Jaina Solo Fel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
solo_sword) wrote2019-08-25 05:42 pm
solo_sword) wrote2019-08-25 05:42 pm
Bastion- Sunday
Jaina and Tahiri had called the students and the other teachers together to talk about what happened, and it'd been a surprise when the students, led by Bhixen, took over and announced that maybe they didn't want to be Jedi. After all, if the Jedi had left them on their own when they needed help, why would they want to be part of that group? They didn't want to leave, though- they still wanted to train under Jaina and Tahiri. Just not as Jedi.
It had left Jaina with a sort of sick feeling. Something had shifted, it already felt too late to change it, and maybe it had been shifting for a while and she hadn't noticed.
After they'd left the kids, Jaina brought Tahiri into her office, where she shut the door, and had no idea where to start.
"I have no idea where to start," she said finally.
Tahiri nodded, crossing her arms as she paced slowly back and forth. "Would I be correct in assuming that we agree the students are justified in feeling the way they do?"
"Yes," Jaina said with a sigh. "That's exactly why I went to the Council in the first place. Jedi are supposed to protect people, and that should include our own." She wasn't even going to bring up that the twins had been way too close to it, because she was still mad about it, and because at least Jag's security people were of help there. And they weren't Jedi.
"And by not coming to the kids' aid when they needed it the most, the Council sent a pretty clear message, or at least one that can pretty clearly be interpreted as saying that they don't consider these students as part of 'their own,'" Tahiri said, and muttered a fairly potent-sounding Yuuzhan Vong expletive half under her breath. "Definitely not positive reinforcement, most definitely not a vote of confidence in the Council's favor. Sithspawn. I guess this was inevitable, sooner or later."
Jaina didn't think she'd have come up with that interpretation, but she also didn't think she could argue against it. "Was it inevitable, though?" she asked.
"I think it was, yes." Tahiri gave her a small smile with a touch of sadness behind it. "Trying to exist in two worlds at once isn't a balancing act, no matter how much we'd like to think it is. Especially when those worlds are polar opposites in some ways. You can only pull it off for so long before some concessions have to be made, or you stop trying altogether."
She took a breath. "To be clear, I don't blame the Jedi, not really. Helping us would put them in a difficult position, after they've had nothing but a string of difficult positions for years and years now, and it's going to take the Order forever to really salvage their reputation after, you know. Everything." It seemed like it had just been three steps forward and two steps back for the Jedi, for Tahiri's entire life since she'd left Tatooine as a kid. "That doesn't mean I think they're entirely in the right, or that it was okay for them to leave us hanging. Just that, well. They're Jedi. And maybe we need to face up to the possibility that we aren't quite that, not any more."
Jaina felt a little as if she'd just been slapped, and she didn't know if it was an insult or a wake up call. Maybe both. "You don't just stop being a Jedi, just like that," she said. "Maybe you can. I can't."
Which wasn't entirely true. Thanks to Fandom she'd met plenty of people who'd stopped being Jedi, or kept being Jedi when everything else about it had fallen apart. She'd seen people in this galaxy leave and be fine- Tenel Ka had done it. It was just that for Jaina, it was known from birth that she would be a Jedi, and then her entire existence since she was twenty years old had been wrapped up in a title that she hadn't expected and wouldn't have necessarily chosen for herself, but it fit. Being a Jedi fit. Anything else felt…
"Besides, do you know what kind of trouble we're going to have out here, if a Force user Empress starts saying that the Jedi hanging around her aren't Jedi anymore?" Jaina continued.
"I don't expect you to just stop like that, no," answered Tahiri, because she'd known Jaina since they were kids, and was perfectly aware of how much of Jaina's identity was inextricable from being a Jedi. She stopped pacing and looked Jaina square in the face, calm and assured about it in a way she'd only managed to achieve in the past few years. "And there's no way that just -- well, just breaking away from the Order, just like that, would go over well. What I do think is that we should maybe . . . start establishing a separate identity."
There were so many things that Jaina had known about her future through her life, and somehow she'd thought this one wouldn't happen. It hadn't even been on her radar. "And what identity is that?" she asked, though she also sort of knew already.
Tahiri took a long, slow breath before she responded, because as much as she'd been thinking this over since the entire situation had started, she knew there was no way she could make it go over entirely well. But that was to be expected, really. Change could hurt, and sometimes you had to -- well, learn to embrace the pain.
Jaina's whole life had been wrapped up in being a Jedi, but Tahiri's had been a constant string of upheavals and redefining herself and finding new ways to live in different worlds, and maybe this was why. Maybe this was what all of that pain and confusion had been leading up to, all along.
"One that still upholds the tenets of the Jedi," she said, "but is free to act on behalf of the Empire, visibly, without it being seen as a conflict of interest. It obviously wouldn't go over well with everyone, but that would be the case no matter what we do."
"Hard to see how they don't think of it as us versus them," Jaina pointed out.
...Hard to see how she didn't think of it that way, without knowing which side she was on. She instantly regretted thinking that, but there was some work to do here that she wasn't entirely equipped for right this second.
"I know," Tahiri said with a sigh, and ran her hand through her hair. "It's going to take some work, and a lot of thought, to figure out how to explain all of this. Input from both sides, most likely -- Ben might have some useful insights, for one."
She smiled, though it was a little bit sad. "Besides, if anyone is qualified to do this, I'd say two Jedi who've seen the Dark Side and come back from it would count, don't you think?"
Though maybe they shouldn't point that out so explicitly.
"Or we're the exact wrong people to do it," Jaina said, though she didn't believe that herself. There were definitely certain things of the Jedi philosophy she'd never quite squared with, and she'd argue that there were certain things the Jedi were taught to avoid that had made her better.
She eyed Tahiri. "You've really been thinking about this for a while, huh?"
Tahiri nodded. "I think on some level or another, I've been thinking about it for years. Not in any real conscious way until recently, but it's all been on my mind for a while."
Jaina wasn't sure what to do with that. It had never crossed her mind even once. "I'm not deciding anything today," she said.
"Of course not," Tahiri agreed. "This is definitely not the kind of decision we want to make in a hurry."
All things considered, it had been a bit impossible for her not to think about it for a very long time.
"We'll take some time, wait for people to calm down, and then we'll talk," Jaina said.
And that was how you knew she was rattled, because it meant Jaina Solo was waiting for people to calm down before acting.
Oh, Tahiri definitely noticed that, but she wasn't commenting on it, and she even managed to keep her surprise pretty well muted in the Force.
"I know it's not the solution any of us really wanted," she said. "I tried to think of one, really. But I keep coming back to this."
"We'll think about it," Jaina said again, like she was hoping that would lead to everyone changing their mind overnight even when she knew she was the one who was going to have to think a lot of things through.
*****
Jaina hadn't explained the situation yet to Jag, since a Sith attack on the capitol like this would keep him pretty busy too, but she did ask if he could make sure the boys were taken care of for a while, and then she did what she always did when she was stressed out: she trained.
Kylo found her not long after she got there, while she was in the middle of murdering some poor training droid. "Of course you'd be here," he greeted her.
"You say that like I'm predictable," Jaina said, frowning as the pieces of the droid hit the mat. Whatever. She could buy more. "Come for a spar?"
"Absolutely not. I know how you get when you're upset," he said. "I have some sense of self-preservation."
"I'm not upset," Jaina lied.
"Jaina. It's me."
She sighed, shutting her lightsaber down. "They're young. They just went through a trauma, one of their friends died, they might not all be thinking clearly. Or maybe they really are, I don't know. But I can't make them be Jedi if they don't want to be Jedi. And the fact is, if they can't trust the Jedi, this isn't going to work out."
"The situation isn't likely to get easier, either," Kyp nodded.
"It's a total political mess. The Council left Allana on her own because they didn't want to get involved, but she's still going to end up on Shedu Maad because she thinks it'll be easier for everyone," Jaina said. "Which isn't what she wants, and it isn't fair to her."
"There is the possibility that they left it alone because they trusted you to handle it," Kyp pointed out, even if he didn't look like he believed that.
Jaina glared at him. "I have two toddlers in addition to a school full of trainees. I'm good, I'm not good enough to take on all those Sith and keep the kids safe from a massacre. And if they believe otherwise, they're idiots. Being Sword of the Jedi doesn't mean I can solve every problem the Jedi have."
"You do, though."
She frowned, and didn't answer. There was something bubbling in her, a frustration about that very thing, about why she always had to keep the plates spinning when it felt like so many others didn't try because they were used to her doing it, because she was running off to do the hard thing while they were still arguing about it, but there was more to it than that. She just didn't know how to put it into words yet.
"What are you going to do?" Kyp asked, when she didn't answer.
She shrugged. "No idea," she said, watching him. "If we split, would you stay?"
He blew out a breath, and took his own moment to figure out his answer. "I'm a Jedi. I haven't spent all these years tormenting Luke Skywalker and not turning to the dark side to call myself something else."
That was disappointing, but she'd expected as much. Still, she tried not to let her reaction show.
"Come on," he said, "let's get a drink somewhere. I think we could both use it."
"There aren't many places in Ravelin that the Imperial Empress can go casually, you know," Jaina warned.
"There has to be someplace," he said, already turning towards the door. "Somewhere unobtrusive."
Jaina scowled as she clipped her lightsaber to her belt and started to follow. "Like you know how to be unobtrusive."
[NFB, NFI, etc. Thanks toweetuskenraider for playing my Tahiri!]
It had left Jaina with a sort of sick feeling. Something had shifted, it already felt too late to change it, and maybe it had been shifting for a while and she hadn't noticed.
After they'd left the kids, Jaina brought Tahiri into her office, where she shut the door, and had no idea where to start.
"I have no idea where to start," she said finally.
Tahiri nodded, crossing her arms as she paced slowly back and forth. "Would I be correct in assuming that we agree the students are justified in feeling the way they do?"
"Yes," Jaina said with a sigh. "That's exactly why I went to the Council in the first place. Jedi are supposed to protect people, and that should include our own." She wasn't even going to bring up that the twins had been way too close to it, because she was still mad about it, and because at least Jag's security people were of help there. And they weren't Jedi.
"And by not coming to the kids' aid when they needed it the most, the Council sent a pretty clear message, or at least one that can pretty clearly be interpreted as saying that they don't consider these students as part of 'their own,'" Tahiri said, and muttered a fairly potent-sounding Yuuzhan Vong expletive half under her breath. "Definitely not positive reinforcement, most definitely not a vote of confidence in the Council's favor. Sithspawn. I guess this was inevitable, sooner or later."
Jaina didn't think she'd have come up with that interpretation, but she also didn't think she could argue against it. "Was it inevitable, though?" she asked.
"I think it was, yes." Tahiri gave her a small smile with a touch of sadness behind it. "Trying to exist in two worlds at once isn't a balancing act, no matter how much we'd like to think it is. Especially when those worlds are polar opposites in some ways. You can only pull it off for so long before some concessions have to be made, or you stop trying altogether."
She took a breath. "To be clear, I don't blame the Jedi, not really. Helping us would put them in a difficult position, after they've had nothing but a string of difficult positions for years and years now, and it's going to take the Order forever to really salvage their reputation after, you know. Everything." It seemed like it had just been three steps forward and two steps back for the Jedi, for Tahiri's entire life since she'd left Tatooine as a kid. "That doesn't mean I think they're entirely in the right, or that it was okay for them to leave us hanging. Just that, well. They're Jedi. And maybe we need to face up to the possibility that we aren't quite that, not any more."
Jaina felt a little as if she'd just been slapped, and she didn't know if it was an insult or a wake up call. Maybe both. "You don't just stop being a Jedi, just like that," she said. "Maybe you can. I can't."
Which wasn't entirely true. Thanks to Fandom she'd met plenty of people who'd stopped being Jedi, or kept being Jedi when everything else about it had fallen apart. She'd seen people in this galaxy leave and be fine- Tenel Ka had done it. It was just that for Jaina, it was known from birth that she would be a Jedi, and then her entire existence since she was twenty years old had been wrapped up in a title that she hadn't expected and wouldn't have necessarily chosen for herself, but it fit. Being a Jedi fit. Anything else felt…
"Besides, do you know what kind of trouble we're going to have out here, if a Force user Empress starts saying that the Jedi hanging around her aren't Jedi anymore?" Jaina continued.
"I don't expect you to just stop like that, no," answered Tahiri, because she'd known Jaina since they were kids, and was perfectly aware of how much of Jaina's identity was inextricable from being a Jedi. She stopped pacing and looked Jaina square in the face, calm and assured about it in a way she'd only managed to achieve in the past few years. "And there's no way that just -- well, just breaking away from the Order, just like that, would go over well. What I do think is that we should maybe . . . start establishing a separate identity."
There were so many things that Jaina had known about her future through her life, and somehow she'd thought this one wouldn't happen. It hadn't even been on her radar. "And what identity is that?" she asked, though she also sort of knew already.
Tahiri took a long, slow breath before she responded, because as much as she'd been thinking this over since the entire situation had started, she knew there was no way she could make it go over entirely well. But that was to be expected, really. Change could hurt, and sometimes you had to -- well, learn to embrace the pain.
Jaina's whole life had been wrapped up in being a Jedi, but Tahiri's had been a constant string of upheavals and redefining herself and finding new ways to live in different worlds, and maybe this was why. Maybe this was what all of that pain and confusion had been leading up to, all along.
"One that still upholds the tenets of the Jedi," she said, "but is free to act on behalf of the Empire, visibly, without it being seen as a conflict of interest. It obviously wouldn't go over well with everyone, but that would be the case no matter what we do."
"Hard to see how they don't think of it as us versus them," Jaina pointed out.
...Hard to see how she didn't think of it that way, without knowing which side she was on. She instantly regretted thinking that, but there was some work to do here that she wasn't entirely equipped for right this second.
"I know," Tahiri said with a sigh, and ran her hand through her hair. "It's going to take some work, and a lot of thought, to figure out how to explain all of this. Input from both sides, most likely -- Ben might have some useful insights, for one."
She smiled, though it was a little bit sad. "Besides, if anyone is qualified to do this, I'd say two Jedi who've seen the Dark Side and come back from it would count, don't you think?"
Though maybe they shouldn't point that out so explicitly.
"Or we're the exact wrong people to do it," Jaina said, though she didn't believe that herself. There were definitely certain things of the Jedi philosophy she'd never quite squared with, and she'd argue that there were certain things the Jedi were taught to avoid that had made her better.
She eyed Tahiri. "You've really been thinking about this for a while, huh?"
Tahiri nodded. "I think on some level or another, I've been thinking about it for years. Not in any real conscious way until recently, but it's all been on my mind for a while."
Jaina wasn't sure what to do with that. It had never crossed her mind even once. "I'm not deciding anything today," she said.
"Of course not," Tahiri agreed. "This is definitely not the kind of decision we want to make in a hurry."
All things considered, it had been a bit impossible for her not to think about it for a very long time.
"We'll take some time, wait for people to calm down, and then we'll talk," Jaina said.
And that was how you knew she was rattled, because it meant Jaina Solo was waiting for people to calm down before acting.
Oh, Tahiri definitely noticed that, but she wasn't commenting on it, and she even managed to keep her surprise pretty well muted in the Force.
"I know it's not the solution any of us really wanted," she said. "I tried to think of one, really. But I keep coming back to this."
"We'll think about it," Jaina said again, like she was hoping that would lead to everyone changing their mind overnight even when she knew she was the one who was going to have to think a lot of things through.
*****
Jaina hadn't explained the situation yet to Jag, since a Sith attack on the capitol like this would keep him pretty busy too, but she did ask if he could make sure the boys were taken care of for a while, and then she did what she always did when she was stressed out: she trained.
Kylo found her not long after she got there, while she was in the middle of murdering some poor training droid. "Of course you'd be here," he greeted her.
"You say that like I'm predictable," Jaina said, frowning as the pieces of the droid hit the mat. Whatever. She could buy more. "Come for a spar?"
"Absolutely not. I know how you get when you're upset," he said. "I have some sense of self-preservation."
"I'm not upset," Jaina lied.
"Jaina. It's me."
She sighed, shutting her lightsaber down. "They're young. They just went through a trauma, one of their friends died, they might not all be thinking clearly. Or maybe they really are, I don't know. But I can't make them be Jedi if they don't want to be Jedi. And the fact is, if they can't trust the Jedi, this isn't going to work out."
"The situation isn't likely to get easier, either," Kyp nodded.
"It's a total political mess. The Council left Allana on her own because they didn't want to get involved, but she's still going to end up on Shedu Maad because she thinks it'll be easier for everyone," Jaina said. "Which isn't what she wants, and it isn't fair to her."
"There is the possibility that they left it alone because they trusted you to handle it," Kyp pointed out, even if he didn't look like he believed that.
Jaina glared at him. "I have two toddlers in addition to a school full of trainees. I'm good, I'm not good enough to take on all those Sith and keep the kids safe from a massacre. And if they believe otherwise, they're idiots. Being Sword of the Jedi doesn't mean I can solve every problem the Jedi have."
"You do, though."
She frowned, and didn't answer. There was something bubbling in her, a frustration about that very thing, about why she always had to keep the plates spinning when it felt like so many others didn't try because they were used to her doing it, because she was running off to do the hard thing while they were still arguing about it, but there was more to it than that. She just didn't know how to put it into words yet.
"What are you going to do?" Kyp asked, when she didn't answer.
She shrugged. "No idea," she said, watching him. "If we split, would you stay?"
He blew out a breath, and took his own moment to figure out his answer. "I'm a Jedi. I haven't spent all these years tormenting Luke Skywalker and not turning to the dark side to call myself something else."
That was disappointing, but she'd expected as much. Still, she tried not to let her reaction show.
"Come on," he said, "let's get a drink somewhere. I think we could both use it."
"There aren't many places in Ravelin that the Imperial Empress can go casually, you know," Jaina warned.
"There has to be someplace," he said, already turning towards the door. "Somewhere unobtrusive."
Jaina scowled as she clipped her lightsaber to her belt and started to follow. "Like you know how to be unobtrusive."
[NFB, NFI, etc. Thanks to
weetuskenraider for playing my Tahiri!]