Like before, Jacen went through the standard hails to get the Solo Quest through Denon's Orbital Control (though, this time, he wasn't misguided by a True Victory Party spy to a slum district) and he piloted his ship down toward the modest Jedi Temple.
There, he docked the Quest in the Temple's relatively small docking bay, for which there was room for, at most, another half-dozen ships the size of a YT-1300. From the cockpit, he and Jaina, seated in the copilot seat, could see, through the forward viewport, the expectant gathering of the Skywalkers and Solos - even little Ben was there, standing in front of his mother. The only one who wasn't part of the family that was among them was a feminine-looking Yuuzhan Vong Hunter droid standing directly behind the Skywalkers; Jacen figured that was Nanna, the YVH nanny droid that Luke mentioned in his last conversation with Jacen.
Jacen sighed before he looked at his sister. "You ready?"
Jaina looked back at him. "You could always tell them first."
Jacen shook his head. "They deserve to hear it from you first."
Jaina reluctantly nodded. "Okay then."
The twins then unbuckled their harnesses, and while Jaina headed for the boarding ramp, Jacen pressed a button that began its lowering to the hangar floor. He then followed his sister.
By the time Jacen reached the bottom of the ramp, Jaina was now exchanging the hugs that she had with her and Jacen's parents to Luke and Mara. After she playfully ruffled Ben's crimson hair, Jaina turned back to her brother, and the attention among the extended family shifted over to him. He headed on over to exchange embraces and greetings with his parents, aunt, uncle, and even tousled Ben's hair, much to his obvious chagrin.
"Why does everyone keep doing that to me?" Ben muttered to no one in particular.
The adults in the group shared a chuckle, and when it was done, Jaina asked her family, "Uh, guys, can we just have a private talk among adults here?"
"Oh, c'mon, why can't I listen in?" Ben moaned.
Luke looked at his son for a moment before exchanging his glance back to his niece. "Is it serious?" he asked.
Jaina spared a glance at her brother before nodding wordlessly.
"Nanna, take Ben back to his room and make sure he does his homework," Mara commanded the YVH droid with them.
"Right away, ma'am," the droid responded in an overly feminine voice that starkly contrasted with its militant tone. "C'mon, Ben."
Ben scowled but otherwise complied as Nanna gently took him by the arm and led him away to the nearest exit from the hangar.
"So, what was it that you wanted to discuss-"
Luke's question to the twins was cut off as Jaina suddenly broke into sobs. Her parents reached out wordlessly to try to comfort her, but she immediately turned away and rushed back to the Quest's boarding ramp. There, she sat on the foot of the ramp and brought her knees in as she began crying into it. Again, Han and Leia hurried after her to try to console her, in spite of their lack of knowledge of why she was acting this way.
Luke and Mara remained in place while looking on in curiosity, while Jacen turned his regretful gaze from his sister back to his aunt and uncle.
"Do you know why Jaina's acting like this?" Mara asked her nephew.
"I do," Jacen answered calmly. "It's only now occurring to her that Chewbacca and Anakin have been dead for years. I can feel it in our twin bond."
Luke and Mara exchanged curious glances at one another before refocusing their attention on Jacen.
"But she's known this for years," Luke pointed out.
"She did," Jacen agreed. "Until I took away her memories of the Yuuzhan Vong War and almost everything after that."
The baffled expressions that the Skywalkers leveled at their nephew matched those of Han and Leia's; the elder Solos were now looking at their son's back, given that, in the midst of her sobbing, Jaina explained to them exactly as Jacen told Luke and Mara.
"Why did you do that, Jacen?" Luke asked. His tone contained no judgement or reproach, just a simple want to understand the situation.
"She suffered a mental breakdown in the Chiss Ascendancy," Jacen elaborated. "Post-traumatic stress disorder from the last war. None of the doctors on Csilla were able to help her from the insanity she suffered. So I had to take her memories. Right now, there's virtually no gap in time from Twenty-Five ABY to now for her."
"And she gave you permission to do this?" Mara asked.
"She pleaded for me to do it," Jacen answered. "I felt like I had no other choice."
Save for Jaina, who continued crying over Chewie and Anakin, everyone in the immediate vicinity of the Solo Quest remained utterly silent, unsure of what to do or say now.
`But Jaina and I both think there's a way that we can restore her memories without her suffering from another mental breakdown," Jacen continued.
"Oh, yeah? How?" Mara asked.
"Yeah, Jacen," Han said, standing up from comforting his daughter. "How are you going to give your sister ten years of her life back without making her go barvy again?"
Jacen partially turned so that he could shift his attention from the Skywalkers and his more immediate family much more naturally. "Jaina and I were thinking that we share that trauma through an extensive practice of our bond."
"Do you think that might actually work?" Luke asked.
Jacen shrugged, though without nonchalance. "Honestly, I'm not so sure. For all I know, we can both fall into the madness that Jaina suffered from if we try this. And then I, the only one who's able to do this, will be left as broken as Jaina was."
"But you absorbed my memories, Jacen!" Jaina cried. "You took them and experienced them! And you didn't break!"
"While I felt the pain, it still wasn't my own," Jacen said. "So it still didn't have a profound effect on me like my own experiences from the war were. But if I share them with you, Jaina, just as I'll have to share my own pain with you, it'll both become our truly shared pain; and we may not recover from it."
"Tell me, Jacen," Luke said before anyone else could speak up, "where did you learn this technique?"
"From the Theran Listeners of Nam Chorios, Uncle Luke," Jacen answered promptly.
"That's what I thought," Luke said. "So it's the vein-routing technique, or mnemotherapy, that you used on Jaina, is that correct?"
"Yes, it is," Jacen confirmed.
"About six months ago, the Order just received a new member from Nam Chorios," Luke said. "A former Theran Listener himself, by the name of Garis Boric. He's only a few years younger than you, but he's already mastered mnemotherapy himself. In fact, he can do it better than you, Jacen."
"How do you know he can do it better than me?" Jacen asked.
"Because he told me that he's been in a situation like this before," Luke explained. "One of his fellow Listeners had a sibling that had suffered from the relapse of a suppressed traumatic memory that nearly turned the sibling into a catatonic vegetable. Garis's fellow Listener was the one who performed the mnemotherapy on his sister, but later on, the sister wanted the memories back, believing that they were what shaped her into who she was.
"Without them, she felt weak and useless, and she felt like she was under-performing in her duties. So she went back to her brother so that they could share the pain, though that would require her to suffer from his pain as much as he had to suffer from hers; at least that was what they thought. So this Listener went to Garis to ask for help; if his fellow Listener and his sibling were to fall in the sharing of their pain, then Garis was to extract both of their memories and keep it inside him for the rest of his life.
"So the procedure began; and, unfortunately, the siblings fell into their collective pain. Hence, Garis saved them from their shared mental instability by taking in their memories. The sister of Garis's colleague went back to her job and strove to perform better, even without those experiences that shaped her, and the Listener who shared in his sibling's madness was exiled from Nam Chorios along with Garis."
"Exiled?" Jacen asked. "For what?"
"Well, what Garis and his fellow Listener, whom he refused to name," Luke explained, "had performed was considered sacrilege among the rest of the Listeners' order. To return the traumatic memories, even at the insistence and consent of the memories' victims, and especially with pain-sharing, was taboo among the Theran Listeners. So while Garis's colleague was banished for committing the act, Garis himself was exiled from Nam Chorios as an accessory to the deed."
"Well, then, let's meet him, so we can get this over with!" Jaina exclaimed.
"I'm in agreement there," Han followed.
Leia was silent for a moment before she nodded. "Yes. Let's go."
The elder Solos then guided their grief-stricken daughter toward Jacen and the Skywalkers, who turned and headed for the exit of the hangar bay that led to the rest of the Jedi Temple.
Minutes later, on the Temple's second floor, the Skywalker-Solo party reached a door that was halfway down the corridor to the left. There, Luke pressed the buzzer next to the door.
A moment later, a calm, gentle voice belonging to what sounded like a human male responded from the answering machine above the buzzer. "Yes?"
"Apprentice Boric," Luke replied, "this is Master Skywalker. My niece and nephew, Jaina and Jacen Solo, would like to see you."
Almost immediately, the door slid open, and a tall, dark-haired, light-skinned human male who looked like he was barely out of his teens stood in the threshold with a starstruck expression his face; this expression was directed solely at the male Solo twin.
"Jacen Solo!" Garis Boric exclaimed. "By the Force, it's so good to finally meet you!" He took Jacen's hand into a firm shake.
Jacen, though caught off-guard like everyone else by Garis's enthusiasm - even the melancholy Jaina seemed wary at the young apprentice - still managed to give a natural Solo grin and smoothly retrieved his hand after the shaking went on for a few seconds.
"Likewise, Garis," Jacen said before he took his hand out of Garis's. "Um, Master Skywalker here told me about your experience as a Theran Listener and how that could help Jaina and me."
Garis's starstruck expression turned grim almost immediately. "What can I do for you?"
"You faced something like this before," Jacen pointed it out. "It's what got you and your fellow Listener exiled from Nam Chorios. Here, however, you will face no such penalty if you ensure that if I can't return Jaina's memories by also sharing our memories both ways, you can take our memories away."
"Come in then," Garis replied without hesitation.
The entire Skywalker-Solo party then filed into the room. Like most, if not all, of the dormitories in the Jedi Temple, it was sparse and minimalist, with only a bed and a few personal trinkets placed here and there throughout the room.
"Would any of you like to witness the process?" Garis asked the elder Solos and Skywalkers.
"Witness?" Han asked. "Isn't that what we're gonna be doing?"
"He's asking whether or not you would like to see what we three are going to see, Dad," Jacen said as he pointed to himself, Jaina, and Garis.
"How's that possible?" Han asked. "I mean, I'm sure all of you can probably see it, somehow, through the Force, but I can't-"
"It's okay, Captain Solo," Garis interrupted. "You don't need the Force to witness something like this. You just need a bowl."
"A bowl?" Mara asked, as confused as Han, Leia, and Luke all were. She then looked at her nephew. "Jacen, you have any idea what he's talking about?"
As Jacen answered, Garis stretched out a hand toward one of his personal trinkets, which was a brown, brass bowl, and used the Force to levitate it in his direction.
"When there are others who are present for a session of mnemotherapy," Jacen explained, "a bowl like that is used to let others see what the Listener and the patient, or patients in this case, are seeing."
"Luke, did you know about this?" Han asked his brother-in-law.
"I didn't know that much about it," Luke replied.
Garis soon placed the bowl on the floor before him before he sat cross-legged. He waved at the Solo twins. "Please, sit down and face each other."
The twins complied, placing themselves on the opposite side of the bowl from Garis.
"Jacen," the apprentice said, "you may begin."
With that, the male twin placed his hands on either side of his sister's head, which she didn't even flinch away from, and Jacen began to give Jaina her memories of the Yuuzhan Vong War and everything after that back to her.
Yet, at the same time, he also allowed that connection to be a two-way street so that whenever she needed his support for going through those memories, she could take some of his inner strength in order to balance herself. And not only that, but he kept those memories for himself as well as giving them to Jaina, so that her experiences were now also his experiences.
But in order for that to be balanced, he had to share his experiences with her.
So he began to gave her the emotions that he had through the war; enduring his own grief over Chewbacca, rescuing Danni Quee from Helska 4, the realization that the Yuuzhan Vong were truly absent from the Force, the death of Ithor; the guilt that Jacen had for not stopping Thrackan Sal-Solo from firing Centerpoint Station at Fondor, Jacen's fear that if he misused the Force he would let the whole galaxy slip into darkness.
And there was more; the death of Anakin (which, again, Jaina had already shared in), Jacen's capture by the Yuuzhan Vong and Vergere, his torture by them...
When the twins reached that point, Jaina couldn't take it; and because of that, Jacen couldn't take it. For all the pain that she had suffered, feeling what Jacen felt was too agonizing. And they both began to convulse as the swirl of mental images, seen by their elder relatives from Garis's reflecting bowl, rebounded through their connection, magnifying the pain to dangerous levels.
"What's happening?" Leia and Han practically asked together. Luke and Mara remained silent, though obviously concerned.
"The pain they're feeling, it's too much," Garis quickly explained before he placed his hands on Jaina and Jacen's foreheads. His voice immediately turned soft and became more quiet. "Calm, Jaina. Calm, Jacen. You can do this. I have faith in both of you that you can pull through this. As your pain is shared, so, too, is your triumph over that pain. As your pain is shared, so, too, is your triumph over that pain. As your pain is shared, so, too, is your triumph over that pain." Garis continued to repeat this over and over as he sent out waves of the Force from both of his hands that sent calming signals into the twins' brains.
And soon, very soon, they had both calmed, and, indeed, they had triumphed over that pain. And from there, they felt their joys, as well; the feelings that Jacen had for Danni, just as Jaina had for Jag; the subsequent victories in the war, which included the Battle of Ebaq 9, the triumph of finding Zonama Sekot, and, finally, the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar.
And there, Jacen had relived his experience of achieving oneness with the Force, and Jaina was there to bask in it as much as he had.
With that, the process had finished, and Jacen and Jaina had automatically snapped out of the bonding process.
"Jaina?" Jacen asked. "Are you... back?"
She hesitated, but eventually smiled with tears. "Yes, Jacen. I'm back."
They then hugged, and everyone else just left them alone for the moment.