CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Crying hadn't helped. Nor had beating her forehead against the cool metallic plane of the lone desk in the room. Jaina was still alone, stuncuffed in a small dank cell, and cut off from the Force.

"They had to bring the ysalmiri," she muttered.

Jaina flipped her head up, her loose scraggly hair flipping away from her eyes, then used the heel of her hands to wipe the streaks of tears from her cheeks. She didn't cry for herself. Stuncuffs, prisons, being held against her will – those were all necessary evils of being Jaina Solo. What drove her to the edge of reason was the not knowing. Not knowing where Jag was. Not knowing what they were doing to treat him. Not knowing if she might make a difference.

And most importantly, not knowing if she'd ever be able to tell him –

Jaina jumped from the chair she had been unceremoniously plopped in, sending it toppling over. She howled in rage and kicked the table's legs for good measure. Frustration had led to anger, and ultimately rage. A tantrum ensued.

Storming. Stomping. Shouting about Chiss-Alliance relations. Threatening to sic her father on them all. It may have been a futile act, but the display at least gave her pent up emotions somewhere to go. And she was positive someone was watching. So she gave them quite a show, from one corner of the small room to the next until…

She hesitated only for a split second, then continued on with her rant, circling around to go back to that same spot.

No, she hadn't been mistaken. There, like a familiar glowing warmth, she found the breath of the Force. Unlike the arrangement on the Shadow, the Chiss had failed to overlap the ysalamiri Force-voiding bubbles properly. That left one small section of the room open to the Force, and left one ray of sunshine in Jaina's bleak imprisonment.

Now to end the drama without raising the Chiss' suspicion.

With a flourish, she threw herself down to the floor, landing in a cross-legged slouch. Her head bent over, her bound hands in the crook of her legs, as if she were spent. Jaina bobbed her shoulders softly a couple times for good measure, but on the inside she was smiling. She let the Force flood into her, filling all the empty places in her heart and soul, drinking it in like a parched Tatooine traveler.

With relative ease she visualized the stuncuff mechanism, tricked the locking mechanism into believing it has received the proper code. Electrons flashed and powered an invisible lead she could only see in her mind's eye, then – click – the cuffs sprung open.

Rehhh-rwooooorsh.

The opening door caught her by surprise initially. Jaina's Force perception was limited to the small space around her. Beyond that she felt nothing, and so she had not known someone was coming. But the Force filled her with peace and clarity of mind. She allowed that initial start to mimic yet another bob of her shoulders. Keeping her head down, she fiddled with the cuffs so they appeared locked and waited.

"Knight Solo, you are to come with us."

Slowly, Jaina lifted her face, her displeasure plainly evident. The Chiss captain from the Shadow stood stiff-legged and at the ready just inside the door. Two armed guards flanked him. The captain regarded her for a moment, then tipped his head in her direction. The guards moved with graceful precision toward Jaina. Still she waited.

The captain wasn't taking any chances, though. As the guards moved into position to help Jaina to her feet, he leveled his charric at her. With a hand on either elbow, Jaina found herself being hoisted up.

"Remove her restraints," the captain said.

Jaina grinned at the tall, officious Chiss. "You mean these?" With a simple thought, the stuncuffs dropped to the floor.

Both guards and the captain leapt into action. In the blink of an eye, Jaina was looking down the barrel of three deadly weapons…set to stun.

She walked forward, her hands held up at chest level. "Listen, you obviously have orders to not hurt me. And I have no desire to hurt you." Jaina stopped toe to toe with the taller Chiss captain, his weapon pointed directly at her chest. "I just want to see Ja- Ambassador Fel."

The captain twirled his weapon and deposited it smoothly into its holster. "Come with me," he clipped before spinning on his heel and striding out of the small room.

Jaina had to jog to keep up. There were a million questions chasing each other around in her mind, yet they found no voice as the Force began to whisper to her in greater and greater detail. As the two guards flanked her, and Jaina tailed the fast-walking captain, she realized more truth from her surroundings. Initially Jag was merely a glimmer with no direction or truth, like a wavering landing beacon in a foggy nighttime sky. But soon, as they wound through the destroyer's barren halls, she recognized the infirmary ward. It was there she began to feel the truth that was Jag.

Her feet faltered momentarily. Where there had always been a steady calm energy, she felt only a dim thread of light – and life.

"Oh no," Jaina sobbed, then broke into a run.

The Chiss captain may have tried to stop her, but Jaina was unstoppable. There was only her and Jag left in her galaxy. Jag and Jaina. Nothing else.

No fears of failure. No concern over making her mother's mistakes. No Jedi duty. No Chiss honor. No war or conflict. No Vikova or Iliana or Achebians.

Just Jag. And she found him without thought, barreling into medroom on a wave of panic. Then skid to a stop.

Jaina's hand found her heart, and a whimper escaped her lips. Lying on the lone medbunk, intertwined with tangles of wires and lines, Jag looked the picture of death. A fateful vision flashed through her mind of poor, darling Anakin as he rested on his funeral pyre. She felt sick and heavy, weighed down by emotions too powerful to bear.

The captain marched to Jaina's side. "I apologize, General –"

Only when the tall, dark stranger motioned the captain away did Jaina notice him in the shadowy corner of the room. "That will be all, Captain."

The clip of heels was followed by a sharp bow. A few seconds later, there was just Jaina and the stranger…and Jag.

Jaina ignored the man, and went to Jag's bedside. Reaching for him, with her heart and hand, she sensed the trauma inflicted upon his body during their struggle on the Shadow. If it had come to this…if it had come to this for their love to be complete, then maybe it was all wrong? Still she could do nothing less than twine her fingers around his cold hands and hold on for dear life. Jaina was not a healer; Jacen was. Yet she poured every bit of Jedi knowledge into the act of keeping Jag in her life.

Drawing the closest hand to her, Jaina bent and laid her lips upon it, and remembered words said to her long ago. "Come back to me, Jag."

A lone tear traced her cheeks, paused on her lip, then plummeted to their clasped hands. Jaina felt the chill of it and shivered.

"Do you love him?"

The question came out of the shadows, issued with the gravest of tones. There was truth and clarity to the question as if the Force had asked to see the sincerity of her heart, asked her to look where most dare not. But the voice was real, the stranger's. He moved from the corner, drawing closer like a cowled specter. And despite her wide-eyed dread, he was nothing more than a man.

A big man. An imposing man. A man who knew no fear, yet he was afraid.

Then she noticed the limp, and the eye patch. It all made sense.

His one-eyed stare focused down, to where her hand linked with Jag's. "Jagged is a fighter. He was always the fighter. But this may all be too…much."

"No," Jaina hissed defiantly. "Not after all we've been through. Not over this."

"This? The mission?"

Jaina hesitated. No he couldn't know. How could he? No one knew what Jag had done, and because she had been too selfish to just love Jag like he had always deserved. Now he might die for it…

She was unworthy, and too ashamed to admit it to Jag's father. He might chase her from the room in Jag's final moments. So she mustered a meek nod of the head and went back to staring at Jag's lifeless hand, begging it to move a finger, praying for some respite from the Force.

At that moment Jaina would have sold her soul to the Corellian hells so that Jag could live.

"I am not one to put much stake in ancient religions and unseen myths."

Jaina looked up into the eye of the man who fathered Jag, the man who rivaled her own father. "You sound like my dad…"

Jag's father stiffened.

"…a long time ago," she finished with a half-hearted turn of her mouth.

"Well if your aunt is any testament to the power of the Force," he muttered.

"Sometimes, we think she is the Force," Jaina countered.

"I have heard tale that Jedi can use their powers to heal?" Jag's father asked the question, but it came out like a prayer. Prayer, faith, hope. He hoped she could save this battered body.

Could she? She nodded. "I can try…"

Jaina bit her lower lip until it bled. She could hear her uncle doing his horrible impersonation of a little green troll – who had been the greatest Jedi ever? A troll? – Do or do not. There is no try.

In this instance, she supposed that was right. If Jag were to die…

"What do you need?" he asked. "What can I do?"

She didn't know what to say. Jaina glanced up to meet the steely brown eye of the Empire's most feared fighter pilot. She looked into the soul of the man who had faced death over and over without so much as a safety suit or shields to protect his life and limb. She looked into the same eyes that now exhibited fear – not for his own being but for the man they both loved to the depths of their souls.

And she simply said, "Believe."

Jaina shut her eyes, and took a long breath, taking in the power of the Force, drawing into her. As that breath left her lungs, she became part of Jag and he part of her, indelibly linked.

Until death do us part.