Jacen came out of his healing trance far more gently than he did in his previous few awakening. Time always seemed to be moving in slow motion when one came out of a lengthy healing trance, or meditation session. Like leaving hyperspace and returning realspace; time slowed and returned to a normal rate of progression. As he unfurled his legs from their cross-legged position he used the force to get an impression of his surroundings. He did this habitually, and without conscious thought.
Jacen came out of meditation, exhaling in relief. He hated the mandatory sessions. He looked forward to traipsing about Yavin IVs underbrush with Jaina, Zekk, and Tenel Ka now that his required training classes were completed for the day. Maybe he could tame another wild animal to add to his ever growing zoo. It was one of the best parts about Yavin IV. All those exotic animals…
As he rose to his feet he felt the tell-tale tingling sensation that he always got when danger was near. He reached for his lightsaber only to find his hands grasping at air. The force was veritably screaming at him now. He rolled out of the way just as two lightsaber blades cleaved the air were he had just stood. Jacen stopped his roll and came to a crouching combat stance, meeting his opponent head on.
Anakin stood there grinning. "You can roll around all you want, but your defeat is intevitable Jedi poodoo."
Jacen did his best to assume a serious expression at the sight of his younger brother standing there with two lightsabers, trying to look menacing. Anakin had only just been allowed to construct one of his own and, with typical mechanical genius, had done so in record time. Jacen was a bit perturbed that Anakin had disarmed him while he was meditating, without noticing at all. "I think you mean 'inevitable', Anakin." his voice assumed a less chiding and more resolute tone as he fell into his role. "A Jedi does not need a weapon to defeat a filthy dark sider!"
It turned out that he did…
Jacen blinked. Kriff, he was waxing nostalgic. He wiped the stupid grin off his own face at the memory of his brother's ambushes. Normally, he'd emerge the victor, much to his brother's chagrin. Strangely, for all his pragmatism and hands-on ways, Anakin was never really better when it came to lightsaber combat. Better in every other way, Jacen thought with a grimace, Anakin was the problem solver, the one who should have lived. He would've known how to deal with this.
Jacen realized that he'd been standingunmoving in the room for some time. He turned to find Mara looking at him.
"Still here, are you?" Mara asked, tilting her head a little. "Didn't they assign you any quarters? I'll have to rebuke the Captain, when next he pays us a visit."
Jacen smiled a little. Mara still sounded downtrodden and distraught, but a joke was a good sign. "I'm afraid that you'll find he hasn't been lax in his duties at all. I just enjoy your company too much." He approached her bed, with caution. "Would you like me to call the medical droid? Have it bring you any food?"
Mara shook her head, but he sensed the tiniest bit of amusement from her. "You do realize that there's a button right here," she pointed at a control panel connected to the bed, "for precisely that sort of thing."
Jacen grinned a little wider. "Come on, you know you love ordering junior Jedi around."
Mara's face took on an inquisitive expression. "Are you one then?"
"Unless I've been promoted or you've been demoted—" Jacen began.
"Likely, if Kenth Hamner becomes the new Grand Master, at least in my case," Mara stated, interrupting Jacen. "But that's not what I meant, and you know it. And for the record, the reason they put chairs next to medbay beds is so you don't have to stand there, looming over vulnerable patients."
Jacen took a seat, and sighed. He addressed her real question, nonetheless. "Of course I'm still a Jedi. If I hadn't wanted to be a Jedi any longer, I would have taken the very available out Luke supplied people like Tenel-Ka with."
Jacen held his breath in anticipation. He didn't know how Mara would react to her dead husband's name. When Mara nodded, and didn't break out in tears, he inhaled deeply.
"Isn't she your friend?" She asked. Jacen sensed an unspoken question.
"I can't quite qualify what we had." He placed subtle emphasis on the past tense.
Mara gave a half smile. It was the most he'd gotten out of her since it had happened. He was surprised how much it relieved him to see such a little thing appear on her face. "Those are fun, sometimes."
"Those?" he asked stupidly.
"Confusing relationships," she explained, smiling genuinely now.
"Your words, not mine," Jacen said, pretending to be defensive. Her good mood, superficial though it was, was infectious.
"I suppose leaving for five years can put a halt to things," Mara added.
"You do remember Danni Quee," Jacen interjected pointedly. He was worrying that Mara was getting a little to close to his secret affair with Tenel Ka. He wanted to redirect the conversation somewhere else. "I thought her and I had some chemistry when we all went on that lovely trip into the unknown regions. I certainly wasn't pursuing anything with Tenel Ka then. I'm no philanderer," he added, with exaggerated shock.
Mara looked up at the ceiling, momentarily. "Wartime romance is doomed from the get go."
Jacen scoffed. "That's not the advice you gave me, once upon a time."
Mara chuckled. "You remember that?"
"Of course," he stated confusedly. "I was subjected to lengthy torture, not a memory wipe."
Mara nodded. "Right… I suppose the conversation was—"
"Awkward," Jacen supplied.
"I was going to say memorable, but that works."
Jacen found her in the mess hall. The interim Jedi base's mess hall was small, but everyone had to make sacrifices due to the Yuuzhan Vong. Jacen breathed in, trying to gather courage. He approached her table and sat down opposite her, without waiting for permission. Mara raised her eyebrow in an unspoken question.
"Aunt Mara…" he began.
"Nephew Jacen…" she responded, mimicking him.
Jacen began to look around the room, nervously. Mara must have thought something was wrong, after a few moments passed, because she grasped his hand. "Are you alright?" she asked.
"?" Jacen blurted out.
"Excuse me?" Mara asked, and he sensed her curiosity mounting. "Jacen what's going on?"
Jacen exhaled slowly. "How do I get an older woman interested in me?"
Mara chuckled. "I must know because I'm old?"
"No!" Jacen held his hands in front of him defensively. "Just a woman and… well I don't want to have this conversation with my mother. You were—"
"…The next best choice?" Mara supplied with a grin.
"Yes. No!" He didn't know if she was making fun of him or just being mean.
Mara laughed. "Alright, I'll stop. What woman?"
"How's that relevant?" he asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
She shook her head, the smile still not leaving her lips. "Trained as a spy, always a spy…" she paused, and Jacen sensed her thinking a mile a minute. "So this woman of yours, is she smart?"
Jacen looked almost insulted. "I'm not that shallow. Of course she's smart . . . and beautiful. I really like her!" He stated intently, though he felt stupid about his outspokenness.
"Right," Mara stifled her grin with what looked to be hard concentration. "So what exactly do you want me to help you with?"
"How do I get her to like me?" Jacen stated, frustrated.
Mara eyes drifted to the back of the mess hall, and Jacen kept quiet, letting her think. "Make her realize that you're not a child," she said, finally. "The one good thing about war is that it matures people who aren't and sadly that means children are robbed of innocence. You're not a child anymore, Jacen."
"Really?" he sounded enthusiastic. "I mean, I don't feel like a child but I didn't realize that the adults thought that way too…"
Mara smiled crookedly. "Oh yes, the older members of the family recently convened the Evil Overlord Council of Adults and with much reluctance we decided to have you inducted to the circle." She steepled her fingers and lowered her voice to a menacing tone. "Welcome to adulthood, Jacen. You may now use children to do menial tasks."
Jacen chuckled. "You do evil mastermind quite well. But," he paused, "aside from making her realize I'm a mature young man, or what not, is there anything else?"
"Women usually like the whole knight in shining armor thing." Mara added. "If you combine Jedi mystique, with maturity, and your natural good looks you should be fine."
Jacen smiled happily. "You think I'm good looking?"
"Well yes . . . of course." Mara looked almost embarrassed.
Jacen stood up excitedly, his confidence having obviously been tripled. He kissed Mara on the cheek, and left the mess hall with a bounce in his step. He never looked back to see Mara touching her cheek, and looking slightly out-of-sorts by the exchange.
Jacen smiled at the memory. Mara seemed amused herself. "Nothing ever happened," he supplied, with a shrug, referring to Danni Quee and himself.
"Sometimes paths diverge too far to ever reunite," she explained, wisely.
Jacen nodded in agreement. "Yes, Master Yoda." His voice was solemn.
She slapped his arm playfully.
Jacen fell silent, and resumed pondering the heavier matters that had been dispelled by their light-hearted conversation. He was dimly aware of Mara propping herself on the two pillows she had been given and using the control panel on her bed to order food. A few moments later a service droid entered the room.
The 3PO series droid approached the bed and bowed slightly. "How may I be of assistance, Master Jedi?"
"I'd like some breakfast, please." Mara said.
"Do you have any particular desires?" The droid queried.
Jacen saw his aunt shake her head. "No, whatever is available is fine."
Jacen cleared his throat. "I'd like a caf, with some synthmilk." The exhaustion that he was feeling was somehow not entirely possible to dispel via the force. Artificial remedies weren't something he was above employing, should the situation call for it.
The droid turned his attention to Jacen. "I'm sorry, Jedi Solo, but you don't seem to be registered as a patient."
Jacen looked at Mara pleadingly.
"What my nephew meant to say, is that I would like a caf, with synthmilk." Mara told the droid, taking the hint in stride.
"I don't know if that's advised, given your treatments," the droid replied.
Mara rolled her eyes. "A Jedi's metabolism can overcome such minor inconveniences," she told the droid. It wasn't really a lie.
"As you wish, Master Jade-Skywalker," the droid said, finally submitting to her wish.
It left in typical slow fashion. Protocol droids, even newer models, had a proclivity to move very slowly, in order to put sentients at ease.
"The things you gotta do to get a good caf…" Jacen said in a mock-world weary tone.
Quiet descended on the room. Jacen used the force to subtly read his aunt, being very careful not to alert her. The overarching emotions she emanated were still sorrow and despair, but not to a suffocating degree. He was relieved. It annoyed him that they hadn't reached Coruscant yet, but hyperspace routes in the Unknown Regions weren't well mapped out. As such, they had to string several jumps together to make it to their destination. The only good part about it was that it allowed Mara some time to recover from the initial shock. He didn't know exactly why—aside from the obvious reasons—but he felt that she had an important role to play in the weeks and months to come.
The doors to the room slid open again. The service droid reentered the room, carrying a tray with Mara's food. He clanked towards her, and placed the tray over Mara's bed. A calibrated repulsor unit attached to the bed automatically registered the tray, causing it to float over the bed at an altitude only slightly higher than a normal humanoid species legs' width. Mara thanked him, and after the droid had given some instructions and a chiding remark about the caf, it excused itself and left.
Mara handed Jacen his caf and started eating methodically. She did most things in a very precise manner, but Jacen had always found her eating to be especially exact. It was something she had in common with his mother. They had both been taught the graces of polite company, something that had been attempted with the Solo children, but to little avail. The Solo gene, courtesy of their maverick father, was not easily cultivated. In Mara and Leia's case, however, high galactic societal graces weren't merely asked for, they'd been demanded. Leia had required it for her political grooming, while Mara needed it because her duties as Emperor's Hand required it. Jacen, no longer puerile but purely logical, rebuked his young self mentally. He envied his mother and Mara's knowledge of high society graces, which they employed as though they were second nature.
Jacen dismissed these thoughts with a mental wave of his hand, and concentrated on just drinking his caf while trying to decide if he should use flow-walking to find out who would become grand master, if anyone. It was risky, and perhaps unethical, but these value judgments put in place by ancient doctrines, long obsolete by the changing of the times, interested him very little. The only thing that stopped him from doing it, was the concern he felt when trying to determine whether or not it would be a certainty, or merely a possible future. He was in relative proximity of the actual event, so the chances of anything derailing the future was more minimal, but not wholly unlikely. Jacen still wasn't sure that the future shown by flow-walking was one of many possibilities, or the most likely. He operated on the assumption that it was the latter. Maybe I should try and fix the vote, so the most useful—
"Jacen, what are you doing?" Mara asked.
He'd not realized she'd finished eating. "What do you mean?" He asked defensively, before realizing there was no way she could've known what he was thinking. His shields were firmly in place and he wasn't thinking about anything with any strong emotions.
"I mean here, in my room?" Mara clarified.
He rose, and placed the emptied cup on the tray. "I'm just trying to be here for you, I guess," he said, returning to his chair.
He sensed gratitude from her, but also trepidation. "That's sweet Jacen but a little out of character."
Jacen did his best to look crestfallen. "How so?" he asked.
Mara turned her head to look at him. "You're no nonsense Jacen now," she extrapolated. "Since you've come back you've kept your own counsel and mostly acted according to your own views." Mara took a breath. "I get why you came earlier." Her voice cracked momentarily. "You wanted to keep me from doing anything foolish," she resumed, the sound of her voice returning to normal. "But now, I don't know what you're doing here, anymore."
"We are on the same ship, you know." Jacen pointed out.
Mara was still looking at him, and he could tell by the way her eyes narrowed that she wasn't in the mood for equivocation.
"I'll be out of your hair when we get to Coruscant," he intoned, in a soothing tone.
Mara shook her head slightly, as though disappointed. "You still haven't answered my question. Is this how it's going to be with you from now on?"
Jacen's jaw set and he felt two sides warring inside him. A part of him wanted to tell Mara all he'd seen, and the other wanted to lie, deflect, and obscure until she believed him. He just didn't know what the right choice was.