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He strokes her back gently. Soft enough to ensure his daughter doesn’t wake from her light sleep.
If she does, she’ll probably be up for the next hour, driving him nuts with her early signs of force usage and insisting on getting that ridiculously large Zakuulan candy which she.can.not.have…under any circumstance. Order from the Commander herself.
...and that is of course why he has already given her five.
He swallows back a sigh in order to not wake up the toddler who decided his chest is a really comfy pillow to rest on. The idea that she basically imprisoned him without the ability to move his muscles except for his hands makes him smile. She is in fact her mother’s daughter…and there is no denying that she has the upper hand.
One brown strain of hair dares to fall in her face and Arcann carefully lifts a metal finger to remove it from her skin, draping it around her ear. It’s crazy, but he thinks she has already grown another two inches in the last days. Of course, Senya doesn’t believe that, but who is the expert on the subject? Exactly, Daddy is.
His daughter is two inches taller. Period.
She stretches her arm towards his face and he is reminded of her mother. It is always her mother. Arcann does not think his daughter has that much in common with him – except for her blue eyes, but really those are Senya’s anyway.
Nevertheless, she shares nothing with any of her cruel ancestors, including him. There’s not even a tiny piece of Valkorion in her, he is sure.
He remembers frantically checking her force signature when he was told of his luck. How scared he was to father a sociopathic monster. Another tyrant who would destroy the legacy of the Alliance, who would be filled with the cruelest of tendencies, perversions and uncertainties. He had made a routine of checking every 15 minutes or so until his soon-to-be wife had told him she would freeze him in carbonite until their daughter’s birth if he didn’t stop.
Well, excuse her for ruining his plan of ending his lineage once and for all.
Even if his child would be perfectly healthy – both physically and mentally – she would still have to burden his legacy. Millions of innocents wiped out, entire planets devasted…not to mention the wounds he had inflicted on her mother, the Commander of the Alliance and his former enemy.
He doesn’t look forward to the conversation he is undeniably going to have with his daughter once she has reached a certain age. In recent nightmares, he already sees her confused look that slowly turns from disappointment to fear before he wakes up in sweat at the thought of his own child’s disgust at him.
The only hope he has is that the Lady Scyva fulfilled his deepest wish: That his child has somehow inherited her mother’s unbelievable capability to forgive.
Of course, he doesn’t wish that for himself. If she hates him in the end for all he has done to the Galaxy and all the consequences she has to suffer from because of it, he will accept it without another word. It’s what he promised her when their eyes first met and he realized he would do anything for her.
Even if it’s to silently plea for the first time in his life that the Gods give her the ability to forgive…to move on when she gets hurt.
It’s a lot to ask for, he knows and he’s helpless. No matter how hard he trains, he will never be able to protect her from life. She will make her own experiences, she will find her own disappointments.
But he doesn’t want her to hate as much as he still hates Valkorion. Even after all these years, he isn’t able to forgive his Father and he knows he never will be, regardless of how many times he meditates.
From time to time, he tells himself that his Father lacked the most fundamental appreciations of life and hence, remained ignorant even in the face of beauty and sheer happiness, cursed to remain forever imprisoned in an existence without any of the essentials of the human experience.
Never missing his wife the way Arcann misses his when she is on a mission to save the Galaxy (again)
Never struck by pure pride at the sight of his children’s first steps (Yes, he made at least 10 holovids of his daughter’s and he is completely shameless on the subject)
All these thoughts, however, don’t extinguish the burning rage he will never get rid of. Not only for what Valkorion did to him, but what he did to his mother. There isn’t a day that goes by when Senya doesn’t blame herself for Vaylin’s fate. His fingers tense a bit while his muscles remember the void on Nathema, the hole in the Force which still makes his stomach turn. He concentrates on petting his daughter’s hair instead, but the feeling lingers in his nerves until the small girl curls closer into his side as a response.
He can’t imagine Senya’s pain and he thinks himself a coward for not even trying. The images created by his brain of his daughter, curled in the fetal position on the floor, drained in the sweat of her body which desperately tries to avoid any further deterioration of her spirit, any unwelcome access to her mind by Valkorion’s minions…
Alone…while he is completely helpless and can’t reach her until she renounces her Fa- no, this thought is too gruesome to entertain. Just as Vaylin was for Senya, his daughter is the center of his universe.
Now that he thinks about it, she can never everleave Odessen…he will just have to keep her here where he can keep an eye on her for eternity (and beyond. Challenge accepted.). It’s a whole planet, for Izax sake, so there is plenty of room, even for a hurricane of that caliber.
No lightsaber for her (so that she doesn’t get ideas), no further communication with Koth which equals no piloting for the young lady (these two get along way too well for Arcann’s taste anyway) and no Zakuulian candy, not even from her Grandma.
Sounds like a good plan, he admits...but he isn’t a fool either. She is her mother’s daughter.
She will find a way to escape from him.
So limit her access to Beniko, too?
He chuckles a little until he feels something fuzzy, creepily moving up his leg. His lightsaber already at hand, he suddenly looks into the wide eyes of a giant brown fur ball lifted by the force and settling in next to the head of his daughter.
She is kidding him…
Was he not clear that he wouldn’t – under any circumstances – tolerate her running around with that ridiculous stuffed pool of dirt? Much less sleeping with it?
He even got Shan and Vortena in on the plan to get rid of it…secretly stealing it from under her pillow in the morning to get it on the fastest Alliance shuttle to Scyva-knows-where.
Is there nobody he can trust anymore?
Great. It’s back. The ball of hair is back and it has already left its disgusting long black tentacles everywhere in their apartment, not to mention he has to endure the feeling of having it on his skin.
Arcann’s face couldn’t show more disgust…he feels as though even his scars are trying to get away from that thing.
It all started two weeks ago when Torian watched his daughter after coming home from a supply run for the Alliance. She likes the Mandalorian and Arcann even admits he is surprisingly good at babysitting. Or at least he was until he showed her a picture of one of the animals he had seen on Tatoine – a giant Bantha.
Yes, a Bantha…the stinking balls of disgusting fur whose smell keeps the most dangerous predators miles away. Every second curse features some kind of reference to how revolting they are.
Naturally, a picture does not have the same effect. Eyes cannot smell. And apparently, his daughter has a sweet spot for everything that is furry.
She thinks of them as “cute”…or “cuddly” and she didn’t stop begging for a stuffed version of one.
At first, he didn’t react. After all, sheisthe daughter of the Alliance Commander. Running around with such a toy is thereby out.of.the.question, no matter how good her levitation skills are at her young age.
Or how good her hold is on Daddy dearest who has decided not to spoil his daughter even though he would secretly battle any Krayt dragon for her. But a Bantha? That is where even he draws the line…
Long story short of course she found a way….and of course she had help from an Alliance member. A day later, he found that thing hiding in her bed. It was larger than his daughter, but she had tried to hide it under her pillow. No matter who had performed the deed, Arcann could see that it was about to fall apart any instant. The giant ball lost hair everywhere and the stuffing was…
Arcann didn’t even want to know what it was.
But his daughter loved that disgusting rug…although he had tried to replace it with a wooden carving made by Senya. As a response, she had shaken her little head at him for even suggesting such a cruel fate because “it just wouldn’t be Ban Ban!"
Great…now it had a name. Now it was really irreplaceable.
He sighs, slowly continuing his gentle strokes down her back. One thing is clear: he will never get rid of Ban Ban. Seeing that darn toy again means his daughter has fished it out of the trash in the farthest shuttle in the Hangar.
Naturally, she didn’t buy into his story of the Sith spy who stole Ban Ban in the night from under her pillow because she had eaten too much candy.
She is her mother’s daughter after all and catches on to these lies quickly.
Daddy will have to repair Ban Ban it seems. If he still gets the honor to touch him after this little incident.
Now he realizes why his daughter was giving him the silent treatment for much of the afternoon. However, this very moment he feels nothing in her force presence that would suggest anger at him. It’s the very same it was when he first touched her in the Force…a calm pond of energy in her body, its water flowing through her veins as she breathes.
She has learned to forgive on her own it seems.
Which means he will make it up to her…especially now that his chest swells up in pure pride.
Great Izax, she isn’t anything like her Father, he thinks, but interrupts himself when she tilts her head in her sleep until she is comfortable again.
Suddenly and only for a moment, she has such resemblance with his younger self that he wants to escape in surprise.
Luckily for his daughter though two slender hands keep him from moving, holding the toddler’s head above the ground with the Force until it gently falls on her father’s side again.
His confused gaze reaches that of his wife who begins to rub his belly in comfort.
“Look what we’ve done…she picks up so quickly on our habits. Next thing you know she’ll snore like her father.”
He’s still a little too caught up in the moment to answer (but for the record he does not snore), staring at the little girl who now seems to look just like…herself. Neither father, nor mother. Just his little girl.
And stupid Ban Ban in between.
A smile appears on his lips as he tils his head to reach his wife’s brown curls, still looking at their child.
“She’ll be fine, won’t she?”
“She is always fine…Quite an achievement with her nervous father around.”
He sighs, nodding to himself while his metal hand mindlessly traces circles on his wife’s shoulder.
“I won’t be ready to let her go…not ever.”
The Commander chuckles, closing her eyes.
“You’ll be fine too, darling…you’ll still have me.”
He can feel her wide grin.
“…and Ban Ban.”