Author's Note: To all you Jaina-Jag fans, turn back now. If you dare to continue reading, feel free to criticize all you want.

Upon dropping out of hyperspace into the Csilla system, the Solo Quest was hailed almost immediately. Jacen answered it and heard Jag Fel ask, "Is that you, Jacen?"

"It's me," Jacen answered. "Where is Jaina?"

"On Csilla. Let me guide you in," Jag's voice replied.

Moments later, Jacen saw a Chiss clawcraft rocketing toward the Quest both through his ship's viewport and on his sensors. For personal confirmation, Jacen checked through the Force to find that, indeed, it was Jag who was coming for him.

Jacen then piloted his YT-1300 toward the clawcraft and allowed Jag to lead him toward the ice-covered world of Csilla. Minutes later, after both ships slalomed through the violent ice-storm that was now raging the nearly-invisible continent below, both the Quest and Jag's clawcraft touched down side-by-side. Seconds after that, the ground opened up beneath the vessels, but not to drop them in a deep chasm, but to gradually lower them via the landing pad that the ships were sharing. The ground closed back up above them as the ships continued toward the underground city that the Chiss had built here.

.

An hour after Jacen and Jag debarked their ships to traverse the city of Cshanalla, the latter led the former to Cshanalla's mental asylum district.

"This was where we placed her after she went... barvy," Jag told Jacen. Right now, the two of them were standing in front of the asylum as the hovercab that brought them here was zooming away into the distance.

Jacen stood silently for a moment as he observed the asylum in wonder, thinking about what kind of madness must have brought his sister to this point. He looked back at her fiance. "Do you know why she had a mental breakdown?"

"You would know better than me," Jag said. "You're the one who was able to look into her mind."

Jacen nodded in acknowledgment of Jag's point. "How was Jaina stopped? How was she restrained? She's a Jedi; I doubt she could have been stopped easily."

"We had ysalamiri ready to stop her in case she became a threat," Jag explained.

Jacen looked at Jag in perplexity. "You had that on hand to stop your fiance?"

Jag shook his head. "No. My society did; as you know, the Chiss are secretive. They're also a little paranoid, especially when it concerns Jedi. Even after your aunt and uncle's expedition with Aristocra Formbi to the Outbound Flight crash site, and the unveiling of that conspiracy that allowed you the time needed to find Zonama Sekot, the Ascendancy still has trust issues with everyone outside the government."

"All right then," Jacen said as he looked back at the asylum. "But the Ascendancy is willing to let me help Jaina, right?"

"Yes," Jag confirmed. "In fact, I told them that you may need the Force for this one. So far, none of our psychiatrists have been able to get through to her; she's more like a wild animal than a human being at this point."

"So she's not being restrained by any ysalamiri now?" Jacen inquired.

"Not by a live ysalamiri," Jag elaborated. "After I told the asylum that you may be the one who can help Jaina, the government decided that they would have Chiss scientists manufacture a serum from ysalamiri blood to be injected into Jaina. She gets them regularly so she doesn't regain her abilities to try to break out."

"That may still interfere with however I may be able to help Jaina," Jacen said, "but I think I can still do something."

"I hope you can," Jag said. "I'll guide you to her cell."

He then began leading Jacen toward the asylum.

Sometime later, the two of them, along with a large, burly male orderly with a keycard, stopped outside one of the asylum's cells. "This is where she's being kept," Jag told Jacen.

"Thank you," Jacen said. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck," Jag said. "You're going to need it."

The orderly then inserted the keycard into the slot on the wall next to the door. The still red light above the slot shifted to green, and the door slid open to the right. Jacen then walked inside, where the door slid shut behind him but remained unlocked.

In the white-blue room that he found himself in, he found a gray-clad figure with long brown hair sitting on the far left corner of the cell. The figure's head was buried up in her arms, which she had propped up against her tucked-in legs; and all Jacen could hear from his sister was a persistent moaning.

"Jaina?" he asked.

She looked up her arms with eyes that had dilated pupils. Those eyes glared at Jacen with such intensity that he almost grimaced at the promise of death that they offered. Otherwise, Jaina's expression was completely blank.

Which was what made Jaina's sudden launch from her vulnerable position to a full-on sprint for her brother was almost unexpected. Almost.

Because of the ysalamiri serum running through her blood, suppressing her Force-abilities, Jacen only had his sight to know that Jaina wanted to kill him for some reason; that, and his hearing for the animal-like roar she emitted.

But while Jacen couldn't sense his sister through the Force, he could still use it when it came to himself. So he flipped off to the side at a super-fast rate, causing Jaina to nearly stumble when she only caught empty air, before he planted his feet up against the wall to his right and used it to launch himself for Jaina in midair. He tackled his sister to the soft floor, where he pinned her wrists at either side and began to do what Danni asked him not to do ever again: he began to secrete a calming anesthesia through her body via the palms of his hands.

Fortunately, Jacen wasn't as distracted as he was before; inwardly, he made sure that the processes balancing out his homeostasis as he simultaneously created the anesthesia were in working order. This, and the fact that he felt that this was necessary to get Jaina to calm down gave Jacen's conscious assurance that he wasn't betraying Danni's word; after all, he did tell her that he would only do something like this if it were absolutely necessary, something that Danni herself agreed to.

Soon, Jaina began to calm down beneath Jacen's grasp, but she didn't fall asleep as most anesthetics worked. Instead, she became more pliant and peaceful, which allowed Jacen to let go of his sister's wrists.

Although their twin bond was strong enough to reach across the galaxy, Jacen still felt that he needed to get this physically close to his sister in order to try to help her; especially if he wanted to know what exactly Jaina was going through. And that meant that he would have to practice a technique taught to him by the Theran Listeners of Nam Chorios: vein-routing, or mnemotherapy, as his guide on Nam Chorios, Sel, liked to call it.

"Jaina," he said softly. "I want you to tell me why you are acting like this." Another thing that the anesthesia made compliant in Jaina was her mind; something that Jacen never liked to do to anyone. It made him feel a little more like Onimi, who liked to control minds himself, like Shimrra and the advanced Slayer priest-warriors that Jacen, Jaina, and Luke had all fought during the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar.

Nevertheless, he was providing some stability to a broken mind. And even if that stability was false, and if it was some misguided delusion on his part that might lead him down a dark path in the future, Jacen still felt like he needed to do this for his sister.

"Juh... Juh... Jacen," Jaina stuttered. "I... I... I couldn't handle it anymore."

"What couldn't you handle anymore, Jaina?"

Tears began to stream from her eyes that poured down to either side of her face. They pooled along the floor next to both sides of her face as she sniffed. "The war, Jacen. The war."

And then he understood; the violent flashbacks to the Yuuzhan Vong War were painful memories of all the death and carnage that Jaina had experienced firsthand.

She was going through severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Jaina, what caused this to happen to you?"

It took a little while before Jaina could answer. "Over a month ago. My squad and I... found a hidden Yuuzhan Vong base. We fought them, and we killed them all. But... we lost several. Including Shawnkyr." She looked like she was on the verge of sobbing. "She was a great friend to Jag and me. And the violence... of that fight, and the deaths we endured... it brought back too many painful memories, Jacen."

It was then that Jaina broke down into sobbing, and Jacen instinctively hugged his sister to try to comfort her. And while he did that, he wondered why, in the six years since the war ended, that only now that Jaina was suffering from shellshock.

And he wondered why he himself never went through the same thing; not so far, anyway. Or why his parents, or Uncle Luke or Aunt Mara, or any of their own friends had gone through the same thing that Jaina was going through right now.

Was it because she wasn't getting the same amount of love and comfort like the older generation had? Was Jag... being abusive?

No, that couldn't be. He would have sensed a worse man in Jag Fel, if that were the case. No, it was something else. It had to be.

And the more that Jacen thought about it as he related his thoughts to Jaina's character, he realized what it must have been, what Jaina was lacking compared to everyone else; she hadn't been relying on the Force to help her.

Oh, sure, not everyone among their friends and family had the Force. Their father didn't have it, and even after the depression he went through following Chewbacca's death, he still went on, more or less a normal person considering his own wartime experiences as a Rebel. The same went for the likes of Lando Calrissian, Wedge Antilles, and the other Rebellion-New Republic veterans who only relied on their trained skills and experiences to get them through.

But even Jacen had to admit that as much as having the Force was a blessing, it could also be a curse. Putting aside the fact that anyone could embrace their own inner darkness to be a Sith or a Dark Jedi, simply feeling the deaths of others through the Force could be even more traumatic than simply knowing that they died, or even seeing their loved ones die before them. But, for a Jedi, as much as the Force could pour more salt on those kinds of wounds, it also helped to heal them, so that they could go on like others who did not have the Force and who could only get through the stages of grieving.

But someone like Jaina, who relied on the Force as merely a tool - just as her and Jacen's younger brother Anakin once had - and who acted not so much as a Jedi as a regular combatant, her refusal to use the Force as something to meditate on, as Jacen did - and even as Luke, Mara, and Leia did - would leave her with an inability to cope in the long-run. Oh, yes, there were times when she had used the Force for meditation, and she had the comfort of family and friends on her side; in fact, that was more than Jacen had during his time with Vergere and the Yuuzhan Vong, whereas Jaina was surrounded by a matriarchal society with her parents and fellow Jedi on Hapes after Anakin died.

And it was because of these elements that Jaina was able to get through the war as well as she had. But since that time, she had relied only on herself, even with Jag Fel and his family to provide her comfort, and the occasional visit and comm call from Han and Leia. And it was because of this, combined with the recent tragedy that she just mentioned, led her into going over the edge.

Which left Jacen one option to help his sister.

"Jaina... is it all right if I take those memories away from you?" Mnemotherapy wasn't simply through influencing the minds of others for compliance; no, it was a precursor to routing out traumatic memories, something that Jacen thought might be necessary going into this.

"Please!" Jaina yelled. "Take them away, Jacen! I don't know how I can deal with them anymore!"

At that, Jacen almost regretted bringing it up. He realized that it might be a terrible idea to take away all of the memories that had shaped Jaina into the fierce, courageous woman that she had become; the positive memories that she shared with her friends and family, even if some, if not most, of them were in grief-sharing. And it was in the Yuuzhan Vong War that she had met Jag; would Jaina not remember who Jag was? Who his family was? Would she know that Chewbacca, Anakin, and so many others were no longer among the living?

Internally, Jacen vowed to himself that he would only do it if he thought that Jaina was too damaged for any psychiatrist to treat. Even after Jag's conveyance of those doctors' assessments to Jacen, the latter still had to see if there was anything he could do just short of stripping those memories away.

So he placed both hands to either side of Jaina's head and concentrated, reaching into her mind harder than he had when he probed her mind light years away.

When he was done, he found that the damage was, indeed, too severe for any psychiatric professional to treat. Jaina was too far gone; and the anesthesia he gave her was only a temporary reprieve.

"Fine then," Jacen said finally. "Let's begin."

And it was then that he began the process of mnemotherapy; through the Force, he slowly latched onto the emotions that those memories possessed, and he pulled on them, consciously fighting against Jaina's unconscious mind that wanted those memories to stay. Nevertheless, Jacen's persistence paid off, and all of the horrible memories that plagued Jaina's psyche hovered into the air between brother and sister.

Jacen looked at them, the flashing images that he had, in a sense, seen when he had reached into Jaina's mind following his previous departure from Zonama. Those memories continued to hang in midair, through the Force, patiently waiting for Jacen to make his decision about their fate.

Jacen remembered from his Theran Listener mentor, Taru Durn, that masters of the vein-routing technique must take those memories that they pulled into themselves; they were human memories, valuable things that could not simply be allowed to evaporate into nothingness. As horrifying as those memories were, Theran Listeners still believed that memories like these needed to be preserved until the ends of their lives.

But Jacen hesitated as he thought about it. He had enough memories of his own in the Yuuzhan Vong War. It was a selfish thought, he knew, and while he understood that he would not be traumatized by Jaina's experiences - for no Theran Listener was thrown into the same trauma that once inflicted the victims - Jacen still didn't know if he could bear anymore of that pain.

But it was for Jaina; if she would forget those experiences that made her into who she was, then Jacen had to remember them for her. If not as a Jedi, then Jacen had an obligation to do this as her brother; her last remaining brother.

So he took those memories into his being, where he almost instantly felt the pain that Jaina had once felt. It was an unbearable kind, one that Jacen had to scream as he felt it rip through his body, and at the periphery of his awareness, he noticed that the cell's door opened for Jag and the orderly still with him to enter.

But as quickly as the pain came, it was gone, and Jacen collapsed next to his sister from the agonizing exhilaration that he just experienced.

"Jacen, are you all right?" Jag asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Jacen said as he stood back up. He then looked back down at the sleeping Jaina before returning his gaze to Jag. "But I don't know if she'll remember you, Jag."

"What do you mean?" Jag inquired.

"I took her memories of the Yuuzhan Vong War," Jacen said. "So she may not remember you, or why she loved you."

"Wait," Jag said, "if only took her memories of the war, doesn't that mean she'll still remember everything after? Like me?"

"On some level, yes," Jacen answered.

"What do you mean on some level?"

"When I took her memories of the war," Jacen said, "they also collapsed the memories of everything after; an unfortunate but inevitable side-effect to what I just did."

"So, when she wakes up, she thinks she's a teenager?" Jag asked.

"Maybe," Jacen answered reluctantly. "In either case, I'm going to have to take her back to the Jedi Order, where she can be helped. Even after all the memories I took from her, she needs to know what happened. I'm sorry, Jag, but I'm afraid you'll have to call off your wedding."

Jag grimaced, but eventually nodded in agreement. "All right. Do what you have to for her." He then reached for the engagement ring that he had on his hand and promptly slipped it off.

Jacen did the same for the unconscious Jaina. He then offered his ring-holding hand to Jag. "Give me yours. I'll keep both of them, as reminders of the love that you and Jaina had."

Jag briefly held his ring in a tight grasp, but relented and dropped into Jacen's palm. Both rings clanked together, as if symbolizing Jag's decision to let Jaina go.

"She'll be out for the next hour or so," Jacen said as he slipped the rings in his pocket before picking Jaina up in his arms. "I'll try to update her on the galaxy as we travel back home."