He's checking his messages one last time before bed, already up way too late from meetings. Jaina Fel has been absent from the last three council meetings, and he's worried. When he sees a communication from Han Solo, marked "urgent", Kyp forgets all thoughts of sleep.

There isn't much to it, just that the family is on Hapes and Kyp is needed there as fast as he can manage. It's already a few hours old. He's got his boots on before he's even realized he's out of the chair.

It's 0300 as he shoots a message to Luke that he's leaving and tosses his hastily-packed flightbag into the cockpit of his StealthX. It isn't far from Shedu Maad to Hapes, but it feels like he's got the galaxy to cross.

Briefly, he wonders why Han summoned him, not Luke. Spends a lot more time wondering if this is about Jaina.

Then he thinks, "Of course it is. Why else would Han comm me in the middle of the night?"

Kyp hasn't properly spoken to her since before she got married a little over a year ago. He's resigned himself to being fifty and still single, still stupidly in love with a married woman.

You're the one that dumped Thelia, he reminds himself.

But he hadn't loved Lia. Anyway, last he's heard, she's married herself, with a little one on the way. That could have been him, but he couldn't do that to her.

So now he finds himself running off in the middle of the night, potentially to the rescue of the one woman he can't have, all because he's an idiot who held back when he should have made a move.

It's a short series of jumps, only a few hours, but getting through the convoluted mess that is the Hapes cluster means he has to pay attention for every step. He's been awake well over a standard day by the time he exits hyperspace and hails Hapes Control for landing clearance.

He knows Han and Leia are frequent visitors to Hapes, practically living at the palace. The Queen Mother's heir, Allana, is their granddaughter. He can't imagine what's so urgent that Han had to summon him this way, and by this point, he's too tired to run through the possibilities too much.

Did something happen to Jaina? To Jag?

Kyp shoves that aside and lands his fighter not far from the Millennium Falcon. He's not exactly surprised to find Han Solo there, the ramp down and sounds of mechanical repair going on inside. Han stands by the ramp with Jaina's droid, Rowdy, wiping his hands on a cloth as he watches Kyp approach.

"You look like hell, kid," Han says finally.

"You said it was urgent," Kyp points out. "I haven't slept, and I'm not young enough to pull all-nighters anymore."

Han's hazel eyes pass over Kyp's greying hair and he shakes his head. "Sometimes I still see you as that obnoxious sixteen-year-old. You should have those of your own by now."

His friend knows very well why he doesn't. "Han. What was so urgent?"

A curse sounds from inside the ship, a voice Kyp would know anywhere. Han jerks his head towards it.

"I tracked down your missing council member," is all Han says.

Jaina's here, judging from the droid, her curses, and Han's remark. Arching a brow, Kyp pushes past him. He's tired, he's hungry, and he's irritated by whatever game Han is playing.

Han's voice stops him as he puts a foot down on the ramp. "Oh, and, uh, make sure you got your lightsaber. You might need it."

Baffled, Kyp checks for the weapon he knows is at his hip. Then he turns and boards the old freighter. Following the creative use of expletives, some of them in tongues he doesn't know, he finds Jaina upside down in the main cabin area, only her legs sticking out of the open hatch in the floor.

He crouches by the hatch. She hasn't noticed him, too busy yelling at the part she's fixing to hear his approach. In a lull between curses, he speaks.

"Need help?"

Jaina yelps and topples head-first into the compartment. Kyp laughs and peers over the edge at her, somewhat cautiously. A wrench nearly hits him in the head and he retreats.

After a minute, she picks herself up and stands, her head barely emerging from the compartment. Sometimes, he forgets how tiny she is. She glares at him, brandy-brown eyes flashing.

"What are you doing here?"

Kyp picks up the wrench she threw and holds it out. "You missed the last three council meetings, Master Fel."

Something goes through her eyes and she snatches the wrench hard enough to hurt. He flexes his fingers, frowning as she goes back to her repair. When a series of clangs erupt from the hole, he asks, "Are you fixing that or trying to beat it into submission?"

"Go away, Durron," she snarls.

"If I wanted my head bit off, I'd go play with Allana's nexu," he says mildly. "You ignored Luke's summons. You never do that."

She tells him in Huttese to perform physiologically impossible acts.

Kyp rolls his eyes, used to her brand of anger, and sits on the floor.

After a minute of more bangs and pounding, it stops. He hears the wrench fall to the floor. She's stopped inventing contortions for him to try. In fact, she's stopped speaking at all.

When he shifts to look down, he sees Jaina sitting on the floor of the compartment, hand pressed to her mouth, tears running down her cheeks. It takes him a second to realise her wedding ring is missing.

He realizes then that he's been set up.

Without a thought, he lowers himself over the edge and sits next to her.

"You wanna talk about it?" he asks gently.

"No."

"Okay."

They sit in silence for a while. Eventually, she stops crying, and it's only then that he dares take her hand, holding it up to examine her bare finger. He doesn't have to say anything, just run his fingertips over the empty space.

"I don't know why I thought I could make it work," she says, her voice raspy from her tirade against the hyperdrive. "I mean, we broke up twice after we got engaged, and even that took fifteen years of fighting before he asked."

"When did this happen?"

"Officially? Yesterday. Unofficially, it's been a few weeks."

Kyp let his head drop back against the wall. "Uh-huh."

"I just got tired of it," she whispers. "The bickering, everything. The Moffs Council wants him back. He wanted to move to Bastion."

"Did he start up with the 'leave the Jedi for me' stuff again?"

Silently, she nods.

"I'm sorry. I hoped that when he stepped down, it meant you two had worked that out."

"I thought we had." She withdraws her hand from his and lets out a shuddering sigh. "But I guess we were just too different. I run hot, he runs cold."

"For what it's worth, I hope you guys would make it last."

She snorts. "No, you didn't."

He tips his head, looking at her directly for the first time since she threw the wrench at his head. "I did. One of us should get that happy ending. You were the more likely candidate anyway. Besides . . ."

When he stops, she prompts, "What?"

"Your happiness has always been the more important thing to me. Even if it wasn't with me."

It's the first time he's ever spoken aloud of his feelings for her, after close to twenty years. It was just always silently acknowledged, after that awkward rooftop picnic on Borleias when she was nineteen.

She's thirty-six now, her own brief apprentice recently Knighted. He's proud of that fact, even if he didn't have a hand in training Ben Skywalker. He enjoys Jaina's successes. Most of them.

He doesn't take pleasure in this failure, contrary to what some would think. He hates to see her hurting.

"So what now?" he asks. "Is it over-over, or is it gonna drag out in an ugly mess . . .?"

Jaina exhales slowly. "It's over-over. Everything's filed away, all neat and tidy, as of yesterday afternoon. I . . . didn't even tell Mom and Dad about it until last night."

Then she narrows her eyes, shifting to look at him. "How did you know I was here? To get here from Shedu Maad, you had to leave last night."

There's no point in lying. It will only make her angry. "I left at 0300. Han said it was urgent."

She scoops the wrench off the floor and throws it with a frustrated yell. It bounces off the wall, richocets, and narrowly misses her head.

"That wrench sure likes skulls," he comments, smothering a laugh.

"ARGH! I'm going to strangle-" Jaina begins to stand, to go yell at her father.

Kyp gives in to the laugh, grabbing her hand to yank her back. "Jay. He was doing what a father does. He knew you needed a friend. One that, incidentally, is pretty used to taking your abuse. Couldn't be Zekk, obviously, Taryn would probably punch you for throwing a wrench at her husband."

With an explosive sigh, Jaina drops back down to sit beside him. "You're not my punching bag."

She leans her head against his shoulder, the first contact she's initiated in years. "I left him," she tells him. "All this time, I've been afraid of people leaving, and I'm the one that walked away."

"You can't fix something that's fundamentally broken."

"Do you mean me, or my marriage?"

"You're not broken, Jaina. You might have been banged up around the edges from time to time, but I've never seen you break."

"And you've been watching a long time. Creep."

It's said with humour and a nudge to his side. He gives her one back. She laughs. He gets the feeling, from the slightly surprised expression that comes over her, that she hasn't really laughed in a while.

"You and Jag tried. You tried long after I would have called it quits, and I'm almost the most stubborn man in existence," Kyp says.

"You're one to talk about letting go of things," she mutters. Jaina straightens, rubs the bare spot on her finger.

Kyp gives her another nudge. "I just have a lot more experience at trying too hard."

She reaches up and tugs at one of his silver-streaked black curls. "Yeah, you're really getting up there, aren't you?"

"I didn't start going grey until I took you as my apprentice. I got my first grey hair at thirty-three. Thirty-three! And it was your fault!"

"Oh, sure, blame me for lousy genetics." She gives the curl another pull.

He catches her hand, wraps his around it, holding it away from his hair. Her breath catches, just a little, and he almost misses it.

Almost.

There's suddenly too little air in their compartment. Kyp drops her hand as if burned, rattled by what that tiny hitch in her breathing does to him. He'd thought he was over that gut reaction by now, but apparently not. She quickly looks away, so he can't see her face, but if she didn't feel it, too, he'll kiss a Wookiee.

He clears his throat. "What are you going to do now?"

She takes a moment to reply. "Well, the first thing I'm doing is dropping 'Fel'. And then . . . I don't know. Pack up his things out of our quarters at the Temple and send them to Bastion."

"Or burn them."

Jaina laughs. "Or that."

"I've got a lighter, if you need one."

"I will keep that in mind."

Kyp stands, not without difficulty because they've been sitting there a while and his rear end is numb. He offers Jaina a hand up and she takes it.

"I'm still going to have a word with Dad about him tricking you into coming here," she says.

"He did what he needed to do."

"Yeah, but he didn't need to trick you."

He touches her shoulder when she turns to adjust the coupling on a bundle of wires. "I don't mind. You know I don't. It's not like he could just tell me what happened."

She sighs. "Yeah."

"You okay now? Not going to mangle the hyperdrive more?"

"I'm good. And Kyp?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

"Any time, Goddess."