When Jaina finally found the Errant Venture, she'd expected the worst. It had been that sort of trip. Instead, by the time she docked her X-wing, Anakin was waiting for her, looking perfectly calm. The hug she greeted him with was a little harder than usual; she'd sort of been waiting to go clingy at someone since the thing with the worldship and she was sort of glad she got to do it at him. "What happened?" she asked when she'd pulled back.

Anakin didn't need an explanation. "Aunt Mara had the baby," he said.

Jaina shouldn't have been surprised, but she was. She hadn't expected to be in this galaxy when he was born, and honestly, after all the killing she'd just helped do it felt a little weird to hear. "But it felt like something was wrong," she said cautiously.

"It didn't go very well, I guess," he explained, and on the way to Luke and Mara's quarters, he explained that Mara had had to go off her treatment for the Vong-created disease in the late stages of pregnancy- which explained why arrest hadn't been an option. She'd let herself get pretty sick, saving all her strength for the baby, meaning things had been touch and go for a while there.

"So the disease is back?" Jaina asked, still worried. Either she'd been more put off by Kyp's betrayal than she'd thought, or she was so accustomed to the threat of losing people that she couldn't not focus on the negative.

"She's back on the treatment now, and getting better," he said, but admitted, "She still looks a little scary. Don't tell her that, though. And don't call the baby anything less than beautiful."

She frowned at him. "Did you call him ugly?"

Anakin had the decency to look chagrined. "Not in so many words..."

"Oh, Anakin."

"Just learn from my mistakes."

Jaina was apprehensive when they arrived, worried that she wasn't hearing the full story. The truth was, Mara looked about as bad as she'd ever seen, even at the height of her illness, but she didn't put out the same sense she had then. And while seated on the small sofa, she predictably did not look like she was going to be passing around her newborn to everyone. "I didn't think you would be coming back here," Mara greeted her.

"I had to see how you were," Jaina said, not mentioning that Mara had scared the hell out of her in the middle of battle. "And I was just on a mission, that's all."

"Exactly," she said. "I thought Ben would be walking before you managed to talk some sense into Kyp."

Luke definitely noticed Jaina's mood darken. With her angry moods, it was sort of hard not to notice. "There's time enough for business later," he said.

"Good. Because I haven't seen your kid yet and there's something wrong with that."

At Luke's gesture, she took a seat beside Mara, who lowered her arm enough to let her see her new cousin. "Aw, he's cute," she said, feeling her spirits lift for the first time since getting back to the Ralroost.

Mara glared at Anakin, who in turn shot Jaina a dark look for bringing that up.

"Do you want to hold him?" Luke asked. He really did seem to be in a better place than she'd seen him recently, even despite the near-arrest and Mara's illness and everything else he had going on. It was encouraging. Though it meant she didn't want to have to tell him about what had happened, in case it ruined that.

"You're not afraid I'll drop him?" Jaina replied.

"You won't," Mara said, though her tone was more warning than reassurance.

Jaina let Mara hand Ben over to her, though it suddenly occurred to her that she didn't really have any idea how to even hold an infant. She hadn't exactly been invested in her droid baby, after all. She supposed as long as she kept still and didn't spontaneously combust or anything, it would be fine. Easy enough.

When Mara started to seem itchy at being without her baby for that long, Jaina gave him back to her and looked to Luke. "Can we talk?" she asked.

He nodded. "Of course."

She'd tell Anakin and Mara everything later, mainly because she didn't want to subject a sick woman and a Force-sensitive baby to the emotions that she knew would come bubbling up when she got through the story until she knew how bad Mara really was. Besides right now she really needed to get the whole story to Luke. It had been his mission, after all.

On the way out of the room, though, she said, "I want a holo before I leave, if that's all right."

"Of course," Luke said with a little smile.

Feeling the need for full disclosure for some strange reason, Jaina added, "It's not for me."

Luke had a bag full of baby toys from Fandom he was perfectly aware she didn't make. He still nodded, and she had the holo before she left.


[NFB, NFI, OOC blah blah blah am I done yet?]