AN: aww. i love the whole "oh - you did want / love me" moment Jaina has in the NJO - i'm guessing that was balance point? I dont remember the exact book... sorry.
She had wanted to help; all large eyed and hopeful.
It had been an exhausting day - meetings, paperwork, more meeting, messages, issues, briefings, paper, paper, paper.
It never ended.
Dinner had been quiet, Han had sat across from her, watched her eyes drift shut and engaged the boys in animated chatter.
"Can we play the new console game?" Jacen had asked after the dishes had been cleared away, quickly bouncing up and down in the living room. Han had nodded and, with a steady hand down her back, had followed his boys into the sunken conversation pit of their living area. Jaina had stayed behind, watching her mom. Quiet.
"You can go play too, babygirl."
"I don't want to."
"Okay. What would you like to do?" Leia sighed, rising from the table, dreading having to sit alone in her office, reading over the briefing report she had hurridly prepared before leaving today. Her early morning meeting on the subject meant she had to re-read and edit it all tonight.
"I want to be with you." her daughter's reply was quiet, she nearly missed it in the background whooping ruckus of the boys.
xXx
"You use to number the pages of my reports for me, do you remember?"
Jaina smiled. It had been so long since she had thought of that. Suddenly she remembered sitting on her parents bed, cross legged or spayed on her stomach. Always humming some tuneless meandering melody her mother use to hum. Small hands printing ever so neatly in the bottom corner of the stacks of flimsy scattered around her mother. Leia's hair had hung, comfortable in one thick braid down her back, clad in sleep pants and one of her dad's old shirts. That was the way she liked to remember her mother. That's when she was truly 'theirs'.
"I'd forgotten. I always loved doing that."
"I could never bear to leave you, Jaya."