Fic: "Fast As I Can" (12/20 J/Z AU
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten | Part Eleven
x-x-x
Day 240
Zekk scavenged the holo-reports for any hint of where Jaina might be, in secret, in danger.
There was an assassination attempt on Gruxbahn, and a bloody escalation between slaver gangs on Tatooine had a civilian death toll. Anti-Republic sentiment grew on the Outer Rim. A Corellian senator went missing. The Kessel mines revolted again. An article on Xavac xenophobia was published, with the author disappearing the next day.
Peckhum asked about meeting Jaina. Zekk told him she was training off-world and wouldn’t be around for a while.
x-x-x
Day 246
The tabloids didn’t pay much mind at first, and let her drift behind others’ headlines. When they caught on, they tripped over each other to fill the vacuum. Her family had been worried about her drinking, about the partying and the friends she kept - they had finally staged an intervention, and Jaina had either run off or submitted to rehab. Her family’s worry lines made it one of the Star’s less implausible ideas.
Another tabloid insisted their photographer had been the last to see her, plastered to Kyp Durron in one of their “famous” lovers’ spats, right before he pulled a Han Solo, and kidnapped Jaina to convince her that they belonged together. Or perhaps, another suggested, the man had been the missing Corellian senator. The lighting hadn’t been the best, after all.
One penned a small blurb, and buried it in the glossiest rumours, that wondered what the Solo rebel girl was doing on Quec’slig.
A week later, someone found a fuzzy holo-image that suggested Jaina Solo had been gaining wait before her disappearance. A day after that, it was everyone’s informed source on the identity of the secret baby’s father.
x-x-x
Day 250
Everyone knew about Quec’slig, just as nobody talked about it, and no one tried to save it anymore. New Republic law was not welcomed on the planet run by crime lords and slave masters.
In the time after Jaina’s disappearance, the reports came slowly to a resigned galaxy: first the rumours of a war, then genocide, and finally the list of Jedi who had disappeared there.
Zekk knew, with the certainty of his best and worst scavenges, exactly where Jaina was.
x-x-x
Day 281
Zekk didn’t let himself search for Jaina anymore; he couldn’t look away from the few reports on Quec’slig. He couldn’t risk missing news.
x-x-x
Day 302
Zekk picked up extra hours at the Flash, and successfully bullied Peckhum’s hangar manger into letting him collect the occasional shift there as well.
He went to the upper levels on one of his rare days off, and found Jaina’s apartment despite himself. Sometimes, his scavenger’s hunches were more trouble than they were worth. He turned to walk back, and instantly knew that Jaina’s window would be front-facing: a deep well of space in the crammed city spanned before the apartment, and in the middle of it was the Rogues’ landing bay.
She had been teaching him to fly in her own backyard.
x-x-x
Day 316
What had Jaina said, so long ago? I guess you missed your calling… You’d fit right in with the Jedi. Amidst tea and meditation. Nearly three months since she had vanished, Zekk wished he had something to believe in.
He watched every holo-report with dread, waiting for the slack jaws, and the wild eyes, and “Jaina Solo, hero of the New Republic, has been added to the list of the Quec’slig - ”
He listened to Jaina’s last message five times, and then deleted it.
x-x-x
Day 337
Zekk knew, as soon as he stepped into his flat, that someone was there. All the locks were undamaged, everything looked untouched, but his adrenaline spiked, and he felt the intrusion in every one of his nerve endings.
“Sorry,” said a voice. It was raspy, throttled even, but loud in the silence. “I got tired of the looks, outside.”
Zekk whirled, even recognizing the voice. He could just barely sketch her outline in his armchair. Zekk stumbled as he searched for the light switch. His chest felt tight; his breaths were too shallow, but it ached to reach for more. He activated the lights.
Jaina sat in his armchair, one of her legs crossed beneath her. The pose appeared as calm as every strained muscle indicated she was not. She looked her size for the first time that he had seen. She smiled at him, and he wished she hadn’t. “I just couldn’t - ” She cleared her throat, and her voice was a little smoother as she corrected, “didn’t - want to go down to the Flash.”
“You didn’t walk here, did you?”
Jana glanced down at her hanging leg, and then at the crutches lying on the floor by her foot. “It’s only a sprain,” she said. “My hand was worse. It’ll be fine by tomorrow. But no - Kyp dropped me off. He gave you my message, right?”
Zekk swallowed - her face - and forced his feet to move. “Yeah, he came down to the Flash.” He approached her slowly, pulling one of the kitchen chairs to stop across from her. He straddled the chair, folding his arms across the top. He was not quite prepared to have so little space between them. He could see the angry red slash that bisected her lips, now, and he hoped her smile wasn’t as painful as it looked.
She kept smiling. “Good. Good - I asked him to, but sometimes - by which I mean always - he can be stubborn and difficult, but I didn’t want you to worry, or to think that - ”
“What happened to you?” The words refused to stay in his throat.
One of Jaina’s hands was cradling the other, and her fingers tightened for half a second. “Kyp - you said Kyp told you, I was on a mission.”
“He did, but - ”
“I can’t talk about the mission,” she insisted. Her voice lapsed back into its full rasp as she became more upset.
“Okay, okay,” he said quickly, thinking of the bare facts he had been able to scrounge. “I’m not asking for the details.” He paused, waiting for her eyes to meet his. “When did you get back?”
Jaina’s forehead creased. She looked exhausted. “Last…morning? Last night? I’m still - readjusting.”
“Okay. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
She looked down. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll get you some water.” He rose too quickly, and stepped away from her. She didn’t look up. Her face was much thinner, her features more striking than he remembered, and it cast harder shadows. He told himself that his memory could be playing tricks on him.
The silence weighed him down, but he had filled two glasses with water and returned before he understood it. He gave her one of the waters, pulled his seat a little closer, and then sat once more. “You were gone over three months.”
Jaina was staring at her water. “That’s what they told me in the prelim briefing. Longer than we were expecting, but - ” She took a slow drink. “Some things you can’t help.”
Zekk just wished she would do something. “It was bad, wasn’t it.”
“The mission…was bad.” Her words were very careful. “The setting was also not good. And it did not go half so well as we were hoping.”
His eyes traced the yellowing bruise under her eye, the scratches and nicks across her face, neck, and hands to the wrist. The rest of her body was encased in black clothing, and the armour hid any other injuries. “Did you have to fight?”
Her knuckles were tight around the glass. The skin of her wrists was particularly red in comparison. She snorted as if he could not see this. “Many times.”
He tried to draw her out. “I suppose you’ve been swinging a lightsaber since the cradle.”
“Oh, no, I have pretty boys who take care of that for me.” Her grin, although tired, was slightly more real this time.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said. “Jedi are probably better at it, this sort of thing, if you want.”
“I told you I can’t - ”
“About what happened to you, I mean,” he corrected her. He didn’t mean for his eyes to linger on her wrists, but she must have noticed, because she flinched. “Even with your family, right? You have annual close calls, there’s probably bureaucracy involved. Do they know where you are?”
“Kyp flew me here,” she pointed out. “I handed in my prelim, and then told the Masters I’d be back tomorrow, or - well, long missions like - I have a few days’ grace, to gather my thoughts. They probably think I’m either drunk or passed out right now.”
“Do you need a ride back?” Seeing her expression, he was quick with his alternative. “Or if you need someplace to crash…?” He coloured, and ran an uncomfortable hand through his hair.
“Can I?” Her response was immediate. “I just - I just needed to get out of there. And - I don’t really - ”
The look in her eyes reminded Zekk of after Brakiss had captured him, though it felt much worse seeing it from Jaina. He had stayed with an unsuspecting Peckhum for a week after his own escape. Zekk moved his thoughts away from that time. The worst he had gotten from Brakiss was prejudicial ramblings and a beating. “It’s not exactly what you’re used to,” he warned his friend.
Jaina rolled her eyes, apparently bouncing back, if slowly. “You’ve never seen Jedi rooms, let alone military barracks. After sleeping on rocks for the past couple months, I’ll gleefully take your rug. Or this chair, even,” she said, patting one of its ratty arms. “This chair will be perfect.”
“You don’t have to - that is, I’ll - ” Zekk wasn’t sure if his skin had ever been this red. An image came to him of - and well, the day’s dread and relief and adrenaline, mixed with this, threw him completely off balance.
Jaina, for her part, looked genuinely amused even with her responding blush. “Who’s the knight in tarnished armour, here? Besides, you’re way too tall for this chair, and I’m the one crashing. I’m not that much of a princess.”
“Whatever you say, Princess. I’ll get some ointment for your wrists, though; you need them for both your jobs.” He ignored the way she pulled her sleeves to cover the burns.
“I can speed up the healing,” she said. “A bit,” she conceded at his look. “Well, I put bacta on it, and I’ll have my whole family fussing over them tomorrow. I really just want to sleep for a while.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” he said, already rummaging through one of his cupboards. His voice remained firm. He had not forgotten the months of worrying. “It isn’t bacta, but it should help.” Finding the jar and some bandages, he took both back to the kitchen table. “Can you walk over here, or do you need a hand?”
She scowled at him, but limped over without significant difficulty. “I’m a little useless if I can’t work through a little pain. Do you need a hand, please.”
“You sure are cranky when you’re hurt. Sit down, and put your wrists on the table.”
She did so, and even pulled at her sleeve to expose her right forearm. “You’ll have to pull the other one,” she said in a flat voice. “My right hand is…well, it’s still healing.”
Zekk nodded, and took a deep breath to steady himself. Exhausted and injured or not, Jaina would run if he reacted to her wounds, and this day had been just enough of an emotional whirlwind for him to forget it.
Whatever the Jedi Healers and bacta had managed to do for Jaina, it hadn’t been enough for her wrists. There was no blood or open wounds, but the skin was raw and a livid red, the worst of it two inches off her wrist bone. Whether they had been actual metal cuffs or something charged, she had fought them. He put the image aside for later.
Aside from a wrinkle of her nose at the smell, Jaina’s face remained calm as he applied the salve. “What is this?”
“Something Peckhum uses for burns on his hands, when he’s doing repairs. It’s cheaper than bacta.”
“Smells worse.”
“The worse it smells, the better it works. Like cough syrup.”
“Or it’s insult to injury.”
“Princess.”
“Vent crawler.” Her mouth tugged at one corner.
He smoothed the last bit of ointment over the raw skin, willing it work quickly. He started bandaging her wrists. “Damsel.”
She smacked him in the shoulder. With her left hand newly bandaged, it was more of a reassuring bump. “Damsel,” she sneered. “As if.”
“In distress,” he insisted, wrapping her right hand as gently as he could.
“I’ll show you distress.”
He made sure to tighten the bandage on her left hand. “Tomorrow. You’re practically swaying, you’re so tired.”
“Shut up, I could take you - ” Her face split in an enormous yawn.
“Nice tonsils.”
“ - blindfolded, and surrounded by ysalamiri, and - and with my legs bounds - ” She could barely keep her eyes open.
“You wouldn’t need that blindfold, at this point,” he said, grinning, as he pulled her up out of the chair.
“When I was four,” she finished triumphantly. He had only pulled her halfway to the armchair when Jaina pulled out of his supporting hold. She almost crashed back into the chair.
“Yeah, you’ve got me pinned. I wouldn’t last a minute, street rat or no. I’m going to get you a blanket. Could you please not drool on the arm of my chair?”
He left her curling up in the armchair, still throwing out the occasional insult.
His spare blanket hadn’t seen the light of day in years, and he had to dig before finding it under a broken X-wing console that he had scavenged before starting his job at the Flash. The blanket smelled like an engine, but he suspected Jaina wouldn’t even notice.
Zekk expected her to be asleep when he came back; he left the lights off, and walked with care. When he unfolded the blanket, however, Jaina looked up with wide eyes. She wasn’t seeing him. “I killed people.”
He stared at her, frozen. “Jaina - ”
“Not just a few people. Not just on - while I was gone. And I couldn’t - ”
He was released to move, and did so quickly, tucking the blanket around her and folding it up for more warmth. She didn’t take up much room. “Sh, just sleep now, okay?”
“There were so many - and I couldn’t save them, so many people were dying - “
“Jaina.” He turned her chin to look up at him. “You’re safe, and it’ll be - ” He decided not to finish his sentence. “You need to sleep.”
She closed her eyes, took a shuddering breath, and released. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just sleep.” Something swept through him, but he ignored it. “We can talk in the morning if you like.”
She was already asleep.
Part 13
-
music for this part, especially the end: Pulse by Ani DiFranco (and srsly, Ani for J/Z? so weird.) The actual song will probably get posted...soonish? Or in a collective, music-for-faic post.
EDIT'ed because after eight years of posting fanfic I can still forget to check that I've posted everything. Like, the last line *facepalm*
x-x-x
Day 240
Zekk scavenged the holo-reports for any hint of where Jaina might be, in secret, in danger.
There was an assassination attempt on Gruxbahn, and a bloody escalation between slaver gangs on Tatooine had a civilian death toll. Anti-Republic sentiment grew on the Outer Rim. A Corellian senator went missing. The Kessel mines revolted again. An article on Xavac xenophobia was published, with the author disappearing the next day.
Peckhum asked about meeting Jaina. Zekk told him she was training off-world and wouldn’t be around for a while.
x-x-x
Day 246
The tabloids didn’t pay much mind at first, and let her drift behind others’ headlines. When they caught on, they tripped over each other to fill the vacuum. Her family had been worried about her drinking, about the partying and the friends she kept - they had finally staged an intervention, and Jaina had either run off or submitted to rehab. Her family’s worry lines made it one of the Star’s less implausible ideas.
Another tabloid insisted their photographer had been the last to see her, plastered to Kyp Durron in one of their “famous” lovers’ spats, right before he pulled a Han Solo, and kidnapped Jaina to convince her that they belonged together. Or perhaps, another suggested, the man had been the missing Corellian senator. The lighting hadn’t been the best, after all.
One penned a small blurb, and buried it in the glossiest rumours, that wondered what the Solo rebel girl was doing on Quec’slig.
A week later, someone found a fuzzy holo-image that suggested Jaina Solo had been gaining wait before her disappearance. A day after that, it was everyone’s informed source on the identity of the secret baby’s father.
x-x-x
Day 250
Everyone knew about Quec’slig, just as nobody talked about it, and no one tried to save it anymore. New Republic law was not welcomed on the planet run by crime lords and slave masters.
In the time after Jaina’s disappearance, the reports came slowly to a resigned galaxy: first the rumours of a war, then genocide, and finally the list of Jedi who had disappeared there.
Zekk knew, with the certainty of his best and worst scavenges, exactly where Jaina was.
x-x-x
Day 281
Zekk didn’t let himself search for Jaina anymore; he couldn’t look away from the few reports on Quec’slig. He couldn’t risk missing news.
x-x-x
Day 302
Zekk picked up extra hours at the Flash, and successfully bullied Peckhum’s hangar manger into letting him collect the occasional shift there as well.
He went to the upper levels on one of his rare days off, and found Jaina’s apartment despite himself. Sometimes, his scavenger’s hunches were more trouble than they were worth. He turned to walk back, and instantly knew that Jaina’s window would be front-facing: a deep well of space in the crammed city spanned before the apartment, and in the middle of it was the Rogues’ landing bay.
She had been teaching him to fly in her own backyard.
x-x-x
Day 316
What had Jaina said, so long ago? I guess you missed your calling… You’d fit right in with the Jedi. Amidst tea and meditation. Nearly three months since she had vanished, Zekk wished he had something to believe in.
He watched every holo-report with dread, waiting for the slack jaws, and the wild eyes, and “Jaina Solo, hero of the New Republic, has been added to the list of the Quec’slig - ”
He listened to Jaina’s last message five times, and then deleted it.
x-x-x
Day 337
Zekk knew, as soon as he stepped into his flat, that someone was there. All the locks were undamaged, everything looked untouched, but his adrenaline spiked, and he felt the intrusion in every one of his nerve endings.
“Sorry,” said a voice. It was raspy, throttled even, but loud in the silence. “I got tired of the looks, outside.”
Zekk whirled, even recognizing the voice. He could just barely sketch her outline in his armchair. Zekk stumbled as he searched for the light switch. His chest felt tight; his breaths were too shallow, but it ached to reach for more. He activated the lights.
Jaina sat in his armchair, one of her legs crossed beneath her. The pose appeared as calm as every strained muscle indicated she was not. She looked her size for the first time that he had seen. She smiled at him, and he wished she hadn’t. “I just couldn’t - ” She cleared her throat, and her voice was a little smoother as she corrected, “didn’t - want to go down to the Flash.”
“You didn’t walk here, did you?”
Jana glanced down at her hanging leg, and then at the crutches lying on the floor by her foot. “It’s only a sprain,” she said. “My hand was worse. It’ll be fine by tomorrow. But no - Kyp dropped me off. He gave you my message, right?”
Zekk swallowed - her face - and forced his feet to move. “Yeah, he came down to the Flash.” He approached her slowly, pulling one of the kitchen chairs to stop across from her. He straddled the chair, folding his arms across the top. He was not quite prepared to have so little space between them. He could see the angry red slash that bisected her lips, now, and he hoped her smile wasn’t as painful as it looked.
She kept smiling. “Good. Good - I asked him to, but sometimes - by which I mean always - he can be stubborn and difficult, but I didn’t want you to worry, or to think that - ”
“What happened to you?” The words refused to stay in his throat.
One of Jaina’s hands was cradling the other, and her fingers tightened for half a second. “Kyp - you said Kyp told you, I was on a mission.”
“He did, but - ”
“I can’t talk about the mission,” she insisted. Her voice lapsed back into its full rasp as she became more upset.
“Okay, okay,” he said quickly, thinking of the bare facts he had been able to scrounge. “I’m not asking for the details.” He paused, waiting for her eyes to meet his. “When did you get back?”
Jaina’s forehead creased. She looked exhausted. “Last…morning? Last night? I’m still - readjusting.”
“Okay. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
She looked down. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll get you some water.” He rose too quickly, and stepped away from her. She didn’t look up. Her face was much thinner, her features more striking than he remembered, and it cast harder shadows. He told himself that his memory could be playing tricks on him.
The silence weighed him down, but he had filled two glasses with water and returned before he understood it. He gave her one of the waters, pulled his seat a little closer, and then sat once more. “You were gone over three months.”
Jaina was staring at her water. “That’s what they told me in the prelim briefing. Longer than we were expecting, but - ” She took a slow drink. “Some things you can’t help.”
Zekk just wished she would do something. “It was bad, wasn’t it.”
“The mission…was bad.” Her words were very careful. “The setting was also not good. And it did not go half so well as we were hoping.”
His eyes traced the yellowing bruise under her eye, the scratches and nicks across her face, neck, and hands to the wrist. The rest of her body was encased in black clothing, and the armour hid any other injuries. “Did you have to fight?”
Her knuckles were tight around the glass. The skin of her wrists was particularly red in comparison. She snorted as if he could not see this. “Many times.”
He tried to draw her out. “I suppose you’ve been swinging a lightsaber since the cradle.”
“Oh, no, I have pretty boys who take care of that for me.” Her grin, although tired, was slightly more real this time.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said. “Jedi are probably better at it, this sort of thing, if you want.”
“I told you I can’t - ”
“About what happened to you, I mean,” he corrected her. He didn’t mean for his eyes to linger on her wrists, but she must have noticed, because she flinched. “Even with your family, right? You have annual close calls, there’s probably bureaucracy involved. Do they know where you are?”
“Kyp flew me here,” she pointed out. “I handed in my prelim, and then told the Masters I’d be back tomorrow, or - well, long missions like - I have a few days’ grace, to gather my thoughts. They probably think I’m either drunk or passed out right now.”
“Do you need a ride back?” Seeing her expression, he was quick with his alternative. “Or if you need someplace to crash…?” He coloured, and ran an uncomfortable hand through his hair.
“Can I?” Her response was immediate. “I just - I just needed to get out of there. And - I don’t really - ”
The look in her eyes reminded Zekk of after Brakiss had captured him, though it felt much worse seeing it from Jaina. He had stayed with an unsuspecting Peckhum for a week after his own escape. Zekk moved his thoughts away from that time. The worst he had gotten from Brakiss was prejudicial ramblings and a beating. “It’s not exactly what you’re used to,” he warned his friend.
Jaina rolled her eyes, apparently bouncing back, if slowly. “You’ve never seen Jedi rooms, let alone military barracks. After sleeping on rocks for the past couple months, I’ll gleefully take your rug. Or this chair, even,” she said, patting one of its ratty arms. “This chair will be perfect.”
“You don’t have to - that is, I’ll - ” Zekk wasn’t sure if his skin had ever been this red. An image came to him of - and well, the day’s dread and relief and adrenaline, mixed with this, threw him completely off balance.
Jaina, for her part, looked genuinely amused even with her responding blush. “Who’s the knight in tarnished armour, here? Besides, you’re way too tall for this chair, and I’m the one crashing. I’m not that much of a princess.”
“Whatever you say, Princess. I’ll get some ointment for your wrists, though; you need them for both your jobs.” He ignored the way she pulled her sleeves to cover the burns.
“I can speed up the healing,” she said. “A bit,” she conceded at his look. “Well, I put bacta on it, and I’ll have my whole family fussing over them tomorrow. I really just want to sleep for a while.”
“It’ll only take a minute,” he said, already rummaging through one of his cupboards. His voice remained firm. He had not forgotten the months of worrying. “It isn’t bacta, but it should help.” Finding the jar and some bandages, he took both back to the kitchen table. “Can you walk over here, or do you need a hand?”
She scowled at him, but limped over without significant difficulty. “I’m a little useless if I can’t work through a little pain. Do you need a hand, please.”
“You sure are cranky when you’re hurt. Sit down, and put your wrists on the table.”
She did so, and even pulled at her sleeve to expose her right forearm. “You’ll have to pull the other one,” she said in a flat voice. “My right hand is…well, it’s still healing.”
Zekk nodded, and took a deep breath to steady himself. Exhausted and injured or not, Jaina would run if he reacted to her wounds, and this day had been just enough of an emotional whirlwind for him to forget it.
Whatever the Jedi Healers and bacta had managed to do for Jaina, it hadn’t been enough for her wrists. There was no blood or open wounds, but the skin was raw and a livid red, the worst of it two inches off her wrist bone. Whether they had been actual metal cuffs or something charged, she had fought them. He put the image aside for later.
Aside from a wrinkle of her nose at the smell, Jaina’s face remained calm as he applied the salve. “What is this?”
“Something Peckhum uses for burns on his hands, when he’s doing repairs. It’s cheaper than bacta.”
“Smells worse.”
“The worse it smells, the better it works. Like cough syrup.”
“Or it’s insult to injury.”
“Princess.”
“Vent crawler.” Her mouth tugged at one corner.
He smoothed the last bit of ointment over the raw skin, willing it work quickly. He started bandaging her wrists. “Damsel.”
She smacked him in the shoulder. With her left hand newly bandaged, it was more of a reassuring bump. “Damsel,” she sneered. “As if.”
“In distress,” he insisted, wrapping her right hand as gently as he could.
“I’ll show you distress.”
He made sure to tighten the bandage on her left hand. “Tomorrow. You’re practically swaying, you’re so tired.”
“Shut up, I could take you - ” Her face split in an enormous yawn.
“Nice tonsils.”
“ - blindfolded, and surrounded by ysalamiri, and - and with my legs bounds - ” She could barely keep her eyes open.
“You wouldn’t need that blindfold, at this point,” he said, grinning, as he pulled her up out of the chair.
“When I was four,” she finished triumphantly. He had only pulled her halfway to the armchair when Jaina pulled out of his supporting hold. She almost crashed back into the chair.
“Yeah, you’ve got me pinned. I wouldn’t last a minute, street rat or no. I’m going to get you a blanket. Could you please not drool on the arm of my chair?”
He left her curling up in the armchair, still throwing out the occasional insult.
His spare blanket hadn’t seen the light of day in years, and he had to dig before finding it under a broken X-wing console that he had scavenged before starting his job at the Flash. The blanket smelled like an engine, but he suspected Jaina wouldn’t even notice.
Zekk expected her to be asleep when he came back; he left the lights off, and walked with care. When he unfolded the blanket, however, Jaina looked up with wide eyes. She wasn’t seeing him. “I killed people.”
He stared at her, frozen. “Jaina - ”
“Not just a few people. Not just on - while I was gone. And I couldn’t - ”
He was released to move, and did so quickly, tucking the blanket around her and folding it up for more warmth. She didn’t take up much room. “Sh, just sleep now, okay?”
“There were so many - and I couldn’t save them, so many people were dying - “
“Jaina.” He turned her chin to look up at him. “You’re safe, and it’ll be - ” He decided not to finish his sentence. “You need to sleep.”
She closed her eyes, took a shuddering breath, and released. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just sleep.” Something swept through him, but he ignored it. “We can talk in the morning if you like.”
She was already asleep.
Part 13
-
music for this part, especially the end: Pulse by Ani DiFranco (and srsly, Ani for J/Z? so weird.) The actual song will probably get posted...soonish? Or in a collective, music-for-faic post.
EDIT'ed because after eight years of posting fanfic I can still forget to check that I've posted everything. Like, the last line *facepalm*