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“What's that?”
“It's a hovercraft, kiddo.”
“What're you doin’?”
“I'm putting it together so you n' your sister can play with it.”
Like thoughtfully stuffed his thumb in his mouth and continued to watch Anakin go over the parts.
Anakin glanced over at him. “Luke, we talked about that.”
“Bou’ wha’?” Luke mumbled.
Anakin gave him a flat look.
“Oh,” Luke popped his thumb out of his mouth. “Bout that.”
“Yeah, about that.” Anakin turned back to the parts splayed out in front of him. He'd so far done more taking apart than putting together. He hadn't liked the factory welding on some of the pieces, and one thing led to another until the whole craft was down to base components.
“Is it s’posed to be all over?” Luke asked.
“Nah,” Anakin said. “I just like it better like this.”
“In parts?”
“I mean. Sort of.”
“Why?”
Anakin huffed a laugh and glanced back at Luke again. “You know… I don't really know. Guess I just like doing it all myself. Trust it more like that.”
Luke nodded slowly and screwed up his little face thoughtfully. “Mama doesn't do it like that.”
“You're right,” Anakin turned back to the pieces of hovercraft, spanner in his mechno-hand. “That's because your mom knows how to do things by committee. Delegate stuff, you know?”
“Committee,” Luke echoed. He'd definitely heard the word before, but at five you couldn't really expect him to retain the meaning of every word used around him. “Del…egate.”
“Yeah. Committee is like… a team. Sort of,” Anakin said. He made a mental note to look that up later, so he could explain it better for Luke. Sometimes, he didn't realize how many words he understood without having the words to express the meaning of them. Not great if you had curious five-year-olds asking questions all the time.
“Oh,” Luke said. Another quiet pause followed, during which time Anakin got the chassis back together, sans welding, but he had no plans to weld around his five-year-old son. After the short silence, Luke piped back up. “And what's del-e-gate?”
Anakin had a better handle of that one.
“It's when you know who does what best, so you ask them to do that bit, but not to do the rest. You ask someone else to do the other stuff, usually someone you think would be good at it. It's like being the boss of a project and making sure everyone else is doing their parts,” Anakin said.
“Oh. An’... you don't deli-gate?” Luke asked.
“Nah, I like doing it all myself,” Anakin shrugged. He set the chassis aside and turned his attention to the bench and safety harnesses.
“Why?”
“You already asked that, kiddo,” Anakin said. He didn't like the look of the harnesses’ emergency releases. “I don't know.” He smiled over at Luke again, patting around for what amounted to a very small lockpick. “I like working on everything myself. So I do.”
Leia shuffled over – shuffled because she was wearing one of Padmé’s skirts and it was under her feet and dragging behind her – and took her place next to Luke.
When they were still babies, they'd both had this kind of medium-brown hair, like Anakin had had in his teens. Now, Leia’s hair was much darker, much like Anakin's hair now, and Luke’s was much lighter, as Anakin's had been in his own childhood. Anakin thought they both looked more like Padme than they did him, but they seemed to have his hair, anyway.
“Daddy likes to be in control of everything,” Leia stage-whispered to Luke. “He wants to have every little bit done right an’ can't trust it's done right ‘less he does it all himself.”
Anakin nodded soberly. “Did your mom say that, kiddo?” He turned back to the release and poked around at the circuits with the pick. (He just wanted it to be more sensitive, so that it wouldn't jam on the kids. Or, Force forbid, jam in a situation where he or Padme had to get the kids out of the ‘craft quickly.)
“Maybe,” Leia said, picking her nose imperiously.
“She's probably right,”Anakin said. “I do like knowing everything's done right, and the surest way to know everything's done right is doing it yourself. It's just… not the most convenient way to do things. Probably.”
“Are you makin’ the hovercraft?” Leia asked.
“Yup.”
“But you took it apart more,” Leia noted flatly.
“Hey, we all know it'll run better if I start from the ground up,” Anakin said.
“Yeah,” Leia said doubtfully. “But the point a buyin’ a hovercraft is not havin’ to build it, Daddy.”
“Nah, the point of buying it is to have all the parts at your fingertips,” Anakin disagreed. “Do you know how much of a pain it would be to build a quarter-sized low-output engine from scratch? Not that easy.” He could do it, sure, but it was probably a few grades above scavenging and hodgepodging protocol droid parts together to build a functioning droid.
“So you didn't take the engine apart to check everything?” Leia asked.
“No, he did,” Luke said. Adorable little tattletale that he was. “Then Daddy put it back together and threw out the-the-the power chokey.”
“Just a limit gauge,” Anakin said.
“Uh-oh,” Leia said.
“Uh-oh what?” Anakin glanced at her, eyebrow raised.
She stared soberly back at him, still absolutely drowning in clothes borrowed from Padmé’s closet. “I dunno, Daddy. You tell me what.”
“Oh no, baby girl, that doesn't work on me,” Anakin smirked.
“Daddy said it'll go better. N’ faster,” Luke said. Again. Tattletale. He probably didn't even realize he was doing it, either.
“Faster,” Leia echoed, lifting her chin and puffing out her cheeks. “I knew it. Daddy’s making it not safe. Mommy's gonna throw it away. Jus’ like others. Our lake toys an’ our kid speeders an’ our NED-A.”
“Okay, the NED wasn't my fault. You two adopted a construction droid from Bail and Breha's summer home, where it was helping repair a deck,” Anakin said. “Your mom just made you leave it there instead of taking it home.”
“‘Sides,” Like cut in. “Daddy brought NED home. Didn't you, Daddy?”
“Daddy also put NED into a gucky protocol droid,” Leia groused. She'd really been looking forward to menacing the neighbourhood with a hulking construction droid.
“And now he can talk,” Anakin said agreeably.
Everyone had agreed that Anakin shouldn't have been able to move the construction droid’s core over to the protocol droid body, but Anakin figured that was more or less because no one actually messed with droid design – it was all basically the same thing, from Old Republic to current Republic. Just with different chasses on top.
It wasn't even a good design, at least in terms of the protocol droids. The super battle droids were onto something, bringing the head down and the torso up to protect the core unit. Why were all ambulatory droids given core units in their heads? You'd think a more central design would—
“Daddy!” Leia snapped.
“Yeah?” Anakin turned to her, smiling sheepishly.
“I said NED doesn't like talking. Even with the protocol droid…ness. He's boring and small now.”
“NED’s just getting used to the new functionality. Construction droids aren't designed to speak, baby girl,” Anakin said. “Give him time. Talk to him. You'll see, he'll find ways he likes communicating, even if it's not talking.”
Leia huffed and crossed her arms. “That's reasonable,” she muttered darkly.
Clearly she was angling for a fight and didn't like being thwarted by her dad being reasonable. Anakin grinned at her and turned back to the hovercraft. “Whaddaya think, kids? Time to take a break? It's probably time for a proper snack anyway.”
Luke sighed. “Okay.”
“Don't sound so excited,” Anakin said. He stood and stretched, bones creaking and protesting from the knot he'd been sitting in. “What's up?”
“I wanna watch you build,” Luke said.
“You can watch later,” Anakin promised. He bent down and lifted Luke up, propping him on his hip, then reached for Leia. “For now, though, it's time we all had a snack. Maybe a nap.”
“Not tired,” Leia grumbled. But she let her dad pick her up and settle her on his opposite hip, anyway.
“You're spoiling for a fight, kiddo. If you're still a cranky loth cat after snack, might be time for a lay down,” Anakin said. She always wanted to argue and fight when she was tired. She'd probably make a great Senator, some day.
Leia sighed dramatically and leaned her cheek against Anakin's shoulder. “Maybe I jus’ wanna fight, Daddy.”
“Maybe,” he said agreeably, moving towards the main building of their Naboo home.
She grumbled darkly, once more having her attempt at arguing thwarted by Anakin’s reasonable response.
Luke belatedly mirrored Leia and laid his head on Anakin's other shoulder. He brought his thumb up, as if to stick it in his mouth, then slowly dropped it again. Anakin practically preens, watching him self-regulate and keep himself on track with breaking the thumb sucking habit. His kids were so smart.
Cutest kids in the Inner Rim, too.
Anakin turned to press a kiss to Leia's hair, then turned the other way to press a kiss to Luke's hair as well. “Bail sent us some Alderaan fruit. You guys want apples today?”
“Apple?” Luke asked.
“Do I like apple?” Leia asked.
“Let's find out,” Anakin said.