carry you in my heart
Summary: Did I love you all the time? I don't know. OneShot – Jaina, Jag. A dialogue.
Warning: Dialogue. The first fanfic I ever wrote was written in this style. For once, I'll return to it.
Set: Legacy of the Force/Fate of the Jedi, with spoilers for Fate of the Jedi – Ascension.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
A/N: Christmas 2012. Have a wonderful time!
Across time and space
You never asked.
It's so like you – so stubborn, so stick-up-the-ass, I remember Jacen calling you that when we first met. I also remember you marching through the rows of diplomats and politicians without looking left or right in order to greet me first. So many years ago, Jag – so much time. So much has happened. And we're still here.
I've done many things in my life I'm not proud of.
I know, I know. You'll say they were necessary. Still, I wake up at night and ask myself if they really were. Did Anakin have to die? Did Jacen have to turn? Did he have to kill Aunt Mara? That's not the hard part, though. The hardest part comes where my own decisions are involved. The Dark Nest, the Dark Side, my role as Sword of the Jedi. Did I choose right? Did I decide wisely? Did I follow the right path? Will I ever know?
The sadness, the fear and the doubts – will they ever disappear?
You never asked. But it is there, in the back of your mind. I can see it. You still wonder about it, long to ask it – and I still have no answer. Maybe there is none. Maybe I just don't have it. But, Jag. Is it important?
It is.
Did I always love you? There was a time when you were everything to me, a time in which I would have gladly forsaken everything I was and would be in order to follow you to the end of the known galaxy. Farther, even. There was a time when you were the sun of my universe. You are infuriating, Jag, always were and still are. But at that time, you were all I wanted. All I ever thought I could need. That time – three wars and two brothers and many, many lives ago – seems so far away today, doesn't it? And somewhere on the way it broke. I left you to die – but you did the same, Jag, you left me and went on without looking back. Don't ever tell me I was the one who was at fault. We both were. You know that. It is not the question who sacrificed more. You lost your family, your status, your inheritance. I lost both my brothers and my aunt. What did we win? You are head of the Imperial Remnant. I am a Jedi, nothing less, but nothing more, either. I am thirty-something and I still wake up and wonder where my brother went, why he left without leaving a note. I still pilot the Shadow and hear Mara's voice. I still look at my mother and see the woman I always yearned for when all I could do was hate her, a childish, naïve anger for all the things she accomplished as a politician and princess and all the things she failed to do as a mother.
So much has changed and so little.
Did I always love you? There was a time when I didn't care, or perhaps didn't think. Maybe there still was love for you left deep inside me. Perhaps that was the reason I didn't shoot to kill. But do you believe in feelings like that? I know you don't. There were other things, Jag, other people in my life. We lived differently, aged differently, and there are many things we did that the other never would have done. Perhaps, if it hadn't turned out the way it has, we would never have met again. Nothing would have happened, nothing would have changed. Perhaps you would still be on your way, hunting down crazy Jedi, and I would still be flying missions with Zekk or some other Jedi. Looking back, yesterday seems so clear to me. Yesterday I didn't love you enough. Today I do, more than ever. It is the in between that is dangerous, a treacherous Kessel Run full of gravity wells and space trash. It is the in between that scares me, those years of doubting and pining and wondering, wishing and fearing. Did I choose you because Zekk didn't choose me? Did I decide to love you because there was no one left for me? Did I say I love you because suddenly, Zekk wasn't there anymore, because I felt lonely and betrayed? Did I feel like the decision had been made for me, had been taken from my hands? I had no other choice than to relent. Did I choose you in order to wake his jealousy? Or did I return because the spark of love I always had for you had rekindled somehow?
I don't care what people think, and especially don't care what they think about me. But your opinion matters, Jag. It really does. And whatever might happen – if I return my engagement ring a second time or leave without saying anything or even die suddenly – you have to know one thing only.
I love you.
No matter what was and what will come. I don't care for gifts and presents, Moffs and Chief of States. I don't care for honeymoon trips and holidays or for dinners consisting of sixteen dishes. I am Jaina Solo, daughter of Leia Organa Solo and Han Solo, sister to two dead brothers, niece to Luke Skywalker. The Trickster Goddess. Sword of the Jedi, fighter pilot, piloting ace. Jedi Knight. And I love you. I can never give you a perfect home or a perfect family or a perfect life. My own home, family and life have been far too warped to try to get anything out of it. But it does not matter.
You may believe whatever you want. But believe me this one time, please. Know that in the end, my love for you was greater than all the little, broken and shattered pieces of the person who claims to be Jaina Solo. I loved you once and I love you now. I learned to compromise, don't you think? I'm a Jedi and the fiancée of the most powerful man of the Imperial Remnant. And I love you.
And, by the way, I think I do really want this wedding.
Love comes quietly
It is a lonely thing, a love across universes.
I miss you most when I know where you are. I can look up the schedule of a public transport shuttle, I can calculate how long it would take me to reach the far-off planet the Jedi and you use as a hide-out. I can plan on what to take and what to leave. And then I can tell Ashik I'm gone for a week, can divert all the work to my office assistants and leave the head-quarter, take the shuttle and join you wherever you are.
Except that I can't, for reasons we both know too well.
Duty.
Loyalty.
The Remnant.
The Chiss, too, now that they have decided to step in.
The Jedi and Abeloth and the trouble you're in up to your ears.
It is better not knowing. We decided on the rule and I am glad we have. But sometimes, I want to send all rules to hell if that means I can see you, can hear you and feel you and hold you, and I would gladly abandon everything I am and represent for a few hours with you. And again, it is not an option that is free for us, nothing we could ever do. Because for the people we are.
Because for whom I am and you are.
You are a crazy woman, Jaina. I knew right off the moment we met for the first time that you were trouble, both for me and for what I stand for. I also knew you looked radiant over the lights of that diplomatic event, and that you had just busted a few of my most skilled pilots in simulations over and over again. I knew I had to get to know you. There were few occasions when I regretted it.
Jaina, my Jaina, Trickster Goddess, Sword of the Jedi. Half-Bounty-Hunter. There is so much you are, so many facets of you I only got to know over the years. I never would have thought I would learn to love you the same way I learned to hate you and to love you, again. It was easy. All of it, as natural as breathing. Despite the pain and the loss and the loneliness, and despite being so close to you but never close enough for the last years. There is something in you that makes me feel towards you with an intensity I have seldom experienced before, something my people have trained themselves not to feel. We don't hate, we don't love, we don't do emotional. It is exactly what you make me feel like. And, while I know my emotions and with them, you, were a reason why my life turned out the way it has, I wouldn't trade them for anything.
You never asked me for forgiveness. You know there is nothing to forgive, even if you feel like there is. I know you, Jaina. You look at me with those eyes that betray every thought of yours. Full of questions, full of guilt, and then I have to distract you in order to make those thoughts go away. I love you most when you look at me without that guilt. Maybe it's your upbringing that makes you doubt so much. Don't doubt me.
Not knowing where you are makes me long for you, but not in the way it would if I knew where you were exactly. I told you saying good-bye had become easier over the time, the day you left with Grand Master Skywalker and the Jedi to confront Ship and Abeloth. It wasn't a lie. Watching you leave has become easier over the years, maybe because you now turn back to look at me one last time before you disappear. Maybe it is because we are older, or perhaps we're developing this strange sense for each other your parents seem to share. Whatever it is, it helps me to get by. It doesn't mean, however, that I have to like it. Watching you walk away from me, Jaina, is the most horrible thing I can imagine. I wake up dreaming you leave me again – for the Dark Nest, for Zekk, for the Order and your family. I tell myself I am part of your family over and over again but at night logic has no power over emotions. Then I reason that if you leave me it was because you were forced to. And then I know that I would come for you – I'd find you wherever you have gone, wherever you have been taken. Because when it comes to such things, all my titles and honors and loyalties don't count a thing. I figure it's not exactly what the Moffs expected when they agreed to have me as head of state. Screw the Moffs. You chose me, Jaina, me, and I will always choose you over everything else. I watched you walk away far too often. It won't happen another time. I won't let you.
Ah, but this is easily said, isn't it?
I intend to keep this promise.
Where are you now? I imagine you and your Jedi are on Abeloth's heels, somewhere on a world filled with darkness I cannot see but you can feel. I'm glad I don't know where, I might come after you. We're so much better together. We're so much less perfect apart. But you are brilliant on your own, a shining star, and I know you will do anything it takes to come back. Sword of the Jedi. Your title mocks me, like the words that accompanied your elevation. Perhaps it would be easier to love you if you were only a plain Jedi, or perhaps not even a Jedi at all. If you were stripped of title, rank and name you would still be the woman I love. But all of this – your title as Sword of the Jedi, your power, your name – they are parts of you. Not having those things would mean you would be someone else. And I don't want anyone else – I want you.
The stars shine brightly tonight. I wish you were here.