Jaina would be returning to Fandom the day after Jacen left, and she didn't know how she felt about it. It made her incredibly nervous that she wouldn't be able to watch him all the time, but he'd made his choice on what he wanted to do now. He didn't want to be part of an order, the figure that everyone looked up to because of what he'd done. And realistically, when Luke Skywalker walked out of a battle seriously injured and Jacen Solo was the one who killed the Supreme Overlord and end the war with that enormous display of power, it was going to attract a lot of attention Jacen didn't want. He wanted to travel, and learn what he could about the Force, and see what he could learn about himself, and there was nothing wrong with that, especially given all he'd been through. This was temporary, and Jaina knew she was pouring her own issues onto him. He'd ended the war. He deserved to be trusted to do his own thing for a while without having her worrying that he was going to turn Sith the second her back was turned.

She walked him to the landing platform, wanting to have some time alone with him before everyone else arrived to see him off. "I want updates," she began. "I'm going to go stir crazy in Fandom wondering what you're doing. If your life's more exciting than mine."

Jacen gave her one of those lopsided grins, having gotten the rundown of a few things that had happened recently. "I can't see that happening," he told her dryly. "I'm glad you're going back."

"I'm just making Fandom my home base again," Jaina shrugged. Coruscant was long from being inhabitable, she didn't have anything close to permanent on Mon Cal or Denon... There wasn't even anywhere permanent she could go. And right now, she wanted to settle a little. "I'll still be coming back to do my Sword thing. I don't want to be too far from the action. I have too much of Mom and Dad in me to give up fighting for peace and justice."

"Especially now that you've gotten so good at it."

Jaina snorted. "That's the real problem, right? When it starts to come easy?"

"You just have to avoid the killing part of it."

"Unfortunately, that's part of the starfighter pilot job description."

"And you're on leave from that. So find some other way to satisfy your need for speed and action. I hear podracing's making a comeback."

Jaina laughed, knowing Fandom itself might give her that. It was why she'd ended up there in the first place. "Like you said, I'm just an individual finding her way in the Force. Might as well figure out what it is I'm doing somewhere I can think." All the time that people had criticized her work ethic or tried to tell her to slow down, it wasn't that she had never known what she did was insane by most people's standards. It was just that it was what she'd had to do for her part in the context of the war. Jacen had been right when he asked her to go back to Fandom over the summer. If she stayed here, she was just going to do the same thing she'd always done and never actually get anywhere.

And since she'd first joined up with the military, Jaina had had to live her life defensively. Things happened, and she reacted to them. For as much as she'd focused on how things affected her, she hadn't actually done much of anything for herself since... longer than she could remember. The opportunity was there, as the end of the war split everyone up and sent them on their own paths, there was no reason not to figure out what it was that she wanted.

"I'll contact you when I can," Jacen promised. "Check in on you, make sure you haven't lost it yet." He wouldn't.

"No comments on how I lost it years ago?"

"Thought it went without saying."

Jaina grinned. "Any idea where you're starting out?" she wondered.

"Right now I think I'd like to spend time among some of the other Force-users- the Jensaari, the Theran Listeners, the Sunesi... maybe even try to find out where the Fallanassi disappeared to," he said, half-laughing at himself. "Anakin's probably ridiculing me for even thinking of going on a quest for answers. He'd probably say that I'd do better just to plant myself under one of these trees and wait for the answers to find me, instead of roving around trying to find them." He sounded sad when he continued, and no wonder, "I wish I could see him, Jaina. I regret so many of the arguments we had, and so many of the wrong-headed decisions I made. But they were the best I could manage at the time. It'd be easy to say I wished we'd never gone to Myrkr. But if we hadn't gone, then none of us might have survived the voxyn. There would have been no one to find Zonama Sekot, no chance for the Alliance or the Yuuzhan Vong. It would have been a battle to the death, with no winners."

Jaina let him finish, actually listening to him rather than passing it off. She'd thought much the same, actually. "Anakin was such a special person that even now it doesn't seem fair that he should have been the one to die. I know that fairness has nothing to do with it, but I'll never get over his death- just like the way he might never have been able to get over Chewie's death." And she got that now. It'd taken enough of John telling her that, along with a complete breakdown, in order to grasp that, but there it was. Some things you didn't get over, but ignoring them didn't work, either. "My worst fear was that I'd survive without you, Mom and Dad. I didn't want to live after Myrkr, Jacen. And after... I might not have just become 'the Sword of the Jedi,' but the sword the Jedi would have been sorry they'd forged. I would have made the Kyp who destroyed Carida look like a simple scoundrel."

He'd heard things like that over the last year, but he seemed a little relieved to hear it all in past tense now. "You'll be all right," he said.

"I always am," Jaina grinned. And she knew she would be, it just didn't feel that way yet.

"I mean it."

She sobered. "And it means a lot to hear it. I know you didn't think that way not too long ago."

"I worried, there's a difference," he corrected. "You survived, and you're not alone. That's what you feared, wasn't it?"

Jaina made a face. "Yeah, but everyone's still leaving. I don't know where you're off to, Mom and Dad are going with Luke and Mara and Ben, all our friends are scattered... Meanwhile I've got no home, no specific job at the moment, and no clear path. It feels like I'm walking out of all of this with nothing."

"Don't think of it as nothing, think of it as a fresh start. By all appearances, that's what I'm doing," he pointed out. "Our paths aren't the same, but I don't think what we're doing is all that different. You have that."

When she sensed her parents nearing, followed closely by Luke and Mara, she said, "All right, let's get this over with before everyone gets sappy."

"Dad will not get sappy," Jacen assured her, reaching down to hug her.

"We'll see," Jaina said, kissing his cheek. "May the Force be with you, Jacen."

"And with you," he said, pulling away in time for everyone's arrival.

Jaina hung back, letting her parents and aunt and uncle say their goodbyes, wondering when they'd all ever be in the same room again, or under what circumstances. They just got everyone back together. Letting him go off now just seemed unfair. But at the same time, he was right. He had to find out what he was meant to do, too, he just had to do it his way.

She watched as he headed off, disappeared into the ship that would take him away, and felt Leia's arm around her in consolation. She missed him already, sad as that was.

And the next time she saw him, it'd be too late.


[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Some dialogue ganked from The Unifying Force by James Luceno.

Hey, game? After two and a half years I finally finished the NJO. \o/ \