-Wish-

She finds Tahiri doing stretches in the workout room. Tahiri had a growth spurt around eighteen and now towers over Jaina, or so it seems. The younger woman is lithe, muscled, and Jaina is hard-pressed to see the little blonde sprite her brother fell in love with.

Tahiri's got her gold curls tied back as she sits on the floor, reaching for her toes. She looks up when Jaina enters, light green eyes welcoming. Jaina wonders briefly if green eyes are a genetic thing that goes with being a Jedi, or if her family just sort of attracts them. Mara, Tahiri, Jag, Zekk, Kyp. Okay, Jag isn't a Jedi, but he was family for a while.

"Want a sparring partner?" Jaina asks.

"Sure." Tahiri seems to bounce to her feet, and in her grin, too long absent, is the girl Anakin adored. "Though I'm a bit outmatched against the Sword of the Jedi."

Jaina rolls her eyes. "Says the Imperial Hand."

As she removes her shoes and steps onto the practise mat, Jaina reflects that there is something she'd wish for on a shooting star: that Tahiri find happiness and love, like Jaina has with Kyp. She misses her brother, too, but Anakin has been gone nearly twenty years.

They spar for several minutes. Though Tahiri's got a height advantage, Jaina trained in hand-to-hand with Mara Jade and with Mandalorians. Her friend's assessment is right: even as the Imperial Hand, Tahiri isn't up to Jaina's level.

Tahiri doesn't move like the other Jedi. She's half Yuuzhan Vong, after her imprisonment and shaping, and fights in a hybrid style that reminds Jaina uncomfortably of Jacen. That, too, is a mostly-healed wound. Jacen hurt them both when he fell, and sometimes she thinks Tahiri got the worse treatment.

"Can I ask you something?" Jaina inquires, as they end the spar session.

The blonde nods, lowering to sit on the mat. Jaina copies her after a moment.

"I watched some of the trial," Jaina says, referring to Tahiri's murder trial for the death of Gilad Pellaeon while she was the apprentice of Darth Caedus. "I couldn't always. And I wanted to be there."

"That's okay. I know you were really busy trying to keep Abeloth from killing us all."

That and distracted by her love life, but Jaina won't admit that.

"They asked if you'd, uh . . ."

"Did I sleep with Jacen?" Tahiri asks quietly. "That's what you want to know, isn't it?"

"I just . . . know he manipulated you into things. I wondered if that . . . was one of them."

Tahiri sighs. "I went willingly," she says at last. "He was manipulating me about saving Anakin, but not about . . . that. And it wasn't until after he and Tenel Ka broke up, after he kidnapped Allana. I wouldn't never have . . ."

"I'm not judging. I know Jacen was a monster, but I'm glad that it didn't extend to that."

"I'd have killed him in his sleep if he'd done that to me," Tahiri tells her bluntly.

Jaina calls water bottles over for both of them, and cracks hers open. "I'd have held him down if he had."

After a moment, Tahiri snorts softly. "We're a mess. Here I am, I've been involved with both of your brothers, who are now dead . . . You went dark after Anakin died. Why didn't you after you killed Jacen?"

Looking down at her hand, the one Jacen smashed, Jaina says, "Because I did after Anakin. Because I knew how not to the second time. Because people cared more the second time than they did the first."

"You had Jag, after Jacen. You weren't in a relationship after Anakin's death. He was good for you."

"That's part of it. Being older helped. But also . . ." She hesitates, knowing that she can't tell Tahiri everything. Her friend still thinks Jag hung the moon, and Jaina doesn't. "Because . . . Anakin's death was a sudden shock, and Jacen's death I planned."

They're both quiet for a long time. Then Jaina says, "If I could make a wish, and have that one thing come true? The Yuuzhan Vong would never have come to our galaxy. No one would have died. Jacen wouldn't have fallen. Raynar wouldn't have become what he did."

She likely would have never met Jag because they wouldn't have emerged from Chiss space to fight the Vong. And Kyp . . . She probably would have ended up with Kyp ten years sooner, at least, because there had been something there all along, since she was sixteen and had run into him at the academy. She just hadn't seen it until now. Had he?

"Yeah, that's a good wish. Too bad we can't change the past, huh?" Tahiri gets to her feet, more gracefully than Jaina might have at that moment, and stretches her arms behind her head. "I'm gonna hit the showers. I'll see you later."

Jaina nods, watches her go towards the locker rooms. She wants to tell her about Kyp, but now isn't the time.

She wonders if Tahiri will ever understand.