36 ABY, new Jedi Temple, Coruscant
Jaina Solo exited the lift and strode down the elaborate corridor toward the Grand Master's office with some fluttering trepidation. She didn't know exactly why she had been summoned, but she was pretty sure she was in trouble. Were it otherwise, Uncle Luke would have approached her himself rather than send for her through official channels. The formality set her insides churning, despite all the horrors she had seen and endured in her short life.
Tesar Sebatyne, Tahiri Veila, Lowbacca, and Zekk rounded the corner ahead of her, and then she was sure. Only Jacen was missing, the ringleader of their unauthorized raid into Chiss space. The war between the Killiks and the Chiss was only recently resolved, but the fallout was still settling. The whole Jedi Order was still settling.
The simple fact that there was a Grand Master would take some getting used to. Uncle Luke had previously encouraged them and all the other Knights to find their own way, to trust the Force to show them the right course. Now he had firmly retaken the helm, like a disillusioned parent who belatedly realized he had placed a premature amount of trust in the next generation. It stung, but considering the chaos Master Skywalker had been required to stabilize, he probably wasn't wrong. Gone were the days of asking for forgiveness rather than permission. Well, almost. She suspected they would all be asking for forgiveness in a few minutes.
Tesar, Tahiri, and Lowbacca had crossed the Grand Master even more recently, and had only just been recalled from their mandatory retreat on Dagobah. Jaina fleetingly wondered if there were any mandatory retreats in her future.
They gathered outside the ornate double doors, greeting one another with nervous nods. At the last moment, Jacen emerged from the lift behind them, and their insubordinate little band was finally complete. Jaina shot him a sister's glower, but he declined to acknowledge it.
"Any idea why we're here?" he asked, feigning ignorance. His mind was closed to all of them.
"Are you serious?" Jaina quipped.
Before Jacen could answer, the doors swung open, and their aunt Mara ushered them inside the well-furnished anteroom. Her face was stony and unreadable, a stark contrast to the plush couches and the purling water feature which were obviously intended to put visitors at ease. They filed inside in silence.
"Don't sit," Mara instructed, stopping them before they could settle around the conversation pit.
"Aunt Mara," Jacen began in his best mollifying tone.
"Master Skywalker," she corrected him. She wasn't angry, but she was very cold, and it clearly wasn't the time to presume upon familial relationships. "This isn't a social call, Jedi Solo. Your rash actions during the war have had some significant consequences that the Grand Master wants to be certain you understand."
Still otherwise closed to her, Jaina nonetheless felt a defensive prickle around Jacen, as though he would have liked to launch into a verbose defense of his battle strategy right there, but something in Mara's eyes stopped him. Again, it was not the time.
They waited for what seemed like a very long and awkward interval, but it was probably only five minutes. Jaina was still reacclimating herself to her old patterns of thought now that the influence of the hive mind had largely worn off, and that inner peace that all Jedi were supposed to be able to fall back on had been elusive. She would have to practice her meditation more faithfully in the future. Tesar's scales rippled slowly, and the room began to smell like agitated Wookiee.
The door into the deeper portions of the office suite finally opened, and Jedi Darra emerged clutching a datapad and a box of datacards in his wings. He looked at them for a moment that was a bit too long to be casual, hung his feathered head, and then shuffled back out into the corridor.
Mara waved them forward. "Go on," she said. "He's ready for you now."
They entered as they were bidden, and stood in an orderly rank in front of the desk. The desk was a huge, ponderous thing carved from black wood and crowned with a slab of gleaming gray marble, specially commissioned for the Jedi Temple by Chief Omas. Uncle Luke never used the desk except on the most formal occasions, and it did set a certain tone immediately.
He didn't acknowledge them for a full minute, tapping on his datapad while he gathered himself. The sting of his disappointment was difficult to endure, even though Jaina wasn't sure yet exactly why he was so disappointed in her. There were certainly several possibilities. The kind and gentle master she had known all her life was buried at present beneath a new and undeniable authority, set just above a churning storm of grievance that set them all on edge. Her friends beside her shared her restless anxiety, but Jacen remained intentionally blank.
"Master Skywalker," Jacen began, becoming impatient, "if this is about the raid, I can—"
Luke raised a hand for silence without looking up, and the air in the room became heavier. Jaina scowled at her brother again. She almost didn't know him anymore.
Finally, Luke closed the datapad. "Jedi Solo," he began without making eye contact, twirling the stylus between his fingers. "Jedi Jaina Solo, I understood that you and your peers present at the Battle of Qoribu made an agreement with Captain Jagged Fel of the Chiss Defence Fleet in exchange for Jedi Lowbacca's parole."
Oh, stang. That's what this was about. "Yes, Master, we did."
"And what were the terms of that agreement?"
Jaina sighed. "The terms were that Jedi Lowbacca would not return to Chiss space or again take up arms against the Ascendency."
Uncle Luke had been present at Qoribu when the Aristocra had explained the terms, and he knew very well what they were. Jacen, however, let slip a pang of surprise. There had not been enough time between his return to Ossus and their immediate unscheduled departure to explain everything in detail. They had been living in the moment.
"Guaranteed by whom?"
"Personally guaranteed by Captain Fel and his family." It was a bitter pill, for sure. Jaina still had feelings for Jag, and she hated that their last words had been so acrimonious, that in their hurry to act they had brought this on him.
Luke finally looked up, tossing the stylus onto the desk. "Jedi Solo, do you understand what a personal guarantee means in the Chiss Ascendency?"
Jaina dropped her gaze. "Yes, Master."
"Now, Jedi Lowbacca, after benefiting from this extraordinary generosity, did you abide by the terms of your parole?"
Lowie hung his head, and growled a contrite admission.
"You did not," Luke confirmed. "How many times did you violate it?"
There had been two obvious occasions, Lowie owned, during Jacen's raid on the supply depot and at the Battle of Snevu.
"Correct." The Grand Master searched each one of them in turn with a steely glance. "Considering the severe implications, I expect you had a compelling reason. What was it?"
The silence was excruciating. The Master was waiting for an answer, but they didn't have one. He knew they didn't have one. They had no defense and no recourse. Jaina had already admitted as much to Jag, and now having to explain it to Uncle Luke brought all the guilt flooding back.
"I . . . we . . ." she stammered, trying to spare her friends the embarrassment. "We forgot."
It sounded even worse than she had thought it would.
Luke bristled like a nexu. He wasn't surprised, he was offended, offended as a Jedi, as a military veteran, as a squadron commander, and there was a disdain in his eyes Jaina had never seen before. "You forgot," he echoed. He drummed his fingers angrily on the cold stone, then picked up the stylus again. "If you had disregarded the damage you would cause after careful thought, or acted out of some misplaced concern for the greater good, that would have been bad enough. But you couldn't even be bothered to remember what Jagged had done for you."
Now it was Jacen's turn to scowl at her, and at Lowie. If Jaina could have scowled at herself, she would have. They really hadn't been thinking at full power during the Killik crisis.
"I regret to inform you," Luke continued, "that the Ascendency is serious about enforcing the terms of that guarantee. I sat here for five hours last night before Aristocra Formbi condescended to take my call. Jagged and the entire Fel family have incurred Lowbacca's debts, and they will be expected to pay for the damage you caused at both Supply Depot Thrago and the Battle of Snevu. That means several million liters of space fuel, clawcraft, dropships, ordnance, and two capital ships." He opened his datapad and turned it to face them, displaying the punitive total.
The number took Jaina's breath away. No one family could be expected to pay it, not without the wealth of a few worlds behind them.
"If they can pay," Luke explained, with particular emphasis on the word 'if', "they will have redeemed themselves in society. If not, their only other recourse is to sacrifice Jagged. If he is rescued," again with that skeptical emphasis, "he will be court-martialed, stripped of his rank, dishonorably discharged, and condemned to exile. Any attempt to return to Chiss space would bring the same penalty on the rest of his family."
Jaina couldn't speak, gutted by guilt and remorse. She felt as if she were on trial, but it was Jag who would endure the sentence. She would never have inflicted this on him if she had known, but she had known and hadn't given it a second thought. That was her uncle's whole point, after all.
"Jagged was a friend and ally during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong," Luke reminded them sharply, "and he advocated for you against his entire chain of command. Now you've taken his career, you've taken his home, you've taken his name, his honor, and his family, all because you forgot." He paused, struggling with his own exasperation, and his eyes narrowed. "What kind of friends are you?"
It was a slap in the face, all the worse because it was so richly deserved.
"Jedi Lowbacca," Luke continued, ready with another devastating question, "I was under the impression that the Wookiee people took debts of honor very seriously. Was I mistaken?"
Lowie couldn't bring himself to raise his eyes, consumed with shame.
Jacen was the first to speak. "Master," he said, tentatively redirecting the exchange, "Captain Fel is still missing?"
As if to add a final insult to the injury, it had been their mother, Leia, who had shot Jag's clawcraft out from under him during the space battle over Tenupe. Jaina knew the topography was complicating the rescue effort, but she had never imagined it would still be going on weeks later.
Luke nodded. "The Aristocra told me the search will continue for now, but there have been several casualties, and they can't devote resources to it indefinitely."
"Why aren't we helping?" Jacen demanded. "It wouldn't take long for a couple of Jedi to find him and get him out."
"No, it wouldn't," Luke agreed, "and I've made that offer several times, but thanks to this debacle the Ascendancy has made it abundantly clear that the Jedi are not welcome in their space for any reason."
Now Lowie protested. If they had caused the wrong, he reasoned, they should try to right it. It was the only way to restore their honor.
"But we can't!" Luke insisted severely, burning with frustration. "I've offered our assistance, they've refused it. If I send a team of StealthXs to Tenupe, they will be fired upon. You, all of you, have made it brutally clear to the Chiss that the Jedi have no honor. You have incurred a debt you cannot pay, and you have involved me and the entire Order in your disgrace!"
He had been rising out of his chair in his fury, but he sank back down as the heat passed. It was still there, but Luke's own feelings of hurt and betrayal were bleeding through. "The physical damage you did might have been forgiven," he said in a more somber tone. "Your actions, taken in a time of war, might have been justified. But the thoughtlessness, the casual disregard for your obligations astounds me. I expected better of all of you, and obviously so did Jagged. General Antilles is one of my oldest and closest friends, and this morning I was obliged to explain to him that my Knights—my niece, my nephew, and their friends whom I was previously honored to consider as near as family—have condemned his nephew to ruin through their own inexcusable indifference."
He let that hang in the air for a while. Jaina felt tears welling in her eyes, confronted with the ugly truth. It made her wonder what kind of person she was, what kind of person she was becoming, what war had done to all of them. It was so easy to get caught up in the demands of the moment, to lose sight of so many little things—and individual people—that had once been so important. It hadn't helped that her head had been clouded by Killik pheromones at the time, something she had done almost nothing to resist.
"I won't punish you," Luke continued in the same weary monotone, "Jacen because I can't be sure how culpable you really are, and the rest of you because I know the knowledge of what you've done and the thought of Jag rotting on Tenupe alone and friendless will be punishment enough. I would recommend that you all spend the remainder of the week meditating on the consequences of neglecting our obligations, the dangers of rash action, and how you intend to regain my trust. I'll have your new assignments for you by then." He looked up, grim and dispirited. "You're dismissed. Jacen and Jaina, wait for me outside."
They went. They couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Tahiri, Zekk, Lowie and Tesar filed through the anteroom and into the corridor without a word. Jaina would have liked to go with them, to disappear and process her misery in peace, but clearly there was more coming.
"Now you can sit," Mara said, her tone a bit softer than before. Just a bit.
Jacen carefully let himself down on the side of the couch nearest the fountain and goldie pool, still a bit stiff with a compression belt wrapped around his healing abdominal wounds. Jaina sat down on the other end, enough room between them for at least two other people. They used to be closer than that, but he had changed while he had been gone. Jaina had never thought he would stay away for five whole years without contacting them. A lot could happen in five years. She couldn't read him anymore, and just the fact that he was actively blocking their twin bond was extremely hurtful.
Master Skywalker came out to join them after a few minutes. He seemed sad rather than angry, and he sat opposite them to continue their conversation, bent forward with his elbows on his knees. "The Grand Master is off duty," he said, looking them both in the eye in turn. "This is Uncle Luke now. I have to say I'm worried about you guys."
Neither of them answered him. Jacen was still unreadable, and Jaina was too ashamed.
Luke sighed and risked a glance at Mara. "Jaina," he began again, "you're letting your feelings drag you all over the place. Jacen, I can't tell whether you're feeling anything anymore. Both extremes can be paths to the dark side, and whatever is going on is clearly driving a wedge between you that none of us is happy to see."
Jaina looked at her brother, who continued to look stonily ahead. "I'm sorry," she said for her part, and meant it. "Sometimes I don't feel like I know who either of us is anymore."
Jacen twitched almost indiscernibly, feeling the pressure of their uncle's expectation. "I know you wouldn't ask me to betray a confidence," he said, deflecting the inquiry, but the way he said it almost rose to the level of a threat.
Luke lifted an eyebrow, refusing to give an inch of ground. "No, I wouldn't," he agreed, "but this was going on long before you had such a convenient excuse. I might even be able to help you and your cautious friend if you can convince him to confide in me. In the meantime, I don't like how secretive and withdrawn you've become. I don't like that you feel you have to manipulate the people around you to achieve your ends. I, especially, don't like to be manipulated, and I'll thank you not to try it again."
Jaina swallowed as he turned back to her. "And you," he said, "bright and talented young woman that you are, have been just three steps short of being completely out of control lately. It feels like you don't know where you're going or even what you want out of life anymore."
"I don't," Jaina admitted, her voice sounding thicker than she would have liked. "I don't know who I'm supposed to be, or what I'm supposed to do about it. What does being 'Sword of the Jedi' even mean?"
The universe felt twice as big as it had that morning, vast and unknowable, and she was just a mote floating in the emptiness with no purpose and no direction. She had thrived on purpose, even when its demands worked her to exhaustion and tried her emotions to the limit. There had been no shortage of it during the Yuuzhan Vong war, but somewhere in the heat of it all she had lost herself, and when the war was gone she hadn't been able to find her feet. She had lost both her brothers—Anakin to a martyr's death, and Jacen to his long and apparently ongoing esoteric journey of discovery—and she had pushed Jag away. They might have been married with kids of their own by now. She thought she had found that purpose again with the Killiks, but ultimately their war with the Chiss had been an exercise in futility that had nonetheless caused a grotesque amount of death and destruction. Without Raynar and the Dark Nest to augment the hive mind, the Killiks were returning to their natural state, the Chiss were finally standing down, and she was once again just a mote, drifting helplessly on the tangled currents of life.
"At the risk of giving unsolicited advice," Luke said, "I think you're both experiencing what is colloquially known as a midlife crisis. We've all had one, and I expect the circumstances of your childhood probably set you up for an early fall. Sometimes we need some help finding our way out. That's why we belong to an order, so there's always someone we can turn to if we feel ourselves falling."
Something compelled Jaina to look up and meet her uncle's gaze. There was a world of trauma there, a lifetime of pain, loss, self-doubt, and emotional scars, but that was just the nature of the journey, and it was all in the past. Master Skywalker knew who he was, and he was content in his purpose. Jaina wished she had a foundation like that, something to cling to and stop her messy freefall. Before she even knew what she was doing, she had reached for him, and Luke had gently closed her hand in both of his. A heavy calm flooded over her immediately, and her flailing thoughts quieted themselves. It was a different sort of quiet, peace rather than emptiness, and it helped her center herself.
"That's one of the first things we have to change going forward," Luke told them. "We're all here for each other, and we should ask for help when we need it, not go blundering around on our own with no direction. That kind of conceited independence always gets us into trouble, as I'm sure your aunt would agree."
"Absolutely," Mara concurred.
"So," Luke concluded, "I want you both to spend some time here in the Temple, or on Ossus if you prefer. Talk to someone, but most importantly talk to each other. Give some thought to your future and what you want it to look like, because I have some serious misgivings about the trajectories you're on." He paused, becoming even more grave than before. "I've just finished destroying two dark Jedi and wrangling an insane one. If you fall, who do you think will be obliged to come for you?"
It was a hideous thought, Jaina realized, and obviously one of the few things Uncle Luke still feared. It was sobering to imagine herself so lost that she would refuse all help and force a deadly confrontation with him, but it really wouldn't be so far out of character considering her recent behavior. Master Skywalker had tried to call her back several times over the past several months, and each time she had refused, determined to feel her own way forward. Where had that landed her?
"I won't try to solve all your problems for you," Luke finished, glancing again at Mara. "I've been reliably informed that it's counterproductive. Take some time, both of you. Talk it out. I'm leaving for Naboo in a few days, but I want to meet with you again when I get back. Remember, we're all in this together."
Jaina nodded, and finally pulled her hand back. "Yes, Master," she said, straightening and trying to look more confident than she felt. "I can do that."
There should have been another answer, but instead there was only expectant silence.
"Jacen?" Luke prompted.
"Yeah, sure," Jacen finally said. "No problem."
Despite her brother's reluctance to be read in the Force, Jaina got the distinct impression that he was somehow offended by their uncle's concern, interpreting it as criticism. She began to wonder if he had any intention of doing any real introspection at all, but it was no good calling him out for something he hadn't done yet.
Luke noticed the whisper of hostility as well, but he also chose to let it pass. Maybe he would bring it up at their next meeting if it hadn't resolved itself. "Go on," he said, waving them out. "Go find some lunch and put your heads on straight. I'll see you in a few weeks."
Back in the corridor, Jaina and Jacen walked together toward the lift in silence. She confronted him as he keyed for entry. "So what was all that about?" she asked.
"What?"
"Getting all prickly like that. They're just worried about us."
Jacen frowned as the lift door opened and they stepped inside. "Maybe," he allowed. "There's no reason for them to be worried about me. I don't expect them to understand, but I've seen things they haven't, and still they're trying to push me back into their own idea of what a Jedi should be."
Jaina was slightly scandalized. "Jacen, they're the Masters."
"Yeah, Jedi Masters," he insisted. "The Jedi don't know everything there is to know about the Force. There's a whole universe of other perspectives out there, and it's really opened my eyes."
"Or blinded you," Jaina sniffed indignantly, "or can't you hear yourself? Sounds like that conceited independence they were talking about."
Jacen rolled his eyes, and turned away from her. "I never asked you to come along, especially if that's how you feel about it. But if you ever wake up one day and want to see reality as it really is, come find me."
Alarms were sounding in Jaina's head, and she briefly considered reversing the lift and rushing back to Uncle Luke and Mara, but they were grown adults now, not pre-adolescent tattletales.
Still, she hoped Jacen would at least consider getting some alternative opinions during this recuperative retreat, and also that the Skywalkers' visit to Naboo wouldn't take too long.