The Reason Why

by Trickster-jz

AU; JainaxOC, the Solo-Skywalkers. Once upon a time, a Jedi princess befriended a street rat and saved him from the Dark. This is not that story.

But You And I Know The Reason Why
by Trickster-jz

*

Disclaimer: George Lucas owns all established characters, star systems, concepts; I own Traest, and an ever-aging laptop. I'm not making any money off of this.
Timeframe: Deals with YJK AU, though the actual story goes over 9 years. If it's easier: Jaina, ages 9-18 in an AU.
Characters: Jaina Solo, Traest (OC), Leia Organa Solo, Anakin Solo, Jacen Solo, Kyp Durron
Genre: drama; general; romance, if not the kind you want
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 16,585
Summary: Once upon a time, a Jedi princess befriended a street rat and saved him from the Dark. This is not that story.
Author's Notes: This is the prequel to my fics Fast As I Can and If You Call, but you don't need to have read those to understand this one. Basically, the AU is that Jaina meets a street boy named Traest instead of Zekk, and things change from there. Also, my uploaded document had some issues--for example, eating all of the apostrophes--so, while I think it's fixed now, fair warning...and maybe let me know if you notice something seriously wrong with the formatting?

*

Jaina is Han's daughter in a thousand and one ways. There are stars in her blood, pulling her to the skies, and brandy in her eyes, drawing her to the hot and dark, the bite and play; the adrenaline curls slick through her gut and whispers freedom and adventure; she never goes anywhere without her multi-tool because her fingers itch and need something to hang onto; and she can hide neither the grease stains on her hands nor the heart just under her sleeve. Jaina is her daddy's girl, and she has never not known that.

Sometimes, though, she is Leia's daughter, too.

*

Jaina is, in this moment: alone, in a junkshop, in Coruscant's undercity, not supposed to be in the undercity, and very pleased with the combination of the above. Even Jacen doesn't know exactly where she is, because he's exploring at the zoo, also without a chaperone or permission. Nine years old, Jaina would much rather barter with the one-eyed humanoid who runs her most recently found junkshop than coo at holographic animals.

She's at the back of the store, just out of the owner's sight so that she can take apart an ancient hyperdrive. A piece falls and rolls to the wall, prompting Jaina to curse a few times and follow it before the owner can notice anything's amiss. She crouches down on the metal grating and finds the writing before her wayward screw: The old pirate will cheat you blind.

It is etched into the durasteel wall; Jaina grins and peeks back at the desk, where the eye-patched owner is yelling into a comm. His arm muscles are thin, and he walks soft and lazy; not a real space pirate, she thinks, but the kind from old tales, old enough to be fat and retired.

She tests the etchings with her finger, then digs in her bag. She finds a thick black marker and flips the top. Retired pirates work in junkshops because they're lazy sell-outs, she writes. Their only joy in life is to cheat people. Who are you?

Coruscant's best scavenger, ink writing tells her a week later. Are you the one trying to fix the hyperdrive? I brought it in—it's junk.

She smirks, and writes, I'm a much better mechanic than you are.

When she's leaving the junk shop later that day, a street boy her age tries to pick her pockets (just like her mother said undercity people would). Han Solo's daughter snatches her wallet right back by hand, and she and he share a grin.

Jaina knows a kindred spirit when she meets one. She forgets about the writing in favour of her new friend and doesn't think about that junk shop for well over a month. Years later, she will see the owner again and think pirate with a pension and laugh without remembering why.

*

Leia talked about Jaina's grandfather exactly once that Jaina can remember as a nine year old. Some of the other boys—not friends, or even "family friends," who would have known better—said things to Anakin about his name. He was only five. Jaina and Jacen pushed the bullies, one of them even up into the air, and then they brought their little brother back home.

Leia was home for once; Han, who had been the one to tell Jaina and Jacen that Anakin was named after Leia's "bio" father, was not there to run interference. When they got home, Jaina and Jacen started telling their mother everything the boys said and did, and Leia's mouth got tight, and that place in the Force that was Leia Solo turned very bright and furious.

"Anakin," she said to Jaina's little brother, who was curled up in their mother's lap and sniffling, "you were named after Anakin Skywalker, who was a great Jedi before he Turned, and who did the right thing for love when anyone else would have been lost."

"They said—he was—a monster," Anakin hiccupped.

Leia looked away, and that Force spot drew in like a black hole. "Darth Vader did many terrible things," Jaina's mother said after a long moment. "But he was not alone in such acts, which is the galaxy we live in. Anakin Skywalker was a good man once, and I have no doubt that you will keep every promise such a man made."

Jaina knows that Leia would never have saved Anakin Skywalker, and she doesn't understand her mother's reaction, not after Uncle Luke did save his father—not yet, anyway. Not for another decade.

*

Traest is as reckless as Jaina is, wild like Jaina isn't allowed to be, completely free. He isn't her best friend, maybe, like Jacen is, or even one of her closest friends, but they spend hours together in the grey undercity, discovering its secrets and its lost.

He never manages to successfully pick her pockets; Jaina is mostly just amused by his attempts. She teaches him a trick she saw her father use, and she and Traest run away laughing from oblivious tourists, gang members, even a few cops. Jaina has heard enough from her parents about corruption in the lower levels that she never thinks twice of it. Besides, they sneer at Traest, and they coo at Jaina if they figure out who she is; they deserve whatever they get, Jaina thinks when she's ten.

One time, when Jaina is eleven, she falls into a refuse heap while they are running from a less-oblivious gangster who has a blaster. She hardly has time to wrinkle her nose—if adventure has a downside, it's the smell—when she has to burrow in deep and hold still as blaster fire tries to find her.

She spends twenty minutes in the garbage—half with blaster fire just missing her, half spent counting silently until it is safe, just like she was taught as a five-year-old when one of Leia's proposed bills was not very popular. Twenty minutes of longing fiercely for her own lightsaber to fight back properly, and for the day when she will be a Jedi Knight who can arrest anyone like the shooter, be the hero, save the galaxy, and never be afraid and helpless and have to just stay still because that's the only way to be safe. She will be, someday—no, someday soon, she decides; she will learn to fight, and she won't ever hide, and she'll make sure no one else has to, either.

When she pulls herself out (after two Force checks, of course; she's reckless, not stupid), Traest is nowhere to be seen, and her throat clenches. He was ahead of her, and she assumed that if she couldn't see him then the gangster couldn't either. She breathes, and checks with the Force, but then she hears him laughing.

"That was so close, can you believe it?" Traest crows, then laughs again when he sees her. "Kriff, did you swim in that? Your parents are going to kill you."

She makes a face at the oily green goop in her hair, and shoves it out of her eyes. She feels a ripple of anger that he left her alone, that he doesn't even seem concerned by what happened. "Are you okay?"

He rolls his eyes. "The guy's chasing another kid who looks like me; he's long gone. You can get out of that junk pile now. Unless you're that hooked on the undercity."

Jaina frowns and wonders about the new target. Another kid, who might not know to count to a thousand and keep still.

Traest only waves a hand and tells her that the guy "had it coming," and how he can't wait to see Leia's reaction when Jaina goes home covered in garbage; it's an idea that makes Jaina try to grimace and laugh at the same time, but more about Threepio's reaction than Leia's (who knows about garbage chutes after all, if she will even get home any time soon after Jaina does).

So Traest is reckless, wild, and free, but he isn't her best friend, and Jaina only rolls her eyes when Leia looks doubtfully at Traest's sticky fingers and wonders if Jaina thinks her "adventures" are really wise. Jaina isn't looking for wisdom, after all.

*

Running with Traest reminds Jaina of flying, but with dark grey and green walls instead of troubleless blue skies and endless stars. Jaina, who loves flying like it's a person, clips her multi-tool and a pinched army knife to her belt, and keeps up with her street guide, no matter how many times he gives her a look that says slumming, or challengers her princess. She dodges gangs and thieves, explores places no one is supposed to be, keeps all her credits tucked close, learns the undercity hierarchy and how to pick all the locks Han said she has no reason to get past.

When Jaina is thirteen, Leia teaches her how to shoot a small blaster and where she can hide it in her undercity uniform of shorts and tank top. Jaina and Leia spend the senator's rare day off on target practice, and Jaina feels closer to her mother than she ever thought she could.

At the end of the day, Leia still looks like a lady (but one who can hit a moving target's heart, which makes Jaina think being a lady might not be completely awful all the time) and she drapes an arm around Jaina's shoulders. "I'm trusting you with this," she tells Jaina. They are almost the same height, but Jaina hasn't grown at all in a year; she might always be looking up at her mother. "Only use it as a last resort."

Jaina, despite Leia's concerns, knows what a last-resort situation looks like; her hand shies from the blaster every time she thinks through how she will draw it and take aim. It's long been habit for her to see exits, shelters, and prime vantage points.

"But, Jaina," Leia says as they get into the back of the hovercar, "is it really what you want?"

Jaina leaves for the Jedi Academy a few months later. They have ships and skies there, too, where she'll fly and learn how to fight.

*

Jaina has been back to Coruscant since going to the Academy, but it's different one time, when she's fourteen. The undercity is different, or maybe Jaina is, just a year after she chose something else. The world has turned from green to soot grey; she can sense things that she didn't before. She walks light on her feet, branches her senses, and watches the corners.

She and Traest never really planned their escapades. They ran into each other, or they didn't. Jaina has run through the undercity alone, or with Jacen instead of Traest, more times than she has with Traest. He hardly ever stays in one spot, has never shown her any kind of permanence in his own life so that she can find or contact him. He doesn't know when she's back on Coruscant. But usually, when she tries, eventually she finds him.

This time, she searches for two weeks, increasingly concerned, and she does not find him. Other street kids are missing too—the Lost Ones are completely gone, not that she would have gotten any answers from them.

The police don't know where he is (they say); the homeless reach at her pockets for "information"; the other kids either shrug or make up stories according to the day—he's in jail, he's off-planet, he's on a long-term theft in another part of the city. No one talks about a gang war or mass arrests, any reason for Traest to disappear into more trouble than he can handle.

Eventually, she goes back to the Academy. She pokes around the undercity a few more times after that, but she doesn't find him. Street kids disappear by the dozens; she tells herself that Traest has always been good at taking care of himself.

She's never certain, but without any clues, what else can she do? Traest always said he would leave one day.

*

To be specific, Traest told her—almost as a ritual goodbye—that some day, maybe the very next day, he would be gone, he'd leave to make more money than she had ever seen, and she would look but never find him. He'd disappear, just like that, and she'd never see him on Coruscant again.

Jaina explains it to Jacen, when she is worrying, and he says, "Well, that's exactly what he did, isn't it?" because Jacen always knows how to make her feel better. "But I think you will find him someday. We'll be Jedi, after all."

Most of all, though Jaina will never admit it to anyone but Jacen when he's being particularly stupid and needs to hear it, Jacen is almost always right. And one day Jaina will see Traest again, though it will be more because he found her than the other way around. (Jacen isn't perfect, after all; he's still her little brother.)

*

Jaina fights Nightsisters, the Diversity Alliance, Black Sun, bounty hunters, and Imperials thugs before she goes on her first real, mostly-solo mission. She thinks that experience (more than most Jedi Masters have) will mean something until it all goes very, very wrong, and her backup ends up in the med ward, and Uncle Luke is telling her that sometimes you do everything right and you still lose.

Leia wants to talk (some time between her already overlapping meetings and hearings, not to mention the sleep that the Chief of State hardly ever gets). Jacen, who hasn't had a bad mission yet, talks about meditation and speaking with someone; he sticks close, shadowing her like they haven't done in years. Han takes her to target practice before he has to fly off for trouble on Corellia. Anakin is at the Academy, and Aunt Mara is also off-planet; Jaina can hardly look at Uncle Luke without flushing with shame. Kyp isn't sure if he's allowed to be her friend and help her find alcohol, or if he's still sworn on pain of death to act like a (responsible) role model. Anyway, they aren't close on their own yet, not like they will be one day, and Kyp Durron has a realm of demons to deal with before he works on anyone else's.

The thing about being a Skywalker-Solo, for Jaina, has always been that you're never alone. At seventeen, Jaina is not alone, but it is different now—the before and after, another chapter and fence—and it feels like being lonely.

Lonely, that is, until a (un)familiar arm wraps around her shoulders; she looks up, startled, her elbow lifting; and the worlds narrow down to this moment, not quite flying, where Traest is grinning down at her. "Miss me, Princess?"

She lowers her elbow; a second later, she grins.

*

It will all happen very quickly, but the start isn't as quick as the parts after it.

*

She's reviewing the reports in the Solo family apartment when there's a knock at the door. She looks up and chews on the end of her stylus; everyone important has the access codes, and she doesn't really want a distraction now. She must have missed something during the mission, and she only just started today's review. She looks back at the reports.

Kaer GUTHER provided information implying that shipment would arrive at Siersa's NORTH PIER, 2300 hours the following day. Unbeknownst to our team and informant, Kaer GUTHER had been compromised and the information…

The knocking becomes pounding and shows no sign of stopping. It has even picked up a rhythm: ba-BAM-dada-ba-BAM. Jaina rubs her eyes, then drops the stylus. She leaves the reports, hidden under less important datasheets, on the kitchen table. "What is it?" she asks when her hand is on the door control panel. "If it's another bureaucratic apocalypse— Oh, hi."

Traest smirks at her and pushes his way into the apartment. "I knew you'd be in here. Your hostessing sucks, by the way; that droid of yours gone?"

"He's with my mom," Jaina says as they wander into the kitchen. Traest doesn't look twice at the mess of datasheets. "What's up?" She looks, as she has every time she sees him now, for a physical hint of what he's gone through in the past three years. She finds only the same grin, and feels it pull at her.

"Haven't seen you in years, have I? And now you always say you're working. I swear, Princess, if you've turned into some kind of nine-to-seventeen drone…"

Actually, she's on a kind of recovery leave; standard operating procedure when a team member ends up in that much bacta. "I'm going over some reports," she says, and sees him glance at them with distaste. "If you want to grab lunch, though—"

Traest insists he has a better idea, which involves an undercity bar and some nasty characters who wear dishcloths on their heads. Jaina, who's tasted only sawdust in the past few days, agrees after just half an hour of harassment. Three punches and two drinks later, she's certainly not thinking about compromised informants and traps anymore.

*

From the night that Traest came back, Jaina knows he's different now. Traest was always reckless; now, he's far more wild, as much as Jaina has slowed herself to think things through and save people when her instincts aren't enough (not that she wants to think about that, if she can help it, that's what a report is for). She's older, too, so she can take note of Traest's new way of movement (a fighter, not just a survivor, definitely not strength from a gym), and the haste to excitement of any kind.

Jaina's seventeen, a Jedi mostly out of training. She isn't a fool. She just—it's just nice. Being around an old friend, running with someone who doesn't worry (or even know to worry) about everything gone wrong.

*

A week after he returns, she becomes impatient. "Where were you?" she asks. She wants to ask what happened to him, but she remembers enough of a post-trauma approach seminar to be passive, to give him room unless he's not healing at all. And, she reminds herself, she can't push. Not right away, anyway.

Traest's gaze cuts, reflexively, to his drink. She can't feel anything from him in the Force. He looks back at her when he realizes what he's done, and he scratches at his jaw. He looks uncomfortable, just a bit, and something else that she can't read. "I always told you I'd leave," he says only seconds after she asked.

Jaina grew up surrounded by Jedi and people used to Jedi; without thinking, she reaches just a little, as if spreading fingers over his bare skin, just to feel: is he hurt, is he ashamed, can she help him? She isn't prying, no, it's just a Jedi's way of paying attention—what is he saying that she can't hear?

Except Traest moves, starts to launch himself out of his chair, then stops and squeezes her wrist tight in his fingers. "Don't," he snarls, looking mean—a reflex, she thinks, like a wounded animal. No need for simile, Jacen would probably tell her, when humans and animals are not so different. "Don't you ever do that again, godsdamnit, you've no right."

It's so unexpected that she has to fight the urge to shrink back and away. She doesn't, even surprise can't undo how much mean Jaina has faced down with a grin, but she files it away. She nods; his grip relaxes; her wrist bones slide back to normal. Now, she doesn't need the Force to read his discomfort. Reflex, she decides. There's a wound, something, and a warning bruise that's sensitive to Force use.

Jaina drinks her caf, and Traest finishes his so that he can order another (spiked) cup.

"I got work," he tells her before they part for the day. "Took the job. That's all. Nothing worth talking about."

Maybe, she thinks; he could have only picked up some ability to feel a Force brush against his mind, and doesn't like the sensation, even thinks it's an invasion (though it wasn't she'd done nothing close to such a breach). But maybe not.

She doesn't ask him again.

*

And then it starts to go very, very quickly.

*

Jaina hasn't lived on Coruscant for more than a few weeks at a time in years. She became a teenager on a jungle planet; Traest informs her that she'll just have to take the crash course.

She's never really been one for clubs—hard to be, when your mother is Chief of State, the paparazzi follow you if you eat breakfast on the go, and your closest friends are Jedi or at the very least family friends with your parents on speed dial. She hardly even gets the point of clubs. Her experiences of dancing, even if she knows it isn't the same, have been enough to make her shoulders tighten as soon as she knows what's coming.

Traest laughs at her and pushes her into the throng while she's still thinking that she has two hours before she should go home and work on reports before getting some sleep and—

As it turns out, Jaina and Traest don't leave for hours, and the reports are forgotten—not that Jaina cares, as hungover as she is at the next morning's briefing.

Clubbing, she decides, with the alcohol, a friend at her back, and the overriding beat so she can't hear her thoughts…clubbing has its upsides.

*

Jaina can't see the night sky in the undercity. She doesn't always think of it, though she feels sometimes as if the stars are tugging her upwards. Barely a month after Traest comes back, while she's lightly buzzed instead of drunk, she murmurs something of this to him and he laughs at her. "You're so melodramatic when you're drunk," he says, then pushes her against the back entrance of a club and kisses her hard. It's strange at first, while she's trying to figure out where to put her hands and if she wants to put them somewhere on a friend, if this is something she wants with Traest. And then it's anything but weird.

She doesn't think about the night sky too much after that, just tongue and fingers and the hum of alcohol to smother anything else.

*

Jaina has gotten used to the paparazzi on Coruscant. They watch her family's windows, follow her, interrogate her friends, and pick the worst pictures they can as proof that she is dying, pregnant, starving, binge eating, and/or doing drugs. Alcohol is a given in the articles, but she's started keeping a flask on her while off-duty, so she figures that's fair enough. She used to either ignore the cameras or play along until she could give them the slip (they are trailing a Jedi), but it's less ridiculous when she notices how Traest acts around them. He turns cold, distant but goading, wondering what her mother would think, who do these people even think they are, don't they have lives, and even if you gave them something, no one would believe it.

(As it happens, people do start to believe that Jaina Solo got kicked out of a club for drunkenly starting a fight, but there's always another, cooler club, and that kriffer had it coming.)

Traest is always there, a whisper in her ear as he trades her empty glass for a full one, or a yell across the room, but he's never there, he hardly ever touches her when the paparazzi are nearby, and he stays away so that no one has her back. "What, you need me to fight your battles for you?" he sneers, once, when she complains as she starts a new drink.

"They don't matter," she tells him, "and I haven't even seen one in here yet."

"People talk," he says, dark and clipped. He trades her half-full glass for a new one. "Here, this one'll be better."

She eyes it, then him, three (and a half) glasses in but still not convinced by liquid so nefariously pink.

He ducks in quick, kisses her jaw; she can feel his breath on her neck, and thinks that love is very sticky. "Trust me."

The drink is sour with a sweet aftertaste, but the night gets very cloudy after that.

She wakes up the next morning on Traest's couch and doesn't remember much of her night at all. No matter, she thinks; it's just one night.

She thinks that a lot over the next few months.

*

Jacen doesn't have much to say about it. Jaina doesn't think he likes Traest much, but her twin did walk in on a few heated moments, and he hardly ever drinks. Jacen spends a lot of time with Tenel Ka when the princess has any half-free moment; he isn't always around.

("Besides," Traest remarks one day. "He hasn't had one of those bad missions yet, has he? He'll be different once someone gets killed."

Jaina flinches inside, then glares at him, wondering why she likes his kisses. "No one died."

"No." He musses her hair. Then, quieter, says, "Not yet.")

Anakin says, "I don't like him." Blunt, firm, right after he's (re-)met Traest.

(Traest only laughs as his fingers trace her spine. "He's, what, thirteen?")

Uncle Luke and Aunt Mara treat her like she's still nine: they talk about the "path she's going down," and the effect of "her company" on her behaviour.

(Traest swings an arm around her shoulders when they've lost the paparazzi for five minutes. They've only just stopped running and he chuffs against her hair. She grins up at him and sees herself in his eyes. His face stills, and he swallows, but then he whoops, pulls at her hand, and they're running again through the streets. She thinks: This is where I want to be, just like this.)

Han tells her that no one is good enough for his girl. But, he adds while dodging Leia's look, he knows a thing or two about taking a risk.

("Do you ever wonder…." Traest says.

She rolls onto her side, snuggles into his body. On the dresser, the incense sticks are almost burned all the way down. "Hm, what?"

He won't meet her eyes. "If your father hadn't married your mother, or if they lived here, the way your dad grew up."

She feels his heartbeat under her chest, and it's not just the incense and the contents of the pipe they shared that make her say, "I would have loved you anyway," but then she freezes because they don't talk about that while sober.

Traest only sighs, though, and runs his fingers through her hair. "Maybe." His fingers move to the side of her face, along dips and secrets that even she doesn't know. He won't say it, but she doesn't feel so alone.)

Two months after Traest returned, Leia finally sits Jaina down in the living room of the family apartment. Jaina's mother is dressed for a meeting with New Republic Families, helping salvage families while Jaina moves more of her things (a workout tunic and mat, this time) into Traest's flat. "Sweetheart," says the Chief of State. She looks as if she's losing something unexpectedly. "This isn't like you," she continues, when really it's just not like Leia, which Jaina thinks is the real problem. "The news stories, the clubs, the alcohol on your breath. It's irresponsible and unbecoming of a young woman. Your father and I raised you to know better than this. I just—" It continues, but Jaina doesn't say a word because at this point, why bother? Leia, who was late for two meetings the second she sat Jaina down, has to leave five minutes into their "talk." Leia looks frustrated and a little old as she says, "We'll talk more later, Jaina. Don't think for a second we're finished here," and then hurries out.

(Traest raises a sleepy eyebrow, watching as Jaina pushes her mat and exercise pulleys against a wall. "She was actually home? Did she need a holo to recognize you?"

Jaina wonders if she should just move in and be done with it.)

*

Jaina's mission, the first after the one that went wrong, comes on the tail of nearly three months' leave. She, Jacen and Raynar are assigned to track an organized crime syndicate on the other side of Coruscant. Jacen comes to Traest's apartment to tell her about it. Jaina's only a little hungover, but her twin looks at her like he doesn't get her. He mostly ignores Traest, who is also sitting at the kitchen table. "We leave tomorrow," Jacen says while Jaina is swallowing a pain reliever. "Deep cover, at least a couple weeks before we get rotated out." He flicks his eyes between Jaina and Traest, looking more sympathetic. "Hardly any outside contact, so you'll want to…"

Tie her boyfriend's wrists to the bedposts? Jaina thinks with a fond smirk. "Departure time?" she asks instead.

Traest only flips open his comm and starts fiddling with it, probably playing a game on the console. Jaina has half a day to give him something to remember, so she soon sends her brother on his way.

*

Jaina and her team leave early the next morning. She's sober, though not entirely awake, her recent lie-ins overriding her Jedi training's early mornings). The only sign of anything being different from the last mission is a hungry red mark on her neck (and others, smaller, where no one can see, but Jaina can feel like a brand) and the instinctive double-check of her hidden lightsaber.

She eyes the sky a last time, then grabs one of the team's speedbikes to go down the rabbit hole.

*

Jaina isn't drunk when she holds their dying informant (Charco, a street kid, fourteen-going-on-thirty, pickpocket and ex-gang member), because she would never be that stupid, even if she did feel shaky once or twice at the start of the mission. She's stone sober, but—covered in blood and watching Jacen's face—she wants a stiff drink (or four) and Traest more than she's ever wanted anything.

It's three days—five gunfights, countless hours of being pursued through unfamiliar undercity, and oozing grief from her twin as he understands (like she did, the last mission) that Solo luck just isn't going to cut it anymore—before Jaina will get either of what she wants.

*

They return to the Jedi headquarters two weeks after they left. Jaina only realizes that she's shaking when she sits down and her chair rattles against the wall.

Raynar is the first to go in. Jacen breathes next to her as they wait for their own briefings; he won't look at her, but she knows his eyes are red. "How did they find out?" he says, startling her. "We were so careful, I didn't pick up on anything—I don't think we missed anything, did we, Jaya? It was just like—"

Jaina grabs his hand and just feels tired. "Uncle Luke will tell you it's not our fault," she tells her twin. "That…things went wrong." Force, she wants a drink. She wants to stop thinking, to wash the kid's blood out from under her fingernails or even just out off her knuckles and from her hair, to sleep a week with Traest close by under a mountain of blankets. "We can look at the reports later, figure out what went wrong."

Jacen's so quiet, she turns to see if he's fallen asleep after seventy-two hours of being hunted. He's staring back at her, frowning. "That's what you did last time," he says, because Jacen always figures her out whether she wants him to or not. "Did you find anything?"

A vacuum, she thought. Nothing was wrong, and then a cover was blown with no leak, and everything was wrong. "Not yet," she says. Some day she'll be able to think about it without wanting to rush headlong into something stupid, and then she'll be able to deal with the traitor and look Sariss, her backup, in the eye again.

Jacen squeezes her hand, and she leans her head onto his shoulder. Her chest does something she can't name, so she turns her nose into his shoulder and feels as much of home as she can take.

She wakes, hours later, on a couch in Uncle Luke's office. She is warm but still exhausted, bleary-eyed with the wire of adrenaline that stays too long after an extended chase. Traest is on the other side of the room, looking at something. Traest, and a drink, and sleep, she thinks, and must make a noise because he turns around very quickly.

He speaks before she can move. "Jacen called me, said things went…" He must see her expression flicker. "Said to come pick you up."

She rubs her face and stands. "It all went to hell, is where it went."

"What happened?"

She shakes her head, tries to balance the bone weariness with the shots of energy that pick at the inside of her skin. "Don't want to talk about it. 'Least, not until I can do something about it. Just…take me home."

"Jaina—" He sounds frustrated, even to Jaina's exhausted ears.

She slips under his arm, tries not be obvious about how she is swaying. "Please. I just want to sleep, then drink, then sleep some more."

He takes her back to his (their) place, but she's asleep long before they get there.

*

Four days later, she moves in properly. Jacen watches her pack, Han grumbles, and Anakin blinks what the kriff happened while I was at school, anyway?

Leia, who is immersed in negotiations with some Outer Rim planets over their education system, doesn't even find out until she comes home three days later.

*

She tosses in bed, shrugs off sheets which are too much in the undercity. The world is dark around her except for the faint light coming from a far corner (door, her mind nudges). She reaches to the left side of the bed, finds an indent but no warmth. She frowns, only a fourth awake, then curls around his side of the mattress when she hears him speaking. In another room, she thinks as she snuffles into his pillow, maybe the kitchen.

He sounds upset, though, almost angry, so she wriggles to the end of the bed, blearily boosts her hearing with her oh-so-special Jedi training that sometimes seems like more trouble than it's worth.

"I've got it under control," he is saying. "There's no reason for you to— What godsdamn use am I if you don't listen to me? I can only push so far, or— You want to hang yourself, fine, but…"

Stay awake, she orders herself, and think straight, because her thoughts are trying to slip through her grasp like water in the desert. Traest is angry. He is talking to someone.

But then he snaps, "She's too valuable, you— That was never part of the plan. Hey, we need— Kriff you, I know my priorities, I don't need you to remind me. I'm just saying, don't burn your bridge too quickly. She's no threat." Traest's voice drops, lulls her from half-sleep and closer to dreams.

Some time later, the bed dips; she shifts into the weight. There is a soft touch to her cheek and then an arm around her waist, a kiss to her forehead. A murmur, "You asleep, babe?" She moves closer, and sleeps.

In the morning, she doesn't remember anything that seems more than a dream.

*

One day, she will tell herself that she heard the first part and was too naïve to understand it, and that she dreamed the second part.

*

The next several weeks, there are fewer full nights spent in clubs, though the tabloids are still working overtime on so much as a glimpse. Jaina is tired of the way Traest keeps distant when others are around. Greedy for heady touches, laughter and running through dark streets, Jaina leaves their apartment to see her family, to keep running into the wall that is her and Jacen's undercity mission, and to see the few friends who are both insistent and on-planet long enough to meet. Otherwise, she fills her world with her lover, his grin, and the tug on her hand as they race into the next adventure.

"Kriff, I missed this place," he says when they duck around a corner to avoid a security patrol.

"You got slow while you were gone," she tells him, her breathing the same as always compared to his quick pants. "Or I just got a lot better."

"I'll take brains over brawn any day," he teases her, then jumps out of their hiding place too early.

A guard pulls his blaster practically in Traest's face, and Jaina laughs as she kicks the weapon loose and the guard to the ground. "Some brains. Did you even look first?"

He grabs her hand and they run. "Why bother, when I have you?"

*

"You can't tell anyone," Jacen says. "Not even Traest."

Jaina's mouth tightens. She's eighteen. "I thought you liked him."

"Not even Traest," Jacen repeats, implacable. His expression is stern, darker than she's ever seen it, though there have been hints since Charco's death. "We have a leak."

Jaina sits down quickly at Jacen's kitchen table meant for one Jedi and a mess of reports. She reaches out in the Force, feels around to reassure herself that they are alone.

"I checked, too," Jacen says, though his voice is lower. "I didn't find any bugs." His apartment is a different kind of mess than comes from moving in with plants, not to mention Jacen himself. She tracks his search and stands to take care of the places he missed, like anything mechanical.

They're silent for thirty minutes, then Jaina says, "Nothing. Unless you got any strange gifts in the past few weeks that we should reconsider."

Jacen shakes his head: "Dad and Chewie helped me move. And," he blushes, "Tenel Ka stopped by once. Or twice."

Jaina decides to find out if her brother has any embarrassing lovebites that look like royal scandals, but then she refocuses. She's been playing nicer lately with being a Jedi, but it hasn't been in her twin brother's home. "It might not be your flat, or even mine," she says, her lips a grim line. She'd like a drink, but this is far more important. "It could be an office, or our comms, or—" She flicks her eyes to Jacen's, and they think it at the same time: Or it could be a spy.

This, Jaina thinks, is why she needs Traest like her mother doesn't understand. Jaina can trust Traest, and forget the rest of the galaxy for a while with his help.

"We're going to need help," Jacen says, pulling out a sheet of flimsi. "Who can we trust, absolutely, who can help us root out a spy?"

*

Jacen and Jaina's list looks like:

Uncle Luke (too busy)

Dad (off-planet until next month)

Chewie (ditto)

Mom (way too busy)

Aunt Mara (except for, when is she even getting back?)

Kyp

Raynar (do you really think he'll manage to find a spy?)

Tenel Ka (but she's really busy right now with Gallinore's gender mess) (right, and how do you know all about that, prince consort?)

Lusa

Anakin (…who's still in training, Jacen) (so we're listening to bureaucrats now about what makes a Jedi, Jaina?)

Jaina doesn't add Traest's name because Jacen is right: it's dangerous, and Traest doesn't have the training or experience that they do. She can keep this to herself (even though the point was always supposed to be no secrets), keep him safe, and tell him when she and Jacen have fixed it.

*

Basically, Jaina and Jacen can rely on Kyp, Anakin (who insists that Tahiri can help; Jaina is beginning to think something very sappy runs in the family), Lusa (who hedges that, perhaps, this would not be Raynar's strongest point), and the rest of their family as a last resort.

Kyp looks at the two of them more seriously than Jaina is used to—it's his Jedi Master Face—and tells them that many missions go wrong, so why do they think there's a leak?

Jaina tore most of her belongings apart looking for bugs, and had Traest looking for the same in his things (he's very private about his possessions, and Jaina couldn't be bothered with an argument), though she gave him a non-spy-related reason (something to do with the tabloids, probably). She didn't find anything. She disassembled all of her family's comms, and they changed their aliases and mixed up their SOP's, and then Jacen ducked blaster fire while checking in on a witness no one else knew they were safeguarding. But even more, Jaina can feel it, sense if not see the trap opening wide to swallow them whole.

"There's something very wrong," she says finally.

"And I don't think—" Jacen glances at her; they haven't said it out loud yet.

"We don't think it's just the one investigation, either," Jaina finishes, because their family never gained anything by underestimating trouble.

Kyp looks at the two of them and then his face turns dark, more like the constant hardest-path-to-redemption and overprotective presence that she grew up with. "Then we'd better get to work."

*

Her mind is still on work when she gets home that night, which is a first in four months. Traest picks up on it immediately, though she does a kriff job of hiding it with her moody silence.

Finally, he says, "Bad day to be part of a family with saviour complexes?"

She stabs at her take-out food. "I can't talk about work."

He blinks at her, rocks back in his chair; in the five months that he's been back, she's told him everything, even the ugly things she couldn't voice to her family. He stares at her as if expecting her to change her mind. She remembers the scorch marks on Jacen's tunic, and remains quiet.

"I'll get something stiffer to drink, then," he says, standing.

"If you'd like, but I can't." She scowls at her glass of blue milk. "Things are—bad at work right now. I have to keep a clear head."

He sits back down and doesn't say anything more for the rest of the evening.

*

There are a hundred people involved in just the Coruscant mission, Jaina is sure; not even main-liners, but pages, informants, people who could overhear, administrative staff with access, cleaning staff who go anywhere, even droids who could have been reprogrammed. A hundred—more—beings they have to review and discuss, whose records they have to scan and test. Catching spies is extremely tedious, and the lack of visible progress (ten background checks down, an untold many to go, and then people they trust) makes Jaina feel trapped and claustrophobic.

"Why don't you tell me," Traest cajoles a week after Kyp joins the investigation. "I can help you sort through it."

"We're sorting," she tries not to snap. Her eyes flick to their well-stocked liquor cabinet, then she sets determinedly to making a mug of hot chocolate.

"Then it'll help you feel better at least." He stops her from burning the milk (he knows the warning signs and always stops her; she wonders if she'll ever have to remember on her own), then takes over the shouldn't-be-this-complicated process. "Hopeless," he tsks. "You can trust me," he says. It's obviously about her work, though she's promised him it isn't at all about trust; but there's something in the way he says it that makes her look up sharply. He's still, won't quite meet her eyes before he meets them for too long, in a way that she always connects to him thinking about the missing years (but he wasn't missing; he left). They've only once spoken about the years he was gone, though she's been tallying every hint and bruise. "You can trust me."

He suddenly diverts the conversation. "You'd think a Jedi could handle making her favourite hot chocolate mix," he says, a touch too loud.

She stops his hands. It's gone on too long, she thinks, if he can't completely trust someone who loves him enough to feel it yank her organs inside out and put them in the wrong order. "Whatever happened, those three years, you can tell me. No matter how bad it was, or…" She thinks about survivor's guilt, and some of the choices she and her family have had to make over the years. "Or even if you did something that you regret, that maybe you don't think you can tell me about. You can trust me, we can fix it."

"No, I can't, and we won't," he snaps, wounded again though she can't see the open sore.

"I love you," she tells him, seals it with a kiss to his chin. He's stiff, but relaxes a little when she holds him close. "I promise, whatever it is, we can get through it."

It's a long moment, and then he hugs her back, runs a hand up and down her back. "You silly girl," he says, voice rough. "You'd lose out on regular hot chocolate without me around, anyway."

"And I wouldn't leave you alone," she tells his neck.

His embrace tightens. "Silly, silly girl." He murmurs something into her hair—three syllables, one of them love. "Going to save me, are you?"

"Family tradition," she agrees, when her mouth has loosened enough from its grin.

*

One of her mother's bills, just introduced after dozens of drafts to crack down on organized crime in the NR's fringe planets, is torn down and undermined in two minutes of discussion. At least four senators who have always opposed each other are in unnatural agreement, even insistence. It isn't the first or last bill to fail so resoundingly, but even Jaina notices the blank disbelief that still lurks in Leia's eyes for days afterward.

Three days after the fiasco, Leia's hovercar's brakes are tampered with. She is in a head-on collision and is—needless to say—very late for a forum on the Jedi's role in the New Republic.

Talk is spreading, from whispers to tabloids to respected news commentators, about the Jedi and sometimes even about the Solos and Skywalkers "in a democracy."

Jaina is having a woefully small glass of brandy—hardly even enough to relax her stomach—and sprawled on their couch. It has been a long day, with hardly any visible progress on the spy, and a Jedi meeting about not giving the public anything to run with—which only made her think about her liquor cabinet and how a Solo is shacked up with a blue-haired ex-street kid, so kriff them, anyway.

She must have said some of the last part out loud, because Traest looks amused. "People getting on your nerves?"

"It's just the whole—" She waves her hand and swallows more of her brandy. "This is kind of sweet, did you mix it with something?"

"A little fruit juice," he admits. "So it's less potent."

"Mm, I never got adding things to brandy," she says, peering down at her glass.

"'It's just the whole,' what?" he persists.

She shrugs and drinks the rest. A light, drifty feeling is spreading through her; she's hardly been drinking at all lately, and apparently she's turned into a lightweight in the meantime. It's disgraceful, though a little sleepy.

"Jaina?"

"The whole Solo thing," she says. "Like, being followed around by losers who don't have their own lives, so they have to snap my holo and make it sound like I'm the first person ever to get drunk. But of course, I'm a Solo; I can be perfect and hiding something, or I can have a drink and be the Devil."

"Did someone say something?"

"Work. Told us all to be good little children and role models or some kriff. Like I never got enough of that from my mom."

"What, she has time to lecture you?"

She groans and walks unsteadily to him. "Don't wanna talk about Leia," she says. "Room's spinning. Did you…" She blinks, feeling very sleepy. "Was there something in the brandy?"

He kisses her temple. "You've been so tense lately. Why don't you tell me about it?"

She talks about everything but the investigation (mostly), and Traest was right, it does help to tell him. He stays the whole time, keeps still for once, and they get through it, being a Solo and a Jedi, and all those missions gone wrong. Not much else is clear for that night: just the warmth of his gaze, some kind of silver screen (later, she'll realize it was a holo-cam), and the vague guilt that she still didn't tell him about the traitor.

*

"You don't want to go to a club, or go out at all for that matter, or drink, or anything except work these days," Traest vents, mostly out of the blue a week after he talked her into that glass of brandy.

"It's important," she says, staring down at her datapad without seeing a word. She's been staring for hours, was even before Traest got home; it's all beginning to smear into blabber. "What are you— Traest, give that back."

He raises an eyebrow at her tone, but holds the datapad high over his head. "You're going to listen to me first."

She stands, raises one of her own eyebrows. "Sorry I'm busy, but this is important. You can entertain yourself for a while, can't you?"

"I can— Kriff you, Princess. What am I, a kid? You hardly tell me anything any more, we never talk about anything that you think is so kriffing important."

She puts her hands on her hips and feels a grudging sympathy for her mother even with their current tenuous-at-best relationship. "I can't tell people everything about my work, even if they live with me. Even you. Most things, fine, but some parts are dangerous. The fewer people who know, the better."

His expression becomes cold, something rare from her lover. "So you don't trust me."

"That isn't true. It's just—"

"It is, though. We live together, sleep in the same bed, but you don't trust me, and you've been getting sick of me."

She stares at him, bewildered by this outburst: haven't they been happy? "Traest," she says, her voice shaking a little, "that isn't at all true. I'm trying to protect you—Jacen and my mom have been shot at three times between the two of them, because of something we're investigating. It has nothing to do with not trusting you. I love you."

Traest snorts, looking mean. "Of all the people you could have turned into, I never thought it'd be your mother."

Twenty minutes after their worst argument yet, he storms out of the apartment and leaves her to stare after him; the datapad connects with the wall behind her.

*

Traest stays gone for the rest of the evening, throughout the night, and still isn't back when Jaina leaves for work the next morning. She is almost in a hovercar accident and can't blame a double agent for it (though the hangover probably doesn't help).

*

When she sits down at the table, Jacen takes one look and then drags her out of the café. Little brothers, especially if he's your twin, are usually right in the brattiest way possible; they don't even make it to Jacen's hovercar before her loose hair sticks to tear tracks.

Jacen listens for the two seconds that she lets him, and then he only has no-nonsense to react to; Jaina wants this investigation over al-kriffing-ready.

*

Leia, of all people, calls and leaves a message of comfort. Jaina snorts when she recognizes her mother's Official Conciliatory Tone, and then deletes the message two sentences in. Jacen probably tattled—he's always been the one closest to their mother—and the Chief of State scripted something while she had a few moments. Leia's never been one for just sitting still.

Jaina looks around at her (their) apartment, the cramped kitchen/dining room/front room, the his-and-hers mess of two careless people, and she thinks of the plans Leia probably had for her. They must have all started with the right boy, certainly not a street rat. Maybe not even someone who can make her want to throw things and yell, even if his presence can rid her of care about what everyone else will think.

Traest is just hers, not a part of the media circus and expectations and the shame of you're better than this that has come with every recent failure.

And she does trust him, so it shouldn't be hard to convince him of that when he comes home. He has to come back (if only for all his things; Jaina checked, he didn't take anything or sneak back for so much as a set of spare clothes), and she can make him believe her. If he knows even a little, he'll understand, and then it will be back to normal. He was right, she's been wrapped up in work again, proving herself, and being downright boring as a result.

Jaina won't be her mother. She is going to keep the balance, keep it all. She'll do whatever it takes; she's Han Solo's daughter, after all. She can beat the odds.

*

She wakes up when Traest takes the empty bottle out of her hand. She grimaces into their table, sits up slowly, and pushes away some of the hair that came out of her ponytail. The light is on, but dim; she can only just make him out as he puts the bottle with the other empties.

He sits across from her, slouches away with his eyes on her. His clothes are clean, and he looks only mussed, as if he's taken breaks between the bouts of partying. Still, there's something turbulent in him, and Jaina's drunk enough that she reaches out—just a little—and senses conflict she can't understand. He came back, though; they can still fix this. She reaches out, and he takes her hand half way.

"Started the party without me, did you?" he teases her and she grins back.

*

She turns her comm off for the next three days, not that she'd be able to hear its ring over the clubs' music, or answer it while she and Traest are reconciling.

It's easy to say "I love you" as they kiss in alleys, stumble into their apartment, and even in the minutes that she won't remember. If she ever felt hesitance at the start, as if he was still just a friend, she is more convinced than ever that it was just her mother's voice stirring up doubts. It is effortless to run with Traest and ignore everything else, to just want and take until the mess is something to revel in.

This is worth Jacen's disappointed tone when, hungover, she finally returns his comms and hmms as he talks about the investigations. Her brothers are so painfully good all the time, and Jaina's just sick enough of it and them to blow off a lunch meeting and let some calls go to voice mail. They don't understand yet; she doesn't care if it takes them even more time. She has everything she wants.

*

"It's getting worse," Kyp Durron snaps into her comm. It's a message, and somehow more shaming as a recording than if she had taken the call. "Your leak was just the starsdamned warning sign. If you can pull yourself away from your boyfriend, or even just out of those clubs for a while, we need to work overtime before one of the assassination attempts actually take."

Traest looks around the corner; he was in the 'fresher. "Did he say 'assassination attempts'? The kriff is going on, Jaina?"

She deletes the recording, tries not to look guilty. "I told you work was crazy."

She'll call back just as soon as Traest stops looking suspicious. Kyp is perpetually pissed about one thing or another; a few hours won't change anything.

*

Anakin is back on planet for the first time since he graduated, and he gives her a flat stare. "Have you seen the tabloids?" he asks; it's really an accusation. Anakin is impossibly hard on himself, and he applies the same impossible standards on everyone else.

Jaina rolls her eyes at him. "You shouldn't read that garbage. They could put Mom in the middle of a scandal."

"But could they get holos of her throwing up outside of clubs on three different nights?"

"Don't be such a self-righteous little brat, Anakin," she says. "You've been gone months, you're going to judge me on the first tabloid story you see?"

Anakin's jaw tightens; he always looks too old, like he probably thinks he is, but now he seems somehow very young, too. "This isn't like you, Jaina."

"You sound like Mom."

Anakin's face whitens in anger. "I've been focusing on research with Uncle Luke."

"Research?" She's surprised. Jacen may be the type to think himself into an early grave, but Jaina and Anakin are more likely to focus on action. Of course, she considers, Anakin has always been a brooder, not to mention slightly convinced that he's going to fix all the galaxy's problems with his destiny.

He shrugs, blushing just a little, the baby brother. "You do research, too. Just not lately." Before she can respond to the renewed edge in his voice, Anakin keeps talking. "I'm helping Jacen and Kyp with the investigation about the spies, so you don't need to worry about it."

"'Don't need to worry'?" she demands, sobering up so suddenly that she has whiplash. "People died because of them, whoever it is, and you know it's a person, not just surveillance, so somebody is betraying somebody. You've got to be kidding me, telling me not to worry."

"So you do care about that."

Jaina can't even move, she's so godsdamned furious.

"Well, when you aren't drunk or hanging off your boyfriend."

It's the closest Jaina has ever come to hitting her little brother outside of training, and she has to breathe through it, has to force her hand to lower again. It takes her another two minutes to speak. "Don't say something that stupid to me again, Anakin. You haven't—" She swallows, thinks of everything she's tried to forget. "Wait until someone you know dies in your arms, maybe then you'll get it."

She pivots and strides out of their parent's apartment; Anakin's gaze follows her out. The worst thing about Anakin is that he always sees too much and acts on it twice as fast as Jacen ever could.

*

Jaina's toe goes up-and-down-and-up under the dinner table as she and Traest eat takeaway. Her hangover presses at her temples, the food tastes bitter, and their flat is too warm, like Anakin's watching stare has followed her back into Traest's arms. Traest looks restless, too, keeps running a hand through his hair and then dropping it to check his jean pocket.

"I have some work to do tonight," she says, breaking the fidgety silence. "It's getting worse."

"What is?"

She rubs the palm of her right hand, along the lightsaber calluses. "It'll be over soon. Anakin joined the team, so we'll be getting more people on it."

"The kid can be trusted with this—whatever—and I can't?" He doesn't sound angry anymore, just bitter, which is worse.

"I'm not sure if any of us were ever just kids, but Anakin never was. Not about being a Jedi, at least." She looks away. "Anyway, I think he's working with Uncle Luke—or for him, since he's far too busy to deal with this sort of thing himself."

Traest becomes more alert. "He's being trained by Luke Skywalker?"

"He's apprenticed. Anakin is very special, after all." Her voice is heavy with resentment; Anakin's self-righteousness won't be made better with Luke's mentorship, and the idea only loops her thoughts back to her brother's accusations. "They're probably setting him up as Uncle Luke's protégé, heir, whatever, and it's his internal investigations training unit. You should have heard him earlier—"

"So he's taking over for you?" Traest asks casually, but he's very focused.

Jaina scowls at her food, most of which still tastes bitter except that parts of it are too sweet at the back of her mouth. "It's my responsibility—"

Traest rolls his eyes and Jaina's mood swings to cold anger even with her lover.

"My family and missions are in trouble, so I have help, not a shift off." She stands, feeling volatile and cutting like he's made her free to be, but for a rare time with him; she wants to be away from them all, for things to go kriffing right again, to not feel so frayed at the edges. "I'll be at the archives. Don't wait up."

*

The archives have a policy about alcohol, but being a Skywalker-Solo has its advantages, and the librarians pretend her flask might actually hold water. Besides, she's reviewing enough reports, supply lists and surveillance footage that no one could think she's ignoring anything. Not until early morning, anyway, but the archive staff hardly ever enforces any official policy they might have about sleeping at the desks, except to deactivate the nearest study light.

*

She dreams, an exhausted jumble of frustration and guilt, and then it tapers into something deeper once her mind has stopped scratching at her skull. A hand is on her shoulder, then rests on her forehead and makes her think of the Jing'quis flu and hourly cold rinses; she frowns and turns into the touch; it gentles into a stroke, then leaves her.

*

On her second day in the archives, Jacen pulls a chair up to her desk. His hand brushes her back before he sits down. "So, where are you?" he asks, and then they fall back into their rhythm.

Anakin comes a few hours later. He and Jaina eye each other, but Jacen is experienced at navigating his siblings through their fights. Anakin, to his credit, has not let his master go to his head (much), and he mostly (sometimes) lets Jaina and Jacen take the lead as the ones who've led the investigation from the start (even if, he mutters once, they are his siblings). He even reviews their analysis trail for two hours (okay, one hour and forty minutes) before throwing it in their faces.

"You're looking at the wrong people," says the sixteen-year-old who thinks he could stop wars if everybody would just get out of his way.

Jaina's twin speaks before she can thump their little brother, but even peaceful Jacen sounds impatient as he says, "Easy for you to say now that we've gathered the base information."

Anakin's cheeks are ruddy. "It's too serious now. You know it isn't just surveillance, or even only bribed staff. You're looking for a traitor." He pauses and stares across the table at both of them. He's academically detached; Jaina is tired, and wants to smother him with a pillow before he figures out the depth of what he's saying. "It's someone you trust." When his gaze meets Jaina's, it sticks. "You need a list of people close enough to you that they could do something like this."

*

Anakin makes his list. He brainstorms with Jaina and Jacen about new friends and landlords, but refuses to show them the names, or even the number of holes he thinks they've left.

Jaina, needless to say, returns home in a mood even worse than the one she left with two and a half days ago. She and Traest settle it with a bed and a lot of alcohol. It doesn't make her forget for long.

"Your kid brother sounds like a brat," Traest remarks the next morning.

It's one of the kindest names Jaina has for her little brother at the moment; she only snorts. "Anakin Solo, the Second Jedi Coming of The Brat. Give him a year, he'll be interrupting Council members."

"That bad?" Traest says; he sounds delighted.

It would be just like Anakin to waste time investigating Traest. Her lip curls. "Some days."

*

Jaina opens the door of her apartment and stares: Leia is waiting in the hallway. "How did you even know I'd be here?" Jaina blurts out. "You could have spent an hour trying to find it and missed three meetings for nothing."

Leia is steady and intent. "I cleared my schedule. May I come in?"

Instead of asking why, Jaina moves to the side, leaves room for Leia to enter. Jaina's mother has never been to the apartment; she has lacked both time (in negatives, even) and a regular, flexible invitation. Besides, Jaina knows what the Chief of State thinks of her daughter's street rat boyfriend; Jaina can only imagine what Leia thinks of their sixth level apartment. Jaina gives the four room tour, studying her mother's reactions as she does.

Leia studies the apartment. She walks into the flat's only bedroom, can't miss the one bed that takes up most of the room, and then goes to their one window. She peers out for a moment, then turns back around. Her mouth is soft and somehow off, not quite sad. "I'm surprised you didn't demand a better view. You can't see the sky at all from here."

Jaina shifts her jaw and then her shoulders, settles on crossing her arms over her chest. "I work on the top level. And Traest already rented here before I moved in, I didn't take much extra room. The rent's good." She lifts her chin. "I like it."

Leia can probably see one of the club districts from the window, but she doesn't say anything about it. "Have you given up on cooking yet?" she asks. "I can't imagine you learned anything of food prep from me; I always ate out whenever I could, when I first moved out."

"Or you got a droid or a servant to make it for you," Jaina points out. "It's different for us."

Neither Leia's expression nor her stance changes, but Jaina doesn't need the Force to know that Leia just held back her first reply. "Perhaps. But neither of us are very domestically inclined, are we?" She pauses and searches Jaina's face for something. It's one of her mother's looks that Jaina has been the frequent target of, and she resists the urge to check her face for a grease stain. "Do you have a place to tinker?" Leia asks. It doesn't sound like the question she was planning to ask.

Jaina shrugs. "The kitchen area is pretty big."

Leia doesn't flinch. Perhaps she knows, from Han, that it doesn't have to be as unsanitary as it sounds. Jaina leads her mother back into the kitchen/dining area/front room. Leia hardly looks at the old radio pushed into one of the corners. Instead, she sits at the table and nods at the seat across from her. Jaina rocks back on her heels, uncertain, then sits.

Jaina has many things to say to her mother, but none of them are worth it. She lets the words fester between them for a day when Leia will allocate time to her own family and heritage and Jaina won't care. It sinks; Jaina can see the weight in Leia's eyes, though she doubts it will last.

"Traest is out," Jaina says to say something. "Work."

Leia looks back, as steady and unreadable as an ocean. "What does he do?"

Jaina shrugs. "Whatever comes by. He's been working in a ship bay lately. Mechanics, some cleaning." She drums her fingers on the table. "And there's his map of the undercity, of course. He's been working on that for years." She grins, then flushes; it seems more personal, a concession.

"What about the job for which he left Coruscant?"

Jaina hesitates, wondering if she should admit her doubts about any such job, then her eyes narrow. "How did you hear about that?"

"You must have mentioned it."

Jaina snorts. "When?" She shakes her head. "It must have been Jacen."

It is Leia's turn to hesitate, something Jaina has rarely seen—if ever. When Leia speaks next, it is without her usual grace, as if she has removed the Chief of State and left only Leia Organa Solo. "I know that I…haven't been around much lately. At all, even, now that you've moved out. We've hardly spoken in months. I am very sorry for that, it was never my intention. You, your brothers, and your father mean everything to me."

No, Jaina snarls, not everything. Leia has been the Chief of State for years, has been involved in the highest level of NR politics for longer than Jaina's been alive, and it has always been more than just a distraction. She throws the silent accusation into the space between them, and hopes she's there when Leia finally misses Jaina.

Leia, if anything, becomes even more serious. "And I know that work hasn't been going well. You could have used a mother."

Jaina's back stiffens. "I'm fine." She sounds too defensive, so she bites the inside of her cheek. "I have Traest. He's been a big help. You guys make way too big a deal about a few tabloid stories. I'm fine," she reiterates, "except for everyone breathing down my neck."

Leia studies her for a long time until Jaina is convinced that she really does have grease on her cheek. "Very well. But if you have some free time today, I have nothing scheduled. I would like to spend as much time together as we can."

Jaina nods slowly after her own delay. Jaina can put up with the Chief of State until her pager goes off about trade agreements on Kuat, or a Hapan government holiday.

*

Leia stays until after dinner. Traest alternates between silent and outrageous, usually in opposition to Jaina's own mood. Leia sits calmly in the middle of their unrest as if cheap takeaway in a tiny flat with her daughter's boyfriend is no less normal than a Senate hearing. Jaina is certain she grew up with five fewer elbows, but the three months she spent as a child imitating her mother's grace are long gone.

"How guilty do you think she feels?" Traest asks as soon as the door has closed behind Leia. "Just showing up as if that'll fix everything."

Jaina is leaning against the door; she is as winded as if she sprinted ten kilometres after three sucker punches. Or maybe four. "I just want to go to bed and not talk about it."

He loops an arm around her shoulder. "Poor baby." He's a little too mocking, but he's the orphan. "Well, you've got me."

*

The next evening, seven months after he came back, Traest puts his fork down in the middle of dinner and asks her to marry him.

While she's half-choking, half-swallowing her food, he fumbles with a gold ring. He can't meet her eyes as he says, "It's just, you can stay. With me. Or not, you don't have to—" He cuts himself off, looking wild and as surprised as she is.

She doesn't give him a chance to bolt. "Yes," she says, not quite leaping over their dinner table and into his arms. There is going to be takeout all over her clothes, but she's too delirious to care. "Yes, yes, of course I will," she says between kisses. "Yes, I love you, I'll marry you, yes."

His chair tilts too far and they fall, but his grip is tight on her waist, they're getting married, and they fall together, and everything is perfect.

*

It's a gold band; simple, with just a few engraved stars around it, and it suits her perfectly. Jaina has seen plenty of glitter in her life, and she knows that Traest must have been saving up for weeks (she daren't think months) and gotten a loan to pay for the ring. He's only said the words once, into her shoulder, but the ring says it a hundred times and ways.

*

Jaina and Traest tell her family together. Jaina can't stop beaming; it's just like a speeding flight over Coruscant's skyline, but with Traest there the whole time: freedom, and she found it all on her own. It's easy to ignore her family's stunned expressions, Anakin's pale face, Leia's concealed reaction.

Jacen is the first to hug her, tell her congratulations, and shake Traest's hand. Han is gruff when he holds her tight and tells Traest that if he so much as lifts his voice…. Leia's reaction is still kept secret as she congratulates them, brushes an affectionate hand along Jaina's hair; but then Leia glances back at Anakin, and Jaina senses a short burst of concern.

Anakin, who hasn't been just a child since he heard about Anakin Skywalker, looks half his age or younger, white face turning even paler as he watches them all, his blue eyes wide and latched onto Jaina's or Traest's face in alternating moments. Some of Jaina's joy withers as he only stands there, not making any move to accept her fiancé or choices. She didn't expect this from Anakin, even if he's been obvious about his opinion of Traest.

He's just a child, she reminds herself. Anakin doesn't always know to look past his own dislike.

Traest is the one who steps up, holds a hand out to Anakin. "So, little brother?"

Anakin grits his teeth and shakes the hand, sparing them teenage melodrama. Jaina reaches out and hugs her youngest brother as the rest of her family talk about just surprised us and wedding dates. Anakin is taller than her by a few inches and will be by more than that in the next few years. For now, her little brother can still tuck his head into the crook of her shoulder. She holds tight, and smoothes his hair when he clings more than she expected. "I know you don't approve," she says quietly, "but I love him. He makes me happy. It'll work out."

Anakin sighs, snuffles like he's still a child after all, and stays another minute. "I want you to be happy."

She smiles, let him sense her freedom and joy. "Love you, little brother."

He releases her slowly, and isn't smiling when he pulls back. "We need to talk. About the investigation."

Jaina sighs, crosses her arms over her chest and keeps the ring visible. "At my engagement dinner, Anakin? Really?"

He presses his lips together and shakes his head. "I have a few things to check on first. But—in a couple days. It might be really important." He bites his lip and finally smiles. "Hopefully not."

"Okay." She can't keep her smile down for long. "C'mon, broody pants. I'm engaged, you've almost figured out the spy's identity, and you'll be exploiting your bragging privileges right through my honeymoon."

"I hope I'm wrong," he says seriously. The colour is mostly back in his cheeks.

"Wouldn't be the first time, little brother," she says cheerfully.

*

Jaina can think, now, sober, about the missions that went wrong. The first one, dealing with drug smugglers; the second with Jacen, the Coruscant crime syndicate, and Charco; three subsequent attempts to fix or at least figure out the disastrous second mission; Kyp's mess of diplomatic negotiations (although that could have been just Kyp); the backlash against the Jedi; the multitude of Jaina's team members who ended up in the med-ward, and the two who died. There's a leak—no, a traitor, Anakin is right about that.

Maybe it's just as well that Anakin has taken over the investigation like a cocky brat. If Jaina were in charge, she wouldn't have any mercy. It's hard to think that three days after her engagement; she wants to ignore the truth as it sits just over the horizon, but she can only do that for so long. She doesn't know what she'll do when they have the spy's identity.

Unless they can be saved, she reminds herself, because then it's just part of the Skywalker-Solo formula; Jaina has the script memorized, just in case.

*

Two days after the engagement dinner, Anakin suffers a hail of blaster fire. He is shot four times, and falls to the landing bay from two floors above—a less than successful Force jump. He is unconscious when found, but looks dead. He will spend nearly two weeks in bacta because of damage to his lungs and head. The assassin was thorough, only unlucky (or Anakin, very lucky).

Jaina only vaguely remembers the distressed Force call she has heard too many times in her life. She was already in a taxi to the Jedi med centre when Kyp called. She doesn't remember anything of running through the med centre's corridors, or of finding Jacen and then the surgery room that holds Anakin and three healers.

There are hours of meditating, sustaining Anakin between his family and closest friends. Anakin's face is whiter than when he found out about Jaina's engagement—hard contrast with the bruises and dirt. She sees him five years old, crying and snotty after the remarks about their grandfather; seven, watching her fix a hyperdrive, beaming and sprinting for the toolbox whenever she asked for help; ten, curling up against her in her bed in the middle of the night or early morning because he couldn't sleep, asking what if I'm like him? and what's a destiny like, Jaya? until she hit him with a pillow and told him the only special thing about him was his abnormal powers of brattiness, so just go to sleep already and he did. Sixteen years old, bossing his older siblings around and floating in a bacta tank. A thousand arguments, embraces, insults, jokes, and now the most serious hospitalization that Jaina has ever seen in her family.

Once Anakin is stable, Jacen and Kyp storm out of the med centre together. Jaina stays knotted up in the chair by Anakin's bed. Leia and Han sit on the other side; Jaina can't meet their eyes, only wants Anakin to go back to being too old and young, special and bratty.

She can't imagine anyone who could do this and be trusted. She can't imagine what she or Jacen have missed. Whatever it is, Jaina is only just big enough to hope they're long gone, to wonder what she will do now and if she will care.

*

She wakes up; she is in her own bed. "It'll be over soon," he tells her. "Do you know anything more?"

She stares at her ceiling. She is sober, and this has to change, preferably yesterday. "Only that someone is going to pay."

A hand in her hair; a glass of brandy held above her. "Someone."

She stops listening.

*

She wears the ring for inside of a week before it's all over.

Jaina is eighteen, a part-time Jedi Knight and a fiancée—the tabloids, if they knew, would probably think it's romantic: young and in love with the boy from the underground. Jaina doesn't really care except that it involves running, laughing, being whatever she wants to be. Until it ends, of course.

Jacen and Kyp knock at her apartment door, sit on her couch, then stand again as if important things aren't discussed every day over Leia's tea setting. Kyp stays quiet and stormy, pacing the room and keeping a tight grip on his lightsaber. Jacen's face is flushed and angry; he doesn't move, but only because he can't decide where to go or what to do, besides avoiding Jaina's eyes. He tries to stare down Jaina and Traest's cloak rack.

Jaina stands too, feels as if they're facing her down, but Kyp looks too furious to be quiet at the source, and Jacen is horrified and pitying. "You found out who the spy is, didn't you?" she says. It isn't a question; her fingers are numb, and her throat is as dry as Tattooine.

Kyp looks at her; she can feel him hovering, ready to lash out at an enemy but holding back to try to comfort. She swallows. "It's someone I trust." She pins Jacen with her stare; the waiting is the worst part, he should know that about her by now.

She knows as soon as Jacen looks at her, but she still isn't ready to hear: "Traest has been working for Brakiss for the past four years. Brakiss—you remember him, the one who started the Second Imperium, went off into organized crime later, he's been…they've been expanding, and…."

Kyp continues when Jacen falters. "Traest has been feeding them information, running some of their jobs—he's been keeping a low profile for the past six, seven months." Since Traest started spying on you, Kyp doesn't say.

She licks her lips, blinks. "Anakin figured it out?"

Jacen and Kyp share a look. "He's awake now," Jacen says. "He got the message through a few hours ago, once he could get his thoughts together."

Jaina doesn't stop herself to think as something ugly, even dark, grips her tight and she lets it. The truth is starkly obvious now that she has it—he hardly had to lie at all, did he, and Jacen and Kyp wouldn't tell her this without evidence—but she refuses to dwell on it, on a hundred I love you's and the Skywalker-Solo tradition. She sees only Anakin, who knotted his five-year-old arms around her and cried miserably into her shoulder when a playmate poked and pushed him.

She clears her throat, looks at Kyp. "He'll be back in thirty minutes." She glances at her chrono, then blinks and can read it. "Maybe twenty. We ran out of—" Oh, gods, she thinks suddenly, the mother kriffer drugged me. On the heels of it: Not that he needed to, with my blood-alcohol level. She digs a spare blaster out from the cabinet above their comm station. The weight is solid in her hand, steadies her stomach. Jacen is her twin, but Kyp argued with her voice mail about irresponsibility; her cheeks are aflame, and she can't look at either of them.

Jacen reaches out. "Jaina—"

"Don't."

Her twin retracts as if she pushed him, but stays firm. He clears his throat. "Whatever it started out as, I think he really does—"

"I don't care," she snaps.

"Even if you could save him?"

Jaina snorts, fights to contain the hysterical laughter. "You saw Anakin." She checks the blaster's power cell.

Kyp rests his right hand at the back of her neck, sympathetic. "Get your lightsaber," he says. "We'll do this the right way."

*

Thirty minutes pass, then an hour. Jaina's knuckles stay white around her lightsaber's hilt. When she finally looks in the cooling unit, the milk jug is still half full.

He's gone. Long gone, long warned.

Another hour goes by; Kyp rumbles into his com-link, Jacen gives up on talking to her, and Jaina disassembles their comm and holo-net console. The console's cam has hours of footage logged, all recent; everything older than three days has been deleted. The comm is clean.

He's gone. "I'll find him if it's the last thing I do."

"Find him?" Jacen parrots.

Jaina considers the console, then smashes it cam-first into the wall. "And take care of this."

*

She doesn't think of the holo-cams and recordings until she's forced Jacen and Kyp out of her apartment. She saves that realization until she's already puking in the 'fresher.

*

She empties their fridge, breadbox, cupboards, pantry, and liquor cabinet. She wears gloves. She doesn't bother to analyze their food or drinks, only packs it all into garbage bags; she considers burning it, but doesn't know if there could be any biohazardous material. Besides, the last thing her family needs is more tabloid fodder: Jaina Solo, pyromaniac. Instead, she drags the bags out to the garbage compactor and lets the drugs leave anonymously. She doesn't care what they were, or where he left them, only that every last trace is gone.

They never had much need for meds; hangover cures and pain relievers are almost alone in the cabinet above the sink. Jaina flushes what she can, throws out the rest.

The bedroom is stripped, the sheets burned and the mattress thrown away. His clothes—most but not all of his wardrobe—are bagged to be given away. Except for one of his favourite shirts, which she tears apart before she thinks.

Room by room, she clears him away, even if it does mean more hours of cleaning than the apartment has ever seen. Even the first sweep isn't finished until after two midnights; Jaina has to take breaks when her stomach fails her, or her eyes smart and she has to clean them out with cold water. There isn't anything left in her stomach, and for obvious reasons nothing is in her kitchen either, so she goes out to buy food. She walks into a supermarket, makes her purchases, walks out, then goes back to return the bottle of brandy because she can't do that now. She ignores the diners she and Traest frequented on her way back. She'll cook her own food if it kills her (which it might).

She goes back to the apartment, locks the door behind her, changes the access code, activates lockdown, and shoves their heaviest chair to block the entrance.

The flat is stripped but not empty; there are still bags to incinerate, to throw into the most disgusting undercity heap she can find, or to give away in pieces to a dozen off-world charities so Traest will never be able to put them back together even if he looks for them.

Except the last bag, which she filled with a collection of Traest's treasures, is not in the 'fresher closet into which she stuffed it a few hours and a retch ago.

Jaina stares at the empty spot, then stomps to the bedroom. Traest's maps of the west undercity are arranged on the bare and frighteningly clean floor. Three days ago, she thought these maps were his only outlet for thought and dedication; no one has ever detailed a useful amount of the undercity and its countless levels; Traest enjoyed the work. She shakes her head, reminds herself that it was every bit a lie. He left the maps, every one of the flimsi drafts and even the ten datapads in which he stores his backups and notes. The maps are nothing to him; if she looked properly, they might not even show real coordinates or warnings.

There is a bottle of brandy sitting in the far quadrant of the room, on top of a square of the map. She walks over and sees a bright red dot, and a sticky note: 60 minutes after you read this. I'm leaving at 61 minutes. It's an hour-and-a-half trip through comm dead zones; she and Traest have been there a half dozen times or more for some of the bars and clubs.

Jaina grabs the map square and her jacket and heads out the door.

*

Uncle Luke told Jaina, once, that trying to save Anakin Skywalker was both as natural and as difficult as anything he had ever done. He said it wasn't easy even afterwards, but that trying was the only right thing to do. "There are monsters out there," he told Jaina after the Nightsisters' attack on the praxeum, "but they are few, and even they rarely started out that way. Everyone can be saved, Jaina, I believe that without reservation."

Leia overheard and Jaina remembers thinking that her mother was stubborn and at least a little angry. Leia's movements were stiff and straight; she stood behind Jaina and put a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Don't confuse her, Luke, it isn't that simple. Jaina, you can't strongarm someone any day into changing their life. They have to want it, the timing has to be right." She paused. Jaina turned around to look up at her mother, who gave the Chief of State's Tough Love Smile. "Some people won't be saved, no matter how hard you try."

But Jaina had known that her mother and uncle were really talking about their father, and so she thought, fifteen-years-old, that of course her mother would say that, but Jaina was going to believe.

*

X marks a club that Jaina and Traest visited once or twice, a true undercity place which the tabloids didn't consider to be worth their trouble. She remembers it, patchwork, some memories blurring one into the other and others all too vivid. She ignores the entrance and walks into the club's back alley. She's seven minutes late, even having broken half the traffic laws and possibly a few laws of physics, but she takes the time to read her surroundings.

Traest, whose Force signature was rarely sought out but still familiar, is probably alone. The club is almost empty at this time of day, but the undercity is loudly alive; it's impossible to be certain. She keeps her lightsaber in hand and walks into the sickly light.

He joins her. "You're late."

She props one fist on her hip. "You're still here."

He grins suddenly, like a vibro-shiv in her chest. "Well?" he prompts.

Her hand is slick on her lightsaber's hilt; she switches hands and wipes the first one dry on her shorts. The undercity is too hot. "You lied to me about everything," she says, too stiff. Her chest is falling inward; she breathes shallower.

Traest steps closer, but halts sooner when he sees her shift her grip. "Actually, I got in some trouble for how much I didn't lie to you."

"All those times I can't remember," she says through gritted teeth, "when my drinks tasted off, you were drugging me. And you—" She swallows, because if she can say this, keeping her self-control for the rest will be a piece of cake. "You tried to kill Anakin."

"No," he says immediately, looking angry. "I told them to find out what he knew, throw him off. They weren't supposed to hurt him."

"Even if I believed you, it's still your responsibility. You— Gods. And all this time—"

Traest's eyebrows dip toward his nose, but his expression begins to close. "You can start any time now, Princess." He grins suddenly, sharp. "Or am I supposed to go first? This is really more your area." He waits, but she only stares back. His short temper—and by gods, she thinks, I'll cut it shorter—flits across his face. "You do know why I picked this spot, don't you?"

"No comm reception," she says, clipping his taunt in some last hope that it wasn't any more personal than his complete betrayal. "Your turf. Too far for me to make it and call for backup. It won't save you, Traest, I don't care what kind of training you sold out for. I'm still a Jedi."

He laughs quickly, though there's something else at her periphery. "Well, that's all good, but it's not what I meant." He holds his arms out, like he'll catch her. "This is where you said you loved me. The first time," he clarifies, obviously smug (and why shouldn't he be: job well done).

"Why?" she finally manages to say. It doesn't matter, she doesn't give two kriffs about his why's—it's probably money or free sex, she thinks viciously, or even a sadistic gratification she missed, little blind child. But she opens her mouth and says it anyway: "Why, gods damn you?"

He doesn't actually, but she's reading him now and he rolls his eyes before he stops the physical reaction. "Because you made me a promise. It's like…metaphorical or some shavit, symbolic, whatever."

"I have a promise to keep?"

His smile starts slow, then stretches wide like he and Jaina are on the same page. She wants to claw it off, except that wouldn't be control and she will scrap at least that much together. Traest says, "Now that you have the chance."

She clips her lightsaber to her belt; this isn't the fight she wants to throw herself into. She imagines her mother to spite both Traest and herself, and crosses her arms over her chest. She's thinking now, will do if it drives her off the deep end, and Leia told her once—she was dressed up and preparing for a disciplinary hearing—that she'd give them enough silence to hang themselves by.

"It was just work," Traest says like he's picked a route through this. "Real work, not just picking pockets, credits to fill my own pockets. I didn't plan to come back or anything." He shrugs. "It's just how things went."

"So you just thought, hey, why not ruin an old friend's life," Jaina snaps, her temper showing before she thinks Leia and Jacen again and closes her eyes to Anakin until later.

"So just come with me if it's so wrecked. No need to be a drama queen, I thought you'd take it better."

She blinks, or tries to. "Are you crazy?"

He rolls his eyes again, this time so she can see it with her eyes. "I didn't give them anything that would get you hurt, did I? Look, are you going to jump in any time soon? What do you even need to save someone?"

It strikes her hard enough to shake loose the numbness and hurtle her into the ugliness from before. Screw control and enough silence to hang himself by, if he's throwing that in her face. "Is that all you want?" she says, mocking him back. "The script?"

He stands still, almost patient like she never thought he was, and looks—if she didn't know better, she would think that he looks sincere. "You promised."

Mired in the ugliness, she sees a thousand times she said I love you, defended Traest to her family and friends, lost herself, and she thinks no. Even if the timing is right, even if he's genuine and not mocking her (if), even if he isn't a monster—no. She doesn't believe him, doesn't want to. He doesn't deserve it. "Traest, you can go to—"

"You promised," he says, furious.

"Anakin's in a tub of bacta," she retorts, because that's true, too.

"That's not my fault!"

She raises her chin. "I don't believe you."

He swallows, his throat working around it and reminding her of a thousand kisses he tricked out of her. "I have information on Brakiss, if you—I could—"

"I don't believe you," she interrupts, cold and loathing. "And I don't care," she says over his look and the redemption stories she was weaned on. "After what you did—I'll never take another chance on you again." She reaches into her jacket, pulls out standard issue cuffs, and begins to feel like the ground is firm enough for walking on again. "You're under arrest, Traest, and by gods, I hope you put up a fight so I can kick your lying ass," she says as she steps forward. She reaches for him, but she couldn't stand close to him before and now he's too quick to move backwards, giving her a chase, and she hates being so short.

"Then I won't disappoint you," he spits over his shoulder before he twists around a corner and darts downward.

*

They run for hours through the undercity, until Jaina is winded and knows that Traest was always pretending when he breathed shortly, until she wonders if he is being chased or if he is getting her lost in the maze of undercity no one has ever completely mapped. She knows some of these places, recognizes most, but Traest is home here and pulls her into his trap. They're running, but she isn't laughing anymore.

They run for hours, Traest ahead and Jaina in pursuit, until Traest jumps and Jaina only thinks regular jump except she's down through a garbage heap hole and flying before she lands hard, slanted the wrong way looking up at where she fell, and gods, her arm hurts, did she imagine the sound of bone snapping? She shudders to a stop, gulps air and the closest thing she has to control, before sliding off her right arm and pulling it loose, and no, she didn't imagine the snap at all, but she can bite her lip through and not cry. She holds it gingerly, keeps breathing and biting down, looks up and sees Traest staring down at her from the lip of his trap. She can't see if he's grinning, wild and smug, but he must be—Jaina thinks he must be, because he tricked her once, but she's eighteen, a Jedi Knight and an ex-fiancée, and she'll never believe in him again. He made her a leak, used her and left her a fool, and put Anakin in bacta—that's the limit of her caring; she sees him gloating, will always see him gloating above her before he darts away.

She stays down until she can roll right-ways and stagger upright, and then she walks home. It's a long walk back to her family, back to the med centre where Anakin will still be floating and breathing, but she gets there. Traest was a traitor, but Jaina is a Jedi Knight, the daughter of heroes, and by gods she will make it through this; she only has to let the stars pull her forward.

*

Jaina is Han's daughter in a thousand and one ways. There are stars in her blood and brandy in her eyes; the adrenaline curls slick through her gut; she never goes anywhere without her multi-tool; and she can hide neither the grease stains on her hands nor the heart just under her sleeve. Jaina is her daddy's girl, and she's never not known that.

Sometimes, though, she is Leia's daughter, too.

The truth is, once Kyp and Jacen told her, Jaina never really thought about saving Traest. Not when she confronted him, not when he made his offer, not for years.

Solos make choices, and they stick by them. Traest was an enemy. She never wondered if she could pull him free of Brakiss, or if he loved her enough to let her fix him. She spent months thumbing her nose at her family's legacy with Traest, but in the end she made the hard choice and didn't look back. Solos and Skywalkers think a lot about redemption, but Vader's granddaughter didn't even consider it when the betrayal stared her in the face.

She didn't wonder if that was a wrong until she heard another boy's story and thought about his what-ifs. Even then, though, Traest's redemption was only academic. She had made her decision, and she never looked back.

That was Jaina's betrayal.

*

So, I will head out alone and hope for the best
And we can hang our heads down as we skip the goodbyes
You can tell the world what you want them to hear
I've got nothing left to lose, my dear
So, I'm up for the little white lies
But you and I know the reason why
I'm gone, and you're still there

-"The Reason Why" by Rachael Yamagata

*

Please let me know what you think!

-Tjz