Chapter 24,

Tell Me Something Good

Part 2

30 ABY

Occupied Coruscant/Yuuzhan'tar

2.5 years after the 'Fall of Coruscant'

Anakin had been right when he'd said that there would be curious Jedi listening to his conversation with Luke. Unfortunately, they'd walked far enough away during their patrol that Jacen hadn't been able to hear most of that conversation. He had heard the tail end of it though, and had been surprised by both what his little brother had said, and by the conviction with which he'd said it.

He'd never have thought Anakin would have been so convinced that the Dark Side was something to fear. Jacen had also found it curious that Anakin hadn't mentioned him or Will when he'd warned Luke about the Dark Side. He'd mentioned Ben and Mara, and Tahiri and Jaina, but not Jacen or Will.

Jacen sat up as Luke approached, "Hey, everything was quiet I assume?"

Luke nodded. "Yeah, should be for you and Jaina as well."

Jacen unzipped his sleeping bag and reached for his boots. "Why don't you get some sleep? I'll get Jaina up."

"Okay. If we're not all awake in two hours get us up. We should head out about 0700."

Jacen nodded and watched as Luke headed over to Mara, waited until his uncle had settled in and then reached out with the Force to make sure Luke was asleep. It didn't take long. Luke was famous within the family for being able to go from wide awake to out cold in under three minutes.

Next he felt for Jaina. When he was sure she was still sleeping he reached for Anakin.

His brother was doing another healing trance, oblivious to all around him.

Confident that the coast was clear and that he wasn't going to get caught, Jacen stood up and made his way over to Anakin and Tahiri, then bent down and placed his hand on Tahiri's shoulder and whispered, "Forty-two."

Tahiri's eyes shot open instantly and she was sitting up with a lightsaber in her hand a second later, her other hand braced on Jacen's chest, a quizzical look in her eyes.

"What's going on?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. It's our turn to patrol."

"I thought Jaina was going out with you."

There was no question that Tahiri was suspicious, and Jacen knew that shielding his intentions was probably pointless, but he stuck to the lie he'd planned on using anyway and hoped she'd go along with it.

"She patrolled earlier with Mara - they decided to give you longer to rest, so it's you and me now."

He held her gaze, and was relieved when she just nodded, though he could tell that she didn't believe him.

Tahiri turned toward Anakin, brushed his hair off his forehead, leaned down and kissed him, then reached for her boots and pulled them on before standing up. She grabbed her equipment belt from the pile of weapons at the foot of her and Anakin's bed, and was fastening it on as she headed off away from the camp ahead of Jacen.

They'd been walking quietly for a good ten minutes and Jacen was a little surprised that she'd remained so, given her reputation for talking, when she finally spoke.

"How about we end this awkward silence and, while we're at it, forego any crap. You obviously have something to say to me given the fact that you lied to get me alone, so how about you spit it out before I die of curiosity."

"You don't mince words do you?"

"I try not to. It's a waste of time."

"Right. So, uhm… this morning…"

"What about it?"

"I owe you a thank you."

Tahiri shrugged. "You don't owe me anything, contrary to what Anakin says."

"Well, I feel like I do, whether he says so or not."

"Don't worry about it."

"I'm not worried about it."

"You would have done the same thing. Or not."

"Well, yeah, I guess, but I wanted to thank you anyway."

"Forget it."

"You saved my life. Not something to just forget. And, as Anakin pointed out; it wasn't the first time."

"Whatever. You thanked me earlier. You didn't need to lie to get me alone so you could thank me again."

"Actually, that wasn't all I wanted to do."

Tahiri whipped around and had the emitter of her lightsaber in Jacen's face instantly and growled, "I can take you."

Jacen's mouth fell open as he stared down at his sister-in-law before batting her hand away and saying, "You and my brother are a match made in Hell. It's just Kriff and Combat with you two, isn't it? Do you duel to decide who's going to change Will's diapers?"

Tahiri punched Jacen lightly in the stomach. "Sorry for misunderstanding. What precisely did you drag me out here to do?"

"Forgive me, I worded that badly. I wanted to talk to you about Hapes."

"I'd rather duel."

"How surprising."

"Maybe it's best to leave the past in the past."

"I think that would be a mistake."

"Fine, you dragged me out here in the middle of the night to say what?"

Jacen ran a hand through his hair and sighed heavily. "I haven't liked you for a long time."

Tahiri rolled her eyes and turned to begin walking again. "Yeah, you're right, dredging it up and reminding me that you hate me would be so much more fun."

"That isn't what I wanted to do either."

"Well starting off by reminding me that you don't like me is a little misleading then. And by the way, I haven't liked you either."

"I'm well aware of that."

"So now that we've reestablished that we don't like each other, can we drop it?"

"No, and if you'd keep your mouth shut for like three minutes while I get out what I want to say you'll see that I actually have a point to make."

"Other than the fact that you hate me?"

"Yes."

"Fine. You have three minutes."

"Thank you. And just for the record, I haven't given Anakin enough credit for patience."

"Two minutes. I can't wait to see the look on your brother's face when he finds out you lied to get me alone so you could tell me you hate me."

"That's mature."

"I'm not the one who lied so I could tell you I don't like you."

"I didn't lie to tell you that. I lied to thank you and to tell you why I don't like you."

"That's… weird."

"You said you'd keep your mouth shut."

"Fine. Talk."

"Fine. I'm talking. I didn't like you because you pulled Anakin away from us."

"No I didn't."

"Tahiri…"

"Fine, but do you think you can walk and talk at the same time, we are supposed to be patrolling."

Jacen stifled the urge to smack her upside the head, then began walking, and when she stepped up beside him to follow suit he began again.

"I thought you pulled him away from us. I saw the pull you had on him and I could see that there would come a day when he would be all yours, he wouldn't be ours anymore, and I didn't like that. And I've spent years disliking you for that, and frankly, you made it easy to not like you, you sort of played into that really well. But I realize now that you didn't start it, it started with Sernpidal."

Jacen stopped talking and looked at Tahiri, and saw that he finally really had her attention, saw that she was finally really listening; so he kept going, both walking and talking again, with her keeping step beside him.

"We lost Anakin at Sernpidal. What you did was hold Anakin together. I mean, he held himself together for a while, long enough for me to be able to ignore that Sernpidal was what really caused us to lose him, or was the beginning of us losing him. Centerpoint was part of it too. But even after that, he still held himself together. Then you gave him what he needed to build himself back up, to be able to put Sernpidal and Centerpoint behind him, or, as much as anyone can put things like that behind them. But I didn't realize until just recently that that's what happened. So when we got to Hapes, I already had issues with you because I saw you as the one who had robbed me of that last year with my brother."

Tahiri stared at Jacen as they walked, and he could tell that she was dumbfounded.

"I knew what was going on between you and Anakin on the Venture, and some of the others figured it out on Eclipse, the younger Jedi, well, some of it. In fact we ran interference for you a few times. We figured nothing good would come of Kam or Corran walking in on you in the kitchen… or in a service elevator… or a maintenance closet… or an air duct off of the main meeting room… we should have let you get caught that time, you were just asking for it."

If the crux of what Jacen was trying to get out wasn't so serious, he might have felt sorry for Tahiri, or might have laughed as her embarrassment raged in the Force and she stopped walking to drop her face into her hands.

"Oh my stars…"

"Yeah, well… what else were we going to do? And Zekk and Ganner were having fun running bets on how far you two were actually going. I was the only one who realized you were having sex in the air duct, though how you managed it I'm not sure I want to know and I didn't see any reason for my brother to get busted. Anyway, I had no idea that you actually considered yourselves married. I knew that you were in a serious relationship, but I hoped it would eventually fizzle out. I prayed it would because I hated you so much. And a part of me was glad that he wasn't going to be around to be with you and Will, because I knew that we would never stand a chance of getting him back if we were competing against you and his baby. And then I felt guilty for that, which just fueled my anger at you.

"But I've realized that we aren't kids anymore, we're adults, and we all have our own lives to live and the only thing that my anger over not having my brother in my life has done is drive him farther away."

Tahiri shook her head in disgust. "It's taken you all these years to figure that out?"

"Well, in my defense, I'm sort of working with a handicap here; I grew up in a weird family."

"You'll get no argument from me there."

Jacen forgot his own argument for a minute and asked, "What do you mean?"

"Anakin wasn't exaggerating when he said that it took him months to convince me to marry him. I may have been young, but even at fifteen I had issues with your family. You do realize you're all spacey, don't you?"

"Well, yeah… I mean… I'm sort of beginning too."

"For Force sake Jacen, your grandfather was a mass murderer. Your mother and uncle were twins separated at birth and hidden from their mass-murdering father. That kind of stuff only happens in holo-dramas. Bad holo-dramas. Your father was a galactically wanted criminal. Your parents are insurrectionists, who are only alive, as opposed to not having been executed or serving life sentences on Kessel because their side won their war; your aunt was an Imperial assassin, and you're all Force freaks. Not the sort of family every girl dreams of marrying into."

"And yet you married into it. What does that say about you?"

"That I'm a sucker for a good kiss?"

"How would you know the difference? Who else have you kissed?"

"What do you know?"

"Oh, please. And besides, you're a Force freak just like the rest of us."

"Which is why I realized I'd better take Anakin up on his offer since my own status as a Force freak was probably going to limit my choices."

"You should be proud to be a Solo."

"I'm proud to be Anakin's wife. I'm proud to be Will's mother. The rest of you have sort of made careers out of making me miserable. But we've gotten off on a tangent. I'm dying to hear your take on how your family is crazy."

"I wasn't going to say crazy. I was just going to say that most families aren't all in each other's business the way ours is. I'm not sure most brothers and sisters are always together the way Mom and Luke are. I think that's sort of… maybe… not normal. I mean, taking a vacation together and spending holidays together, that seems to be the norm… doing everything together, working together every single day, not eating a meal without the other, not making a decision or going to the 'fresher without the other knowing… it's sort of creepy, isn't it?"

Tahiri chuckled at that. "Well, given that I'm an orphan, you might be asking the wrong person. I'm sort of at the other end of the spectrum."

Jacen smiled and nodded his head a little. "Maybe. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think maybe I've had unrealistic expectations of always having my siblings with me, especially having a twin, and that expectation was sort of kriffed with by what happened at Sernpidal, but I didn't realize it until later, and I didn't want to blame Dad for contributing to the situation by how he treated Anakin, so it was easier for me to blame you for pulling Anakin away. And then after Centerpoint, I didn't want to take the blame for driving Anakin even further away. And then with our different views of the Force, I didn't want to take the blame for that driving the wedge deeper. Does that make sense?"

"I guess. I never thought of it that way. Since you and Anakin didn't spend much time together at the Academy my relationship with him was always very separate from his relationships with all of you. And he didn't talk about Sernpidal or Centerpoint much, as I'm sure you can imagine. Even now, it's still hard for him. And after Yag' Dhul Anakin and I were pretty wrapped up in ourselves."

"And you two never wondered why I disliked you?"

"By that point you and Anakin were having such issues that we just assumed it was an extension of that, and obviously we were right."

"Yeah. So, when we got to Hapes, and you blamed me for his not coming back, and I was already feeling so guilty about it, it was really easy to lash out at you. And then when Mom blamed you, it was easy to latch onto that, to convince myself that it really was your fault, that if you hadn't told Anakin about Will... and then with everything you said to us…"

"We all said a lot of things that we shouldn't have."

"Yeah... You have a mouth on you like a spacer though. Where did you learn to talk like that? We went to the same school and I didn't learn to talk like that."

"I read a lot."

"What were you reading? Stars, Tahiri. I'd never even heard of some of the names you called me."

"I'm imaginative."

"I guess. And you kiss my brother with that mouth?"

Tahiri gave Jacen a wide grin. "All day long." But then she grew serious again. "He hates it though. I'd be in so much trouble if I ever talked like that in front of him. I'm not even allowed to say 'kriff'."

"Good, it's not very ladylike."

"Well, I've never claimed to be a princess."

"That's how he sees you though. He thinks you're perfect."

"Hardly. He's painfully aware of all my faults. If you ask him, I'm sure he'll list them for you. In aurebeshic order."

"That's not what I mean. Yes, he's aware of your faults, but he's able to see past them, and sees the ways in which you are perfect, for him anyway, and he adores you."

"It goes both ways."

"I know. I see that now. And I see how hard you've both worked. I never gave you guys credit for how seriously you take your relationship. I guess because you were so young, and I was older, and I wasn't in a place where I would have been able to take a relationship that seriously, I assumed that you weren't able to either, then I judged you two based on how I would have dealt with it."

"That's understandable. And to be honest, we didn't have the faintest idea of what we were doing back then. We thought we did at the time, we thought we understood the magnitude of what we were doing, but we look back on it now and laugh at ourselves. And I'm sure in five years, we'll look back and laugh at ourselves now."

"If you're able to say that, maybe you won't."

"I guess time will tell. And, I think as far as taking it seriously, or understanding it, the most important thing is that we are each other's best friend. That hasn't changed since we were children. Hopefully that will never change. Even when we split up, the hardest part of that time for both of us was that when we were both so bruised and lonely and scared the one thing we both needed most was our best friend. And afterwards, when I told him about Hapes, and we split up the second time, when he came back, well, he came back home almost everyday and then left again, but the reason he kept coming back was because he needed his best friend, and yet what hurt him the most was the fact that his best friend had said all the things to his family that I said, if that makes any sense."

"I think I get it. The level of trust is different."

"Sort of. He could almost understand how, as his wife, I said some of the things I said, but as his best friend, the person he'd shared all the things he had with, for all those years, things he felt about your family, as his best friend, I shouldn't have betrayed his trust like that. It was sort of a double betrayal and that's what caused the most damage and what we've had to work the hardest to rebuild."

"How long did it take?"

"We're still working on it. It will never be the same. It may be as strong again, it may even be stronger one day, but it will never be what it was. What we lost is gone forever because there was an innocence to it that we can never recapture. We're adults now. We'll never be children again, and what was done can never be undone, it can only be learned from."

"Wow. You want to be my therapist?"

"No, but I'm sure Dr. Abay can make a good recommendation."

"He wouldn't want to be my therapist either?"

"Conflict of interest. We've devoted far too many hours in his office to Anakin's relationship with you for him to be able to take you on as a patient."

"Really? Anakin has talked about me with his therapist?"

"Are you kidding? Do you realize how much the issues between you two hurts him? You're his big brother. It kills him that you two don't get along."

"I just assumed he thought I was a self-righteous ass and could care less whether I lived or not."

"Well, half of that is right. But ask yourself this; why would this relationship matter so much to you and not to him? You've just spent an hour explaining to me why you've hated me for stealing your brother away. Obviously you love him deeply or you wouldn't have cared that I 'took' him. Why would you think that you mean any less to him? He would love to get along with you."

"But not enough to change the way he does things."

"Would you want him to? Really? Would you want him to be anyone other than who he is?"

Jacen sighed heavily. "I don't know."

"No? Anakin's best quality is his goodness. The very core of his being is his goodness, and it's beautiful, and everything he does, everything he is, stems from that goodness. Even with all of your differences, I know you see that."

"Maybe."

"He sees it in you. As angry as he gets with you, he sees that same goodness in you. It's why it keeps breaking his heart that things are the way they are between you two. Because he sees that goodness and he can't figure out why it's there and he's not on the receiving end of it." Tahiri closed her eyes and a peaceful smile spread across her face before she spoke again. "Speak of the Sith… time to stop talking about him, here he comes."

A rustling sound came from a couple of trees and Anakin appeared from behind them.

"That's right, no more spilling secrets," Anakin said as he made his way to where Tahiri and Jacen had stopped walking. "I came to make sure I still had a wife and a brother. Either one of you could have buried the body by now."

Jacen rolled his eyes. "Now who isn't funny?"

Anakin chuckled as he stepped up behind Tahiri and wrapped his arms around her waist. He leaned his chin on her shoulder and kissed her cheek, and whispered; "Hi."

"Hi. Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Came out of my trance and it's hard to sleep without my favorite pillow," he answered as he sat down, pulling Tahiri with him onto his lap.

Jacen sat opposite them, studying his brother. If Anakin knew that Jacen had lied to get Tahiri alone he didn't seem upset, not overtly, and the fact that the conversation with Tahiri had ended well gave Jacen hope that Anakin wouldn't take a lightsaber to him for his deception.

"Everyone else is waking up anyway," Anakin continued, as he rested his face in Tahiri's neck. "Do Yuuzhan Vong really not need to sleep much? Huane said she's been up for an hour already."

Jacen watched Tahiri snuggled into his brother and sighed. "Not much. The shaping wreaked all kinds of havoc on my sleep cycles."

"And all this time I thought I was the one wreaking havoc on your sleep cycles back then."

"Hey," Jaina called, as she joined the group. "Thanks for covering my patrol, Tahiri. How was it?"

"Blissfully quiet," Jacen answered for her.

"If you don't count Jacen's inability to stop talking. And people say I don't shut up."

"She matched me word for word," Jacen countered.

Jaina eyed them both suspiciously. "So it wasn't a mistake to have you two patrol together? I'm grateful for the extra sleep, thanks for offering to go for me."

"We endured it," Jacen shrugged, hoping Tahiri wouldn't out him.

"It was fine, just don't expect us to do it again," Tahiri said, cocking an eyebrow at Jacen.

He grinned back at her and said, "Really, there's only so much I can take on one mission."

"What about me? As if the shaping wasn't enough torture for one war," Tahiri countered, and Jacen knew he was forgiven, at least a little.

Anakin chuckled and kissed the top of Tahiri's head. "How about a twenty-minute trance before we pack up and start our day?"

"Right here?"

"Yeah, I'll hold you while you do it."

"Sounds good. Just don't get grabby while I'm not awake to enjoy it."

"You're no fun."

Jaina rolled her eyes and muttered, "You two are insatiable," as she walked away.

"So we've been told," Anakin called after her. Then, he gazed into Tahiri's eyes, and smiled as her eyes rolled and her head fell against his chest and he cradled her to himself.

Jacen shook his head and asked, "She really can't do that on her own?"

"She can when she's at home with no distractions, but anywhere else, it's easier and quicker if I do it with her."

"Maybe if she'd kept training..."

"Maybe. So, did you work out what you were hoping to work out?"

"What do you…" but Jacen gave up trying to pretend he didn't know what Anakin was talking about when Anakin raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah, I think we worked it out."

"Good. I'm impressed. You guys almost looked like you were enjoying each other's company."

Jacen smiled, then looked at the ground for a second before looking back at Anakin and shrugging. "She's alright."

Anakin smiled back. "Yeah, I might even keep her."

"You should. She loves you, a lot."

"I love her too, a lot."

Jacen grew serious as he looked his brother in the eye. "I know Anakin, I know. I understand now. And I'm sorry it took me so long."

"Thank you."

Jacen nodded, then stood up. "You want some caf?"

"No, but she'll want some when she comes up."

"Okay, I'll get her some," Jacen said as he walked toward camp.