Room 313, early Saturday morning

[solo_sword]

After being dropped off at the causeway, Jaina hadn't been entirely sure what to do with herself. Not wanting to go straight for the cabins just yet, she instead returned to her room at the dorms. Everything felt different here now. She knew the room, but it felt like someone else's, even if she recognized everything in it.

And against her better judgment, she focused on that one presence she knew to look for, touching lightly on him and sending along an image of where she was, assuming he would take that as a hint to find her. This wasn't a conversation for the cabins, with all their lack of privacy and walls.

In the meanwhile, if anyone asked, she was packing. What she was doing was sort of trading things out, replacing one move with another, and maybe surreptitiously packing some things away.

[For the boy, and SP is love because despite clicking on those Australia links sleep will be needed. *gets popcorn*]

Comments

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

Her summoning was a strange sort of feeling and completely unexpected. Relieved and anxious to see her, John quickly made his way to Jaina's room, wondering why she hadn't just gone to the cabin.

"So the Force is better than a cell phone, huh?" He leaned in the doorway with a smile.

[solo_sword]

She looked up from what she was doing really quickly, kind of amazed at how glad she was to see him, even under all the trepidation. Both things might have reflected in her smile, and maybe even the "Hi."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

John moved closer, sort of worried by that look after all the worrying he'd done the last week. "Not exactly the hello I expected."

[solo_sword]

"Rough couple weeks," she said, deciding Kyp had chosen the right phrasing there. "Not exactly the hello I expected to give."

Of course, if it'd been up to her, she'd be back home still avoiding her comlink.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Care to tell me about it or something?" Still confused, he reached out to rub the side of her arm with one hand.

[solo_sword]

All of a sudden, Jaina had no idea what to say. She'd had to tell Leia what happened to Jacen, yes, but she'd been in that horrible numb state before things started to hurt again.

It took a moment before she just made herself say it, feeling just a little more removed from this place again. "Anakin and Jacen are dead."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

John stared at her in shock for a moment, trying to get his head around the idea that her brothers were dead. "Jaina, I'm so sorry," he whispered, reaching out to hug her.

[solo_sword]

She'd let him. For a moment. Mostly because she wondered if he needed it more than she did. But given how she expected this to go, she sort of thought that she couldn't let herself get too used to being comforted, and she needed to go through all of this without turning into a wreck, which was why she pulled away much sooner than she normally would, and said softly, "You might want to wait on the hugs till you've heard everything."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

The last time she'd been all weird like this was when they were fighting. He didn't remember a fight or doing anything wrong, so maybe this was her way of dealing with grief. Meaning he was not going to take that as against him. Yet.

"Okay," he said slowly, taking a seat on her bed.

[solo_sword]

She didn't sit, yet, still not sure how to say any of this. She was looking at him, though, taking a deep breath and saying, "The first part of the plan started off all right. When we got to the worldship at Myrkr, though, not a single thing went right. We lost literally half the team. And after Anakin... I didn't react well." Understatement.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

John nodded, getting the feeling he was going to be doing that a lot to encourage her to keep going.

[solo_sword]

"I insisted on going to retrieve Anakin, and to do that," and again, this was stuff she hadn't had to explain before, "I killed a Vong warrior with Force lightning, and that was just the start."

She didn't know how much he really understood of the dark side, but she figured she'd find that out in his reaction.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

Regardless of whether he understood the dark side, John did understand that she was not happy about her actions. His brow furrowed in concern, "Okay."

[solo_sword]

Jaina thought she liked it better when everyone just knew what she'd done. "Zekk accused me of turning before we even escaped the worldship, and then Jacen was captured and we had to leave him behind," she said, still watching him as carefully as she dared. "After he died, I um. Proved Zekk right." She shrugged slightly. "Grandfather's going to kill me."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

John frowned, mostly because he wasn't sure what she expected him to say. "So you went to a bad place, but if you were still there, would you be telling me about it?" He understood people acting out of character in response to death.

[solo_sword]

"It's not as simple as that," she said slowly, deciding he didn't really understand it. "We tried to go to Coruscant, and got there in time for the mass exodus of the planet because the Vong had taken it. We had no choice but to go to Hapes, Tenel Ka's homeworld, where her grandmother took an interest in me. I let her play dress up doll with me in exchange for letting me get at the Hapan ships and scientists, because that would allow me to get back at the Vong. It was more than just being in a bad place."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Okay, so what did you do to get back at them?" He was starting to see hints of that gray area Anakin had warned him about.

[solo_sword]

"We stole a Vong ship to get off the worldship, one I renamed the Trickster in a blatant act of heresy, just to make them mad," Jaina said. "Everything the Vong use is alive, including their ships. Which I figured out meant that the ships could be identified by their own unique gravitic signatures. With enough support from Ta'a Chume and her scientists, we were able to duplicate the Trickster's signature and reflect it onto other ships so the Vong never had any idea what they were actually shooting at. They'd blow each other up, even." And then, more reluctantly, "not all of the test pilots who went up knew what they were testing. I called in on Lowbacca's life debt to my family to get him to bring in Wookiees to help, and a good number of them didn't survive it."

She wasn't going to talk about the coral chip implants. She'd agreed to never speak of it, and she was going to uphold that agreement. They didn't need to be mentioned.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

John silently nodded, getting that her ethics on this had been questionable and people had died under her orders, but he also got that this was a time of war and she wasn't the first person to do something iffy in the hopes of beating the enemy. There was disappointment in his eyes, but no lack of affection.

[solo_sword]

It sort of worried her a bit that he seemed okay with this so far. "Do you really get what it is my grandfather did when he was Vader? Why it was such a big deal?"

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Jaina, you told me he was Sith. That he destroyed entire planets, killed people for fun, and ruined millions of lives in the process," John wasn't sure why she was bringing this up. "...Is that who you are now?"

[solo_sword]

"It easily could have been," Jaina said quietly. "I don't think I would have made it to Sith. I don't think Kyp or Tenel Ka would have let met get that far. But when it came down to it, that's what I chose."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"But they didn't let you. And no one here would've either," he pointed out. "Are you waiting for me to reject you because you made some big mistakes?"

[solo_sword]

Yes. She didn't answer the question, though. "It isn't just about letting me or not," she said. "Ta'a Chume was using me for her own little plan and I was allowing it to happen. I figured if I could hurt the Vong, whatever happened to me was worth it. Because Dark Jedi either turn back or they get killed by someone smarter than them. I would have let myself get that bad."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"So then why aren't you there, being all Dark and getting yourself killed? I don't understand why you're telling me all of it this way." John was getting sort of exasperated. She was presenting him with facts like she expected him to walk out any minute.