only one who’s noticed. And here you are, ready to jump right back into the stuff that got him into that mess in the first place.”

“Jaina, do you really think that it’s my fault that he stayed with that good-for-nothing lowlife for all those years?”

Jaina nodded.

“Well, you’re wrong. Do you have any idea what we went through together? How many times we almost died, and how it felt to be stuck far away from home, while a war is going on all around you, and no way of knowing if anybody is safe or even alive? I almost gave up, more than once. We depended on each other to survive. We were each other’s entire world.”

Jaina still didn’t speak, but she at least let her angry glower soften into an unimpressed but mostly neutral expression.

“I thought I was never going to see you again, or anybody else. I couldn’t feel anyone else but you in the Force, and that connection was weak. I thought the Stellar Imperium was winning, and everyone else was dead, and you were running from them, to be caught any day. That the war would be lost and we would live out the rest of our lives alone on a hostile world – and that we’d die soon, too.” Jacen shuddered at the memories. “The Sith caught us. Darth Inferna and Lord Welk caught us and tortured us for more than a week. It might have been two. All the time sort of runs together. They put me through pain you couldn’t even imagine.”

“I think I could,” Jaina said in a small voice. “I felt it through our twin bond for a few seconds. That’s how I knew you were still alive. You couldn’t feel all that if you were dead.”

“And the bond was weak, and you only got a little taste of it,” Jacen reminded her. “I can’t describe it. It was pain so bad I thought I could die, except that I wasn’t dying, and there was no way out of it. I wanted to die just to make it stop. And Anakin... what they did to Anakin.” Jacen’s voice broke and he took a few deep breaths to compose himself before continuing. “He was in the medic center for a week after we were rescued. Most of that was replacing parts that Inferna took out. He hid the worst of it from me after she was killed. She’d torture him to the point that he was almost dead, put him in a bacta tank, and start all over again. Every day. She and Welk would strap him down, and they scraped out one of his kidneys one time, and another time she threaded six thin metal rods through his body and left him suspended for hours. They skinned his back, too – and every time, he was drugged so that he couldn’t lose consciousness.”

“Why, Jacen? Why would they do that?” Jaina now looked sorry. “Even if they’re Sith they’d still have a reason.”

“They were trying to draw you to the planet,” Jacen said. “I figured it out, and that’s why I shut down in the Force and blocked you out for awhile. They knew that you had attacked Lumiya on Cyalax, and Lumiya was angry with them, so they were trying to kill you by luring you out to us. They thought that I’d cry out to you through the twin bond and then you’d come running to save me. When I caught on and it didn’t work, they tried to use despair instead of pain against me by leaving Anakin to die where I couldn’t get to him. Not without going through that agony.”

Jaina bit her lip. “I guess... I guess I don’t understand at all, then,” she said. “Maybe neither one of you ever got over it.”

“Got over what?”

“All that happened to you. I don’t know what it’s like, and you’re right, I can’t imagine what it’s like, to be left stranded like you were and in the situations you were in.”

“I almost lost him, Jaina,” Jacen said, “and then I’d have been alone. One of the Stellar Imperial officers almost killed him. I patched him up and then he just barely pulled through. The injuries left him weak, and he almost starved to death. I didn’t know what to do. His body was failing and he was weak, but the food we had was making him sicker. He wasn’t even forty kilograms when the ice finally broke and spring came.” He covered his eyes to hide the tears. “I couldn’t be without him. Not then. And I can’t be without him now. Please, try, try to understand at least that, if you can’t accept anything else.”

“He was everything to you, and now you can’t sort it out again,” Jaina said. “I’m not judging you. I might have been before, but I didn’t know much about what happened to you. You never told anyone.”

“Didn’t want to think about it. Still don’t.”

Jaina hugged Jacen. “Then don’t. I’ll go back to the Temple and tell Luke that you were sick and in bed, but it’s not serious enough to call Tekli down; you just needed to go into your own healing trance. And Anakin was staying with you and watching Allana and forgot to call Luke.” Then she got very serious. “The thing is, though, you can’t keep this a secret forever. You can try, but then you have to lie, and that just snowballs. I’ll help you out this once, but I’m not going to do it again. Eventually you’re going to just have to be honest.”

“That’s not going to go over well with the press.”

“Jacen, don’t be an idiot. The press doesn’t give a flying ball of hawkbat poop about what gets you off. Maybe a gossip column or something, but they’re so flooded with rumors that nobody would believe the truth anyway.” She spread out her hands. “Admiral Ackbar is a female Gamorrean in disguise! Colonel Vandersnee raided the Corellian nuclear arsenal last week! A study from the Institute of Biological Science on Commenor shows that sucre syrup cures cancer in lab mice! Anakin Solo dumped Dyar Leeds and is now with – Jacen Solo! Actress Selandia Grace arrested for the murder of Mon Mothma! Even though Mothma is still around. See what I’m talking about?”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“Don’t act so surprised about it,” Jaina said. “Take care of yourself, though. And Anakin. And Allana.” She shook her head. “You guys are a weird family.”

“You’re part of the family, too, you know.”

“Yeah.” Jaina stood up. “I know. I guess when you’re Darth Vader’s grandchild, weird things will happen.”

She left, and Anakin finally wandered into the kitchen. “So Jaina’s onto things now, too,” he said.

“Yes, and she doesn’t care. I don’t think. There, that wasn’t so painful. Ow.” Jacen then made a face, reached under his bottom, and produced a small black wrist chrono. “Uh-oh, Jaina’s chrono fell off, and she’s gone.”

“Just give it to her next time she stops by,” Anakin suggested.

“Yeah. Good idea.” Jacen tossed the small device on the countertop. “Now, where were we, love?”

“Can I come out of my room yet?” Allana yelled.

“Making breakfast for Allana,” Anakin sighed.