They'd only just started. There was still time. Jaina turned herself more towards him, pulling back slightly. "So you know," she said, not sure she should be saying this but feeling the need to anyway, "when the time comes, I want you to stay. But I'm not going to ask. It's out there, but whatever you end up doing, I want it to be because it's what you want."

"I mean... You know I want you around," she said. "In whatever capacity that means. If you go to school, if you join up with your military, there's a place for you in Twin Suns for as long as you want it, whatever. You have the options, I just don't want to add to the pressure by making it about what I want. That's all."

"Slightly more than just in my squadron," she said with a little smile.

"I'm not entirely sure," Jaina admitted after a pause. She sighed, deciding if she'd already said this much, she might as well just go for it. "Look, I don't know what I'm going to do once you graduate, either. I'd have stayed home after Borleias if you weren't around. I may end up going back, I may stay here doing the same thing I have been, I don't know. If you wanted to come back with me, I wouldn't exactly hate it." Which was about as far as she was willing to go on that right now, especially as it went against the instinct she had with so many others these days, even if that was fading. "Or if it's a long-distance thing, I'd still want that. I'm just saying I want to work it out."

"That's not what I meant," she said, withdrawing her hand. She'd meant this to be a good thing, not to make things worse. "You know what I'd probably be without you? I'd be that girl Ben and Tahiri don't want to talk to. You're what I have that those versions don't."

"Fandom got old for me a while back," Jaina said bluntly. "And my grandfather tries in his own way, but he's not why I come back. I love having you home with me. Even when you were at flight school it didn't feel weird to me because you were in the same galaxy. But I just really, really don't want to make your decision about me when you're the one who's going to have to live with it."

"I just don't want you to make things worse, or uncomfortable." Though she was really wondering if she'd done just that.

It kind of was, yeah. And while putting herself out there was a huge thing for her, she was really wondering if she was just so out of practice that she just couldn't do it anymore. "I shouldn't have brought it up," she said, pulling herself back into a sitting position. "Don't worry about it."

"Not what I was saying," she said, not for the first time tonight. "Know what, forget it. I shouldn't talk. I've learned now."

"I'm saying exactly what I mean. I don't know how to put it any clearer," Jaina said. "It just keeps getting all twisted up and then it sounds like you have no idea what I'm saying when I don't know how else to say it."

"I don't want you to stop talking," she sighed. "But yeah, maybe we should call it a night." And she'd just spend it kicking herself and working more.