Title: Unfound
Author: Lyraeinne
Characters/Pairing: Jacen, Jaina
Genre: Gen/Angst
Era: Post-Legacy AU
Rating: PG-13 for violence and a touch of language
Warnings: Nasty violence between siblings. Death imagery. And spoilers for the end of Legacy.
Word Count: 2,771
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns all. Del Rey owns everything else. Sadly, I am neither.
Summary: Sometimes you don't get it right the first time.

Author's Note: Believe it or not I started writing this thing quite a while ago, before Invincible was more than a glint in Del Rey's eye. It got lost repeatedly behind schoolwork and me not really knowing what to do with it after the book came out, but after extensive rewriting and tweaking I'm finally declaring it done. It was originally meant to read as a loose sequel to Five People Jacen Solo Still Loves, and I suppose it still does, at least in the sense that it's more consistent with the spirit of what happened in Legacy than accurate to the detail. You certainly don't have to have read it to understand this one though.

* * *

Somewhere between there and here she'd been stripped down to her flight tank and underwear, so the torn flesh across her leg and side was the first thing he saw when he opened the door. She'd been left half-curled half against the wall, legs curled up defensively.

Tahiri was at the opposite side of the room where the overhead light didn't quite reach, sitting on a low stool. "Hey," she said. "I got bored waiting for you."

Jacen moved out of the doorway slowly, just far enough to see Jaina's still face despite the twisted position she'd been left in. Soft curving cuts traced a shallow pattern across her legs, arms and back.

Probably in places he couldn't see, too.

He knelt down beside her and touched her arm, feeling the jagged edge of bone through the skin. "I didn't tell you to hurt her," he said. He slid his hand down a little, brushing where the bone went smooth again. "Don't touch her again."

"Oh," Tahiri said. She shifted behind him, clearly caught off guard. "But you said…"

"I said we're not doing things this way," he paused when he sensed her mood shift in the Force. "For now."

Tahiri said nothing, but the flash of wounded anger in her silence would have been obvious if he'd been dead to the Force. She got off the stool and came up beside him, her knee almost brushing his side. Too close.

"Just go," he said. He worked for a moment to quiet the tinge of frustration edging its way into his emotions. In another moment he would have to turn around, and she wasn't what he wanted. Wasn't the image he wanted to contaminate the first he'd had of his sister since…

"Caudus," Tahiri murmured, her hand a hair's breath from touching his shoulder.

He felt her body hit the wall before he heard the sharp crack of the impact. Too hard. He felt a small, unexpected pang of remorse, and he released her a little more gently, letting her slide rather than fall down to the cell floor. "Just go," he said again. "Please."

He heard her ragged breathing behind him, angry and humiliated. But the door slid open again, and then closed.

Jacen put his hands in his lap, willing them to stop trembling. He had not quite mastered this body's instinctive responses to emotional arousal yet.

Now alone with only the sharp white light of the cell surrounding them, he took his time memorizing the unbroken curve of Jaina's chin, and the dark lines of her eyelashes against her cheeks. He traced the faint scar on her neck, right where he had smashed his toy X-wing when they were five. He etched each line into his mind, and he closed his eyes to make sure they would not slip away this time. That nothing, nothing would shake them loose again.

He rolled her gently until she was lying on her back instead of her stomach, and she squeezed her blood-crusted eyelids tighter and let out a small noise of pain. He deactivated the stun cuffs and slid his hand underneath her, lifting her head just a little. He brought the bottle to her mouth, gently sliding his fingers in first, coaxing her to open.

He knew she needed the water but it was too much for her, and in her half conscious state she choked and gagged, grabbing hold of his hand in both of hers, making a sincere effort to push him away.

He wrestled with her for a moment; she was surprising strong for someone who had supposedly spent the last seven hours being tortured, but the strain was too great and she was sliding back into oblivion already. It had to be obvious that she couldn't win this time.

Her shields were strong even when she was unconscious, but being her twin brother did have its advantages, and it didn't take much to enter her mind enough to force her to swallow the liquid this time when he tipped it into her mouth. He waited until she'd gotten one, two sips, and then he let her push his hand away from her face.

Underneath the caked blood her hair was dirty, and looked like it probably had been for some time. He brushed it through his fingers, feeling a small, unexpected surge of familial pride. Tahiri had done her worst, but she hadn't broken. Of course she hadn't broken.

Pain did not break Jaina Solo.

She absorbed it like fossil dust, each disappointment, each injustice, each loss only crushing her further into immutable, diamond-sharp rock. As an ally, it had made her the unflaggingly reliable soldier she was.

As an opponent, it had made her invincible.

Jaina had never been shattered the way that Jacen Solo was, so long ago. Never been grinded down until nothing remained but the jagged, ruined pieces of what she had been. Never been remade, piece by piece, into something new.

For the first time a long time, he found himself wondering which tragedy was the greater after all.

* * *

It took her a while, but Jacen had long ago learned the value of patience. He allowed her space to regain her bearings, watching her sitting back slowly onto her haunches through the viewer, pressing her good hand over her eyes. Watching her watch the food he'd put there for her, the warm chocolate and brualki, charred just the way she liked. When she began to watch the viewer instead, watching him watch her through the narrow lens, he knew that it was time.

She was sitting with her legs pulled against her chest, head resting on her knees when he opened the door, just fast enough to see the flinch run through her at the sound.

Jacen paused for a long moment. "Hi," he said.

She turned her head just slightly in his direction, focusing her gaze on him for a brief moment before looking away again. "What do you want?" she said softly.

"I'm…" The words he'd rehearsed so carefully were bleeding together, empty of all the meaning he'd wanted to convey when he'd imagined this moment. He took a breath. "I thought we could talk. You and me."

She turned her head to the other side, eyes closing again. "You're sick," she said. "And you're dead."

He leaned back against the still-open doorframe, glad for once that he'd dismissed the guards in the hallway already. "Maybe."

"I killed you," she said. "You died in front of me." An edge of desperation was creeping into her voice.

"I know," he said. He took a step forward. "I was angry." He paused again, wanting her to feel the words as much as hear them. "But I forgive you."

She closed her eyes, and he could feel the tears forming underneath her eyelids. "Don't," she said, letting out a small, ragged breath. "Don't…"

"Just listen," he said. He sat down slowly, just far enough away to be out of reach. Still closer than he'd been to her (conscious, anyway) in years, except for when they fought. "I don't want it to be this way anymore."

"You don't want…" her voice rose sharply and then broke. She twisted away from him, looking in the other direction. "You did this. Not me."

"You're right," he agreed. "I did."

"No," Jaina said acidly, fingers digging into her bare arms almost convulsively. "That's not what you say. That's not what he would say."

"It's what I'm saying now," he said. He reached out slowly, grazing her forehead with his fingertips once.

"No," Jaina said again, almost doggedly. She pulled sharply away from him, fingernails digging into the flesh of his wrist. "That's not what you'd say, you sick bastard. You can't… you can't just change your mind. You decided. I killed you."

"It's okay," Jacen assured her. "I still love you, Jaina."

"Shut up," she said, pulling back from him again. Just like that the edge was back in her voice, the shaken, gut-shot hollowness dried and gone as if it had never been there. "If you loved me, or Mom and Dad, or even your own sithspawned daughter, you wouldn't have done what you did. What you did to our family."

"I was wrong about some things," he conceded.

"No you weren't," she said, her voice starting to rise. "That's not what Caudus would say."

"Maybe I need lessons," he agreed. He wanted to touch her again, but he stopped just short of grazing her thumb where it was resting on the tile. "Tell me what he'd say."

Jaina stared for a long moment, seemingly caught somewhere between numb incomprehension and a curious kind of disbelief. Finally her good hand came up and pressed itself firmly over his mouth. "Just be quiet," she said, her eyes focused on the hand where it pressed against his face. "Just don't."

Jacen fought to stay motionless under the hand, under her unshifting, unblinking stare.

"Now tell me why I'm here," she said. She let her hand drop slowly. Caudus tasted dirt and sweat. "Darth Caudus."

Jacen thought for a long moment. "I wanted to see you," he said finally.

"No," Jaina said firmly. "You wanted to get to Allana. And probably Tenel Ka. You want them."

"Someday," he said. "I wanted to talk to you. Like we used to." This time he did touch her hand, feeling the soft pad of bruised tissue over one of her knuckles. "Don't you…" He needed to choose his words carefully. "Don't you miss it, Jaina? The way we used to tell each other everything…"

"You're dead," Jaina said resolutely, the frigid edge returning to her voice. "I can't talk to someone who's dead. Someone who decided."

"Maybe not," Jacen said. He watched the muscles of Jaina's hand. Her fingernails were dirty. "Maybe I didn't decide the way you thought I did."

He thought to himself a split second before it happened that perhaps he should reach up and block the strike he knew was coming, but he couldn't quite convince his arm to move and she had already punched him in the face, hard enough that his nose was stinging.

"Don't…" she said. She was breathing raggedly again. "Don't ever…"

"I'm sorry," Jacen said. His nose was starting to bleed.

"You didn't give me a choice," she said harshly, tears standing out in her eyes. "If you think it was what I wanted… If you think I did this…"

"You always had a choice," he said. He could taste the blood already. "Just like you have one now."

She laughed, a hollow, naked sound. "What choice?" she said. "People are going to look for me, and eventually they're going to find me. And guess who gets to take you out again when they do?"

"If that's the choice you have to make," he said softly. "But you don't have to wait for them, Jaina."

Her expression of frustrated anguish changed abruptly when he slid her lightsaber back into her hands. "It's the same choice you keep making," he said. "The same choice every time."

"No," Jaina said numbly. She stared down at her hands as if they no longer belonged to her, slowly hefting the rounded heaviness of the shaft.

"Come find me," he said. He touched her face one more time. "Whenever you've decided, just come find me."

He left the cell without looking at her again.

* * *

He opened his eyes to the quiet snaphiss of ignition just below his jaw.

She was kneeling above him, crouched by his hip on the other side of the bed, the sharp violet light throwing her expression into harshly contrasting shadow.

This body's eyes didn't adjust to new light as fast as his old one, and it was a moment before the grey blur of the doorway took the shape of someone's head sticking into the open gap. Long strands of blond ringlets flooded the hallway in an unmistakable sprawl. Unexpectedly, he felt a small pang of regret. "You didn't have to kill her," he heard himself say.

"She was in my way," Jaina said. The blade burned closer to his throat, and he could feel the convulsive tremor in her good hand. The injured one was curled, limp, in her lap. "She was protecting you."

Jacen lay still, the unmade sheets cold on his bare skin, breathing the ozone in slow, measured breaths. Jaina shifted, her knee nudging into his thigh. "And you're wrong," she said, forcefully punctuating the words by leveling the blade almost horizontally across his throat. "Whatever you… whatever you think about what happened…"

"I thought you wanted what I wanted," Jacen said. He swallowed and felt his skin burn a little more. "I thought you wanted it to stop."

Jaina's face tightened even more, and the oxygen in the air rippled in front of his eyes, blurring and stretching her expression into a ghoulish imitation of anguish. "It will never stop," she said. "I have to make it stop."

"Then I guess it doesn't even matter," Jacen said. "It doesn't even matter if I'm him or not."

Jaina let out a ragged scream, and the lightsaber moved in a split second, searing a savage line through the pillow beside his head. He moved reflexively and twisted off the bed, landing hard on the cold tile. She followed him a second later, grabbing him by the hair and stepping hard on the inside of his thigh, missing his crotch by a few inches. "Move," she said. She pressed harder with her foot, and he felt the stress on the bone. The lightsaber was back at this throat. "Just fight me, you disgusting…"

"No," Jacen said. But he jerked sideways, enough to put her off balance and sweep her with his other leg. She landed on her broken arm and howled, and he rolled on top of her and hit her in the face, grabbing hold of her lightsaber arm and squeezing it around her fingers, forcing it down closer to her face.

She gritted her teeth and pushed back. "What's the matter?" she said. "You don't have the balls to finish it?"

"You're going to finish it," he said. "It's your fight."

She spat in his face and managed to twist enough to shove her knee up in between his. White-hot pain exploded behind his eyelids, but he managed to grab a leg and then an arm before she could get out from underneath him. She hit him again and rolled him, and he smacked her wrist hard enough to send the lightsaber flying. She grabbed his throat and pressed with the edge of her palm, holding him down against the floor. She panted.

Five seconds. Ten seconds. There was a catch in her lungs now, an injury that had to be from before. Fifteen seconds. He saw the lightsaber lying beside the bed. A flick of her wrist and she'd have it again.

"Get it," he said. The pain in his groin was making him dizzy. "Look. It's right there."

She looked in the direction he indicated. She looked back at him, her eyes moving from his face to his throat, where her hand was still clenched. "I have to do it," she said. Two tears slid down off her cheeks and onto his chest. "I have to."

"You can do it," he said. "It's your chance."

"I have to," she said again, but she was already folding down onto her haunches, hugging her arms to her sides. She wiped her face messily on her arm, but it did no good. "Oh sith, Jacen…"

"It's okay," Jacen said. He sat up slowly, but she was rocking back and forth now, sobbing quietly. "It's okay now," he said.

"I hate you," she said, and pressed her hands over her eyes. She didn't resist this time when he touched her shoulder, not even when he slid forward far enough to wrap his arms around her rigid, unyielding form. "I hate you, I hate you." Her fingers dug in feverishly, clutching him so hard it hurt to breathe in.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, leaning his cheek against her hair and breathing. "It's just you and me now."

The lights were beginning to change on their own just beyond the edge of his line of vision. They filtered from red to yellow, reflecting in lines off the lightsaber's metal shaft and the soft pale strands in Tahiri's hair. The room stayed dark anyway.

* * *