you can call me great one

On one hand, Jaina hated diplomatic missions and didn't think she was any good at them. On the other hand, at least she was getting out to do things, and she was getting better at the diplomacy thing. And sure, she had to bring a bodyguard still, but he was in back during the flight, while Jaina got to hang out in the cockpit and he slightly bored.

Naturally this meant getting the phone out. She took a picture out the viewport of the hyperspace lines (which took more tries than she would ever admit to to get something not-blurry) and sent it off.

Because really, if nothing else it was pretty.

[open for calls and texts! As always if you think you got it, you did!]

The fact was, Jaina was disturbingly used to spending long stretches of time closed off somewhere with no food or showers while things tried to kill/hurt her. None of that was actually bothering her. She was bothered by things she'd seen in a couple rooms, but she was repressing that by being sort of vaguely worried about her grandfather without exactly knowing why.

But none of that was why there wasn't class today. It was just that once Jaina realized what day it was (why did it feel like Tuesday?), she'd already missed her shift at one job and it was too late to come up with something for today's class with how exhausted she was. Besides, she was sure a lot of people were still either hiding out or passed out. So she sent an email this morning telling her students that class was canceled, but that she'd be in her office if anyone needed her or wanted handwavy private flight shed time. What, shooting could be cathartic.

So she was in her office with coffee, going through messages from home. She could go weeks at a time without being able to contact her family, so they hadn't even noticed she was gone... at least not on their own. Jag had noticed, though, and he'd contacted her parents yesterday, and now she had worried messages from more than a few people. Hopefully 'There was a Fandom thing, I'll explain later' was an acceptable explanation for now...


[Open!]

Normally Jaina wasn't an antisocial person, but she'd taken to staying in her quarters a lot since she got out of the hospital. When she did, to grab dinner (one could not survive on a kiddie pool of fruit alone) or to sneak into a training room against orders not to, she tended to do it on off hours when she knew no one was really around. There were too many condolences from random people, too many stares or whispers from others, and you could just forget going outside the Temple for a while until the story died down some. She could deal with herself and her own conscience just fine, but the general public was another story. One step at a time here.

Besides, she could call people and people could call her and she didn't have any shortage of visitors, so no one could say she was really isolating herself. She had pictures of an alternate universe little brother as a kitten to prove it. And the fact that really having nothing to do was driving her crazy was probably a good thing. Meant that she was at least still herself, or something.

On the bright side, she was getting really good at Angry Birds Space.

( and then there was a visitor )

( and later, a call )

[Preplayed with sith_happened/momslilassassin for great "omg too much stuff going on" justice, and NFB/NFI. If you would like to comment, though, that is all right.]

Jaina wasn't going to the funeral, which she had mixed feelings about. She wanted to be there, for Luke and Ben and her parents, but the same little part of her that had tried to skip out on her own brother's funeral just wanted to get away. That wasn't why she was missing it, though. After killing Lumiya and learning afterwards that there was no way that she could have killed Mara, Luke gave the task force new orders to find Alema, because she had to have done it.

Alema had to be found, yes. She was a threat, a Dark Jedi, and crazy as all get out. But the trail didn't make sense, and while Jaina couldn't voice or even admit to herself what she feared... she knew deep down that Alema was no real match for Mara.

Between that and the thought that she had to buckle down and be (even more) serious about what they were headed into, she'd had a little Talk with Jag and Zekk when she told them what happened. She would like to say that she handled it like a mature adult, but in reality she'd snapped something like "I'm not sleeping with anyone and that's final." Then they'd sat down and decided as a slightly uncomfortable team what their game plan was, which meant leaving immediately.

She had a few hours on Coruscant now. She'd made time to find Ben already, before calling the one in Fandom. It wasn't long enough, but she'd really felt the need to reassure him that it'd be all right, and that he'd be all right, because she knew he would, and he knew she knew. And then she had just enough time to regroup and pack up for another trip that would take an undetermined amount of time and head on out.

She was starting to feel like a pro at that.


[Open, as this is the last chance to talk to her for a bit. Not that she knows this yet.]

Jaina's portal was delayed. She had no idea how a portal could be delayed, but here she was. After a while of waiting at the causeway, she'd come to the beach, figuring that if she was going to be stuck waiting, she should at least get a change of scenery.

Watching the waves made her think too much, though. About her grandfather and Tiny Mom, about how certain things just kept popping up through the years, even about how much her thinking had changed since she was sixteen. That was when she'd check her datapad to read up on what was going on on Corellia, because potential conflict was a happier subject.

Or she'd check on her portal's ETA and curse at the very idea of gnomes when she saw it was delayed again. How?


[Open!

Aaaaand since I'm popular today: Zayne | Anakin | Ben | Luke | Rory | Eric]

It had been surprisingly easy for Jaina to be relieved from her assignment. She got the feeling the Council had realized that she was going to do whatever she wanted to do anyway so it was easier to just go along with it, but in reality she'd sounded worried enough when she called Luke that he'd agreed maybe she should go. And fine, maybe she felt guilty about leaving again to go running off to Fandom, but she kept reassuring herself that it wasn't like she didn't work her ass off at home, and in cases where you had a bad feeling about something, it was best to go with it.

So it was back to Coruscant for a whole couple hours and then off to the Portalocity terminal, where even though she'd booked her portal via her phone, they claimed they'd lost her reservation when she got there.

( this got sorta long )


[Establishy, and I think I am going to all-out make her life hell this weekend.]

Her time in Fandom had pretty much done exactly what Jaina had needed it to do: she'd had time to heal up, and while she still felt off, getting back some degree of normalcy had helped a lot. Maybe this was what happened when you coped like a normal person? When she arrived at the Temple, she went straight to the Masters, ready to explain what she'd been doing in Panem and why, and take whatever lumps she had to. She knew she could do so calmly, without coming off like she'd been traumatized or completely angry.

Of course, that was shot to hell the second Corran mentioned that she'd been gone for almost a month, when she should have only been gone two weeks. It made things a little more difficult, trying to talk about how running off was the right thing to do when you were trying so hard not to think about what it had meant the last time time had sped up for her.

Jaina didn't get an answer today, but she knew there'd be some sort of punishment, even if it was getting stuck in the kitchen for the next month. At the moment, that was a secondary concern. When she was free to leave she'd immediately gone to her quarters and got her phone, sending a quick text to multiple contacts reading: Time kriffing sped up again. How are you? and then waited for the messages to bounce back at her. If they did, she'd know she'd been cut off from Fandom again for who knew how long.

Everything went through just fine.

With a sigh of relief, Jaina decided she'd stick to her room for a while, unpacking, doing some quick math to figure this out, and waiting to see if anyone responded. She'd be cursing to herself in the meanwhile.


[Open for calls, texts or emails! If you want to have gotten the message and know about the time speed, you totally got it.]

A lot of people probably wouldn't believe it, but Valentine's Day had actually been Jaina's favorite holiday before. You got flowers and an excuse to spend time with the person you loved, and then there was dancing and you went home together. What was there not to like about it? After the last year and a half or so of her life, though, she would much rather just pretend the holiday existed, even if she was being slightly better at the not closing herself off thing. She'd survived a week of ridiculousness, now all she had to do was make it through chaperoning the dance and teaching on the day itself and she'd be fine.

And as it turned out, she wasn't in as bad a mood as she thought she'd be when she got to her office today. Visitors wouldn't even get crabbed at as she tried to get class done a little early so she could still fit her normal training in. Blame the flowers she'd gotten at her place.

Jaina could not be more relieved to wake up this morning feeling more normal than she had in a week. It was just a normal day, complete with training and not wanting to jump on anyone before heading into the office. It was a good thing, too; checking her messages meant she got the one from Luke asking her to come back for a mission. She couldn't imagine having to work like that, around Zekk, of all people. She was kind of excited to go back. It had been a long time, and if she was being asked onto assignments again, maybe it meant everyone was at least slightly less wary of/pissed at her.

This all meant that office hours today was spent not only working on class, but making a couple calls and trying to figure out if there was anything she needed to take care of before leaving tomorrow.