Jaina Solo Fel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
solo_sword) wrote2012-08-03 06:24 am
solo_sword) wrote2012-08-03 06:24 am
Entry tags:
Coruscant- Friday morning
This morning, more or less on a whim, Jaina had left a message for Tahiri to meet her. She'd been thinking about it since her conversation with... well, Tahiri the other day, but today was the day she followed through on it. She wanted answers, and she wanted to look at her and talk to her and know that Ben was right about her, and if that was true, maybe she wanted to check up on her.
She hadn't seen Tahiri since Mirta had gone and stabbed her on Bloodfin, so Jaina had set the meeting place at a park, somewhere nice and neutral, in public, just so no one had to feel defensive. She wasn't even sure that Tahiri would show, but she found a spot on a bench to wait, just in case she did.
Tahiri very nearly didn't show, actually. If it had been anyone else but Jaina, she might not have. She headed toward the bench quickly, with her head down, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible, and when she did arrive she sat down gingerly on the opposite end of the bench with a wordless nod.
"You came," Jaina said, sounding somewhere between surprised and pleased. It seemed like a good start...
“You asked,” Tahiri answered, which was a very brief answer by her usual standards, but she didn’t sound like she was up to being particularly talkative. “Funny as it sounds, I’m glad you did.”
"Me, too," Jaina said. Well, she was glad so far. She'd see how the rest went. And given the last time they had been in the same room together, she had to ask, "Are you okay?"
Tahiri shrugged and looked down at her hands; she was keeping her emotions locked down in the Force, but the occasional flash of guilt would occasionally leak out. "I'm here," she said simply, because that was one thing she had that Jacen didn't. Where that left her in relation to the closest thing to a family she'd ever known, she had no idea. If she sounded surprised by it, she was; she hadn't expected to be left alive, much less walking free.
"Good," she said, and meant it. Let no one be too surprised that Jaina would be supportive here. After Zekk and Kyp and her grandfather and herself, she wasn't going to shun someone who made it back. "It's just... what the hell happened?"
Support didn't mean she wasn't going to be blunt, though.
Blunt from Jaina -- Tahiri was used to that. “That could be a very long story. How far back do you want me to go?”
"Whenever you decided that sticking with Jacen was a good idea," she said. There was some allowance for the fact that until pretty recently, a lot of people would have thought that was a good idea.
"It seemed like a logical choice at the time," Tahiri said honestly.
And Jaina had to ask the logical question: "How?"
"That's funny, actually." Not that there was much humor in her tone. "It started years ago, when Luke exiled me, Lowie, and Tesar to Dagobah. Funny because we didn't trust Jacen at the time, but I had a hard time with how the idea of my allegiance to the Order was at odds with wanting to defend Raynar. I started questioning things then."
Tahiri shifted on the bench, picked absently at a frayed edge on her sleeve. "I know as Jedi we're supposed to be able to stay neutral when we have to . . . but for me, the instinct to uphold family bonds is just as strong. It's as much a part of the Yuuzhan Vong as some of our less admirable traits. We grew up with Raynar. In a way, he's a part of my crèche. So when I had to face that choice, it started to seem like some part of me would always be at least a little at odds with what we're taught as Jedi."
"That makes sense," Jaina said thoughtfully. "I mean, there are some things we're taught that I've never subscribed to, either." And funnily enough, some of her own doubts about what Luke and the Order was doing it stemmed from the Swarm War and the exile of the three of them. "But then why Jacen?"
"He had GA resources to draw on and an influential position in the government. It seemed like a practical approach to dealing with the war." Tahiri paused. When she spoke again it was slow and deliberate, as she tried to choose the right words. "I've been trying for half my life to find the common ground between my upbringings, you know that; as much as I believe that there are certain beliefs and values that the Yuuzhan Vong must relearn in order to be a part of this galaxy, I'd come to suspect, just as much, that the reverse holds true. And I thought that since he'd studied all those other Force cultures, he might have some insight on the matter."
"Even with the things he was doing?" Though, Jaina reminded herself, just because she knew what Jacen had been pulling the whole time didn't necessarily mean that it had made it out beyond the immediate family circle. Mara hadn't even seen it for what it was until it was too late.
"I didn't have your perspective on it," Tahiri pointed out. "I had barely even seen him at all since I got back from Dagobah. What I had heard -- well, it's been a long time since I put an awful lot of stock in what the news had to say about us . . . about the Jedi," she corrected herself.
"Point," Jaina conceded. And don't think she hadn't noted that correction, though she wasn't going to mention it right now. "And his insights just made sense?"
"From a certain point of view." When she realized, a split second later, that she'd unintentionally quoted Obi-Wan by way of Luke's constant retellings of that story, a brief smile crossed Tahiri's face and faded again. "One I decided to go with. That isn't to say I didn't have reservations, but when he offered to teach me to flow-walk, it was tempting enough to ignore them." She wasn't proud of that; she didn't sound like she was.
"I didn't even know he could do that." Which sort of stung, in the way that anything she learned about Jacen from here on out was going to be learned without him involved, forever, but she was trying to keep thoughts like that pushed to the back of her mind until she could better deal with them. "I guess the stuff he knew might seem worth learning."
That had been why Jaina had apprenticed herself to Kyp when she'd been going dark, after all. She felt a little bad now for not warning against that sort of thing.
"Oh, it did. And I don't doubt it seemed like that to him, too, when he first started out," Tahiri said, her expression neutral but a touch of bitterness in her voice. "After all, on the surface, there's nothing wrong with just wanting to learn about new things, new ways to look at the galaxy."
"So what changed?" Jaina asked. "I mean, you don't hear about many Sith quitting."
"Ironically, the same thing that got me started down that path: too many questions." Tahiri laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I'm no more suited to being a Sith than I am a Jedi."
"I can't say I'm sorry to hear you say you're not suited to being a Sith..." Jaina admitted. The Jedi part she wanted to touch on, but she herself was very desperately in need of a break from work, so it felt a little strange actually talking about it.
"I didn't think you would be." Tahiri actually looked a bit relieved that Jaina hadn't touched on the Jedi part. She had a pretty good idea that the Order wasn't exactly fond of her as it was; she didn't want to have a clearer sense of that sentiment. She studied her hands for a moment and took a breath, then ventured, "Thinking about it, I can probably point to one thing that Jacen and I had in common."
Without even thinking about it, Jaina leaned forward to listen. "What's that?"
Tahiri raised her head and turned to look Jaina in the eye for the first time in this conversation, the most hesitant she'd been about it for fifteen years. "The Yuuzhan Vong broke us both. I don't believe either of us could ever have gone back to seeing the galaxy the same way after that, no matter how hard we tried."
If things weren't the way they were, and Jaina wasn't the way she was right now, this is where Tahiri'd be getting a massive hug. As it was, she just went quiet for a moment, taking that in.
She'd never seen Jacen as broken, but just because she hadn't seen it didn't mean it didn't happen. There were pretty big chunks of his life that she'd had to miss completely, and she couldn't fully comprehend what all that time had meant for him. All she knew was that he had seen the galaxy as broken, and he felt the need to force things to be the way he thought they should be because that would be right according to how he saw it.
She frowned a little, but answered that with a nod. But that statement did leave Jaina was a big question. "What's next for you then?"
That was just as well. Tahiri probably would have frozen up, or reacted badly somehow. "I'm not sure. Not yet. But thanks to Ben, at least I still have that to be unsure about." She laughed, a little sardonically. "I can't go back to the Order. I know that much. Maybe I'll take up bounty hunting. Make a tradition of it."
Jaina couldn't help but be a little reminded of Zekk, once upon a time. "It has worked for others," she said with a small smile.
See? Tradition.
Tahiri looked at her with a mixture of relief and gratitude. "I half expected you to talk me out of it," she admitted in a tone that suggested she was glad that Jaina hadn't. Somehow that meant a lot.
Don't get too used to it, Tahiri. It wouldn't last forever.
"Then you already know what I would say and I'd be wasting my breath," Jaina said simply. "You've got a lot to work out, and if you're not ready or wanting to do that with the Jedi, then nothing I say is going to be helpful." Besides, when Jaina came back from the dark side, the one thing she'd really needed was people to trust her and let her figure things out for herself. Tahiri was going to have plenty of people who didn't trust her. Might as well be the person that did.
“You’re always so practical,” Tahiri remarked, the bare hint of a smile twitching at one corner of her mouth for a moment. “I can’t help appreciating that.”
Which was her way of saying thank you, on multiple counts.
“But you know,” she went on, sobering, “the Jedi aren’t exactly seen in the best light themselves at the moment. You being seen with me -- that won’t do you any favors.” Granted, Tahiri was pretty sure that Jaina was aware of that, so again, gratitude.
"Since when have I ever cared about that?" Jaina asked. Which was sort of a lie... She heard enough of what people were saying about her to care, but not enough to stop her from doing anything.
Jaina so very nearly got a hug there, except that Tahiri still wasn't entirely convinced she'd accept one. "Since when have you ever let it stop you, you mean? No, I know. I'd just rather not mess things up for the Jedi any more than I already have."
"I don't think you helped," Jaina said honestly, "but I don't think you messed things up. I do get it, though. Needing time away." Hey, it wasn't like she was 100% on her next move yet.
"No, I did." Tahiri was pretty determined to own up to that. She was also pretty convinced that this wasn't an issue of needing time away from the Jedi, but a permanent break. "For myself, if nothing else. I don't know if I can fix that, but I can certainly try."
Jaina watched her for a moment, saying finally, "I hope you do, Tahiri. I really do."
"I believe you," Tahiri answered, and she sounded like she wasn't sure whether to be grateful or surprised; it came out as a little bit of both. There was some irony -- a lot of it -- in how years ago it had been Jacen who'd told her she'd always be family, and now it was his twin, the one who'd had to kill him, who seemed to be upholding that promise. It . . . didn't exactly make her feel better about what she'd done, though, and she stood up. "But I suppose I'd better get started. I have my work cut out for me. Tell your parents --"
She paused. The last time she'd seen Han and Leia, she'd been trying to arrest them on Jacen's orders. 'I'm sorry' seemed laughable. "Tell them -- everything they'd ever done for me, I haven't forgotten after all?"
"I will," Jaina said, standing as well She really would tell them, too; she knew they'd appreciate it. "And if you need anything, you can always call." Not that she saw that happening much, if at all, but the offer was there.
Tahiri looked like she was about to say ‘I will,’ then reconsidered. “I’ve leaned on your family too much already,” she said, which was at least an improvement over the bitter I’m done with all Solos declaration she’d made to Ben. “But thanks for the offer anyway. May the Force be with all of you, okay?”
Jaina almost said it right back. She stopped herself just in time, not knowing whether that'd go over wwell and deciding to err on the side of cautioun. "You too, Tahiri."
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. So much thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
weetuskenraider for making LOTF!Tahiri make sense, omg.]
She hadn't seen Tahiri since Mirta had gone and stabbed her on Bloodfin, so Jaina had set the meeting place at a park, somewhere nice and neutral, in public, just so no one had to feel defensive. She wasn't even sure that Tahiri would show, but she found a spot on a bench to wait, just in case she did.
Tahiri very nearly didn't show, actually. If it had been anyone else but Jaina, she might not have. She headed toward the bench quickly, with her head down, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible, and when she did arrive she sat down gingerly on the opposite end of the bench with a wordless nod.
"You came," Jaina said, sounding somewhere between surprised and pleased. It seemed like a good start...
“You asked,” Tahiri answered, which was a very brief answer by her usual standards, but she didn’t sound like she was up to being particularly talkative. “Funny as it sounds, I’m glad you did.”
"Me, too," Jaina said. Well, she was glad so far. She'd see how the rest went. And given the last time they had been in the same room together, she had to ask, "Are you okay?"
Tahiri shrugged and looked down at her hands; she was keeping her emotions locked down in the Force, but the occasional flash of guilt would occasionally leak out. "I'm here," she said simply, because that was one thing she had that Jacen didn't. Where that left her in relation to the closest thing to a family she'd ever known, she had no idea. If she sounded surprised by it, she was; she hadn't expected to be left alive, much less walking free.
"Good," she said, and meant it. Let no one be too surprised that Jaina would be supportive here. After Zekk and Kyp and her grandfather and herself, she wasn't going to shun someone who made it back. "It's just... what the hell happened?"
Support didn't mean she wasn't going to be blunt, though.
Blunt from Jaina -- Tahiri was used to that. “That could be a very long story. How far back do you want me to go?”
"Whenever you decided that sticking with Jacen was a good idea," she said. There was some allowance for the fact that until pretty recently, a lot of people would have thought that was a good idea.
"It seemed like a logical choice at the time," Tahiri said honestly.
And Jaina had to ask the logical question: "How?"
"That's funny, actually." Not that there was much humor in her tone. "It started years ago, when Luke exiled me, Lowie, and Tesar to Dagobah. Funny because we didn't trust Jacen at the time, but I had a hard time with how the idea of my allegiance to the Order was at odds with wanting to defend Raynar. I started questioning things then."
Tahiri shifted on the bench, picked absently at a frayed edge on her sleeve. "I know as Jedi we're supposed to be able to stay neutral when we have to . . . but for me, the instinct to uphold family bonds is just as strong. It's as much a part of the Yuuzhan Vong as some of our less admirable traits. We grew up with Raynar. In a way, he's a part of my crèche. So when I had to face that choice, it started to seem like some part of me would always be at least a little at odds with what we're taught as Jedi."
"That makes sense," Jaina said thoughtfully. "I mean, there are some things we're taught that I've never subscribed to, either." And funnily enough, some of her own doubts about what Luke and the Order was doing it stemmed from the Swarm War and the exile of the three of them. "But then why Jacen?"
"He had GA resources to draw on and an influential position in the government. It seemed like a practical approach to dealing with the war." Tahiri paused. When she spoke again it was slow and deliberate, as she tried to choose the right words. "I've been trying for half my life to find the common ground between my upbringings, you know that; as much as I believe that there are certain beliefs and values that the Yuuzhan Vong must relearn in order to be a part of this galaxy, I'd come to suspect, just as much, that the reverse holds true. And I thought that since he'd studied all those other Force cultures, he might have some insight on the matter."
"Even with the things he was doing?" Though, Jaina reminded herself, just because she knew what Jacen had been pulling the whole time didn't necessarily mean that it had made it out beyond the immediate family circle. Mara hadn't even seen it for what it was until it was too late.
"I didn't have your perspective on it," Tahiri pointed out. "I had barely even seen him at all since I got back from Dagobah. What I had heard -- well, it's been a long time since I put an awful lot of stock in what the news had to say about us . . . about the Jedi," she corrected herself.
"Point," Jaina conceded. And don't think she hadn't noted that correction, though she wasn't going to mention it right now. "And his insights just made sense?"
"From a certain point of view." When she realized, a split second later, that she'd unintentionally quoted Obi-Wan by way of Luke's constant retellings of that story, a brief smile crossed Tahiri's face and faded again. "One I decided to go with. That isn't to say I didn't have reservations, but when he offered to teach me to flow-walk, it was tempting enough to ignore them." She wasn't proud of that; she didn't sound like she was.
"I didn't even know he could do that." Which sort of stung, in the way that anything she learned about Jacen from here on out was going to be learned without him involved, forever, but she was trying to keep thoughts like that pushed to the back of her mind until she could better deal with them. "I guess the stuff he knew might seem worth learning."
That had been why Jaina had apprenticed herself to Kyp when she'd been going dark, after all. She felt a little bad now for not warning against that sort of thing.
"Oh, it did. And I don't doubt it seemed like that to him, too, when he first started out," Tahiri said, her expression neutral but a touch of bitterness in her voice. "After all, on the surface, there's nothing wrong with just wanting to learn about new things, new ways to look at the galaxy."
"So what changed?" Jaina asked. "I mean, you don't hear about many Sith quitting."
"Ironically, the same thing that got me started down that path: too many questions." Tahiri laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I'm no more suited to being a Sith than I am a Jedi."
"I can't say I'm sorry to hear you say you're not suited to being a Sith..." Jaina admitted. The Jedi part she wanted to touch on, but she herself was very desperately in need of a break from work, so it felt a little strange actually talking about it.
"I didn't think you would be." Tahiri actually looked a bit relieved that Jaina hadn't touched on the Jedi part. She had a pretty good idea that the Order wasn't exactly fond of her as it was; she didn't want to have a clearer sense of that sentiment. She studied her hands for a moment and took a breath, then ventured, "Thinking about it, I can probably point to one thing that Jacen and I had in common."
Without even thinking about it, Jaina leaned forward to listen. "What's that?"
Tahiri raised her head and turned to look Jaina in the eye for the first time in this conversation, the most hesitant she'd been about it for fifteen years. "The Yuuzhan Vong broke us both. I don't believe either of us could ever have gone back to seeing the galaxy the same way after that, no matter how hard we tried."
If things weren't the way they were, and Jaina wasn't the way she was right now, this is where Tahiri'd be getting a massive hug. As it was, she just went quiet for a moment, taking that in.
She'd never seen Jacen as broken, but just because she hadn't seen it didn't mean it didn't happen. There were pretty big chunks of his life that she'd had to miss completely, and she couldn't fully comprehend what all that time had meant for him. All she knew was that he had seen the galaxy as broken, and he felt the need to force things to be the way he thought they should be because that would be right according to how he saw it.
She frowned a little, but answered that with a nod. But that statement did leave Jaina was a big question. "What's next for you then?"
That was just as well. Tahiri probably would have frozen up, or reacted badly somehow. "I'm not sure. Not yet. But thanks to Ben, at least I still have that to be unsure about." She laughed, a little sardonically. "I can't go back to the Order. I know that much. Maybe I'll take up bounty hunting. Make a tradition of it."
Jaina couldn't help but be a little reminded of Zekk, once upon a time. "It has worked for others," she said with a small smile.
See? Tradition.
Tahiri looked at her with a mixture of relief and gratitude. "I half expected you to talk me out of it," she admitted in a tone that suggested she was glad that Jaina hadn't. Somehow that meant a lot.
Don't get too used to it, Tahiri. It wouldn't last forever.
"Then you already know what I would say and I'd be wasting my breath," Jaina said simply. "You've got a lot to work out, and if you're not ready or wanting to do that with the Jedi, then nothing I say is going to be helpful." Besides, when Jaina came back from the dark side, the one thing she'd really needed was people to trust her and let her figure things out for herself. Tahiri was going to have plenty of people who didn't trust her. Might as well be the person that did.
“You’re always so practical,” Tahiri remarked, the bare hint of a smile twitching at one corner of her mouth for a moment. “I can’t help appreciating that.”
Which was her way of saying thank you, on multiple counts.
“But you know,” she went on, sobering, “the Jedi aren’t exactly seen in the best light themselves at the moment. You being seen with me -- that won’t do you any favors.” Granted, Tahiri was pretty sure that Jaina was aware of that, so again, gratitude.
"Since when have I ever cared about that?" Jaina asked. Which was sort of a lie... She heard enough of what people were saying about her to care, but not enough to stop her from doing anything.
Jaina so very nearly got a hug there, except that Tahiri still wasn't entirely convinced she'd accept one. "Since when have you ever let it stop you, you mean? No, I know. I'd just rather not mess things up for the Jedi any more than I already have."
"I don't think you helped," Jaina said honestly, "but I don't think you messed things up. I do get it, though. Needing time away." Hey, it wasn't like she was 100% on her next move yet.
"No, I did." Tahiri was pretty determined to own up to that. She was also pretty convinced that this wasn't an issue of needing time away from the Jedi, but a permanent break. "For myself, if nothing else. I don't know if I can fix that, but I can certainly try."
Jaina watched her for a moment, saying finally, "I hope you do, Tahiri. I really do."
"I believe you," Tahiri answered, and she sounded like she wasn't sure whether to be grateful or surprised; it came out as a little bit of both. There was some irony -- a lot of it -- in how years ago it had been Jacen who'd told her she'd always be family, and now it was his twin, the one who'd had to kill him, who seemed to be upholding that promise. It . . . didn't exactly make her feel better about what she'd done, though, and she stood up. "But I suppose I'd better get started. I have my work cut out for me. Tell your parents --"
She paused. The last time she'd seen Han and Leia, she'd been trying to arrest them on Jacen's orders. 'I'm sorry' seemed laughable. "Tell them -- everything they'd ever done for me, I haven't forgotten after all?"
"I will," Jaina said, standing as well She really would tell them, too; she knew they'd appreciate it. "And if you need anything, you can always call." Not that she saw that happening much, if at all, but the offer was there.
Tahiri looked like she was about to say ‘I will,’ then reconsidered. “I’ve leaned on your family too much already,” she said, which was at least an improvement over the bitter I’m done with all Solos declaration she’d made to Ben. “But thanks for the offer anyway. May the Force be with all of you, okay?”
Jaina almost said it right back. She stopped herself just in time, not knowing whether that'd go over wwell and deciding to err on the side of cautioun. "You too, Tahiri."
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. So much thanks to
weetuskenraider for making LOTF!Tahiri make sense, omg.]
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