#2 left!

"Obi! Obi!" Luke shrieks, Leia hot on his heels and swiping at him with hands held like claws. An empty chair screetches across the floor as Luke darts behind it for cover, laughing at a pitch that Obi-Wan had previously believed could only emenate from very small birds or very distressed kittens. Leia, streaked with mud from her fingers all the way up to her ears, makes a wild lunge for him, cackling and shrieking.

All fourty-some pounds of small-child filled with the particularly vicious glee of a victorious hunter is intercepted by a well-timed pick-up from Maul, who hoists her into the air under the armpits and as far away from his body as possible, nose wrinkling. Leia howls, kicking her legs furiously in the air, but Maul will not be budged.

Obi-Wan takes a sip of his tea. "Looks like you've escaped defeat, Luke," he remarks.

"Leggo!" Leia hisses. Obi-Wan wonders, occassionally, if she is truly a human child. Perhaps Padme had some Zabrak or Togruta in her blood. Or perhaps Leia just spends too much time copying Maul.

"Hands," Maul drones, marching her over to the kitchen sink. "Luke." Luke, too, is a mess of mud, sticks, leaves, and all other manners of refuse that two young children instructed to go outside and play find their way into.

There existed a Maul, once upon a time, who hated mess so virulently that even a cup left out would send him into a fit. Doors would slam, invectives would fly, shouting matches would be had... He'd thought Obi-Wan to be a completely incorrigable slob.

Maul was never allowed the space to make any mess at all. Not even as a child.

Watching him take Leia's chubby youthful hands in his own, helping her with the soap even as she scowls, holding each tiny finger so gently in his own hands as if they were the most precious things in the world (they are) Obi-Wan can only smile. Despite all that they have lost they have still come so very far.

"We made messy," Luke observes, stretching out his shirt to stare at the evidence of what can only be a full frontal assault with mud.