Work Text:
“…so then we had to leave, because it’s” – Anakin made quotation marks in the air with the first two fingers on both his hands, one bare and one gloved – “‘against the Jedi Code to marry your former Master’, apparently.” He snorted. “As if the offer of a High Council seat was ever going to convince me to give up that.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and raised one eyebrow at the exact moment that Obi-Wan Kenobi walked through the door, and Biala forcibly reminded herself that she was effectively interviewing two clairvoyants.
“Apologies for my tardiness,” Obi-Wan said quickly, and took Anakin’s still-outstretched right hand in his left at the same time he extended his own right hand across Biala’s desk and shook hers as she stood to greet him. “Pleased to meet you. Obi-Wan Kenobi. I see you’ve already met Anakin.”
When they separated, he skipped sitting in her second desk chair in favor of perching on the arm of the chair Anakin was already sitting in, keeping Anakin’s hand clasped between both of his own in his lap.
“Yes. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Biala said, smiling and sitting back in her own chair behind the desk. “I’m looking forward to assisting you both to find your dream home. Now – can you tell me what kind of property you are looking for?” She pulled up a blank page on her datapad and smiled placidly at them, waiting for them to begin.
The two former Generals across from her glanced at each other. “Well…” General Kenobi started.
“Um…” General Skywalker hummed.
“Pretty much anything, really, would be fine,” General Kenobi said slowly, and Anakin nodded eagerly.
“Yeah. We’re very easy to please. As long as we’re together who really cares about the details, right?”
Well, that told her absolutely nothing. “Perhaps we should start by deciding where you would like to live. Are you planning on staying here on Coruscant?” Biala prompted.
“Well, my business is here…” Anakin said, at the same time that Obi-Wan shook his head and said,
“No, not necessarily.” He looked down at Anakin in surprise. “I thought you said one of the perks of running a repair shop was that people have ships and speeders everywhere, and you could work from anywhere in the galaxy.”
Anakin considered this. “That’s true…” He turned back to Biala, a triumphant look on his face. “Okay! He’s right. So, we could live anywhere, I guess.”
Biala frowned. “That’s” –
“Except a desert planet,” Anakin quickly added.
Obi-Wan nodded. “Yes, of course.”
Biala, relieved to be making headway, wrote that down. “No deserts. Got it.”
“Or, like, super…beachy planets,” Anakin continued. “It’s not the lack of water so much that’s the problem, it’s the” –
“Sand,” Obi-Wan said firmly. “No sand. Write that down.”
“Okay,” Biala said.
“And nothing too hot in general,” Obi-Wan said, and Anakin nodded.
“Yeah. I don’t really want to be under the hood of a speeder all day in a thousand-degree heat, you know? And he burns really easily.”
General Kenobi nodded. “I do.”
“So…perhaps something less dry and more humid?” Biala suggested. “Jungles, vegetation, that sort of thing?”
Anakin pulled a face. “Where there’s rain there’s mud. I’m kind of done with mud.”
“Actually let’s just remove any planet that was ever the site of a Clone Wars battle from the list,” Obi-Wan said carefully.
“So…staying on Coruscant is out, then?” Biala asked, arching one eyebrow. There had been at least two major battles on and above Coruscant during the Clone Wars.
“Oh.” General Kenobi seemed surprised by this. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. That would exclude Coruscant.”
“And we should probably stay away from any of the Separatist systems, too,” General Skywalker suggested, flicking a glance at General Kenobi out of the corner of his eye. They were still holding hands over General Kenobi’s lap. “Just in a, you know, not-getting-beat-up-when-we-go-out-to-buy-supplies sort of way.”
“Smart thinking,” General Kenobi said proudly, and he patted Anakin’s hand.
Biala sighed. Now rather than having too broad a scope, she was quickly running out of places it seemed they would agree to live. “What about non-ocean bodies of water? What do you think of, say, the Lake Country on Naboo?”
General Skywalker had already started shaking his head before she’d finished her sentence. “Not Naboo. My ex-wife lives there.”
General Kenobi looked thoughtful. “Staying near Naboo might be advantageous, however. We do have custody of Luke and Leia half the year.”
Finally, something Biala could latch onto. “Mid-Rim, then?” she asked, stylus poised over her notes.
General Skywalker only shrugged. “We have hyperdrives. We can pick them up and drop them off from pretty much anywhere.”
There went that idea. Biala put her stylus down.
Fifteen minutes later, they’d eliminated ‘anywhere with a native gundark population’ and established that they both preferred systems with only one sun and at least semi-standard day and night cycles, but were no closer to deciding on any one planet or even one particular system. “Let’s change tacks for a moment,” she suggested. “Laying aside where it might be physically located, what sort of qualities are you looking for in the house itself?”
“As long as it’s got a bedroom, a kitchen, and a refresher, I can’t imagine we really need much else,” General Skywalker admitted.
“You’ll have to forgive us; we’re both used to living in very close quarters,” General Kenobi explained with a smile. “The Jedi Temple dormitories are not exactly famed for their luxury. And then, during the war” –
“Mostly tents,” Anakin said.
“As he said. We don’t expect much.”
“So something small, then?”
They both nodded. “Absolutely. Less to clean,” Obi-Wan said.
“We do have cleaning droids,” Anakin reminded him.
“Of course, but I’d prefer not to have MSEs constantly underfoot all day and night.”
“That’s true.” Anakin tapped his chin with his free hand. “They’ll probably spend most of their time in the workshop cleaning up after me anyway.”
Biala blinked at him. “I’m sorry – workshop?”
“Oh, yeah,” Anakin said, as if this entirely new factor he’d just thrown into the equation should have been common knowledge already. “I need somewhere to work, and I don’t want any sort of a commute, so my workshop will need to be on the property. We could do sort of a ‘ground floor mechanic’s shop, upstairs living quarters’ sort of thing, I guess?” He looked to Obi-Wan.
“As long as you don’t expect me to keep it tidy, then that sounds wonderful,” Obi-Wan replied. “I would love to have you home more often.”
Anakin looked triumphantly back at Biala. “See? There’s one thing we can make a decision on! Workshop on-site. Write that down.”
Biala did. “Presumably, if you’re going to be running a mechanic’s shop out of your home, you will also need to be close enough to a major metropolitan area that customers can find you?”
Anakin waved his hand dismissively. “People will find us either way. I’m kind of…” He bit his lip. “Look, I don’t want to sound like a dick, but we have more clients than we know what to do with. Having the chance to have former Jedi General Skywalker work on your hyperdrive is, uh, kind of a selling point.”
“Biala makes an excellent point about not being too remote,” Obi-Wan said carefully, “but we don’t want to be too close to town, either. After all, we’ll need a fair bit of space for the airfield.”
“Airfield?” Biala blinked.
“I have a lot of ships,” Anakin said calmly.
“If you need space for an airfield, that’s…” Really something you should have led this conversation off with, Biala thought to herself. What she said out loud was, “Going to narrow down your options.”
“We are also perfectly happy to move into an already existing airfield-adjacent structure,” Obi-Wan said magnanimously, as if he thought he were really throwing her a bone on this one.
“But not, like, too adjacent,” Anakin said nervously. “It would probably get too noisy for the varactyl. They have very sensitive hearing.”
Obi-Wan looked at him, confusion written all over his face. “What varactyl? We don’t have a varactyl.”
“I think we should. You like them. I’ve always wanted to get you a pet varactyl.”
“Oh.” Obi-Wan deflated, considering this offer. “That’s very sweet, dear.”
“I thought once we had some more space, we could put it in, like, a stable or something. But” – Anakin turned to Biala. “Whatever’s easier for you, honestly.” Then he turned back to Obi-Wan. “That’s going to make Ahsoka really happy, too. Living where we work. She’ll get to see the twins more often.”
“I’m sorry, ‘we’?” Biala asked, hoping she’d heard him wrong.
“Oh, yeah,” Anakin said with a laugh. “Ahsoka Tano. Our P-well, former Padawan. She and I own the shop together.”
“So, when you said…” Biala checked her notes, “all you need is ‘a bedroom, a kitchen, and a refresher’, you neglected to mention that you also need a second bedroom?”
“Not necessarily in the house,” Obi-Wan cut in quickly to say. “She would probably prefer a more…private area.”
Anakin nodded emphatically. “She’s already seen a lot of our” –
“Yes, thank you, dear,” Obi-Wan interrupted him, patting his hand again and turning a little red around the ears. “I’m sure Biala understands what we mean.”
“So…” Biala wanted to make sure she had this absolutely correct. “Now you’re talking about buying two houses.”
“Ahsoka’s can obviously be smaller,” Anakin said, as if that had been her main concern with this situation.
“But still close by.”
“Right, yeah, super close,” he nodded.
“I’m sorry, I…” Biala steeled herself, taking a deep breath. “I must be confused. I’m unsure how any house could be smaller than what you’re already describing for your house. You want her to have a studio apartment, then?”
They both shook their heads. “No, no. We just mean that she doesn’t also need room for Luke and Leia the way we do,” Obi-Wan said.
“And Luke and Leia are…?”
“My kids with my ex,” Anakin said easily. “They’re with us half the year.”
“They have separate bedrooms at their mothers’; we may also want to afford them the same in our home,” Obi-Wan mused.
Anakin snorted. “Yeah, but Padmé has, like, a palace. My ex comes from money,” Anakin explained, directing this last to Biala.
“Yes, while we’re on the subject – what is your budget?” Biala asked, circling ‘# of bedrooms?’ on her pad as a note to herself to get back to later.
“Er…not much,” Obi-Wan admitted, a little sheepishly.
“‘Jedi’ is actually more like a volunteer position, it turns out,” Anakin explained. “And doesn’t super translate into paying careers very easily.” He looked to Obi-Wan. “That Divo guy keeps trying to get you to join the Coruscant Security Force, though.”
Obi-Wan rolled his eyes. “It’s a good thing we’re moving, then. I’m afraid in all the shuffle I will manage to misplace his number and all means of contacting or being contacted by the CSF.”
“And Obi-Wan wrote a book,” Anakin continued. “Only” –
“Only it wasn’t very popular; thank you, Anakin, for bringing that up,” Obi-Wan cut in dryly.
Anakin shook his head. “No! That wasn’t what I was going to say. I was going to say that we donated all proceeds from your book to the Veteran’s Hospital, so it’s not like we can use that money to buy a house. Also, it was popular,” he insisted.
“Yes. For two weeks exactly,” Obi-Wan agreed.
“That’s about how long it took people to figure out what it was really about,” Anakin explained to Biala. “Turns out, er, most of the people who were lining up the night of the release to buy a copy were hoping for something a little more, uh…” He frowned, trying to think of a diplomatic way to finish that sentence. “Okay, so you know when you see something labeled, ‘by the hero of the Clone Wars, High Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi’, you’re automatically kind of going to think” –
“That was not the version of the cover I approved with the publishers,” Obi-Wan groused crossly, but Anakin continued on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“…that it’s going to be about, you know, the war, and explosions and battles and spying and missions and stuff. Or…” He grinned. “Maybe even a little bit about that whole very well-publicized time after the war when you ran off to marry your very-recently divorced, much-younger secret paramour. Just spitballing, here, my love.”
“If said much-younger paramour has any interest in seeing his twenty-fifth name day, he might want to stop spitballing,” Obi-Wan scowled.
“Okay, okay,” Anakin conceded, although he hadn’t stopped smiling. “I really like your book, actually. It was just, um.” He cleared his throat. “It has a lot of footnotes. And maybe hit the galactic history and Jedi philosophy topics a little harder than most of your readers were expecting, was my point.”
“A point that has been enumerated to me multiple times, thank you.”
“He’s writing a sequel,” Anakin admitted, sotto voce, to Biala. “But unless that becomes an, er, unlikely best seller, we’re probably going to pay for the house with whatever I’ve been making at the shop.”
“Well, if it’s as small as you say,” Biala said with a tight smile, trying to get them back on topic, “that may not be too much of a problem. You’re settled on three bedrooms, then?”
For some reason, this made them both burst into laughter. “Oh, yeah, we’ll just make the kids sleep outside,” Anakin said, once he’d gotten his mirth under control enough to speak in complete sentences.
“To be fair, I think a couple of them would welcome the opportunity to do a little camping,” Obi-Wan said, drying his eyes with his sleeve.
“I…” Biala hastily checked her notes. “Thought I had accounted for the children? One bedroom for you two, one each for Anakin’s twins? Am I forgetting anyone?”
“Just our other four children,” Anakin said smoothly.
Biala felt the color drain from her face. “Your what?”
“Well, four now,” Obi-Wan said. He was still chuckling, on and off, clearly finding her confusion amusing. “We have been talking about adopting a few more.”
Anakin had pulled himself together faster. “The war created a lot of orphans, around the galaxy,” he said, very seriously, and beside him Obi-Wan sobered up immediately. “Obi-Wan and I are just doing our best to help some of them out.”
“It’s been delightful, having young voices filling the house again lately,” Obi-Wan said, and Anakin nodded in agreement. They looked at each other. “Now that you and Ahsoka are all grown up,” Obi-Wan added fondly.
“I should hope so, or the fact that we’re married and raising six children together would become really inappropriate, really fast,” Anakin told him, and Biala just wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a joke or not.
“So we’re up to seven bedrooms, then,” she said, barreling on.
“With, er, maybe room to add a few more later? In case we adopt some more children?” Obi-Wan suggested.
“Is that a thing, in houses? Expandable bedrooms?” Anakin asked hopefully.
Biala frowned. “No. That’s not a thing.”
“Now, our former troops, they might be amenable to camping outside,” Obi-Wan said.
“Depends on the weather, I guess,” Anakin told him.
“The who now?” Biala was developing a pounding headache.
“We have a standing offer out to anyone who formerly served under either of us that we will provide them a place to stay, should they ever need one,” Obi-Wan explained.
“And how many people does that encompass?” Biala asked.
“Oh, somewhere just north of ten thousand, I suppose,” Obi-Wan said airily.
Biala blinked a few times. Then she blinked a few more times.
“Obviously, not all at once,” Anakin said, sensing her distress.
“Oh, obviously, not at all at once!” Obi-Wan said with a laugh, and Anakin joined in.
“I’m glad you find it funny,” Biala muttered under her breath into her datapad.
Three Months Later
“Biala! Good to see you! Found us a house yet?” Anakin greeted jovially as he flopped onto a chair. Obi-Wan sat down beside him, much more sedately.
“No,” Biala said firmly. She stayed standing, gripping the back of her chair in her hands. Anakin’s face fell. “Because it turns out there is no house in existence that meets all of your – frankly ridiculous and contradictory – requirements. I have looked at every home for sale between here and the Outer Rim and can confidently say that nothing exists that can please the both of you.”
“So…” General Kenobi prompted, looking confused.
“You mean we don’t get a house? You’re…giving up on us?!” General Skywalker demanded angrily.
Biala shook her head. “No. But I am passing you off. I’d like you to meet Rice Ecker. He’s an architect.” She beckoned to her office door, and Rice walked in, a bag over his shoulder and stacks of blueprints in his hands. “I am recommending that you find yourselves some piece of land – somewhere both metropolitan and rural, and near some sort of child-safe but sand-free body of water – and then tell Rice about all of your many, many stipulations, and let him design you something customized.”
“I…I guess that could work,” General Skywalker said, clearly running through possible scenarios in his head.
At the same time, General Kenobi turned to Rice. “I’ve been thinking about this pet varactyl idea,” he said, and Rice’s eyes widened. Biala had not warned him about the pet varactyl. “If we only get one, I’m worried they might get lonely. Do you think you could add a second stable, next to the first one, so that they could have a friend?”