Slipping
Summary: Her body might be healing, but what about her heart? Drabble- Jaina, and perhaps Leia, too. After the events of Invincible.
Warning: I do mean "Drabble" serious. Even though this means around 1000 words in my world.
Set: Post-Invincible. Jacen is dead.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
I am not letting go of you. We are not.
In the haze of pain and the numbness of the bacta tank, a voice whispers. Jaina blocks it out. She does not want to hear anything, anyone, does not want to see and hear and sense. She wants to float away on the waves that come and go, bringing and taking pain. Usually, healing trances leave her less conscious than this, but she does not care for an explanation.
Jacen is dead.
Her twin, her brother, her second half. Years and years of closeness, of learning and growing have connected them. They've fought together, watched others die. The pain for Ani is still sharp and ragged, doubled by the loss of Mara and Jacen. Even more so because, differently than Anakin, Jacen didn't go down heroic and lovable. He made her – no, hate is a grand word, and Jedi don't hate, anyway – he made her hurt. He lied and plotted and fought in a way that made it impossible for her to see anyone else in him than Darth Caedus, and then he spent his last breath saving his daughter. There is nothing heroic in him, the only thing left is the image of a pitiful, spent Dark Force-user, and still she grieves for him. Still, her heart feels like a part has been ripped out with a Wookie's claws. Jacen is dead, and she is the one who killed him. The Jedi in her insists that it had to be done. The sister she is bends in silent agony. If she never wakes again, it is fine with her. She can stay in this limbo forever, hurting and screaming without a sound, and at least she won't feel her parents' sad eyes and her uncle's hurt face.
We are not letting go of you, Jaina.
Mom.
Her mother's presence in the Force is unmistakable. There are others, but she refuses to notice them. She'd ignore her mother, too, but Leia's mind presses against hers with a strength that is remarkable.
You are not leaving us like that. We've already lost Jacen and Anakin. We refuse to lose you as well, Jaina.
If the Force was able to communicate clear words, they would probably have sounded like this. Instead, she feels warmth and love and despair, and an incredible draw.
Come back. Come back. Come back.
Pang.
The memories assault her, a speeder on collision course, and she has no way of defending herself. A small girl and a small boy, hovering over the edge of the table, curiously staring at the Holo that shows their uncle. The boy says something, the girl laughs. Pang. A child asleep in its bed, dark, unruly curls over a crunched-up face, flushed and sweaty. Shifting, as if ill, and a comforting, cool hand descends on its brow. The girl quiets and falls asleep again. Pang. The same girl, a bit older, in an apprentice's robes, proud and a bit afraid, and she waves from the hatch of a star yacht, the boy next to her in identical robes. Pang. The same girl holding a tiny boy, watching him in awe. Pang. The girl presenting her own light saber, flushed with excitement and pride. Pang. The girl in a X-Wing, concentrated and focused, a Kessel run and a high price and still a game, nothing more. Pang. The girl wearing star fighter uniform, uncomfortable and still proud. Pang. The girl in a red dress, beautiful, perhaps, but young and inexperienced in regard to her public duty even though she fights better than many grown men. Pang. The girl, but much older, her hair shaved and her head bald, and dark rings under her eyes. Pang. A girl, her face contorted with perhaps rage or fury or pain, and pang the same girl in a priceless dress in a palace and pang a girl holding hands with someone and pang the same girl in the midst of Joiners pang the small girl again, smiling up at a taller person, all the adoration and love in her face Jaina can feel in the Force right now. Pang, the girl is angry, she screams and fights. Pang. Asleep, her head on her arms, in front of a table full with metal junk. Pang. The girl talking to a boy who looks exactly like her, both of them laughing about a silly joke. Pang. The woman (because she is no girl anymore), more dead than alive, in the arms of a man who looks vaguely familiar, and she is bloody and in pain and more than a little delusional. The memory focusses on her face and she can see herself, and Jaina knows.
Pang.
One last time. The same girl-now-woman floating in a bacta tank, her hair in soft waves around her shoulders, her eyes closed. Her face is scrunched up in her own nightmares, her own memory. Jaina withdraws from them a bit, and the face relaxes. She takes hold of the memories again. The pain comes as hard as she has known it would and yet she does not let go. It's not her body that hurts. She is healing, slowly but surely. The pain she shoulders is the pain of her own heart, and her mother's, too, because in a way she never understood before she can suddenly understand her. Senator, Princess, Rebel, Head of State, Jedi. Leia Organa Solo has been many things in the course of her life but suddenly and with startling clarity Jaina understands that she always was her mother, first and foremost. There might have been days when she hated her, young and immature as she was. But she always was the person Jaina knew she could turn to. That she never had done so didn't change the fact and perhaps now, she would find the strength. Jacen was gone, and so was Anakin, and Jaina was the last Solo child left. The pain she endured probably was nothing compared to what her parents must feel, and yet it was equal. Because they were family. Suddenly, with Jacen and Anakin both gone, it was incredibly important to hold on to what she had left.
She'd always known she loved her parents. She only never had thought of it like this.
In her mind, the woman in the tank opens her eyes.
A/N: It's a mother-daughter thing.