The slight shudder of a well-tuned hyperdrive exiting hyperspace dragged Jaina out of a light, but refreshing sleep, to be greeted by the glare of the twin suns, the sight of which caused her to both blink, as the cockpit automatically darkened, and took her on a whistle-stop tour of dozens of faces, most overlaid by a melancholy that reminded her they hadn't survived the Yuuzhan Vong war. After a moment, she shook off the thoughts, reminding herself that their deaths hadn't been in vain, then took the controls, aiming the maiden for a standard re-entry manoeuvre, flicking on the shields to absorb the inevitable heat and protect her crippled X-Wing during the manoeuvre.
On most planets, she'd have simply left the autopilot to handle things, but on Tatooine, she knew that was a sure-fire way to end up in a canyon five hundred klicks from the middle of nowhere, and so she stayed at the controls, and was surprised when a set of purposeful footsteps heralded Jiido entering the cockpit.
"Master Solo." He said, before taking the co-pilots seat. "Does Tahiri…" he broke off, and she was surprised to see the pureblood's cheeks turn a darker shade of red.
"Does she throw herself at every available humanoid male?" Jaina completed. "No, she doesn't. Aside from one incident about two years ago, she hasn't generally been interested in the physical side of love, or love generally. Her first boyfriend, my brother, was killed when she was fourteen. She never really got over it."
"I see." He replied, with a slight twitch of a facial tentacle, although Jaina was unable to tell what emotion that movement indicated. "So I'm the lucky one, am I?" he said, carefully keeping any possible sarcasm out of his voice.
"I believe so." Jaina replied with a smile. "I think you could find few better beings to develop an intimate relationship with. She'll defend you with her life, she'll stay true to you, and, more importantly, she almost certainly genuinely loves you."
"I hope she does. We both owe each other a life, and I hope we can find all of the common ground between us."
"Another thing, though," Jaina said, her voice suddenly turning more serious. "How many sith like you were there?"
"How do you mean?" he asked, confused by the two possible answers.
"I mean, in terms of the honourable, noble and not exactly evil."
"There were a few." He said. "The emperor's agents tried to hunt down and exterminate light-sider sith whenever they could, so it was rare to find one. I protected those I could, but… I didn't get to many in time."
"How many of you survived?"
"Of the various light-siders, I believe five or so made it to our tomb. Most of the rest capitulated to the Jedi order, but many others died."
She nodded, satisfied by the answers, then reached down to her belt. "I believe this belongs to you." She said, handing back his lightsaber, apparently untouched, but she wasn't surprised when he carefully pointed it away from both of them and the ship, before igniting the weapon.
Instead of the crimson blade he was expecting, the blade instead glowed a deep green.
"I thought I'd give you a weapon which reflects you, not the sith you present as."
"Thank you." He said, smiling. Through the force, Jaina could tell he meant it.
~0~
Ever since they'd returned from laying wreaths, Vestara had done little else other than sit at in the chair directly at Ben's bedside, alternately trying to meditate or just talking to him, telling him how much she loved, and how much she wanted him to recover so they could be together.
Luke, to her surprise, spent most of his time in a meditative trance, often floating several feet off the ground, and occasionally orbited by everything from his lightsaber, disassembled into a cloud of parts, to several spare chairs and the large pot plant from the corridor. Over the last day, she'd seen him totally disassemble it five or six times, then put it back together again, before repeating the process. His excuse for it was that he was having trouble with the focusing crystal de-aligning itself in use. She suspected it was a way to keep his mind occupied and avoid thinking about Ben.
Sometimes, she'd thought she felt Ben stir, or reach out to her mentally, but it was always a false sensation, which made it even worse.
She was also being tailed, unobtrusively, whenever she left the room, by a member of the hospital staff. It felt to her like over-caution, but she knew herself well enough that master Skywalker's obvious unwillingness to take a chance with her safety didn't rankle, or at least only did so slightly.
Behind the hospital was a airspeeder pad, which she established was rarely used. As it was a large, enclosed, clear space, she began to use it to practice her forms on, simply as a way to clear her mind of everything other than angles and speeds. Master Skywalker had found her lightsaber still clipped to her belt when he rescued her and Ben, and had given her a different crystal to use, replacing the artificial red gem with a natural, cool cyan crystal from somewhere in his belt. It was remarkably calming, and had also changed the resonance of her saber, making it sound slightly sharper, with a more rapid buzz than before.
All she could hope was that Ben would wake up.
~0~
When she finally dropped the maiden onto one of the enclosed pads at anchorhead spaceport, Jaina breathed a sigh of relief. The atmospheric flight had been as eventful as usual for Tatooine, with several flight-threatening bouts of turbulence and a near miss with a small sandstorm. There were also the entirely to be expected fresh pockmarks on the underside of the craft, courtesy of various Tusken tribes they'd overflown at two or three hundred feet, the customary altitude for anything airborne, although she suspected that her "instructor" had given her the height used to avoid local radar stations by independent traders.
Once they were fully down on the duracrete, and the maiden's flight systems had been closed down, Jaina popped the blastboat's personnel hatch, and the four passengers disembarked. Jaina negotiated the landing fee, while Jiido just looked at the first thug to wander over and suggest that maybe he'd like to give him some money to ensure nothing 'happened' to the ship while it was docked. After a ten second dose of sith lord no.1 glare, the man turned away, before sauntering away as if it had been an enquiry about customs or the weather.
He was somewhat betrayed by the large damp patch on his trousers, immediately below his crotch. Jiido, and admittedly, Jag and Tahiri, stifled a chuckling fit at the way the man had almost lost any residual bladder control at the frankly savage glare he'd received.
The speeder hire counter would normally have hosted several more such thugs, but news had clearly travelled fast, and the room was deserted other than for a slightly nervous clerk, who was waiting with the keys to a large, highly comfortable speeder that looked vaguely like it had been "recovered" from Jabba's palace years before. It certainly had the rear doors for that, but Jaina was amazed by the almost starfighter quality handling it displayed as she drifted it out of the speeder lot, sliding it sideways before hitting the power and cruising smoothly away down the street with the grace of a twee, a ponderous but still manoeuvrable starfighter used as a gunship by the alliance military.
When they arrived at the hospital, Jaina began issuing orders. "Jag, you go on ahead and tell Uncle Luke we're here. Jiido, take Tahiri and make sure she gets some happy pills, even though you can supply something equivalent whenever you want. I'll square this thing into the parking bays, and then come and join you in the ICU.
~0~
Even floating deep within the grip of the force, Luke's mind quickly picked out Jaina, Jag and Tahiri as soon as they came within a mile of the hospital, along with a fourth, remarkably powerful feeling presence which seemed totally foreign to him. What was even stranger was the tenderness flowing both ways between the new presence and Tahiri.
Ten minutes later, all four were in the hospital, and he could feel Jag, despite his relatively weak signature, drawing nearer to him, while jaina paused in reception, and Tahiri and the presence dropped down to the pharmacy. The shortness of the detour confirmed they were simply gathering some of the standing prescription of anti-depression meds Tahiri carried a signed, open ended prescription for.
Jag entered first, and simply came over to Luke, before just squeezing his shoulder and taking a seat, not recognising or caring about Vestara, who was seated next to Ben, just holding his hand gently.
Jaina, who was next into the room, wasn't so generous.
Vestara was jerked to her feet by a force grip around her neck, and her hands instinctively rose to contest it, meeting only air, as Jaina just squeezed, briefly, anger radiating from her, before releasing the overt pressure, allowing Vestara to breathe again.
"If you ever touch one of my family again, you sith harlot, I will track you down, wherever you hide, and kill you." Jaina hissed, punctuating her sentence with squeezes of the younger girls windpipe. "I don't care who or what I have to go through to get to you. You threw a kriffing thermal detonator at my parents and my niece. I don't care what self-serving, cowardly motives you claim, you tried to murder them, just to prove your loyalty to your precious allies, and save your own skin. You were willing to sacrifice a nine year old girl, just to save yourself." She wasn't bothering to hide her contempt or anger in the force, but was astonished when Vestara simply hung there, not doing anything to break her force grip, before she replied. "Kill me, then. You know I deserve it. I am responsible for more deaths than anyone else here, except Master Skywalker. Kill me!" She was almost begging, and that was what stayed Jaina's hand, preventing her closing her victim's windpipe.
"You deserve to die." Jaina continued, her voice dripping venom. "But maybe, one day, you will redeem yourself in some way. Until then, stay away from any member of my family." As said the final words, she pushed hard through the force, sending Vestara hammering into the wall, before she toppled to the floor and into a boneless heap.
