Title: Wedding Present
Author: upsidedownbutterfly
Summary: It's Jaina's wedding day, and Tenel Ka and Tahiri have a present for her. Spoilers through Apocalypse.
Rating: G
Author's Note: There's nothing in this universe or any other that can convince me Tenel Ka and Tahiri weren't the bridesmaids at Jaina's wedding.
"We have something for you," Tahiri informed her as she finished affixing Jaina's veil to her upswept hair. Jaina met her eyes questioningly in the mirror, but Tahiri's expression was uncharacteristically enigmatic, and an instant later she'd stepped backwards and out of the mirror's line of sight. Jaina turned to find her now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tenel Ka, their identical dresses flowing together until it appeared that the two women had been enveloped by a single expanse of turquoise. In Tenel Ka's outstretched palm rested a black box, perfectly square, and she nodded at Jaina to take it.
Inside was a locket, small and silver and intricately carved with a graceful, flowing design that Jaina thought she recognized as distinctly Hapan in style. She ran her hands almost reverently across the outside surface, tracing the careful lines of the etching and admiring the extraordinary craftsmanship. It was only when her fingers brushed the tiny clasp to the one side that she hesitated, something silent and unknowable giving her pause. "Open it," Tenel Ka finally coaxed, and after a moment Jaina did so.
Her brothers gazed back at her from the palm of her hand. Holos, two of them, just a few centimeters high, their projectors embedded within the inside surface of the locket. Jacen stared up at her from the left, expression serious but with a glimmer in his eyes that was both mischievous and achingly familiar. Jaina could trace most, if not all, of their childhood misadventures to that look. On the right, Anakin grinned up at her broadly, looking painfully and impossibly young.
The image of Jacen flickered momentarily as she stared at it – once, twice – then Anakin's did as well, and it was then that Jaina realized she was crying. "Thank you," she tried to say, but the words caught in her throat, snared on the lump she found unexpectedly lodged there. Her vision blurred further, and she felt more than saw Tahiri extract the locket gently from her hand to fasten it about her neck so that it hung elegantly just above the neckline of her gown.
"We thought they should be here today," Tenel Ka said softly, and Tahiri murmured her concurrence. Jaina merely nodded and raised her right hand to once more brush her fingers across the cool metal of the locket where it now lay nestled against her breastbone, its weight solid and certain and somehow reassuring as if Tenel Ka and Tahiri were right and her brothers really were here with her today. Maybe they were. Jaina knew enough of Force spirits not to discount the possibility.
The ache in the part of her heart that belonged to her brothers would never go away, but Jaina felt it ease ever so slightly at the thought. "Thank you," she said again, stronger this time and steadier, despite the tears that still dampened her cheeks, and when she raised her gaze to meet Tenel Ka and Tahiri's, Jaina was surprised to find that she was smiling.