The abandoned shack, Monday after 1st period

[solo_sword]

Jaina could have put this off. She knew he'd be back in a few weeks, and that this was probably a better conversation in person, but putting it off felt like the coward's way out. If he was going to hear the story, she needed to tell it now, before she could sink into life like nothing was wrong. Or pretend to, anyway. This wasn't something where she could greet him on arrival with "Oh by the way..."

Of course, she'd been intending to go back to the dorms for this conversation, which didn't exactly work out because she instead found herself in the woods, so she gave up and headed for the abandoned shack instead. She was adaptable like that.

Anyway, once she was there and knew she'd have privacy for this, she did hesitate at picking up her comlink for a moment. And then she sucked it up and called her grandfather.

Anakin	Anakin picked up the comm on the first chirp. "Skywalker," he said, hoping it was Jaina. Despite what Obi-Wan might've thought, Anakin did worry.
Jaina	Actually, Jaina decided, there was a benefit to this. She couldn't tell what the other person was feeling over a comlink. That made things easier. Still, she started with a simple, "It's me."
Anakin	Anakin closed his eyes, reaching out for the little Jaina-spot on the planet. "You were gone for a bit," he said.
Jaina	She was still very used to and very focused on sheiding herself. Especially for this. Her primary goal these days seemed to be keeping people as distant as possible. "Yeah," she said, and she realized now that she shouldn't have been surprised that he would know that. Really, it should have been expected. "I ended up going on a mission for the Jedi."
Anakin	He wasn't used to her walls being quite that high for him. "What happened?" he asked quietly, internally bracing himself.
Jaina	It wasn't the first time she'd had to tell the story, but this was telling him about members of his own family, whether he'd met them or not. Therefore she really wished she could have cushioned it better than just, "My brothers died."
Anakin	There was dead silence from Anakin's side of the connection, but his sense through the Force was anything but quiet: shock, sorrow, and a sudden need to see her that threatened to overwhelm him. "I can get to the causeway in twenty minutes," he finally offered.
Jaina	Jaina shook her head. "There's no need. Nothing to be done at this point," she said. Because that of course would be the only reason he'd want to come back here. "Anakin's already had his funeral and everything."
Anakin	He wiped his hands across his eyes, surprised to find that they were trembling. He wasn't supposed to outlive grandchildren, regardless of galaxy. "I wasn't thinking of logistics," he said, pushing his feelings way, way down to be dealt with later. "I want to see you. Make sure you're in one piece." Or as close as she'd be for a while.
Jaina	"I'm fine," she lied. Though even she could honestly admit she was at least better than she had been. "I'm okay, I just want to get out of here again and get back to work."
Anakin	"You're not fine," he countered flatly. "No one fine has emotional shields up that could double as plating on a Star Destroyer." He sighed and dropped into a chair. "Talk to me about it?" he asked quietly.
Jaina	"I'm blocking on purpose. No one wants to know what I'm feeling, trust me," Jaina admitted. "The Vong started sending these creatures called voxyn after the Jedi. They're completely vicious, can kill you about sixty different ways and we only have antidotes for half of them," she explained. "The plan was to send a strike team, led by Anakin, to the cloning facilities in the worldship over Myrkr, where we'd kill the voxyn queen and stop them from creating more. In order to make it look realistic, it was a group of seventeen of us, all younger, who could believably be turned over to the Yuuzhan Vong. They wouldn't be expecting us to turn on them, overtake the ship once we got into Vong space. And the first part of the plan worked. It was hard and I'd love to never do that again, but everyone survived till we got to Myrkr."
Anakin	"I want to know what you're feeling," Anakin murmured, but for once didn't push it. "Luke let seventeen of you off for this mission?" He rapidly adjusted his idea of how dangerous the voxyn were to somewhere around "beyond ridiculous." "What happened next?"
Jaina	"He was going to go himself, but the Vong wouldn't have bought it for a second. Everyone checked off on the plan. Luke, my parents, Lando even delivered us right to them," Jaina said. "But when we got there, the Vong were expecting us, tried to lead us into a trap. We had to abandon the ship we'd commandeered, and along with it, a member of the team who'd been injured," she went on. "And then nothing could go right. They'd anticipated us enough to send Nom Anor. He's an executor, the same one who infected Mara, the same one who tried to kill us both on Duro. They chased us down the entire time, cut off our path. The only reason we made it through at all was because we'd rescued what turned out to be two Dark Jedi who knew the way and wanted out as badly as we did." She took a breath, bracing herself for the really hard part. "The longer it went on, the more casualties we took, and when he decided I needed to be saved from Vong capture, Anakin took an amphistaff to the gut that ruptured his spleen, and he wouldn't stop long enough to heal."
Anakin	"Oh, my Jaina," Anakin whispered, rubbing his hand through his hair. He'd been through his share of impossible military situations: the memories of the loss of the Padawan Pack had woken him up at night for years and he hadn't been related to any of them. He didn't say Anakin's injury wasn't her fault. If she knew it, repeating it wouldn't help, and if she hadn't gotten there, hearing him say it wouldn't change anything.
Jaina	Jaina managed not to flinch; there was still a very big part of her that didn't want to be anyone's anything, that truly thought it would be easier for him if he just stopped that right now. She was a little proud of herself for not reacting. "Ultimately, we got to the cloning facility, but everything had gone wrong. Anakin was getting worse and he knew it, and so he put Jacen in charge of the mission and stayed behind to hold off the Vong to let the rest of us escape." A couple of blinks and gone was any evidence of emotion over this. She wasn't going to do that to herself. "He didn't make it. I didn't take it well." Slight understatement.
Anakin	"How 'not well,' Jaina?" he asked softly, nothing but concern in his voice. Now was hardly the time for lectures.
Jaina	She took a breath. "I decided to go after Anakin's body. I split up the team, and my methods for getting Anakin back weren't the best," she said. "Including using Force lightning on one of the Yuuzhan Vong warriors."
Anakin	Jaina would probably be able to feel his heart break across the distance between them. "Oh," he said very, very quietly.
Jaina	Reasons like this were why she was shutting everyone out. "Don't get too disappointed in me yet, it's not over," she sighed. Worse was the fact that she'd been turning before Anakin even died and she knew it. "We got Anakin back, and stole a Vong ship. Everyone made it back except Jacen, who did manage to kill the queen. He also was captured. We had to make a choice, to escape, or go back in there for him," she said. "The Vong have this weird thing with twins. I don't know, they wanted both me and Jacen, to pit us against each other, and it was pointed out that if they had Jacen but not me, they'd keep him alive. So we left, and they killed him anyway."
Anakin	"I'm not disappointed," Anakin said, "and I'm not angry." If asked, he wouldn't be able to describe what he was. Numb came closest. He sighed. "Are you sure you don't want me around?" he asked.
Jaina	There wasn't really a good answer to that question, because she did and she didn't all at once, so she settled for, "Seriously, I'm doing all right. I'm just having to bide my time till I can go back and start hitting them again. They took Coruscant."
Anakin	More silence as Anakin tried to process that. Two brothers gone, the capital gone..."I'm amazed you're able to put one foot in front of the other, my Jaina," he murmured. "But I'm also very glad you're back here, even for a little while."
Jaina	"I've had help," she admitted.
Anakin	"Getting help is not weakness," he said. It was a lesson that had taken him a long time to learn. "And if you need anything from me, it's yours." He paused. "How's your mother holding up?"
Jaina	Jaina paused. Okay, maybe this would be the hardest part to tell him, given his relationship with Leia. "Not well," she said. "She, um. Had a breakdown after Anakin, and now she's insisting Jacen's still alive."
Anakin	"But you felt him die, right?" Anakin asked gently.
Jaina	"Everyone did," she said, a little blankly.
Anakin	"Then let her grieve in her own way," Anakin said. "There's only so much loss a person can take, and everyone has different limits. The truth will be the truth today and a year from now." He stared out at nothing for a moment. "Was the Force lightening the extent of your lashing out?"
Jaina	Slowly, Jaina shook her head. "I got worse. A lot worse."
Anakin	"How much worse?" Anakin asked.
Jaina	There really was no way to do this except to just say it. "We ended up on Hapes, where the former Queen Mother took an interest in me. I knew what sort of person she was, but I allowed her to try and reshape me in order to gain access to her science teams and pilots to test some new ways to kill the Vong," Jaina said. "And then I apprenticed myself to Kyp Durron."
Anakin	That got his attention. "Kyp Durron? And reshape how?"
Jaina	"I didn't realize it at the time, but she was trying to make me acceptable enough to replace the Queen Mother. I turned her down when she told me what she was doing," Jaina assured him. "I didn't want the power, I was strictly out for vengeance." Honestly, that fact did make her feel better.
Anakin	"She wanted a Jedi to rule the Consortium?" Anakin sounded confused. "Did I miss a part where they don't hate the Jedi?"
Jaina	"The rightful queen is a friend of mine since the Academy," Jaina said. "She's in power now anyway. But Ta'a Chume wanted someone she could control. She thought I fit the bill. I didn't."
Anakin	Anakin snorted. "She doesn't know you at all if she thought you could be controlled," he said. He paused for a second. "Are you still looking for vengeance, my Jaina?"
Jaina	"I want the war over," said Jaina immediately. "I don't want to be the person who's so desperate to make that happen that I become a danger. That's over."
Anakin	He was silent for a moment. "And how will Durron teaching you anything help with that?" he finally asked.
Jaina	She sighed a little. She didn't expect anyone to really get it, but it made it really hard to explain. "I went to Kyp because I needed the help of someone who wouldn't flinch at what I was doing. Only he flinched," she said. "He was the one that pulled me back when I was the one bringing both of us down." And a little more hesitantly, "He's the one who dumped me back here to get some perspective."
Anakin	And for that, Anakin would be forever grateful to a man he was pretty sure he'd loathe on sight. "How far did you go before he flinched?" he asked. "Specifics won't make me angry."
Jaina	There were certain events Jaina was never planning to speak of out loud. "Things like using Chewbacca's life debt to get one of my best friends to bring in Wookiees for testing, which got quite a few of them killed," she said. And the thing was, if they'd volunteered, she wouldn't have felt that badly about it. It was her methods that had to change and she knew it.
Anakin	Anakin hissed in a breath. "Oh, Jaina," he said, sounding disappointed despite himself. "What were you trying to accomplish?"
Jaina	Strangely, she felt a little defensive of it when she knew she shouldn't have. Most likely it was to cover guilt. "I was working on finding ways to use Vong technology against them. And it worked," she said. "And bad as it was, we're still going to be able to use that. No one died for no reason."
Anakin	"But they also died without having the full picture," Anakin said. "Don't hide bad intentions behind promising results."
Jaina	"I'm not anymore," Jaina promised. "And there's already a plan for me the second I get back there. I'll be purely constructively killing the bad guy again."
Anakin	Anakin didn't sound entirely pleased by that. "And what's the plan?"
Jaina	"The Yuuzhan Vong equate me with their Trickster goddess. I used that to goad them further. We're going to take advantage of that, using me as the figurehead in a psychological warfare campaign," she said. "And Uncle Luke is going to hand his squadron off to me to reform the way I see fit, and I've already got good pilots lined up. I just can't do it yet."
Anakin	"Because you were sent back here," Anakin said, not bothering to keep the relief from his voice. "I can't say I'm sorry to not having you poking a species right in the eye who has shown no sign of humor or mercy right in the right so soon after...everything else."
Jaina	"I'd rather be doing more than poking them. People are going to keep dying and I want to do what I can from letting the Vong cause more casualties." By causing some of her own.
Anakin	And Anakin could certainly understand the appeal of keeping her hands busy to keep her mind off of other things. "You'll have your chance," he said. "Just not immediately."
Jaina	"I know," she said with a little frown. "I just have to prove that I can handle going back."
Anakin	"I don't think anyone doubts that you can," Anakin said quietly, "but a break can't hurt."
Jaina	"I know. Not much I can do now but suck it up and deal," Jaina said. "I know this isn't the call you wanted while you're gone."
Anakin	"I'd rather know now when I might be able to be a little useful to you," Anakin said. "And if the island gets to be too much weird to handle, you're always welcome here." It was an indication of how worried he was that he didn't even hesitate before adding, "And you can bring John with you if you'd like."
Jaina	She raised her eyebrows. "Wow. I scared you into being that nice?"
Anakin	Yes. "No," Anakin insisted.
Jaina	"It won't hurt my feelings if you tell the truth."
Anakin	He ran a hand through his hair, which was now beginning to stick out in unfortunate directions. "I can't feel how you are from here," he said finally, "and that worries me. And you've decided to find someone new to train you, and that worries me more." And she'd started messing with some seriously dark powers, and that worried him most of all.
Jaina	"The Kyp situation is... confusing," Jaina said honestly. "It's not like I'm receiving any training here; that's all on hold. And Mara knows what's going on. She's not happy about it, but it means she's watching Kyp like a hawk as much as she can."
Anakin	"I imagine that's not much of a change for Mara," Anakin commented dryly. "She didn't strike me as the type to give Durron much of a leash to begin with."
Jaina	"No. But moreso since Sernpidal, and I think more now. But I don't think there's anything to worry about from Kyp. Honestly."
Anakin	Anakin snorted. "We'll see," he said. "You've had a tough couple of weeks. It's going to take a while to gauge the impact."
Jaina	"We'll see," Jaina said right back. "I don't want to take up too much of your time, I just... wanted to let you know what happened."
Anakin	"You're never taking up my time," Anakin said softly. "I wish--" He trailed off as the number of things he wished for cascaded over him. I wish you didn't hurt so much. I wish this had never happened. I wish I could make it better... He sighed. "I wish," he repeated.
Jaina	"I know," she told him. She knew there wasn't much point in wishing now, but she'd had some time since it happened. "Are you okay?"
Anakin	Not even close. "I'll get there," he said. "I'm more concerned about you."
Jaina	"Don't be," she assured him. "I'll live." At least till the next time she went home, and then they'd see.
Anakin	"You'd better," Anakin said, and there was absolutely no humor in his voice when he said that. "I'll see you soon," he promised, "but until then, you call any time, okay? Some days will be harder than others. Strange things will remind you."
Jaina	"I'll remember that," Jaina said, though she had absolutely no intention of needing to call. She was not planning on being anything but fine. "I'll see you soon."
Anakin	Anakin held in a small sigh of frustration. She was too much like him sometimes. "I love you," he said quietly. He didn't say things would get better. Too many years of living with loss had taught him otherwise.
Jaina	She was really reluctant to say it back. It was more attachment than she wanted to deal with at the moment, but she figured he needed it more than she did. "Love you, too," she said. "Bye, Grandfather."
Anakin	"Bye, Jaina," he replied, clicking his comm closed and dropping his head to rest between his hands. He stayed that way for a long time.

[Preplayed with the wonderful sith_happened, and NFI.]