Once the battle plan was decided, things seemed to move faster than they actually did. Almost as soon as Jaina was reunited with her parents, they were separated again as Han and Leia ran off into yet another dangerous mission on Caluula. As far as Jaina was concerned, that sort of thing was fine for her to do, but the rest of her family just needed to slow the hell down already. She meanwhile ended up at Mon Calamari Extreme when the Vong finally arrived, and spent far too much time in a crippled X-wing in the middle of the battle, thus driving home the hypocrisy of the slowing down thing.

And then they found Zonama Sekot.

The living world was where Luke, Mara and Jacen, out of contact for all this time, were holing up, and Jaina was sent with her parents to meet with them. She'd all but attacked Jacen with hugs the instant she saw him, beyond happy for that reunion. Minus Ben, still hidden away in the Maw, this was the most together her family had been since longer than she could remember.

Zonama Sekot came with a few surprises, such as help from the Yuuzhan Vong high priest Harrar, who Jaina had not heard from since she'd gone up against him after Myrkr, while she still using the Trickster. Since she'd been fairly badass in that meeting, though, she didn't have to feel awkward now that he was on their side. Also among the surprises was that Sekot (yes, the planet) had also agreed to make living ships for some of the Jedi, if the pilots were able to bond with their seed-partners, which was a process that looked really fascinating.

Looked, because it was just something Jaina couldn't do. Try as she might, she couldn't manage to bond with the little animal things, which meant that she was away from her X-wing, Jag had command of her squadron again, she couldn't use the Sekotan ships, and she was entirely grounded right before what was probably the final battle of the war. Somehow this didn't seem fair to her, and she was getting really tired of feeling like she was sitting around and being useless while everything happened around and to her.

Restless and tired of watching the other Jedi do their bonding successfully, Jaina finally set off looking for Jacen, who'd opted to skip the process. This proved to be more difficult than she would have thought, and when he finally found her, she greeted him with, "I've been looking all over for you. Where were you, practicing making yourself small or something?"

For a moment it looked like he was still lost in thought, or something. He seemed to do that a lot here, and that probably shouldn't have been a surprise. This was Jacen, after all. Being on a living planet like this was probably his dream come true. "The Force is strong here," he explained. "The usual methods don't work."

"That's for sure," she muttered.

"Are you angry about something?" Jacen asked, considering her.

She was angry about a lot of things. "I guess I'm just disappointed," she said instead.

All he had to do was look at the other Jedi, and he knew. "Because none of the seed-partners bonded with you."

"What else?" she snapped. "I mean, I'm as good a pilot as Kyp, Saba, or Corran, and they bonded with seed-partners right away. At Mon Calamari, I flew my X-wing into combat with only one engine!"

"Piloting skills have little to do with the bonding process. Or with courage, for that matter."

"Great. Then I guess I'm just not as attuned to the Force as they are." Right. She got it. There was a reason even for little animal things to reject her. At that thought she realized how ridiculous she was being, but it didn't mean she stopped feeling like she did.

"You know that isn't it," said Jacen, turning her towards him so he could look directly at her. "It could be that Sekot sees some other purpose for you."

"Easy for you to say. You didn't even try bonding with the seed-partners."

The smile he gave in response to that was only slightly lopsided. "I'm not anything close to a pilot." Apparently he'd get better. Somehow.

"Yeah, well, neither am I. I'm just the official Sword of the Jedi- whatever that means." Jaina took a breath, wanting to shake off the sulkiness, especially as her next question popped into her head. "Jacen, do the Yuuzhan Vong pose a threat to the Force?"

Jacen shook his head. "They're a threat to the Jedi, because they'd have all of us embrace their religion and their gods, and see the universe strictly as they see it. But no matter how the war is decided, individuals will continue to find their way to the Force. It's not a flame the Yuuzhan Vong can extinguish- any more than the Sith could."

"And you're still willing to fight to make sure that doesn't happen."

"In my own way. I've learned something about myself since Centerpoint."

"From Vergere, you mean."

"From Vergere, from Sekot, from all of you. I'm starting to think that the Force- at least as we understand it- is only one facet of a finely-cut gemstone, and that maybe the sum of it is even greater than its parts."

When he got into that sort of talk, it was very easy to tune out the philosophy. "At least Zonama Sekot is willing to fight alongside us."

"That will be Sekot's decision."

Jaina frowned. "Based on what? On whose interests the Jedi are serving?"

"We serve the Force," Jacen said. "None other."

"Is that justification enough for obliterating the Yuuzhan Vong?"

"No," he said strongly. "They are not outside the Force. According to Sekot, they have been stripped of the Force."

Right. They couldn't even be sensed. "So I've heard," Jaina said. "But, then, what do you think the Force wants for the Yuuzhan Vong?"

"If I knew, we'd have the answer to ending the war."

Jaina sighed, and fixed him with a look. "I hate cryptic."

"That's just too bad."

*****

With the Alliance diverting half their forces away from defending Mon Calamari in order to attack Coruscant, the Jedi's plan was to send a strike team into find the Supreme Overlord Shimrra. Take him out, the war was over. Harrar talked them through the best way to do it, and how to get through the citadel, though they hadn't gotten as far as even deciding who would go.

And because all good plans had to go straight to hell (Jaina had discovered long ago this was standard), the plan was sped up quite a bit by the appearance of a Yuuzhan battle group in the system. By the time the Jedi had assembled, it was pretty clear the plan was going to have to be 'go now.'

"We were hoping for more time, but that's not going to happen," Luke told them. "The Yuuzhan Vong are on the way, which means you're going to have to get your ships airborne and give yourselves a crash course in piloting them." He turned to Tesar, who not long ago had been under Jaina's command in Twin Suns, and said, "The shuttle will take you and the rest of the Wild Knights to your blastboat and fighters."

And yet Jaina got nothing. She didn't find this acceptable. "Now do I get to fly my X-wing?" she asked, frustrated.

"May I say something?" Harrar said. "Assuming some of you are going to Coruscant, your war party will benefit by having both Jaina Solo and Jacen Solo as comrades. Our warriors are very superstitious, and the sight of the celebrated Jedi twins- united- could demoralize them. The capture of one such as Jaina Solo would count for more than her death."

Right. The person giving her something to do was the Vong, and it sounded cheery. And still, it was all about image, not about what it was she could actually do.

It was Tahiri who spoke, which was especially unnerving for some reason. "At Borleias I told you not to accompany Luke and Mara to Coruscant, because I was afraid that your presence would endanger them. Now I agree with Harrar that you should go." Oh, that was why. Because even Tahiri got a say and she didn't.

Jaina folded her arms across her chest, beyond annoyed now. "Nice to see that everyone is so comfortable with deciding my destiny."

There was a small amount of satisfaction a moment later when it was said that Sekot wanted Cilghal, Tekli and Danni to stay onplanet, which Danni took issue with. "I thought I'd be going with you and Mara to Coruscant."

Luke shook his head. "Sekot obviously feels that you're needed here."

"If I can accept not flying, then you can accept staying here," Jaina said stubbornly.

After a pep talk from Luke, it was time to get ready, and as Jaina started away from the landing pad, she became aware that Mara was following her. As evidenced by her, "What is wrong with you?"

All great conversations started with accusations. "Nothing's wrong with me," Jaina lied. "I'm just sick of being treated like some high school kid when I'm a twenty-one-year-old woman."

"If you want to be treated like a twenty-one-year-old woman, you might want to stop acting like some high school kid," Mara countered.

Jaina stopped in her tracks, staring at her aunt in shock. Very few people tended to call her on her behavior, and it was always like a slap to the face when they did.

"What was that back there?" Mara pressed, standing with her.

"I want to be where I'm most useful, which is in my ship, with my squadron. But time and time again everything affecting me gets decided for me, and the decision is never about what I want."

"That happens sometimes. Sometimes the decision is about what's best for everyone," Mara said. "So what do you want, then?"

"To be in my ship."

"That's not an option."

"Exactly," Jaina grumbled.

There was something about seeing Mara look peeved at her that always made her feel six years old. "Jaina... you're needed most here. It's not like you're doing nothing. You're going to the citadel to take out the Supreme Overlord. That's definitely something. If you really want to be where you're needed most-"

"I want it to be my decision!" she protested. She was not doing well with that maturity thing here.

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation with you, of all people," Mara said, shaking her head.

Frankly, neither could Jaina. She hadn't always just let things happen to her. On Myrkr, she'd been the one to abandon the mission to get Anakin, and her actions on Hapes had nearly made her queen. She was where she was today because she'd given herself the job. So when had that changed? When she was named the Sword? When she learned she might have to kill her twin someday? She'd thought she was simply accepting her destiny, but maybe not. She'd lived according to what she was needed for, and put her own life on hold because she was waiting for the galaxy and the war to slow down-

And she'd made someone else wait for that, too. Wow. John wasn't supposed to have been right about her making him wait half a lifetime. At any point, she could have ended the whole time mess by figuring out the compromise she'd told him too late that she'd wanted... and she hadn't. On top of some realizations that had come out from her last talk with Rose, she wasn't coming off- or feeling- too great here.

She didn't know what happened to her expression to make Mara ask, "What's wrong?"

Jaina shook her head, not wanting to get into it right now. It did get her to cave, though. "I'll shut up," she promised.

"I don't want you to shut up, I want you to see-"

"I see," Jaina interrupted. "I'm on board. I have to get prepped." And now she was glad to be going anywhere but here. If she survived this, she'd see where this all left her then.

*****

The last time Jaina had set foot on Coruscant had been when she'd brought John along to meet her family, if that was any indication of how long it had been. What she saw now from the copilot's seat of the Falcon, she didn't even recognize. The planet itself had been altered, the gravity changed, a moon was gone... Jaina had never considered Coruscant home, but she had grown up here, and this wasn't what she suspected. It was unsettling.

It was under attack at the moment, a battle they were headed right into. "This party's just the way we left it," Han noted.

The last time he'd been here, he and Leia had been escaping Coruscant when it fell to the Vong. "I missed that one, Dad," Jaina said flatly. The last time she'd attempted to come here had been that same day, seeking refuge after Myrkr and losing Anakin.

"Me, too," Jacen agreed from a seat behind her. He'd been a prisoner of the Yuuzhan Vong already. It had been a bad day all around.

Han didn't have a response for that.

The Falcon wasn't on the offensive here. They just had to get onto Coruscant, which proved difficult in the middle of the battle. Pellaeon also had the Imperials here, and the Jedi in the Sekotan ships were defending against the battle group, and Jaina copiloted the ship from the sadly normal-sized seat and reacting before her father could even give orders while Luke and Leia took out what coralskippers they could from the gun turrets. It was, in all, about what they could have expected.

What they didn't expect was to actually see Coruscant. It was even worse than it had looked from orbit. Jaina knew what the geography of the planet used to be. It had been mostly glittering cityscape. That was almost completely gone now. Buildings that had remained standing were now covered with alien vegetation. Mountain ranges were destroyed. Fires raged, sending herds of unfamiliar beasts scrambling for safety, and once they got further into what had once been a city, they saw Yuuzhan Vong civilians doing the same.

"This place isn't worth saving," Jaina realized as she watched the changing landscapes through the viewport. Jacen had told her that when he'd escaped captivity, he'd found himself on Coruscant. He'd found their old family apartment, the last place the Solos had all lived together, back when Anakin and Chewie were alive, before there was Jedi training and war. He'd seen what had happened to the world he'd known, and it had been devastating. Jaina understood that feeling now.

"Shimrra obviously feels the same," Harrar said darkly from the seat beside Jacen.

The Falcon finally touched down safely in a canyon the Alliance had commandeered, a canyon that had also one been part of the city. Jacen and Jaina geared up in biosuits and followed the Jedi and their parents down the landing ramp and onto the balcony and into a fairly large group of military. "Welcome home," yelled Judder Page, leader of Page's Commandos, trying to be heard over the A-wings streaking the sky overhead. "To, as we like to call it, Necropolis."

To her surprise, Jag was one of the military personnel present. She snuck away while Page briefed the others, just long enough to learn that he was going to be headed to Westport to be deployed, and to give strict orders on what to do with her squadron while Twin Suns was under his command. He could handle his own Vanguard Squadron and hers, he'd proven this before. Still, being able to get bossy like this while she'd been feeling pushed around and helpless honestly did help, and she appreciated that he put up with it.

When she moved back towards the group, she realized she'd have to get the lowdown on the situation here in a minute, because Leia was already working on the goodbye hugs. At the moment she was attempting to squeeze the life out of Jacen, but once she spotted Jaina returning, she turned all that motherly force on her. Jaina wasn't turning it down.

When she'd finally released Jaina, Leia turned to her brother and began to speak, but he shook his head and assured her, "They're in my keeping, Leia. But all of us are in the custody of the Force."

Jaina supposed most families hugged like this when they were saying goodbye before someone went on vacation, maybe. Her family did it when someone was about to possibly go walking to their death voluntarily. Once Han had hugged his kids a little more tightly than necessary, he turned to Luke and said, "We've been in worse straits than this, right?"

"More times than I can count," Luke said with a grin.

"Then maybe we should make this one count as the last one."

"I'll abide by that if you will." They wouldn't.


[NFB, NFI, woo! A good portion of dialogue taken from The Unifying Force by James Luceno. When canon gives you brattiness, might as well use it for character development, right?]