CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Until death do us part.
The words echoed across the mists and pinpointed things her eyes could not see.
Death do us part.
Jaina paused somewhere in the foggy shroud and tried to track the words as they spirited past. Death? she wondered. Who's dead?
Do us part.
The soundless voice whisked over and through her, and Jaina spun. Seeking the source.
"Us?"
She was so confused. Lost. Adrift on a memory or a dream.
Us part.
Then she remembered something. She remembered who.
"Jag?"
His name ricocheted off nothing and everything. Imaginary and reality. Then disappeared into an unseen void that welcomed it inside.
Jaina took a step toward where her voice had last been.
"Jag?"
Jag. Jag. –ag. –ag.
Gone again. She took another step. More sure this time, and felt a familiar sensation. Like she was going home.
"Jag? Are you there?"
Of course he wasn't really there. Nor was she. For here was nowhere, yet somewhere.
Somewhere in the depths of his mind.
No. Not mind. His soul, his being, his essence.
"Jag, I'm here," she called, trying to hide the quiver.
This moment was more important than any other. This moment had been her fault, and if the outcome was anything other than…
She couldn't think of that; she couldn't live with that. This is all my fault. If only I had let myself feel. If only I had let myself love. If only I had told him.
She clenched a fist defiantly. "He doesn't deserve this."
"No. He doesn't."
Jaina would have screamed aloud from the shock of the male voice, save her Jedi reflexes that clapped her teeth shut just in time.
"Kriff, Anakin! I hate it when you sneak up on me."
The words had barely left her mouth when Jaina realized what she had said. Then all she could do was stand there, frozen in place, and stare at the embodiment of Anakin, as he had been once, a long time ago.
She tried to speak, but the words ran into the hand over her lips. With a concentrated effort Jaina willed her hand down. It flopped to her side, and what she had meant to say next was all but forgotten.
"What is it he doesn't deserve, Jay?" Anakin's words emanated in a swirl of light, a light that shown from the very depth of him.
"To be like this."
"Really? You sure you don't mean, you don't deserve him?" Now the light was part of Anakin, casting increasingly brighter and outward. It consumed the mist, burning the fog away with its power.
"Uh… I… No."
Anakin stared. He was so bright now, aglow with a fire that made everything appear in perfect clarity. His light cast off the shadows, yet somehow left her blinking and blind.
He was right. She hated that he was always right.
What good were little brothers? Except to be a royal pain in your –
He laughed. Anakin clutched his torso and laughed some more. He laughed at her. The radiance of his joy flared, chasing the last remnants of cloud away. They were left standing in a long angular hall, white walls and barren. They stood in an unfamiliar hall, and Anakin laughed at her.
Jaina giggled despite herself. "Bantha brains."
Anakin swallowed a chuckle. "Oh, come on. I was never that bad."
"Yes, you were." Jaina said, then tackled her brother in a loving embrace. She clutched him to her, head buried in his chest – When had he gotten so tall? – and whispered, "But I miss it every day."
"Do you miss Jag?"
"Every day."
"Except he's not –"
"Dead," she gasped.
Jaina watched her own lonely future flash out before her. It was one thing to be denied a loved one in death, another to deny oneself out of fear or insecurity. She had wanted to protect her future, her children, her career, and in the process had denied herself one of the things that was dearest to her. She had denied herself love. Not anyone else; not death, or fate, or circumstance.
A weak cry escaped her lips, and a tear dripped off her cheek onto Anakin's tunic. "I'm afraid."
"So?" Still in their embrace, Anakin's voice reverberated through her.
"Jag's not afraid of anything. Certainly not afraid to love. And I've given him so little in return." Jaina drew back, and stared up into Anakin's beautiful eyes. "He doesn't deserve that."
Her brother's smile faded a little, but there was only kindness in his expression as he said, "You are wrong, my dear sister."
With that he vanished, and all that was left was his voice. "Fear is the path to the dark side. It steals the truth."
"Anakin?" In a panic Jaina spun. Frantic. "Anakin!" Eyes darting. Head snapping side to side. "Don't leave me!"
"Find the truth, Jaina," he whispered from his unity in the Force. Anakin was gone, but he had not abandoned her. She held onto that, shut her eyes and called upon the peace and serenity she desired.
Breathe. In. Then out. Comfort in. Then anxiety out.
When she opened her eyes, Jaina noticed what had been left in Anakin's wake. The hall was not just a barren white hall, but rather a corridor of ice. She could feel its chill but it did not cool her. And along these icy walls, there were distinct openings.
Doorways. To what she had no idea.
But she imagined that if she were meant to find the truth, it would be behind one of these doors. Before Anakin's voice returned to admonish her again, Jaina drew herself up tall and braved a step forward. Somehow she knew this was the right direction. Possibly because she could find some balance now, balance that had been so remiss these last days without the Force. Maybe because she could sense Jag now, more clearly than ever.
Always the pragmatist, Jaina went about her search like anything she had done before. She began opening doors. The first revealed a room full of schematics, three-dimensional renderings spun in every nook and cranny, while flimsiplasts and even books were stacked neatly from wall to wall. Jaina wandered in to take a closer look. A clawcraft dominated the center, but a holo of an X-Wing sat evenly beside it. There were Supes and TIEs, Y-Wings and skips, every ship or fighter imaginable. She even paused to note renderings of the Falcon and Shadow, and next to them another ship she could not recall.
Jaina knew this wasn't her destination, so reluctantly she drew back. She could have stayed there forever. Yet that was only a desire to hide in familiarity, and nothing more.
The next room was lined with holoframes filled with every imaginable scene. Unlike the first room, this one's interior had nothing on the floor. Only the walls were decorated. Jaina couldn't help but look.
There were many different types of holocaptures, some bigger, some small. Most showed happy moments – what appeared to be a graduation ceremony with Jag among a unit of Chiss, his family throwing snowballs in a frozen field. Others showed sad moments – a casket draped with the CEDF flag, a downed clawcraft broken in two. What struck Jaina was the sheer number of memories saved, and with how much love they were preserved.
She continued deeper into the memory room, eventually finding a recollection of her. It was a small holoframe, holding a still-smaller image. The moment was their first encounter on the Tafanda Bay. As she journeyed onward she found even more captures sprinkled among the others, until finally Jaina stopped in place and realized that now almost every moment was of her alone.
One of those images sprang to life before her. A scene she had no memory of, at least not in this way. She was lying on a medbunk and Jag was at her side. Though he was a man of little emotion, there was not one she couldn't have read on his face. Despair. Pain. Grief. Hope.
"I love you, Jaina," he said. "Please come back to me."
It had been so easy for him to say. And she had missed the simplistic and beautiful truth of it.
The agony and desperation of his plea broke something in Jaina's heart. The torment was her own. She felt it cut through her like a knife, dissecting her heart in two.
Jaina sprinted from the room.
After that, she lost herself in a frenzied search. She flung open one door after another. She noted each particular grouping or ordered storage it represented, before rushing back out. None of them held what she sought. She didn't need little pieces of Jag. She simply needed Jag.
Jaina didn't stop, driven by some hidden, undeniable urge. She didn't stop until one door opened into not a room of ice walls and ordered containment, but rather chaos. It frightened her so horribly, she had no choice but to seek its truth. For this room was not Jag. It couldn't be.
After a few seconds she began to make some sense of the psychotic disorder. There were images swirling within a dark and dank environment. The floor was muggy, almost liquid; the walls dripped with brown ooze. The air was so hot and foul, Jaina almost backed away. Yet she could not.
Soon the images began to take shape. Some of them she recognized – the day she had almost been captured on Borleias, the Citadel's escape vessel blasting away from Coruscant in the final battle of the war. Others she could not recall, even though they were images of her – standing next to an indeterminate man, leaning up to kiss Kyp, lying lifeless beside a downed X-Wing, blasting Force lightning from her fingers.
Jaina stumbled, scrambling for purchase on the shifting ground. Almost falling, she collided with a memory, a memory of the moment she had rejected his overture on Zonama Sekot. The apparition consumed her and wrapped around her and drenched her in cold, unadulterated fear.
Somehow Jaina made it out of the room, and collapsed against the wall. Panting, she tried to find her balance again. There was nothing good about the currents of the Force emanating from that room. There was nothing in that room that Jaina could even conceive of as being part of Jag. But they were all truths – his truths.
In that moment, Jaina realized that these were more than just painful memories. These were Jag's fears.
Suddenly, she was running, running down the hall of ice and crying out.
"Jag! Jag!"
She turned a corner, demanding for him to hear her. "Jag! Come back to me! Please! Come back to me!"
Running past doors, Jaina simply knew each one was wrong too. They weren't really Jag, not his totality. That was what she had to find. So she ran down corridors of ice, squared and even, not an angle out of line. She ran around corners and bends, desperate for something other than smooth planes and occasional glimpses at parts of the man she loved. She ran until she could run no more.
Out of breath and lost in her despondency, Jaina slumped forward and laid her forehead against a wall. Then pounded her fist into it. Over and over.
"Kriff. Kriff. Kriff." She heaved a breath. "Please! All I want is Jag." She slammed her fist so hard something cracked. "Just Jag!" Again, crack! "Give! Me! Jag!"
But it wasn't her bones breaking – a screeching of shattering ice pierced the air. Jaina teetered and practically toppled forward. Where there had been a wall, there was no longer. The ice gave way, collapsing and disappearing into nothingness.
Left behind was a place green and alive and…beautiful beyond imagining.
Jaina stood in a field of grass that stretched as far as the eye could see. There were wildflowers and naniflys and blossoming katabushes. As she turned slowly in place, the scenery did not change. Everywhere the ice was gone, and all that remained was perfection. Jaina felt the sun on her shoulder, so she spun to face it, looking up to allow her face to absorb the warm rays.
This was Jag. She could feel him everywhere, even in the breeze.
"I dream of us here."
Jaina's eyes snapped open. Where the sun had been, Jag's green eyes stared down at her.
"I dream of us…together," he said.
Jaina looked to her right, and left. She smiled at the rightness of it.
"It's perfect," she said, cocking her head. She hesitated, on the cusp of something. She wanted it so bad, yet she still feared it. Did he really deserve her personal demons?
Now Jag was there beside her, and took her hand. "Yes. I do."
Jaina blinked. Jag smiled. "Hey, this is my mind, right? Or soul, or wherever we are."
She giggled. "I suppose you're right." Then stopped abruptly. "Really, Jag. Do you want this? I mean, us? I'm hardheaded as a Star Destroyer hull and opinionated and obstinate and always off on some Jedi calling and I'm just a scruffy Skywalker-slash-Solo Rebel and afraid I'll bunk up motherho– "
Jag's finger pressed to her lips. "Yes. Every part of it. The simple fact that you recognize those faults makes me love you more. And as for motherhood, I have no doubt you will be the best you can be. There is no more any man could ask."
Glancing down at their feet, Jaina inhaled, drawing in her shame. "I put you here. You're hurt because of me."
"Jaina, I am here because of my own choices, because of my own fears. I am far from perfect myself –"
"But this is perfect."
Jag lifted Jaina's chin gently. "Jaina, this is us."
Her heart soared, picking her up off her feet. Her lips met Jag's; their bodies united. For a brief instant they were perfection. Two but one. Synchronized hearts. A fusion of souls.
Pulling away, she found that grounding herself was nearly impossible, yet Jaina did. She gazed up at Jag, and reveled in simply the way his eyes adored her. With her palms flat to his chest, noting the slow, steady rhythm of his heart, she whispered, "Jag, come back to me."