"The beauty of your husband being locked up, Goddess, is that your divorce proceedings are going to be a snap," Kyp says, sweeping an arm out as if presenting a whole new world. The new world, of course, is his apartment, where she'll be staying tonight. Her place has echoes.
"That's how you say hello, Durron?" Zekk asks.
"I thought I'd start with good news, yeah," Kyp says. "The bad news being, obviously, that you got conned into marrying a traitorous bastard."
"Technically he's not on trial for treason," Jaina points out, slinging her bag onto Kyp's couch. "Also, you are a terrible person."
"He's not on trial for being a bastard either, but I notice that's not something you quibbled about."
"I notice you didn't argue about being a terrible person," Zekk comments.
Kyp shrugs.
This is how the new chapter of Jaina's life begins.
Well. Sort of.
Jaina staggers through the door of the fresher, reaching to catch herself on the wall. She gets a handful of shoulder instead, and someone else grabs her elbow.
"When did you even get here?" she asks Zekk tiredly.
Zekk says, "Kyp called me. Something about awkwardness."
They both look at Kyp, who has moved a hand to Jaina's hip even though she hasn't relinquished her grip on his shoulder.
"I thought maybe you might be more comfortable talking about it with Zekk," he says, and through their bond she feels him prod her mind a little. He frowns. She shoves him.
"Nobody should be more aware of my body than I am," she snaps, and turns her back on both of them to lock herself back in the fresher.
She isn't really angry that Kyp knew she was pregnant before she did – their boundaries have always been nebulous, wartime erasing whatever lines they had up in the first place. They both try not to push, but sometimes it's almost easier for her to be in his head than in hers, and she knows he takes comfort in checking on her almost constantly. And of course, the people involved are her and Kyp. They would push anyway. They can't help themselves. Why Kyp thinks Zekk might be easier to talk to is a mystery, one made no less clear by the bit of Kyp's mind she enters automatically.
She isn't angry with Zekk, either. Both of them are trying to help her. Both of them are helping her. Zekk's worry pushes at her from another corner of her mind, but it's faded even more than usual while she's in Kyp's brain.
She isn't angry with them. She's just angry with everything. Possibly she has a problem.
"Do you know how far along you are?" Zekk asks after she shows her face again.
"Why don't you ask Kyp?" she suggests with more bite than she means to add.
"Why don't we leave Kyp out of this conversation," Kyp mutters, but he settles on the other end of the couch from her. She's curled up, legs hugged to her chest, but Kyp isn't exactly Mr. Open Body Posture either. Zekk is the calmest, and has claimed the chair.
Jaina glares at her knees. She feels entitled.
"You're hardly showing," Zekk says. "But you have to be pretty far along, given the timeline of-"
Jaina and Kyp's conspicuous silence makes him stop.
"Was there someone else?" Zekk asks carefully after a moment. "Someone we could contact for you?"
Kyp's sudden indignation on her behalf makes her laugh, even if she wants to choke on it. "No," she says. "I didn't sleep with anyone but my husband while I was married."
Which, of course, means she slept with a man plotting to end the peaceful rule of law – or attempted peaceful rule of law, anyway – and probably the lives of no few of her friends and family after she learned about said plotting.
Kyp knows. Kyp has always known, and Kyp will probably always know: their bond is more specific than hers and Zekk's, and Zekk has never woken in the middle of the night and instinctively reached out to run a system's check on their partner's body as a probably unhealthily co-dependent version of counting nerfs to go to sleep, only to find that body having sex, and that mind enjoying it very much.
Possibly Jaina has more than one problem. Possibly those problems involve not thinking her invasive mind bond is a problem.
"Oh, Jaya," Zekk says sadly. "I'm sorry."
Kyp doesn't say he is, but some niggling part of his brain, part that she wouldn't be privy to if she wasn't in his head already, whispers sorry, sorry on endless repeat. She doesn't want them to be sorry, except that she does.
This is the real beginning of the next chapter.
"I'm fine, Dad," she says for at least the eighteenth time this week. Amusement comes to her from Zekk, who has inexplicably moved in while she has inexplicably not moved out. Kyp doesn't seem fazed by either of them.
"I'd tell you if she wasn't, Han," Kyp calls from the kitchen area.
"No you wouldn't," Zekk says, who knows perfectly well Kyp won't tell anybody about Jaina's condition unless she's unconscious or has given him the go-ahead. "I would, though."
"Zekk's a tattle-tale," Jaina informs her father as Han hmmphs. "He tattled on me to the doctor two days ago."
"It's almost like you don't want to stay healthy," Zekk says dryly. "By the way, Kyp, no more Correllian seaweed. Apparently it's bad for her."
"You see what I have to put up with?" Jaina asks her father, and bids him farewell.
They joke around Han as a necessity – Jaina doesn't want him worrying, Kyp wouldn't want him worrying even if Jaina didn't, and Zekk respects that she doesn't want an overprotective smuggler-turned-republic-general in the already crowded apartment all day every day. Her mother confines herself to calls every other day, because Leia is sensible, but Han will not be satisfied that his last remaining child is in good health if he doesn't speak to her with increasing regularity.
When the call is dropped, though, Jaina tends to mope. It could be hormones. It could be her entire situation. It could be emotional overlap and bleedthrough from both men, who are expert mopers.
"Would you stop feeling sorry, please? I'm fine, I'm going to have the baby, the baby will be fine, Jagg will be imprisoned or exiled or whatever, it's all fine."
"Just to double-check," Kyp says, "You aren't giving birth because you feel the need to continue the Skywalker bloodline or anything, right?"
"If I felt the need to continue the Skywalker bloodline I'd have done it a long time ago," Jaina snaps. "It's not like I've had a lack of options on that count."
Kyp, who is an unspoken member of those options, retreats sheepishly, while Zekk, who is a declared member of those options, coughs.
"I want the dratted kid, okay?" she says.
Great, Kyp says in her mind, as if he wasn't questioning her a moment ago. I get to be the cool uncle.
"I think Ben gets to be the cool uncle," she says out loud out of consideration for Zekk, who immediately says, "Excuse you, I am obviously the coolest of all uncles."
Her life, Jaina thinks, but the mood in the apartment is noticeably lighter, so she rolls with it.
"You are not naming that child Anakin," Tahiri says firmly, standing over Jaina in the hospital bed. "This is an intervention."
"I wasn't planning on it…?" Jaina says, trailing off into a question. The baby in her arms is a girl, first of all, and though she supposes Anakin could be gender neutral if she felt like it it just feels like it would be a bad plan.
"Oh," Tahiri says. "Well. Good. What are you naming it?"
"How did you even get in here?" Jaina asks, glancing around. Kyp is asleep on the couch – being the daughter of a former head of state got perks, like a private hospital room with a couch that is too short for your partner to sleep comfortably on. Kyp manages anyway – and Zekk has gone off for food. Her mother and father and Uncle Luke have finally gone home. Tenel-Ka sent warm good wishes. It's a mystery why Jaina herself abides, but she tries to listen to her doctors when she doesn't have more pressing matters to attend to.
"I walked," Tahiri says. "You put me on the family list."
"That doesn't seem like something I would do," Jaina says. She's glad she still has the capacity to joke. She's glad Tahiri still has the capacity to joke with her.
"You love me. Name?"
"Hell if I know," Jaina says. "Probably I have another famous ancestor somewhere."
Tahiri makes a face and leans in, putting her nose an inch away from the baby's. The baby scrunches her own nose and makes vague attempts to flop. Jaina fondly supposes she's trying to shove Tahiri's face away, which means the kid has more of her than Jagg. Jagg would have politely stared back.
The baby also shrieks, which makes Tahiri back away hastily. Jaina smirks.
"Wha?" Kyp demands, sitting bolt upright. What's wrong?
He's not sending to her, Jaina realizes. She just gets the trailing end, whether by proximity or because of their already established bond. The baby shuts up immediately, eyes comically wide. Jaina commiserates, and projects safe/home/mother. Someone else joins her, and someone else: Tahiri, who she halfway expects, and Zekk, who must have felt something in their bond and reacted accordingly. Kyp adds the feeling of a fortified wall around the kid, and Jaina will have to talk to him about that. He's not allowed to give her kid issues until she's at least six.
Then she realizes that it's not him on the wall, it's her, which is really very nice of him. Her kid is still going to have issues. Maybe Anakin wouldn't be the worst name for her after all.
The baby straight up glares at Tahiri then, and Jaina is struck by sudden inspiration. "Yeah, okay," she says. "You're a Mara if ever there was one."
The baby seems to consider this. She blinks, gurgles, and goes right to sleep.
"Yep," Jaina says. "Mara Solo. Welcome to the galaxy. Try not to screw it up worse than we already have."