My one and only attempt to write Jaina sympathetically, because I think she's a dork.

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Red is the color of innocence.

She remembers, once, that she wore nail polish and curled her hair and wore pretty things. That was a long time ago, though (before Myrkr) and she tries not to think about it now. But she'd found an old photo album from before the war and something (Curiosity? Longing?) prompted her to open it.

And there she was on the first page, young and pretty and as innocent as could be. She was dressed in red: a cute red sundress, some strappy red sandals. She remembers, distantly, that her mother hadn't wanted to buy them for her, that they were too racy. But Aunt Mara had prevailed upon Mom ("…c'mon, Leia, she's not a little girl anymore!"), and she got them.

Jaina looks closer at the holo. Her hair isn't curled, and she isn't wearing any makeup – even then, she hadn't liked the feel of it on her skin – but she had red nail polish on, shiny and bright. And she was holding a metal purse painted red.

The purse jogs her memory. She had gotten that for her sixteenth birthday – her father had given it to her. She hadn't seen it for ages – it was probably still on Coruscant, rotting in the ruins of her home. Jaina unexpectedly felt tears pricking her eyelids. She'd liked that purse. It had a picture of a cute little kitty on it, and all the girls had wanted one just like it.

Well, except for Tenel Ka, of course. Tenel Ka never seemed to notice girls wearing dresses and make-up. She'd always looked the same, eternal, never-changing. Jaina thought she could depend on that even now. But before Myrkr, she'd seen Tenel Ka wearing spacer's clothes and a simple braid, looking far more adult than she had in her braids and lizard-skins. And now, she wears a Hapan naval uniform with her hair pinned up, and Jaina thinks she misses the girl whose eyes would twinkle at Jacen's corny jokes, rather than the woman who frowns sadly at her when she's sure Jaina isn't looking.

Jaina tears out the holo of her sixteenth birthday on a whim, and props it against the mirror and forgets about it. But later, she looks at the holo and smiles at the memory of youth. She wears a red dress to the ball and smiles at the Chiss colonel – Jagged, his name is Jagged – but she feels instinctively that she'd be more comfortable wearing black clothes with a blaster on her hip instead of this frivolous color.

Red used to be my favorite color. When did that change?

She tries to recapture her childhood, but all she's left with is a holo smiling happily from before the war.