I loved B’schu’le’s and so it seemed did the rest of Coruscant. The restaurant was very crowded when we walked in and I was thankful that Shiv had thought ahead to reserve us a table.
I ordered a big salad and a noodle dish. When he ordered wine with the meal I knew we weren’t going back to work afterwards which was okay by me. Now I understood why we had taken a taxi to Cati’s instead of his air-speeder.
“Are you going to talk about what’s been bothering you?” he asked as I stabbed my fork through leafy salad.
I glanced up at him, “I told you the last time you asked. I don’t sleep very well.”
He looked at me for a moment. “The palace doc could fix you up with something that would help with that.”
“I’m not going to start taking sleeping aides, it will pass. It’s just bad dreams and I get them sometimes.”
“See, I’d normally believe you but you’ve had this scary death warmed over thing going ever since you got back after Hoth and it reminds me a lot of how you looked after Jyrki, well you know… kidnapped you.”
I made a face. “I had bad dreams then too.” I said with a mouthful of salad. “It will pass; you need to trust me on that.”
For a moment I saw him hesitate, the decision of whether or not to push me wavered across his face. He was worried. “It’s not like you to lie to me.” He said a bit sadly. He had decided to push.
“I’m not lying. I don’t sleep well, I wake up with really terrible nightmares most of which I don’t remember and I can’t get back to sleep afterwards. It’s not like I have the luxury of being able to nap in the afternoon, you know.” I frowned. “Do you really want the absolute truth?”
He nodded.
“I hate sleeping alone when I am on this planet.”
That made him smile and for the first time all afternoon he actually seemed to relax. “I knew there had to be another reason.” He grinned. “You’re pining for the man you love.”
I sighed. “See, this is exactly why I don’t tell you things!” I said crossly, mutilating the last bits of defenceless salad on my plate so loudly that people sitting one table over looked at me. I glared right back at them and they returned their attention to their own plates so fast I thought they might get whiplash. “I am not pining!”
He just shrugged. “Whatever.” He leaned over to reach the shopping bag; a glossy red dura-paper thing with little string handles and shoved it over to me. “I thought that you might want some company in bed, seeing as how you get lonely….” He let his sentence trail off with a knowing wink.
I sighed and shook my head. “Honestly Shiv, you’re as bad as the gossip girls from HR.”
The waitress came and cleared away our empty salad plates and replaced them with the main course. Shiv had some sort of thinly sliced reddish meat, rizzoles, and vegetables all drizzled with a creamy looking sauce. It smelled wonderful. My pasta was covered with a chunky sauce made from a red fruit and was heavily spiced, just the way I liked it. While the waitress hovered around us, refilling our glasses and smiling, I held my tongue. As soon as she left I pulled the bag to me and peeked inside. Underneath a layer of delicate tissue was the largest stuffed toy bantha I had ever seen. Despite the fact that we were sitting in a good restaurant I hauled him out of the bag with a squeal of delight. He was perfect, with soft, long shaggy fur and horns made from some sort of roughed up leather. The detailing on him was astonishing, even his glittery eyes seemed real.
“I am way too old for cuddle toys Shiv, but he’s gorgeous…where did you find a bantha toy on this planet?” I said as I slipped him back in the bag and grinned.
Shiv beamed. “We special ordered him from Ji-Ji’s, really he’s for your birthday, I mean, birthdays. He’s from me , Ynyth, Bobbyn, Maxxi and Cati and I wasn’t supposed to give him to you until your other birthday but goodness knows if you’ll be here for that and I figured you could use the company at night. I got the call this morning that he was done, so it seemed like the right time all around.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say. I had never really talked to Shiv about my love affair with Banthas yet somehow he had known. My guess was that maybe Thrawn had given something of that away but I was pretty sure no one would admit to anything.
“Eat your lunch before it gets cold.” He waved his fork at me. “I have to tell Cati that I saw you finish a meal with my own two eyes.”
I did as he asked, not because I had to but because I really was, for the first time in ages, very hungry. Like most things, my bouts of anxiety and sleeplessness came and went. The regular routine of being back on a planet again helped a lot. That Lord Vader was more often away than on Coruscant helped even more. The best of all was that the Emperor had not been around much either. Slowly the nightmare I had lived through on Wayland was receding, relegated to the same strange part of my life that Jyrki’s treatment had been and I tried not to think about the moral implications of working for the Empire. My on going training sessions with Master Kjestyll were helping to re-ground me and for a while I could forget about the Force and all of its sides, light dark and in between.
“What are you doing after this?” I asked him.
“I am coming back to your place and we are going to watch some of the latest season of Smuggler’s Run, which I happen to know you just picked up and then I am going home and you will get a decent night’s sleep.” He said, “Unless you have a lesson or something?”
I shook my head. “Nope no lessons tonight, so we’ll go with your plan.” I agreed and went back to finishing my pasta. By the time we had done with the main meal we decided to get desert to go because while B’schu’le’s made the best cakes in the galaxy, their ‘caf was awful.
Smuggler’s Run was a brilliant drama about a band of rag-tag nobodies, in a galaxy very far away but amazingly similar to ours. It was a funny, campy show with a great cast of characters. The brilliant but broken captain who is trying to get away from his past, the crazy alien mechanic who could fix anything, twin brothers who were mercenaries and finished each other sentences, the weapons expert who just happens to be a hot chick and the stowaway kid, who everyone except the mechanic thought was a guy but who was really a girl. They lived by their wits on their ship which loosely resembled an old Corellian tub and was always falling apart. They usually ended up helping people instead of actually doing anything terribly illegal. It was hilarious but also sometimes sad and touching.
We ate our delicious deserts, sipped excellent spiced coffee and then topped it all off with a glass of Thrawn’s thirty year old Corellian brandy. I was stuffed and my sides hurt from laughing so much.
Once we had eaten I had hauled the large bantha toy out of the bag and slouching on the couch with my feet on the coffee table I had it balanced on my lap, face to face. He was the cutest thing I ever saw next to a real bantha baby. He had been made to perfection and I had fallen in love with him.
Shiv poked me in the ribs. “How can you see the screen?” He asked.
“I see fine over his head!”
“His?”
I looked up at Shiv and nodded. “Yeah, he’s a he.”
“How can you tell?”
“The shape and thickness of the horns.” I said tracing my finger around the loop of the sueded leather. “Females horns never grow to more than one circle and the ridges aren’t as pronounced. I love banthas.”
Shiv grinned. “I know.”
“Who told you that, because I’m sure it wasn’t me?”
“I am sworn to secrecy.” He said. I opened my mouth to say more but he waggled a finger at me. “Shut up, not another word, just watch the show!”
I smirked at settled back down, cuddling the huge stuffed toy, watching the ‘net with one of my very best friends.
“What are you going to call him?” Shiv asked after five minutes of silence.
“I’ll have to think about it. Naming a bantha is a big deal.”
“Will you tell me what you name him then?”
“I promise, now will you shut up?”
He laughed and grabbed the remote to backtrack so we could catch up on what we missed.
It was late when he left and despite his advice of letting the dishes sit until the morning I just couldn’t. Thrawn did not like clutter and chaos in the house and some of that had rubbed off on me, besides I couldn’t stand the sight of dirty dishes when I first got up and ever worse was a messy kitchen, I was never awake enough to deal with that first thing. Once everything was tidy I took my bantha toy and went to bed. I hadn’t slept with a stuffed cuddle toy in bed since I was a very small child. I sighed when I slipped under the beautiful linen sheets, wearing one of Thrawn’s pyjama tops and wrapped my arm around the bantha to snuggle it. A small piece of furry comfort in the darkness the night had become. Unfortunately its presence didn’t stop the nightmares but it was something to grip on to when I felt as though I were drowning.
The nightmares had become indefinable night terrors involving faceless attackers and endless chases through never ending labyrinths which usually ended up with me falling into the molten lava on the planet the Emperor had called Mustafar. It was not a particularly great way to wake up. Going back to sleep after such a nightmare was usually impossible so I would get up, make myself tea and use the portable computer terminal to get some work done. This way I could sit in the living room and have the HoloNet on in the background. While I was wading through the latest barrage of inter-office mail the late night programme that was currently on was interrupted.
The news anchor was shaken as he read out the latest report of fighting between the Empire and the Rebels. While these kinds of reports were not really new the disclosure that someone from the Imperial side had defected to the rebels was. The news programme did not have a name and details were sketchy at best which was typical.
With my portable computer terminal, I quickly logged into the palace network and began to scan through the internal imperial bulletin boards that I had access to via Lord Vader. The traitor was Admiral Harkov. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did and I could not help wondering how many more so called loyal Imperials were not exactly as they seemed.
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