Fic: "If You Call" (9/?, J/Z AU; sequel to FaIC)
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight
x-x-x
“Oh. Yes. It’s just that-” She shrugged awkwardly, then seemed to come to a decision. “Traest was the fiancé.”
To his own horror, Zekk heard himself say, “You’re kidding me.”
Jaina’s expression turned into a sneer before he could try to fix his reaction. “What, doesn’t it sound like exactly the kind of mess I’d let my love life turn into?”
Zekk gawped at her for a long moment. “You…were engaged to Traest.” He stumbled to his bed and sat down. “How did you two even meet? I mean, how-how old were you?”
Jaina faced him as if ready for a fight, but her shoulders curled inward; he could make her tell him. “I don’t want to talk about this. It’s the past.” He could almost hear the number of times she had said that before.
“Too kriffing bad. What happened?”
Finally, she took a seat on the stairs. She was scowling, but had clearly given up on ignoring the subject. “I met Traest when I was nine years old,” she started, more slowly than he had expected. “I was-I’m not sure how to explain. My life was easier than yours in a lot of ways, but…it was harder in others. I grew up surrounded by the…most amazing people. My family, but their friends, too-people who are Rebellion and Republic heroes. But it was never really safe, with all the enemies, bounty hunters, and assassins, so our parents kept us as safe as they could. It could be very isolating. Stifling, even, sometimes.”
She looked up and seemed to notice something in Zekk’s expression. She gave a half-grin. “It wasn’t that bad. It’s just-my brothers and I were protected as much as possible-up until we got kidnapped, which happened more than occasionally. But you know me,” she shrugged. “I got restless.”
“At nine.”
“Zekk, my brothers and I were thwarting kidnappers and Dark Jedi practically from the womb. We grew up surrounded by the children of other heroes; getting into trouble was practically a competition. Exploring Coruscant’s undercity was an adventure only because my mother had forbidden it, and no one knew where I was.”
“Okay, so you hit your rebellious streak early.”
She rolled her eyes. “I liked digging though the old parts stores. One day, I ran into Traest on my way back.” She grinned, oddly. “He tried to snatch my cred card, but I caught him. It was…a game. He was nothing like anyone I knew, really. He didn’t worry about Imperials or Dark Jedi. He was just this scamp who went through the day doing whatever he wanted-or that’s how he explained it, anyway.”
“Did he know who you were?” Zekk asked, remembering how slowly he had found out.
“Immediately. I think that’s why he did it-to see what the princess would do. He was…he was like me, sort of.” Jaina smiled, too softly for her expression to really be classed as wry. “Wild, scruffy-my dad showed me how to pick most locks, but Traest showed me how to get into all the others and then get away without anyone seeing.”
When she went quiet for several minutes, Zekk’s mouth twisted. “What happened?”
What had softened in Jaina changed into a manner more brisk. “We weren’t really close at the time, but we were friends. Then when I was thirteen, I went to the Jedi Academy to start my training. When I came back on a break, Traest was missing. He didn’t have anyone, not even a leader, let alone someone like Peckhum. He kept himself alive.” Jaina swallowed. “I tried looking for him, but there were no leads-I couldn’t find any of his friends, and he didn’t leave a message. And anyway, he had always said that one day he’d leave and just never come back.”
She looked angry-at herself, probably, or at Traest, and certainly at Zekk for making her talk about it. “But he did come back,” Zekk prodded.
The line of her jaw tightened. “When I was seventeen. Almost eighteen. We ran into each other-maybe by accident, I’ve never really known.” She caught herself. “He was older, of course, but there was…something different about him. He was wilder than ever and-you’ve met him,” she said.
It occurred to him, suddenly, that she was asking him to understand. Zekk loosened his fists and tried to look less than completely furious. “He was very charismatic. Charming, almost.” The green-eyed man hesitated. “I’ve met people like him before, but-I almost believed him sometimes, even when the lab was right in front of me.”
“And he wasn’t even like he is now,” Jaina insisted. “I don’t think. He’s different now. Committed.” There was no forgiveness in her voice.
Zekk had to fist his hands back together. “Did you love him?”
It seemed to break the tension, if only to set it in a different way. Jaina rolled her eyes, rueful. “I was seventeen. What did I even know about being in love?”
That, he thought, sounded an awful lot like yes.
“Anyway, it wasn’t exactly like that. He brought out the worst in me, encouraged all my little sparks of rebellion.” She sighed. “Look, I was seventeen, okay? It wasn’t so much that everyone expected me to save the galaxy as it was just a…a fact. You don’t expect Coruscant to have a lot of people and really bad traffic, it just does. And mostly I was okay, didn’t let it get to me, but when I was with Traest-it was like being someone else. And being with someone like Traest was…very freeing.” Her voice soured. “Freefalling, really.”
Zekk finally stood, uncomfortable but realizing that Jaina would tear his head off at one wrong move. He walked to his desk, ignored the article that was still lying there, and leaned against it. “What did he say about being gone?”
Jaina shrugged, as if he didn’t already know that Traest had come back as an enemy. “He said he’d been travelling, which-he had been off-world, that was true. But I didn’t press the way I should have.” This time, Jaina’s anger was clearly directed inward. “I thought-and even when he wasn’t leading me through very un-Solo-Skywalker-like behaviour, I was an idiot over him in so many ways. I thought that maybe he’d gotten into trouble with a gang, or even been caught by the police. But I never made him tell me anything he didn’t want to-not after the first couple denials. I didn’t ask any of the questions I should have.”
So she had loved him, Zekk thought. It explained a number of things, not least her reaction to any questions about Cruxx when she and Zekk had first met. “But really…”
“He’d been recruited. He had been training-working-for almost four years by the time I next saw him. I don’t know if he came back to find me, or if he just took the opportunity while he had it, but-”
Zekk gave her several minutes, but she clearly meant to leave it at that. “Jaina,” he said. “The ring.”
She was looking at her knees; the shadows made it difficult for him to see her face, but he knew she was tense. “Well, I figured it out before stumbling down the aisle, obviously. I wasn’t quite that stupid. And I probably would have done a lot of things for him, but once I had proof….”
“But what did he-”
“Look, I’m trying to answer, okay, but I don’t talk about this. I’m not divorced, I don’t have an annulled marriage, I only wore the ring for a few days, and it was years ago. I’m not that person anymore. And-” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m too sober to talk about the details of what Brakiss had Traest do.”
Zekk was about to point out that she obviously wasn’t trying to give him answers, but then she dropped Brakiss’ name and the argument died in his throat.
Jaina’s head shot up to study him, her eyes catching the light. She scowled. “What?” But she stood, and descended the last few stairs, slowly becoming concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“Traest was-he’s working for Brakiss?”
Jaina blinked, but her face smoothed out of confusion into something more watchful than she usually let people see. “Brakiss kidnapped and recruited street kids over a decade ago,” she said. She sounded almost as if she knew that this was not new to Zekk. “He wanted to bring down the Jedi Order, revive the Empire-he even had an Imperial Guard pretending to be the Emperor. He started with street kids who-who wouldn’t be missed by parents or authorities.” She paused, looking pained. “And you were one of them, weren’t you?”
Zekk’s hands tightened around the edge of his desk. “Human,” he said. “Blond hair, blue eyes, flair for the dramatics. I was sixteen.”
“Yeah. He even had this stupid cape he liked to wear, horribly impractical.”
“Yeah.” Zekk’s head dropped, his chin sinking into his chest. He could practically feel Jaina trying to restrain her questions. “I thought he was just some nut, or maybe even a slaver. I escaped,” he told her, looking up quickly. “I never worked for him.”
Jaina tilted her head; he couldn’t quite decipher her expression, although he was relieved to notice the absence of suspicion. At least Traest hadn’t broken her heart that badly. “You weren’t one of his regular soldiers, were you.” She sounded-bizarrely, he thought-almost smug.
“What are you talking about?” He already knew that Jaina was right, somehow-he just didn’t know how she knew. “He spouted something about-destiny, or something as stupid, but otherwise he just kept me locked in a room.”
She frowned, looking concerned; she took another step closer to him. “Did he hurt you?”
He raised an eyebrow; there was enough messiness without worrying about his brief captivity a decade ago.
Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes darted away for a moment as she cleared her throat. “Brakiss is a Dark Jedi. He recruited as many ‘soldiers’ as he could, but he wanted other Force sensitives to train as a sort of superior guard. I guess-I think you were supposed to be part of the latter group.” She looked faintly abashed.
There was an obvious flaw in her reasoning. “I’m not Force sensitive.”
Jaina made a face and looked considering again.
“I’m not,” he insisted. “And anyway, wouldn’t you have been able to tell?”
“Well, it’s not like-you meet someone, and you suddenly know they’re Force sensitive. Besides, I wasn’t looking for it.”
“Because I’m not the type of person who would be a Jedi.”
She looked impatient, but kept from snapping at him. “When I was teaching you how to fly, you learned very quickly. I’d be about to point something out, and then you’d remember.”
“I’m a quick study. And Peckhum...”
Jaina was not deterred by his interruption. “When it snowed, your hands weren’t nearly as cold as they should have been.”
“Street kid,” he reminded her. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“The undercity is hot at the best of times,” Jaina contradicted him. “You should have been as useless as Beryl. And you’re always finding things, finding out things.”
“You don’t sound very surprised,” he remarked flatly.
“I…don’t think I am.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I wondered once or twice, sort of. There were little things, I didn’t sit down and add them up, but...” She straightened. “Brakiss was looking for something-maybe someone-that he never quite pinned. Maybe you. The Nightsisters had a protégé, Vilas, who was supported to help lead, but-he wasn’t Brakiss’ choice, and Tamith Kai and Brakiss fought. The Shadow Academy divided up its loyalty-some of them stayed with Brakiss, and the rest with the Nightsisters. Brakiss couldn’t take on the Jedi as he was-the Nightsisters tried, but they didn’t do much better than Brakiss would have. Brakiss, for his part, became involved in more strategic power struggles. Organized crime, human trafficking, sentient experimentation.” She smiled oddly; there wasn’t much humour in it. “Do you believe me?”
“About Brakiss? Of course.”
“I meant about you. And Brakiss.”
“It’s a bit much to swallow,” he hedged.
“Especially with the Traest holovid reveal?” she suggested, smirking a little.
“I’m not exactly… I’m not Jedi material.”
Something in her expression softened-something he hadn’t even realized that she had been holding onto all this time, or which he had only blamed on the mission. “Zekk,” she said. “Don’t be such an idiot. It’s-you don’t have to do anything with it if you don’t want to. But-for what it’s worth. I think you could be a great Jedi.” She blushed and looked at the floor. “Or-anything else you wanted to be.” Her eyes darted up at the last moment, and her lips curled. “That’s kind of the point.”
He stared at her, caught by the sincerity she was offering. Her smile could almost have been shy, if Jaina Solo had ever been shy a day in her life. It made very clear, in a way that over a year at the Flash and months of distance had not, what Peckhum and Mique had seen, and what Jaina had slowly been risking to put forward. He wondered what his own expression was telling her; if perhaps her anger was as much for his leaving as for the fact that he had kept safe his own intentions while she had been showing her hand. “Jaina-”
Her expression slid into awkwardness, and her jaw twisted a little. The honesty became self-deprecation-a seagueway for something more brisk. “Right. If we’re finished the massive amounts of melodrama, I should be getting back to the others. I shouldn’t even really have-”
“I’m glad you did,” he interjected, still off balance.
“I was…” She rolled her eyes, shrugged it off. “I wanted to make sure everything went okay. You know. On your first mission.”
She refrained from glaring at him for once-he wondered if she would try to recruit him now that she thought he was Force sensitive. Not, he reminded himself, that he actually was. He summoned a smile for her, though he expected no sleep tonight with all the new thoughts in his head. “It takes a little more than villains’ small talk to finish me off.”
The corners of her lips turned up. “Just contacts, then?” she suggested. If Kyp had been trying to amuse Jaina with his prank, then he hadn’t completely failed. “Your face is still kind of-” She waved at her own, now definitely grinning. “You might need to use soap.”
Zekk reassured himself that he had not just had a deeply personal conversation with Jaina while his face was smeared blue. Zekk was not that unlucky. There had to be a limit. He refrained from touching his face to check the colour, though; he’d only look like more of an idiot. “Right,” he said. “Remember, Kyp was being immature during a recon mission. He deserves to get hit.”
“You’re both grown-ups,” Jaina said, heading toward the stairs. “Settle it on your own. You really don’t need to be intimidated by him; Kyp hasn’t actually torn off anyone’s head in years.”
“Or he’s just gotten better at hiding the bodies,” Zekk muttered, then: “I am not intimidated by Kyp Durron.”
“Then you can thump him on your own. The other girls and I could do with a men-are-stupid laugh.” She was going to have a laugh all to herself as soon as she was off the Hawk, Zekk could tell. “But, okay, I really am going now. Oh,” she said, pausing on the fourth step. She peered down at him. “We’ll contact you tomorrow morning to debrief you properly. We’re supposed to record everything for testimony. So maybe write down everything you remember? Your perceptions, things we couldn’t catch on holo-or that you wouldn’t trust just to tech, anyway. You never know when something will go wrong.”
She climbed two more steps, then looked back again, less absent. “And-keep an eye out. The others are working on making sure you don’t have any trouble, but…”
“I don’t have any intention of dying now,” he assured her.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Here?” he checked.
She rolled her eyes. “Really bad idea. Go out for a walk. Spend some of your paycheque.”
“No, thank you.”
“Not Traest’s,” she told him. “Just-get breakfast, or something, preferably without a tail. We’ll find you.”
“So without non-Jedi tails, you mean.”
Jaina grinned. “I really should tell you what I can do with the Force. Finding you won’t be a problem.”
x-x-x
Part Ten
cut!lyrics from Wicked Man's Rest by Passenger. And I'm going to sleep now, and fix everything in the morning.
x-x-x
“Oh. Yes. It’s just that-” She shrugged awkwardly, then seemed to come to a decision. “Traest was the fiancé.”
To his own horror, Zekk heard himself say, “You’re kidding me.”
Jaina’s expression turned into a sneer before he could try to fix his reaction. “What, doesn’t it sound like exactly the kind of mess I’d let my love life turn into?”
Zekk gawped at her for a long moment. “You…were engaged to Traest.” He stumbled to his bed and sat down. “How did you two even meet? I mean, how-how old were you?”
Jaina faced him as if ready for a fight, but her shoulders curled inward; he could make her tell him. “I don’t want to talk about this. It’s the past.” He could almost hear the number of times she had said that before.
“Too kriffing bad. What happened?”
Finally, she took a seat on the stairs. She was scowling, but had clearly given up on ignoring the subject. “I met Traest when I was nine years old,” she started, more slowly than he had expected. “I was-I’m not sure how to explain. My life was easier than yours in a lot of ways, but…it was harder in others. I grew up surrounded by the…most amazing people. My family, but their friends, too-people who are Rebellion and Republic heroes. But it was never really safe, with all the enemies, bounty hunters, and assassins, so our parents kept us as safe as they could. It could be very isolating. Stifling, even, sometimes.”
She looked up and seemed to notice something in Zekk’s expression. She gave a half-grin. “It wasn’t that bad. It’s just-my brothers and I were protected as much as possible-up until we got kidnapped, which happened more than occasionally. But you know me,” she shrugged. “I got restless.”
“At nine.”
“Zekk, my brothers and I were thwarting kidnappers and Dark Jedi practically from the womb. We grew up surrounded by the children of other heroes; getting into trouble was practically a competition. Exploring Coruscant’s undercity was an adventure only because my mother had forbidden it, and no one knew where I was.”
“Okay, so you hit your rebellious streak early.”
She rolled her eyes. “I liked digging though the old parts stores. One day, I ran into Traest on my way back.” She grinned, oddly. “He tried to snatch my cred card, but I caught him. It was…a game. He was nothing like anyone I knew, really. He didn’t worry about Imperials or Dark Jedi. He was just this scamp who went through the day doing whatever he wanted-or that’s how he explained it, anyway.”
“Did he know who you were?” Zekk asked, remembering how slowly he had found out.
“Immediately. I think that’s why he did it-to see what the princess would do. He was…he was like me, sort of.” Jaina smiled, too softly for her expression to really be classed as wry. “Wild, scruffy-my dad showed me how to pick most locks, but Traest showed me how to get into all the others and then get away without anyone seeing.”
When she went quiet for several minutes, Zekk’s mouth twisted. “What happened?”
What had softened in Jaina changed into a manner more brisk. “We weren’t really close at the time, but we were friends. Then when I was thirteen, I went to the Jedi Academy to start my training. When I came back on a break, Traest was missing. He didn’t have anyone, not even a leader, let alone someone like Peckhum. He kept himself alive.” Jaina swallowed. “I tried looking for him, but there were no leads-I couldn’t find any of his friends, and he didn’t leave a message. And anyway, he had always said that one day he’d leave and just never come back.”
She looked angry-at herself, probably, or at Traest, and certainly at Zekk for making her talk about it. “But he did come back,” Zekk prodded.
The line of her jaw tightened. “When I was seventeen. Almost eighteen. We ran into each other-maybe by accident, I’ve never really known.” She caught herself. “He was older, of course, but there was…something different about him. He was wilder than ever and-you’ve met him,” she said.
It occurred to him, suddenly, that she was asking him to understand. Zekk loosened his fists and tried to look less than completely furious. “He was very charismatic. Charming, almost.” The green-eyed man hesitated. “I’ve met people like him before, but-I almost believed him sometimes, even when the lab was right in front of me.”
“And he wasn’t even like he is now,” Jaina insisted. “I don’t think. He’s different now. Committed.” There was no forgiveness in her voice.
Zekk had to fist his hands back together. “Did you love him?”
It seemed to break the tension, if only to set it in a different way. Jaina rolled her eyes, rueful. “I was seventeen. What did I even know about being in love?”
That, he thought, sounded an awful lot like yes.
“Anyway, it wasn’t exactly like that. He brought out the worst in me, encouraged all my little sparks of rebellion.” She sighed. “Look, I was seventeen, okay? It wasn’t so much that everyone expected me to save the galaxy as it was just a…a fact. You don’t expect Coruscant to have a lot of people and really bad traffic, it just does. And mostly I was okay, didn’t let it get to me, but when I was with Traest-it was like being someone else. And being with someone like Traest was…very freeing.” Her voice soured. “Freefalling, really.”
Zekk finally stood, uncomfortable but realizing that Jaina would tear his head off at one wrong move. He walked to his desk, ignored the article that was still lying there, and leaned against it. “What did he say about being gone?”
Jaina shrugged, as if he didn’t already know that Traest had come back as an enemy. “He said he’d been travelling, which-he had been off-world, that was true. But I didn’t press the way I should have.” This time, Jaina’s anger was clearly directed inward. “I thought-and even when he wasn’t leading me through very un-Solo-Skywalker-like behaviour, I was an idiot over him in so many ways. I thought that maybe he’d gotten into trouble with a gang, or even been caught by the police. But I never made him tell me anything he didn’t want to-not after the first couple denials. I didn’t ask any of the questions I should have.”
So she had loved him, Zekk thought. It explained a number of things, not least her reaction to any questions about Cruxx when she and Zekk had first met. “But really…”
“He’d been recruited. He had been training-working-for almost four years by the time I next saw him. I don’t know if he came back to find me, or if he just took the opportunity while he had it, but-”
Zekk gave her several minutes, but she clearly meant to leave it at that. “Jaina,” he said. “The ring.”
She was looking at her knees; the shadows made it difficult for him to see her face, but he knew she was tense. “Well, I figured it out before stumbling down the aisle, obviously. I wasn’t quite that stupid. And I probably would have done a lot of things for him, but once I had proof….”
“But what did he-”
“Look, I’m trying to answer, okay, but I don’t talk about this. I’m not divorced, I don’t have an annulled marriage, I only wore the ring for a few days, and it was years ago. I’m not that person anymore. And-” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m too sober to talk about the details of what Brakiss had Traest do.”
Zekk was about to point out that she obviously wasn’t trying to give him answers, but then she dropped Brakiss’ name and the argument died in his throat.
Jaina’s head shot up to study him, her eyes catching the light. She scowled. “What?” But she stood, and descended the last few stairs, slowly becoming concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“Traest was-he’s working for Brakiss?”
Jaina blinked, but her face smoothed out of confusion into something more watchful than she usually let people see. “Brakiss kidnapped and recruited street kids over a decade ago,” she said. She sounded almost as if she knew that this was not new to Zekk. “He wanted to bring down the Jedi Order, revive the Empire-he even had an Imperial Guard pretending to be the Emperor. He started with street kids who-who wouldn’t be missed by parents or authorities.” She paused, looking pained. “And you were one of them, weren’t you?”
Zekk’s hands tightened around the edge of his desk. “Human,” he said. “Blond hair, blue eyes, flair for the dramatics. I was sixteen.”
“Yeah. He even had this stupid cape he liked to wear, horribly impractical.”
“Yeah.” Zekk’s head dropped, his chin sinking into his chest. He could practically feel Jaina trying to restrain her questions. “I thought he was just some nut, or maybe even a slaver. I escaped,” he told her, looking up quickly. “I never worked for him.”
Jaina tilted her head; he couldn’t quite decipher her expression, although he was relieved to notice the absence of suspicion. At least Traest hadn’t broken her heart that badly. “You weren’t one of his regular soldiers, were you.” She sounded-bizarrely, he thought-almost smug.
“What are you talking about?” He already knew that Jaina was right, somehow-he just didn’t know how she knew. “He spouted something about-destiny, or something as stupid, but otherwise he just kept me locked in a room.”
She frowned, looking concerned; she took another step closer to him. “Did he hurt you?”
He raised an eyebrow; there was enough messiness without worrying about his brief captivity a decade ago.
Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes darted away for a moment as she cleared her throat. “Brakiss is a Dark Jedi. He recruited as many ‘soldiers’ as he could, but he wanted other Force sensitives to train as a sort of superior guard. I guess-I think you were supposed to be part of the latter group.” She looked faintly abashed.
There was an obvious flaw in her reasoning. “I’m not Force sensitive.”
Jaina made a face and looked considering again.
“I’m not,” he insisted. “And anyway, wouldn’t you have been able to tell?”
“Well, it’s not like-you meet someone, and you suddenly know they’re Force sensitive. Besides, I wasn’t looking for it.”
“Because I’m not the type of person who would be a Jedi.”
She looked impatient, but kept from snapping at him. “When I was teaching you how to fly, you learned very quickly. I’d be about to point something out, and then you’d remember.”
“I’m a quick study. And Peckhum...”
Jaina was not deterred by his interruption. “When it snowed, your hands weren’t nearly as cold as they should have been.”
“Street kid,” he reminded her. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“The undercity is hot at the best of times,” Jaina contradicted him. “You should have been as useless as Beryl. And you’re always finding things, finding out things.”
“You don’t sound very surprised,” he remarked flatly.
“I…don’t think I am.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I wondered once or twice, sort of. There were little things, I didn’t sit down and add them up, but...” She straightened. “Brakiss was looking for something-maybe someone-that he never quite pinned. Maybe you. The Nightsisters had a protégé, Vilas, who was supported to help lead, but-he wasn’t Brakiss’ choice, and Tamith Kai and Brakiss fought. The Shadow Academy divided up its loyalty-some of them stayed with Brakiss, and the rest with the Nightsisters. Brakiss couldn’t take on the Jedi as he was-the Nightsisters tried, but they didn’t do much better than Brakiss would have. Brakiss, for his part, became involved in more strategic power struggles. Organized crime, human trafficking, sentient experimentation.” She smiled oddly; there wasn’t much humour in it. “Do you believe me?”
“About Brakiss? Of course.”
“I meant about you. And Brakiss.”
“It’s a bit much to swallow,” he hedged.
“Especially with the Traest holovid reveal?” she suggested, smirking a little.
“I’m not exactly… I’m not Jedi material.”
Something in her expression softened-something he hadn’t even realized that she had been holding onto all this time, or which he had only blamed on the mission. “Zekk,” she said. “Don’t be such an idiot. It’s-you don’t have to do anything with it if you don’t want to. But-for what it’s worth. I think you could be a great Jedi.” She blushed and looked at the floor. “Or-anything else you wanted to be.” Her eyes darted up at the last moment, and her lips curled. “That’s kind of the point.”
He stared at her, caught by the sincerity she was offering. Her smile could almost have been shy, if Jaina Solo had ever been shy a day in her life. It made very clear, in a way that over a year at the Flash and months of distance had not, what Peckhum and Mique had seen, and what Jaina had slowly been risking to put forward. He wondered what his own expression was telling her; if perhaps her anger was as much for his leaving as for the fact that he had kept safe his own intentions while she had been showing her hand. “Jaina-”
Her expression slid into awkwardness, and her jaw twisted a little. The honesty became self-deprecation-a seagueway for something more brisk. “Right. If we’re finished the massive amounts of melodrama, I should be getting back to the others. I shouldn’t even really have-”
“I’m glad you did,” he interjected, still off balance.
“I was…” She rolled her eyes, shrugged it off. “I wanted to make sure everything went okay. You know. On your first mission.”
She refrained from glaring at him for once-he wondered if she would try to recruit him now that she thought he was Force sensitive. Not, he reminded himself, that he actually was. He summoned a smile for her, though he expected no sleep tonight with all the new thoughts in his head. “It takes a little more than villains’ small talk to finish me off.”
The corners of her lips turned up. “Just contacts, then?” she suggested. If Kyp had been trying to amuse Jaina with his prank, then he hadn’t completely failed. “Your face is still kind of-” She waved at her own, now definitely grinning. “You might need to use soap.”
Zekk reassured himself that he had not just had a deeply personal conversation with Jaina while his face was smeared blue. Zekk was not that unlucky. There had to be a limit. He refrained from touching his face to check the colour, though; he’d only look like more of an idiot. “Right,” he said. “Remember, Kyp was being immature during a recon mission. He deserves to get hit.”
“You’re both grown-ups,” Jaina said, heading toward the stairs. “Settle it on your own. You really don’t need to be intimidated by him; Kyp hasn’t actually torn off anyone’s head in years.”
“Or he’s just gotten better at hiding the bodies,” Zekk muttered, then: “I am not intimidated by Kyp Durron.”
“Then you can thump him on your own. The other girls and I could do with a men-are-stupid laugh.” She was going to have a laugh all to herself as soon as she was off the Hawk, Zekk could tell. “But, okay, I really am going now. Oh,” she said, pausing on the fourth step. She peered down at him. “We’ll contact you tomorrow morning to debrief you properly. We’re supposed to record everything for testimony. So maybe write down everything you remember? Your perceptions, things we couldn’t catch on holo-or that you wouldn’t trust just to tech, anyway. You never know when something will go wrong.”
She climbed two more steps, then looked back again, less absent. “And-keep an eye out. The others are working on making sure you don’t have any trouble, but…”
“I don’t have any intention of dying now,” he assured her.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Here?” he checked.
She rolled her eyes. “Really bad idea. Go out for a walk. Spend some of your paycheque.”
“No, thank you.”
“Not Traest’s,” she told him. “Just-get breakfast, or something, preferably without a tail. We’ll find you.”
“So without non-Jedi tails, you mean.”
Jaina grinned. “I really should tell you what I can do with the Force. Finding you won’t be a problem.”
x-x-x
Part Ten
cut!lyrics from Wicked Man's Rest by Passenger. And I'm going to sleep now, and fix everything in the morning.