Description: What if Jaina hadn't stopped herself from following Jag? Takes place during Legacy novels Exile and Fury. (Slightly AU, but doesn't veer too much from canon storyline.)

Author's Note: I was a little disappointed in how the development of Jag and Jaina's reconciliation was depicted in the Legacy novels. It all seemed kind of sudden, like one day Jag wanted nothing to do with Jaina, and the next he was back to caring about her like he had as a teenager. So I took a couple of little snippets from the books and altered them a bit to play with how they might have come to terms with their past.

Acknowledgements: The characters and quotes referenced in this work of fiction do not belong to me, but rather to those brilliant minds who have shaped the Star Wars universe, especially George Lucas and Aaron Allston. I merely play in the sandbox that they have filled.

She became aware that Jag was still standing, waiting. "Was there something else, Colonel?" Inwardly, she winced. Even to her own ears her tone sounded dismissive - and she'd addressed him by the military rank that had been stripped from him, as if it had been her intent to rub salt into an injury.

Jag flipped his towel across his neck, his action mimicking Zekk's, and showed her a forced smile. "Colonel. I suppose not, Jedi Solo." He turned and strode from the room.

She rose to follow him... (Legacy of the Force: Exile, by Aaron Allston)

Jaina rose to follow him, striding quickly to catch up.

"Jag." He stopped, turned, looking perfectly neutral, but emitting a sense of confusion in the Force.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

Now the confusion moved to his face, eyebrows knitting together under his bangs, still jarringly long to Jaina. "Sorry for what?"

"I didn't mean to rub it in, using your old rank. It's just habit, I suppose."

His eyebrows unknit, face softening just a bit, so slightly she believed no one else would have been able to detect it. "No need to apologize. It actually brought back a pleasant memory." She must have looked confused now, for he elaborated, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "Shared evasive maneuvers."

"Oh."

Jag turned to walk away once again, but before he could take a step, Jaina felt herself blurting out, "I still think about it too, how we were during the war." Jag didn't turn around, but she saw his shoulders tighten. She wanted to hold back the next sentence, but couldn't. Knowing that it violated the distance she was attempting to keep from men these days, but sure she had already crossed that distance with her previous thought, she ventured on: "We were happy then, weren't we?"

Jag sighed, turned just his head, looking over his shoulder to say, curtly, "Yes."

As he began to walk away once more, Jaina called out, "Jag? I'm sorry."

"I told you, your apology is unnecessary."

"No." Jaina felt the need to do this, had felt the need for years, and more frequently since being assigned to his task force. "I am so sorry. Not for the 'colonel' thing. For everything else. For making you unhappy."

"Apology accepted." And he meant it; his sincerity radiated through the Force. Nothing was fixed, she knew, nothing real, anyway. But they were on the mend at least, and maybe one day, she could bring him happiness again, as his friend.

Turning back to the task force office, hearing Jag's boots fall, still with military timing, behind her, Jaina remembered a conference room kiss, a voice calling to her through a deep trance, shared evasive maneuvers. She smiled.

Jag welcomed the steam of the 'fresher, appreciating the respite from time spent with Jaina Solo. He still wasn't entirely sure what her uncle, the Jedi Grand Master, had been thinking assigning her to his task force, but at this point, he hardly appreciated it. Her presence was... confusing. And confusion was the last thing he needed when preparing for a mission.

His resumed flirtation with her had begun mainly as a knee-jerk reaction to the presence of Zekk. It was like he was a teenager again, attempting to keep the guy at arm's length from Jaina, and he didn't know why, other than the sport of it. The more time he spent with Jaina, though, the more he began to remember their time together during the Yuzzhan Vong war, and all the pain and betrayal that had hardened him to her influence since then began to fade into the background.

Jag turned his face up into the spray of water, allowing it to overtake his senses, clear his head of dangerous nostalgia. They weren't the same anymore, he reminded himself. Not only had their relationship shifted, even before the Killik disaster, but they had each changed as people. Jaina certainly had. She seemed darker than before, not like she had during her brief lapse into the dark side on Hapes, but a different sort of darkness. She no longer laughed or joked or connected with people. She snapped at his and Zekk's flirtatiousness, when the teenager he had known would have seen it for the playful banter that it was and joined in.

That moment in the hallway though, when Jag had glanced back just before rounding the corner - he still didn't know why - and saw her grin, her eyes unfocused as if remembering something pleasant, in that moment she was closer to the old Jaina than he had yet seen since arriving on Coruscant. Perhaps she hadn't changed as much as it seemed, but was merely hiding herself as a means of protection. She had shown signs of that tactic before.

Before he could stop himself, Jag remembered their period of separation while he patrolled the Hydian Way, and the experiment he had conducted to test Jaina's feelings, which had seemed ambiguous in her messages. That had certainly broken her delusional attempt at pushing him away. Perhaps a repeat would have the same effect, remind her that there was more to life than being the Sword of the Jedi.

Jag chided himself for the thought. He had no desire to reclaim her affections, especially since he still felt resentful towards her for her part in unravelling his life. He stepped out of the spray of water, wrapping himself in a towel and activating the anti-fog function on the mirror. As it cleared, he considered his reflection. Jaina wasn't the only one who had changed.

He still hated her uncle sometimes though, for that stupid title he had given her. Sword of the Jedi, whatever that meant. Jag sniffed in disdain. He respected the Jedi, but sometimes he questioned the mystical element of their order. This vague prophecy certainly wasn't doing Jaina any good. As for him, it was difficult to lead a team with one member who obsessed over her own development as a fighter.

And Jag missed her smile.

Epilogue-ish.

"So. You're a good Sword and a rotten Jedi. But even if you get back to being a good Jedi, you're going to die. You know why? Because you're training in Jedi skills as though you're going to have a straight-up Jedi duel with your enemies, all lightsabers and light-side Force tricks. But you need to be thinking like someone who hunts Jedi. Like me." He stepped so close to Jaina that Zekk thought for a moment he was going to stoop and kiss her. (Legacy of the Force: Fury by Aaron Allston)

Jag almost kissed her. It wasn't the time, the mood was all wrong, but for a moment his brain had malfunctioned and what had been a deliberate move to intimidate and make his point almost became a transport back ten years. He wanted to kick himself.

He had thought, just as in a weak moment back on Coruscant, that he should just kiss her to make her feel something, to test if she had dulled herself completely to her humanity. Then, thankfully, his brain had taken over again, and he had stopped himself before bringing his head down to capture her mouth. He had made his point without the gesture, and he was sure it would have done more harm than good. Still, of all the ways he had dealt with tension between himself and Jaina, and there had been plenty of times for that, yelling at her certainly wasn't his favourite.

As he made his way back into the hangar, Jag allowed himself a moment of pointless speculation. What if, he wondered, Jaina had gone home with him after the war? What if they had had the chance to test their relationship in peace time without a galaxy's worth of separation? What if they had married? He pondered whether it would have worked out, whether they would be inseparable like his parents or the Solos, or whether they would have fallen apart regardless during the Killik mess. Would he still be estranged from everyone he loved, or would he and Jaina be spending holidays on Csillia, bringing their children to visit his parents?

He sat down on the Millenium Falcon's docking ramp, peeling off layers of kit, reminding himself to focus on a different female Jedi, the one they were hunting. If he continued to drift off into reminiscences and what-ifs, he would end up getting them both killed.