Previously on The Intimate Lives of Interstellar Blunderers…
Jag got caught red handed… sort of… from a certain point of view
And
Oh… oh dear… oh… maybe 'forcing' Tahiri's hand wasn't the best idea Jacen's ever had.
Season 4
Episode 5
Swapped my innocence for pride,
Crush the end within my stride
Said I'm strong
Now I know that I'm a leaver
I love the sound of you walking away
You walking away
Mascara bleeds a blackened tear
Oh, and I am cold, yes I'm cold,
But not as cold as you are
I love the sound of you walking away
You walking away
I cannot turn to see those eyes,
As apologies may rise
I must be strong
And stay an unbeliever
And love the sound of you walking away
You walking away
Mascara bleeds into my eye
Oh, and I'm not cold, I am old,
At least as old as you are
I love the sound of you walking away
You walking away
Walk Away/Franz Ferdinand
Apartment of Jagged Fel and Noya Parck
Senate City, Coruscant
40 ABY
Almost 11 Years After the Yuuzhan Vong War
Noya had been cold and silent the whole way back to their apartment, the moment the door closed behind them however the assault had begun. First she snarled at him for a while and then she started yelling in a language Jag had never heard her speak and was hard pressed to identify. Gradually her momentum built into all out hysteria, which is when she began throwing everything in the apartment not bolted down.
Since not a single item had connected with its target so far Jag had stopped ducking a while ago; Noya had terrible aim.
Somewhat casually, Jag made his way to the bar, simultaneously reflecting on the ideas that there appeared to be many things about his fiancé that he did not know, and that he would need an extra smooth whiskey tonight, as he anticipated drinking a fair amount of it. He picked his favorite Corellian blend, yet another gift from Wedge, and filled a glass. As the cold crystal touched his lips and the amber fluid began to sear down his throat, he was assaulted not by the sound of Noya's anguished voice behind him, but that of his own from lunch earlier that day.
I find it doubtful Noya knows me that well. In fact, I know she doesn't. It's not like I'm hiding anything from her, I just don't think that she's the type of person that looks that deeply.
Had he spent the afternoon listening to Jacen lecture Kyp on not hiding from the woman who loved him unconditionally only to be committing the same sin himself?
Jag mentally checked back in and observed that Noya seemed to have run out of projectiles, though her volume and vocal exertion were no less passionate. In an odd mental flash that Jag was sure only men were capable of, he was suddenly a little turned on by the fire he saw in the woman before him. It lasted just seconds, only to be replaced by tenderness, and then guilt, bringing him right back to the situation at hand and deepening his desire to find something appropriate to say - a way to undo the pain that he had caused her. The more he thought about it the more apparent it became to him that this had been inevitable. In fact, given the circumstances, it was stunning that it had taken this long for the women to meet.
He surreptitiously tried Tahiri's comm and was disappointed when it again immediately went to voicemail. He knew she'd landed, according to the tracker she was at Jacen's. If he could get a hold of her he knew she'd 'drop by' so that Noya's upbringing, rigid and steeped in the tradition of never allowing a guest to go unattended, combined with Tahiri's steadfast refusal to stand on ceremony would help defuse the situation. The women were an interesting combination of Fel, yet not Fel. Both were welcomed into the family with open arms, though Tahiri on her own merits, where Noya's standing depended almost entirely on Jag. Nevertheless, Tahiri had the unique ability to calm the high-strung Noya, and tonight of all nights, she would certainly side with her soon to be sister-in-law. Of course, once her work here had been accomplished, she'd kick Jag from here to Dantooine for allowing this to happen, as she'd been warning for ages.
In the meantime, Jag worked to both assuage his own guilt and prepare his rebuttal to the accusations coming his way, when, or if, Noya finally reverted to Basic. Hell, he'd settle for Cheunh, or Corellian, or even Sy Bisti or Minnisiat at this point, any language that they both had at least a marginal grasp of.
He spent the next fifteen seconds telling himself that he'd never lied to Noya. At least not outright. But he couldn't in good conscience pull it off. The reality was that she had simply never asked the right questions and he never bothered to offer answers that weren't specifically sought. If he really wanted to be honest with himself, which was becoming an increasingly less appealing prospect by the second, he'd have to own up to the fact that he'd omitted a lot about his relationship with Jaina... okay, the entirety of it, and allowed Noya to come up with her own conclusions based on carefully selected tidbits he had imparted.
Jag was suddenly engulfed with self-disgust for convincing himself that his refrain from telling the woman he was planning to spend the rest of his life with about the most important relationship of his life was to protect her from pain, when the reality was that his 'refrain' was actually simple cowardice; one thing he had never imagined he'd be was a coward.
His mind raced back to that night in his office with Jaina. At the time he'd told himself that he had stopped because Noya was the safe bet and he was afraid Jaina would just leave him again, that he didn't want to have to live with the guilt for one night of recaptured bliss, or that it was out of a sense of loyalty to Noya, a concession to his own honor. But were any of those excuses more than that? Mere excuses?
Jag's eyes drifted to the large viewpane that covered most of the south wall of their living room, the wall that overlooked the still wild wilderness of what had for a decade been Yuuzhan'tar. The obsidian night allowed the low wattage bulbs burning inside the apartment to turn the pane into a mirror giving Jag a view of Noya, tears of heartbreak and humiliation marring her beautiful face. He felt a sudden deepening of emotion for this woman who only wanted to make him happy, and then just as suddenly realized that the feeling was not new and that in fact this was the most significant relationship of his life.
Armed with this epiphany, Jag put down his glass and walked up behind her, wrapping her in a hug with one arm around her waist and the other across her shoulders. He buried his face in her neck, breathing in her scent, acutely aware that he loved it and had for a long time. After a few minutes, her sobs began to subside.
When Jag spoke he did so in a quiet, soothing voice, "I'm sorry, Noya, I'm so sorry. I was wrong in how I handled this." He gently turned her around and hugged her to his chest. "I don't deserve you, or your forgiveness, but I do love you and I never meant to hurt you like this. My breakup with Jaina was difficult. When you and I met it was still too painful for me to talk about, so I didn't. As you and I became closer, I didn't see any reason to go into the details. I never imagined that we'd all wind up here on Coruscant."
"But we did, Jagged."
"Yes, and Jaina and I talked and resolved our issues and…"
Jerking away, Noya spit out, "Resolved your issues? What does that mean? You agreed to see each other in private? Set the ground rules for sneaking around?
"We are not having an affair." Jag sighed. "Please listen; we hashed out our differences and hurt feelings over the break up. We didn't want any animosity towards each other to interfere with work that we both feel passionately about. We went through a lot together during the war, and in the years after it. She wasn't just my lover; she was my friend. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you more about it. We missed each other as friends and we wanted that back. At no point did I intend to exclude you. You were always either on your way to Csilla, or just returned from Csilla, or too tired, or didn't care about meeting my scruffy rebel war buddies."
"So this is my fault?"
"Of course not."
Noya paced away and then stopped dead in her tracks. Slowly she turned around and Jag was amazed to see that she had suddenly become even more enraged than she already had been. "Are there any other 'war buddies' I should know about?"
Jag began to shake his head, but could see the slap coming a kilometer away, and didn't try to stop it. He figured that on one level or another he deserved it.
He let the sting set in and then said, "To answer your question, I spar with a lot of them, but Jaina is the only one I dated. You may not care at this point, but I assure you, we really were just sparring."
"That's actually worse because now you're being dishonest with yourself as well as me. It's all so clear now." Noya sobbed again.
"What's clear?"
"I was worried about you, you know. It scared me sometimes, that you could go from so passionate to so cold in the blink of an eye. I thought maybe it was part of your military training or something. I thought about it a lot, I did research on war vets, I did research on elite combat pilots in long term high stress situations, I asked people about it, trying to figure out if your ability to compartmentalize was a part of your personality and was what had made you so good at what you had done, was what enabled you to fight for so long and stay alive, or if it was just me. I even decided to back off on getting pregnant immediately thinking maybe you were suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress and that your not wanting a baby right away had to do with needing to fix the galaxy first.
"Have I ever been anything more than a mildly amusing replacement? A substitute for what you couldn't have? "
The tears came in earnest again, the last words croaked out before Noya once again turned around, one arm wrapped tightly around herself, the other up so that her hand covered her face. "Don't try to deny it, Jag," she sobbed. "I saw the way you were looking at her tonight. I've spent the past two years wishing that you would look at me like that, wanting nothing more than to be what you want, but having no idea what that was, and the whole time all I needed to do was be Jaina Solo. You've spent our entire relationship hung up on your former love. Was there ever a time when we were together in bed that it was actually me there with you or were you always imagining her?"
"I can honestly tell you that at no time since we've been together have I thought of anyone but you when we were in bed."
"Well forgive me if I find your credibility suspect."
Jag sighed and ran a hand through his hair, praying that the new sag in her shoulders was an indication of exhaustion and that maybe she'd calm down and he'd have a chance to regroup before talking to her again, when a new wave of defeat assailed her and sent her into a new wave of sobbing.
"Can you even begin to understand how this makes me feel? Not only did you conceal this from me, but so did your parents, Cem and Tenel Ka, Wyn and Tahiri, all of whose opinions of me matter so much. Your friends; were they in on it too? Kyp and Jacen… oh gods, Jacen… and your coworkers, your staff. How am I ever supposed to face these people again? Have they all spent the last two years laughing at me behind my back? Or did they have so little respect for me from the beginning that they simply didn't care?"
"It wasn't like that, in fact Tahiri has been the most vocal in saying I should have told you."
"But you ignored her?"
"The more time that went by, the harder I found it to say anything, and besides, how was I supposed to bring it up?"
"How about 'Noya, I should have told you this ages ago, but I had a long term relationship with a woman that everyone I know has a close connection to, and since I'm asking you to extend yourself and try to establish bonds with these people I thought I should give you a heads up?'"
"You're right. I should have done exactly that the first time I introduced you to any of them."
Jag watched a new expression cross Noya's features, one that terrified him, one of resignation and defeat. Then she lowered the final boom, "You know, Jagged, the worst part of this whole evening is that at no point have you tried to convince me that you don't love her anymore."
Jag's mouth fell open as he realized she was right, and he began to shake his head. He hadn't, and instantly realized that this was his biggest mistake by far. Unfortunately, the damage was done and nothing he said now would convince her otherwise. But then again, look how many years it had taken to realize it himself.
This time Noya's tears were silent as she turned slowly and headed for their bedroom. Jag saw the lights on the control panel flash red indicating that she had locked the door behind her. He took a deep breath, trying to release some of the pressure in his chest. He walked into his office, threw himself onto the couch and stared up at the ceiling, wondering how this situation had gotten so out of control and how in heavens he was going to fix it.
And why wasn't Tahiri answering her comm?
Jacen Solo's Apartment, Senate City, Coruscant
Tahiri heard the vibration of the comm unit in her bag again, and idly wondered who wanted to speak to her so badly. She knew it wasn't Jacen, and it sure as hell wasn't Tarkin; he'd likely gone straight from talking to her hours ago to Rabeeta's waiting arms and anyone else who might be looking for her could wait.
Right now she was focused on the pain and grief radiating from the apartment on the other side of the door she was leaning against. She wasn't sure if that was better than the rage that had eased only a short time ago, but she did wish Jacen would get off the floor, where she was pretty sure he was lying, to lay somewhere more comfortable; but what did she expect? He'd often told her that he loved the scent she left behind on the sheets and was loath to change them after she'd gone. Now he loathed her and would likely burn the sheets, if not the entire bed.
Her own tears had long since dried, their tracks leaving itchy paths of salt behind, but she had been too numbed by her own pain to be more than marginally aware of them. The bulk of her concentration had been on reaching for Jacen in the Force. He was trying to shut her out, but he was too spent and their bond strong enough that Tahiri got a better glimpse than she knew he would have liked of where he was lying.
Despite her focus on him, she couldn't tune out the voices in her head that screamed to be heard.
The first one said to go to him, to take Jacen in her arms and admit that she had lied; that she did love him, loved him more than she'd ever loved anyone in her life, and that their every separation tore into her soul. This was also the voice that said enough was enough; walk away from Tarkin, let Belindi issue her warrants and beg Jacen to run away with her. They could go to Wyloff, to the home Jacen had built for them, and make a bunch of beautiful Force adept babies.
The second voice urged her to confess to Jacen that her life with Tarkin was a sham, but that hundreds of agents, and ultimately millions of civilians, were dependant on information only she could provide, and that in order to stop this group of very corrupt beings who would return the galaxy to what his own parents and uncle had offered their lives to stop, and what she and Jacen and all their friends had given their youth and innocence to protect, had to come before their feelings. If they were going to be together, they'd have to wait. Oh, and Jacen needed to be ok with her continuing to whore herself for the GFFA for the duration of the investigation.
Third was the voice that mocked her by saying that she had lost all perspective and had become obsessed with bringing down Tarkin; that she was being a sanctimonious fraud who got off on pretending to be a lone superhero vigilante, hell bent on defying the odds and saving the galaxy single-handedly, not wanting to share the responsibility or the credit with anyone else.
She hated that voice.
Then there was the voice that told her that this had nothing to do with the investigation and was simply a case of wanting to save her heart because even after all that had happened, after everything that had been said and done between them, Tahiri was still too afraid to allow herself to believe that Jacen truly did, or would continue to, love her.
Her life simply didn't work that way.
In one form or another this day was inevitable and had been a long time coming. She had even tried to warn him in the beginning. That being said, as many times as she had allowed their break up to play out in her head, she had never imagined Jacen's pain being so intense, or his feelings of betrayal so sharp. Admittedly, in all of her made up scenarios, it was always Jacen doing the leaving and her being gracious enough to make even Leia proud as Jacen introduced her to his sweet, if slightly meek, bride-to-be.
She had steadfastly ignored the possibility of things exploding like this and had to marvel at her capacity for self-deception. She could hardly blame Jace for his rage. She figured his pain was a result of the fact that she had pushed him as far as it was possible to push a man before he finally snapped. Calling her a broken whore and saying that he never wanted to see her again was pretty tame and less than she deserved given the number of years that she had teased him with her body and denied him everything else. If he truly did want more… no, the idea was too much for her to even think about right now.
Continuing to reach out to him wasn't doing either one of them any good so she pulled back her presence and, switching gears, reminded herself that she was doing the right thing; he only thought he was in love with her. To continue their affair was wrong and she felt no small amount of guilt for letting it go on as long as she had. As heartbreaking as this was, it was the right thing to do for him. Eventually he'd thank her for finally setting him free, she just prayed that they'd find their way back to the long-ago promise he made that he'd always be her friend. It wouldn't be anytime soon; she knew that, but maybe… one day.
Yes, she was doing the right thing. Tarkin or no Tarkin, Tahiri was too damaged to have a true relationship. But knowing that was doing nothing to ease the pain.
Digging her comm out of her bag, she saw that all the calls she'd missed had been from Jag. She wasn't supposed to meet with him until lunch, but right now she needed him. Maybe it was time to confess. If there was one person she could unburden her soul to it was Jag. He wasn't going to be happy to hear about what she had hidden from him for so long, but like the fiercely protective big brother he was, he'd comfort first, ask questions second, and berate her for her stupidity last. She was more than willing to take the reprimand if it meant she could curl up in his arms first and have a good cry.
With Noya still on Csilla there was no need to wait, Tahiri could walk over to Jag's right now and drag him out of bed. If she was lucky maybe he'd even feed her between the comfort and the berating.
Jag woke with a start, the crick in his neck from sleeping on the couch forgotten as he noticed the pre-dawn light seeping in through the large window in his study. He could feel someone in the room and prayed that Noya had finally un-barricaded herself and was willing to talk.
Instead, he found Tahiri sitting on the edge of the couch trying to gently rouse him. The look in her eyes filled him with fear; he sat up and cupped her tear-streaked face.
"What's the matter? Was your cover blown? Does Tarkin know?"
"No, no, Jag, it's not that..."
Before she could get any further Jerome, the head of Jag's security team, burst through the door, clearly relieved to see him there.
Jerking to full attention at the sudden flurry of activity as more of his staff filled the room, Jag began to ask what was going on but was interrupted by Jerome's breathless tone.
"Sir… Thank the Force. When we heard that your speeder exploded... we feared the worst and couldn't figure out why you would have left without telling us you were going out. I'll alert the rest of the staff that the speeder must have been stolen and let the media know that you were not the victim after all."
Still unable to totally shake the confusion of being bombarded with first Tahiri's presence and then that of so many of his staffers after a night of fighting with Noya, Jag struggled to acclimate himself to a situation that was filling him with inexplicable dread. He fought to clear his thoughts and make sense of the stimuli that were converging on him.
"What speeder? What explosion?"
"Sir, the Corvair your brother gave you. It was taken from the speeder bay and exploded near the east end spaceport, right outside where the Clawcraft and your shuttle are docked. We had assumed that you'd gone down to work on your fighter, but you're here, so the speeder must have been stolen somehow. We're all just so grateful that you're alright."
Sudden realization dawned on Jag and he flew off the couch, running toward his bedroom. Horror engulfed him as he realized that the door was unlocked. Opening it and lunging into the room he at once saw that the bed had not been slept in and that Noya was no longer inside, nor were the packed bags that had been sitting at the end of their bed the night before.
Fighting the urge to vomit, Jag sank to his knees, panting and rasping out, "No, no, please, no."
The last thing he was aware of before his sobs turned to keening was the sound of Tahiri's soft voice mumbling words of comfort as she pulled his head to her shoulder, rocking back and forth.
Next time on Fear and Love...
Csilla...