Fic: "If You Call" (10/16? J/Z AU; sequel to FaIC)
Pre-Script: Seriously, if you haven't read last post, go back and read the last post.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine
x-x-x
“I think I should give you a deadline, boy,” Peckhum mused. “Three more days should be plenty of time to sweep your girl off her feet.”
Zekk had been trying to give Peckhum a carefully edited account of the mission, which had somehow become his good news for the day, so his expression darkened before he could control it properly. “I don’t think Jaina is very…amenable…to being swept off her feet right now.”
“Nonsense. Probably everyone thinks that and nobody’s tried. You’d be surprised, the people who get swept off their feet.”
“Yes,” Zekk muttered, “but that’s the problem.”
x-x-x
Zekk didn’t bother trying to sleep that night. If he wasn’t figuring through how Traest fit into Jaina and her actions (or just how much she would kill him if she knew what he was thinking), then memories and new thoughts about Brakiss swarmed him. When his mind turned back to the events of the past day, however, Zekk decided to find some reinforcements.
When he poked his head into the kitchen, it was as empty as he should have expected. The cooling unit was similarly sparse, as was his jar of tea leaves, so he set about making an uncharacteristically large mug of caf. He hadn’t pulled an all-nighter in a while; even with his racing thoughts to keep him awake, he would need the caffeine to keep him alert.
He was about to transfer the liquid from the caf pot to his mug, but instead he turned to look behind him. “That decaf?” Raven asked from the doorway.
Fine, then, he thought-he would be up all night anyway. “It’s really anti-decaf,” he told the captain. “Possibly also more pure caffeine, less savoury flavour.” He made a face at the thought, and mentally underlined purchase more TEA on his to-do list.
Raven raised one eyebrow perilously high. “Planning a long night, are you?”
He blinked at her, desperately hoping he had read that wrong even as his cheeks flushed. “Jaina left me with some thinking to do,” he said carefully, trying not to overemphasize left. At the time of his interview, it hadn’t seemed important to find out Raven’s view on tabloids, let alone Jedi, but he should have remembered how poorly carelessness suited him.
Raven nodded, still watching him carefully. “I didn’t dream that, then-a Jedi did come on board my ship?”
Zekk sighed. “Yes, she did.” He swallowed some of his drink, wincing at the strength of its flavour.
“And not just any Jedi, but one of the Solos. Kriff. She’s a friend of yours?”
Zekk leaned against the counter, cupping the mug in his hands as he let the warmth try to soothe his nerves. “When she’s not very furious with me. We ran into each other a few nights ago.”
Raven’s eyes sparked with ready intelligence; it was one of the things he most respected about her. “She here ‘bout those disappearances?”
Zekk hadn’t even thought about these kinds of complications-if Raven would talk where she shouldn’t, if she’d sell something out for money or because she felt she had to, even how a smuggler would react when a Jedi boarded her ship. Not until those contacts had washed out, anyway, not to mention hearing about the Traest disaster. Zekk put his mug on the counter, and crossed his arms over his chest. He reminded himself that Raven was intelligent, thought Scooti’s magazines were trash, and was really a pretty good person who just happened not to concern herself with the fine print of trade law.
Still- “No, she’s just around, I think for a vacation. The Jedi don’t have jurisdiction here, as far as I’m aware.”
Raven smiled, her hands on her hips. “Of course, you’d say the same even if she was up to her neck in taking down the kidnappers.”
Careful, Zekk reminded himself. For the sake of a reference, if not his job. “I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to talk about any of her missions,” Zekk said. “Even the bare minimum that she tells me. When she feels like it.”
“Do you talk to her about your work?” Raven prodded.
Zekk scowled at her. “She knows I’m the Hawk’s co-pilot,” he snapped. “Unless that’s changed.”
The dark-haired woman met his gaze levelly. “This is my kriffing ship, my livelihood, I’ve more’n a right to ask ‘bout this.”
Zekk thought about admitting that he and Jaina hadn’t been speaking for months at his own decision, but it would be a shallow cover. An obsolete one, too, if he played things right. “Jaina probably knows that you smuggle on occasion, but I knew that even before I applied for this job, and I didn’t tell her. Anyway, Jaina’s father was a smuggler, and she’s-” Zekk felt uncomfortable giving personal information about Jaina, but decided it would be obvious to anyone who spent time with her. “She’s always been closest to her father.”
Raven was quiet for a moment. “We ain’t got anything on board now.”
Zekk thought of Jaina’s amusement, but picked up his mug again and nodded. “I took this job with the understanding that the work is mostly on the up-and-up,” he told Raven. “I won’t stand for sentient trafficking, or anything that- I have my own morals, independent of my friendship with Jaina. I’m not going to tattle more just because I know a Jedi.”
“She doesn’t come on board if we have any cargo,” Raven warned.
“I don’t think Jedi really enforce those kinds of laws, Raven…”
“And don’t think this is over, either. I don’t like this.”
Zekk subsided, his jaw tight. “Yes, captain.”
Raven groaned. “I’m too sober for Jedi on board. She heard the no-current-cargo bit, right?”
“Yes, she mentioned that you offered her a tour.”
“And she didn’t think anything was odd, yeah?”
Zekk nodded, keeping a straight face. “She didn’t suspect a thing.”
“Great.” Raven speared her fingers through some of her dark hair, and blew out a heavy sigh. “You gonna be up all night?”
“What gave it away?” Zekk asked, gesturing with his mug.
Raven pulled a deck of cards out of her jacket pocket. “Play a few games?”
What else are you going to do? he could imagine Jaina saying. He wondered if Raven was drunk enough (or on her way to being so) to put money on the table. Zekk shrugged as casually as he could. “Beats staring at the ceiling.”
x-x-x
Zekk could have minded his own business, but he didn’t expect Jaina to ever willingly tell him the full truth, and he wasn’t sure how well she would take his poking at her gaping vulnerability. He wanted the truth, but not at the expense of Jaina refusing to speak to him ever again. He was barely into a mild hangover at sith-hundred-hours in the morning, though, and it took him some time to realize what, exactly, he was seeing. Or, more accurately, what he was not seeing.
Solo AND engagement went through the holo net database before he could remember how famous and adjective-like Jaina’s last name was. He hadn’t even winced when thousands of results-many, remarkably, for the right family if the wrong generation-appeared on his datapad.
He clicked the results window closed before it could overload his datapad’s memory, and then gathered his dully-aching brain cells. ‘Jaina Solo,’ he typed, AND engagement. According to the Coruscant news articles database, she was engaged to: Jag Fel, Raynar Thul, Prince Isolder of Hapes (who Zekk had thought was already married, and to no less than a warrior queen who could kick his ass), Kyp Durron, a nobody who insisted that he and Jaina had fallen in love on the holo net, enough strangers to make Zekk’s eyes glaze, and Kyp Durron (post-first marriage’s annulment). The database results page had 1-2-3-4-5…156 pages in total while filtered.
Frankly uncomfortable at the thought of ‘Jaina Solo’ AND boyfriend, Zekk hesitated. Traest, he typed, AND ‘Jaina Solo’ AND engagement, which gave him results very similar to his second search.
By the time he had filtered it to ‘Jaina Solo’ AND Traest AND ‘engagement’ AND ‘age 18’ AND (betrayal OR Brakiss) AND family, Zekk was feeling completely sober.
x-x-x
A dozen hours, sixty-seven credits (and hopefully forgiveness) won, four mugs of caf, and several glasses of brandy later, Zekk stepped out of the Hawk for breakfast. He wandered at first, trying to shake anyone who might be following him; he noticed neither evil henchmen nor Jedi, but kept walking anyway until the itch at the back of his neck had disappeared.
When he thought Jaina might actually be awake (or at least have remembered to pull herself away from work), Zekk ducked into the first café that looked capable of producing real food. He ordered a larger than normal amount of food, and sat facing the door. He looked down for just a moment to deal with his toast, and Jaina sat down across from him.
He raised an eyebrow at her; despite the fatigue bruises under her eyes (and another actual bruise on her left wrist), she looked smug for sneaking up on him. “You’re late,” he told her. He gestured to his nearly finished breakfast.
Her fingers drummed against the wood table, proof of what her overly bright eyes suggested. “I got held up.”
He glanced at her bruised wrist and wired fingers. “Did you sleep at all?”
She snorted, pointedly ignored him as if sleep were for mere mortals and not Solos, and not-so-stealthily stole a drink from his mug. “Ugh.” She made a face, and replaced the mug by his plate. “That’s tea, isn’t it. Sneaky and malicious tea disguised as caf. I told you you’d fit in with the Jedi.”
“Teach you to steal any mug of caf that hasn’t been bolted down.” He pushed a small plate to her side of the table. “I got you a muffin. The food isn’t bad; you should order something.”
“Don’t mother me,” she said, glancing at her chrono. “Kriff, I am late. We still have to-” She scanned the café first. “We’ll have to go straight to the warehouse. C’mon.” She took a quick bite from the muffin, and started to put it back as she stood. At his look, she rolled her eyes and kept it. “I am eating,” she insisted.
“Caf-even the gallons you’ve consumed-doesn’t count as ‘eating.’” He pulled aside the door curtain of the diner, grinning as she rolled her eyes.
“Just because you don’t see me with food doesn’t mean that I’m not. I made sure to eat that first night, in the diner, didn’t I? And anyway, they have nutri-boosters for the rest of the time.”
“Stars, you are kidding me. Nutri-boosters?”
“Drama queen.” She tugged at his sleeve-almost absently, or like a habit-and pointed down an alley. “My bike’s this way.”
“Finish your muffin.” Zekk searched his coat pockets. “I have a nutribar somewhere around here.”
“To think, I was worried about you getting hurt on this mission,” Jaina said around a mouthful of muffin. She looked ridiculous, almost like a child with no manners. Zekk wondered how anyone could take her seriously on diplomatic missions or in the middle of a fight. “If I’d known what an overprotective mother hen you are, I would have assigned you to a couple jobs with Kyp.” Nonetheless, she finished the muffin in a few bites, and even took the nutribar he gave her.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked after a pause.
She gave him an exasperated look, licking at some crumbs at the corner of her mouth. “Didn’t we shelve questions? Or is that just to protect you, and you can interrogate me as much as you want?”
“How much do the others know?”
Jaina glared at him, and threw the muffin wrapper into a garbage can. “About Traest.”
“He’s part of your mission, so I assume they-”
“My team knows I’ve had run-ins with him before; Brakiss’ sort generally try to get to my family at some point or another-no self-preservation instincts, you know. Everything else, you’d better keep to yourself. Not that there’s any reason for you to talk about it.” She seemed to think that was the end of it, and started to walk down the alley.
Zekk pulled her to a sharp stop. “They don’t know anything?”
She shook her hand free, and put her hands on her hips. “Why should they? Fine, Kyp knows, but he’s family.” Her jaw tightened and her eyes darkened. “He was there.” She saw his expression and became even more frustrated. “I don’t talk about this. It was a long time ago. Do you still tell everyone about your first real breakup?”
“Traest was just a little more serious than getting dumped for someone with better prospects.”
“You don’t get it. This stuff happens in my family. We get bored if someone isn’t trying to kill us. People are used to it-it’s part of our job description.”
He tried to picture Jaina at seventeen, grease-stained and grinning, a little more careless and much more reckless, and he shook his head. “It’s still different. If it wasn’t, you’d tell them everything and make jokes about it.”
“I just-no one knows about it. Just my family, and maybe a handful of other people.” She shrugged, clearly making an effort to restrain the emotional element. “People who actually saw it happen, who needed answers.”
“You told me.”
“You would never have let it go.”
“No, you told me. Everything.”
She made a dismissive noise. “And what, we need to talk about that?”
“Considering how well it turned out last time, I thought we’d actually try talking about the important things this time.”
“It was just-” She made a frustrated movement with her hands, then curled them into fists. Her eyes were on their surroundings. “It’s part of who I was-am, whatever. I wanted you to understand,” she finished more quietly.
“Jaina-”
“You have run so far over your question limit, Zekk, that the next one gets you a very hard punch before we start on everything we’ve been putting off, got it? You’re the one who ran off, how about if we spill your guts all over the sidewalk? We can pick them apart in public and see how much it can hurt.”
He swallowed his questions-even the most obvious one: how had she managed to cover this up at all, let alone completely? Patience, he reminded himself. And at this point, he probably should seriously consider flowers-or maybe a broken gadget, he amended. “Fine,” he said after a moment.
Jaina tightened her ponytail, and adjusted her shirt’s neckline. “The speedbike’s this way.” She pulled him into the alley.
He did a double take at the red vehicle, forgetting the tension that lingered between them. “Someone rented you a speedbike? In the city?”
Jaina’s grin suggested a very different kind of guts spilling. “Aren’t you glad we had that conversation first?” She tossed him a helmet. “Be glad my father’s Han Solo.”
“Oh, stars.” Maybe, Zekk thought, Beryl had had it right all along. “Someone is going to get horribly maimed, aren’t they?”
Preferably the person interrogating me about personal information, said Jaina’s wild grin. “Just don’t try this on your own. It requires Solo genes and mastery of the Force.” She straddled the seat and waited for him to settle behind her.
Despite Jaina’s recklessness and even her current frustration with him, Zekk felt a curl of anticipation in his gut. He’d never agreed with Beryl for long, after all, so he sat behind Jaina without any further delay. He could see her smile and the gleam of her eyes without looking at her face; familiarity with her mischievousness or Jaina’s theory of Force sensitivity, he couldn’t be sure. (He wasn’t the Jedi type, he reminded himself, but he kept seeing Jaina’s face from the previous night.)
Jaina revved the repulsion engines as she turned the bike from the wall. “You might want to hold onto something.”
x-x-x
Part Eleven
cut!lyrics: You Found Me by The Fray. I'm actually obssessed with that song for this 'verse, despite it being taken quite out of context. This is why I should listen to a song once, read the lyrics, and *then* get excited :p
Also, it is snowing. AGAIN. I think I'll move back to Vancouver, where there is no snow. OH WAIT.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine
x-x-x
“I think I should give you a deadline, boy,” Peckhum mused. “Three more days should be plenty of time to sweep your girl off her feet.”
Zekk had been trying to give Peckhum a carefully edited account of the mission, which had somehow become his good news for the day, so his expression darkened before he could control it properly. “I don’t think Jaina is very…amenable…to being swept off her feet right now.”
“Nonsense. Probably everyone thinks that and nobody’s tried. You’d be surprised, the people who get swept off their feet.”
“Yes,” Zekk muttered, “but that’s the problem.”
x-x-x
Zekk didn’t bother trying to sleep that night. If he wasn’t figuring through how Traest fit into Jaina and her actions (or just how much she would kill him if she knew what he was thinking), then memories and new thoughts about Brakiss swarmed him. When his mind turned back to the events of the past day, however, Zekk decided to find some reinforcements.
When he poked his head into the kitchen, it was as empty as he should have expected. The cooling unit was similarly sparse, as was his jar of tea leaves, so he set about making an uncharacteristically large mug of caf. He hadn’t pulled an all-nighter in a while; even with his racing thoughts to keep him awake, he would need the caffeine to keep him alert.
He was about to transfer the liquid from the caf pot to his mug, but instead he turned to look behind him. “That decaf?” Raven asked from the doorway.
Fine, then, he thought-he would be up all night anyway. “It’s really anti-decaf,” he told the captain. “Possibly also more pure caffeine, less savoury flavour.” He made a face at the thought, and mentally underlined purchase more TEA on his to-do list.
Raven raised one eyebrow perilously high. “Planning a long night, are you?”
He blinked at her, desperately hoping he had read that wrong even as his cheeks flushed. “Jaina left me with some thinking to do,” he said carefully, trying not to overemphasize left. At the time of his interview, it hadn’t seemed important to find out Raven’s view on tabloids, let alone Jedi, but he should have remembered how poorly carelessness suited him.
Raven nodded, still watching him carefully. “I didn’t dream that, then-a Jedi did come on board my ship?”
Zekk sighed. “Yes, she did.” He swallowed some of his drink, wincing at the strength of its flavour.
“And not just any Jedi, but one of the Solos. Kriff. She’s a friend of yours?”
Zekk leaned against the counter, cupping the mug in his hands as he let the warmth try to soothe his nerves. “When she’s not very furious with me. We ran into each other a few nights ago.”
Raven’s eyes sparked with ready intelligence; it was one of the things he most respected about her. “She here ‘bout those disappearances?”
Zekk hadn’t even thought about these kinds of complications-if Raven would talk where she shouldn’t, if she’d sell something out for money or because she felt she had to, even how a smuggler would react when a Jedi boarded her ship. Not until those contacts had washed out, anyway, not to mention hearing about the Traest disaster. Zekk put his mug on the counter, and crossed his arms over his chest. He reminded himself that Raven was intelligent, thought Scooti’s magazines were trash, and was really a pretty good person who just happened not to concern herself with the fine print of trade law.
Still- “No, she’s just around, I think for a vacation. The Jedi don’t have jurisdiction here, as far as I’m aware.”
Raven smiled, her hands on her hips. “Of course, you’d say the same even if she was up to her neck in taking down the kidnappers.”
Careful, Zekk reminded himself. For the sake of a reference, if not his job. “I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to talk about any of her missions,” Zekk said. “Even the bare minimum that she tells me. When she feels like it.”
“Do you talk to her about your work?” Raven prodded.
Zekk scowled at her. “She knows I’m the Hawk’s co-pilot,” he snapped. “Unless that’s changed.”
The dark-haired woman met his gaze levelly. “This is my kriffing ship, my livelihood, I’ve more’n a right to ask ‘bout this.”
Zekk thought about admitting that he and Jaina hadn’t been speaking for months at his own decision, but it would be a shallow cover. An obsolete one, too, if he played things right. “Jaina probably knows that you smuggle on occasion, but I knew that even before I applied for this job, and I didn’t tell her. Anyway, Jaina’s father was a smuggler, and she’s-” Zekk felt uncomfortable giving personal information about Jaina, but decided it would be obvious to anyone who spent time with her. “She’s always been closest to her father.”
Raven was quiet for a moment. “We ain’t got anything on board now.”
Zekk thought of Jaina’s amusement, but picked up his mug again and nodded. “I took this job with the understanding that the work is mostly on the up-and-up,” he told Raven. “I won’t stand for sentient trafficking, or anything that- I have my own morals, independent of my friendship with Jaina. I’m not going to tattle more just because I know a Jedi.”
“She doesn’t come on board if we have any cargo,” Raven warned.
“I don’t think Jedi really enforce those kinds of laws, Raven…”
“And don’t think this is over, either. I don’t like this.”
Zekk subsided, his jaw tight. “Yes, captain.”
Raven groaned. “I’m too sober for Jedi on board. She heard the no-current-cargo bit, right?”
“Yes, she mentioned that you offered her a tour.”
“And she didn’t think anything was odd, yeah?”
Zekk nodded, keeping a straight face. “She didn’t suspect a thing.”
“Great.” Raven speared her fingers through some of her dark hair, and blew out a heavy sigh. “You gonna be up all night?”
“What gave it away?” Zekk asked, gesturing with his mug.
Raven pulled a deck of cards out of her jacket pocket. “Play a few games?”
What else are you going to do? he could imagine Jaina saying. He wondered if Raven was drunk enough (or on her way to being so) to put money on the table. Zekk shrugged as casually as he could. “Beats staring at the ceiling.”
x-x-x
Zekk could have minded his own business, but he didn’t expect Jaina to ever willingly tell him the full truth, and he wasn’t sure how well she would take his poking at her gaping vulnerability. He wanted the truth, but not at the expense of Jaina refusing to speak to him ever again. He was barely into a mild hangover at sith-hundred-hours in the morning, though, and it took him some time to realize what, exactly, he was seeing. Or, more accurately, what he was not seeing.
Solo AND engagement went through the holo net database before he could remember how famous and adjective-like Jaina’s last name was. He hadn’t even winced when thousands of results-many, remarkably, for the right family if the wrong generation-appeared on his datapad.
He clicked the results window closed before it could overload his datapad’s memory, and then gathered his dully-aching brain cells. ‘Jaina Solo,’ he typed, AND engagement. According to the Coruscant news articles database, she was engaged to: Jag Fel, Raynar Thul, Prince Isolder of Hapes (who Zekk had thought was already married, and to no less than a warrior queen who could kick his ass), Kyp Durron, a nobody who insisted that he and Jaina had fallen in love on the holo net, enough strangers to make Zekk’s eyes glaze, and Kyp Durron (post-first marriage’s annulment). The database results page had 1-2-3-4-5…156 pages in total while filtered.
Frankly uncomfortable at the thought of ‘Jaina Solo’ AND boyfriend, Zekk hesitated. Traest, he typed, AND ‘Jaina Solo’ AND engagement, which gave him results very similar to his second search.
By the time he had filtered it to ‘Jaina Solo’ AND Traest AND ‘engagement’ AND ‘age 18’ AND (betrayal OR Brakiss) AND family, Zekk was feeling completely sober.
x-x-x
A dozen hours, sixty-seven credits (and hopefully forgiveness) won, four mugs of caf, and several glasses of brandy later, Zekk stepped out of the Hawk for breakfast. He wandered at first, trying to shake anyone who might be following him; he noticed neither evil henchmen nor Jedi, but kept walking anyway until the itch at the back of his neck had disappeared.
When he thought Jaina might actually be awake (or at least have remembered to pull herself away from work), Zekk ducked into the first café that looked capable of producing real food. He ordered a larger than normal amount of food, and sat facing the door. He looked down for just a moment to deal with his toast, and Jaina sat down across from him.
He raised an eyebrow at her; despite the fatigue bruises under her eyes (and another actual bruise on her left wrist), she looked smug for sneaking up on him. “You’re late,” he told her. He gestured to his nearly finished breakfast.
Her fingers drummed against the wood table, proof of what her overly bright eyes suggested. “I got held up.”
He glanced at her bruised wrist and wired fingers. “Did you sleep at all?”
She snorted, pointedly ignored him as if sleep were for mere mortals and not Solos, and not-so-stealthily stole a drink from his mug. “Ugh.” She made a face, and replaced the mug by his plate. “That’s tea, isn’t it. Sneaky and malicious tea disguised as caf. I told you you’d fit in with the Jedi.”
“Teach you to steal any mug of caf that hasn’t been bolted down.” He pushed a small plate to her side of the table. “I got you a muffin. The food isn’t bad; you should order something.”
“Don’t mother me,” she said, glancing at her chrono. “Kriff, I am late. We still have to-” She scanned the café first. “We’ll have to go straight to the warehouse. C’mon.” She took a quick bite from the muffin, and started to put it back as she stood. At his look, she rolled her eyes and kept it. “I am eating,” she insisted.
“Caf-even the gallons you’ve consumed-doesn’t count as ‘eating.’” He pulled aside the door curtain of the diner, grinning as she rolled her eyes.
“Just because you don’t see me with food doesn’t mean that I’m not. I made sure to eat that first night, in the diner, didn’t I? And anyway, they have nutri-boosters for the rest of the time.”
“Stars, you are kidding me. Nutri-boosters?”
“Drama queen.” She tugged at his sleeve-almost absently, or like a habit-and pointed down an alley. “My bike’s this way.”
“Finish your muffin.” Zekk searched his coat pockets. “I have a nutribar somewhere around here.”
“To think, I was worried about you getting hurt on this mission,” Jaina said around a mouthful of muffin. She looked ridiculous, almost like a child with no manners. Zekk wondered how anyone could take her seriously on diplomatic missions or in the middle of a fight. “If I’d known what an overprotective mother hen you are, I would have assigned you to a couple jobs with Kyp.” Nonetheless, she finished the muffin in a few bites, and even took the nutribar he gave her.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked after a pause.
She gave him an exasperated look, licking at some crumbs at the corner of her mouth. “Didn’t we shelve questions? Or is that just to protect you, and you can interrogate me as much as you want?”
“How much do the others know?”
Jaina glared at him, and threw the muffin wrapper into a garbage can. “About Traest.”
“He’s part of your mission, so I assume they-”
“My team knows I’ve had run-ins with him before; Brakiss’ sort generally try to get to my family at some point or another-no self-preservation instincts, you know. Everything else, you’d better keep to yourself. Not that there’s any reason for you to talk about it.” She seemed to think that was the end of it, and started to walk down the alley.
Zekk pulled her to a sharp stop. “They don’t know anything?”
She shook her hand free, and put her hands on her hips. “Why should they? Fine, Kyp knows, but he’s family.” Her jaw tightened and her eyes darkened. “He was there.” She saw his expression and became even more frustrated. “I don’t talk about this. It was a long time ago. Do you still tell everyone about your first real breakup?”
“Traest was just a little more serious than getting dumped for someone with better prospects.”
“You don’t get it. This stuff happens in my family. We get bored if someone isn’t trying to kill us. People are used to it-it’s part of our job description.”
He tried to picture Jaina at seventeen, grease-stained and grinning, a little more careless and much more reckless, and he shook his head. “It’s still different. If it wasn’t, you’d tell them everything and make jokes about it.”
“I just-no one knows about it. Just my family, and maybe a handful of other people.” She shrugged, clearly making an effort to restrain the emotional element. “People who actually saw it happen, who needed answers.”
“You told me.”
“You would never have let it go.”
“No, you told me. Everything.”
She made a dismissive noise. “And what, we need to talk about that?”
“Considering how well it turned out last time, I thought we’d actually try talking about the important things this time.”
“It was just-” She made a frustrated movement with her hands, then curled them into fists. Her eyes were on their surroundings. “It’s part of who I was-am, whatever. I wanted you to understand,” she finished more quietly.
“Jaina-”
“You have run so far over your question limit, Zekk, that the next one gets you a very hard punch before we start on everything we’ve been putting off, got it? You’re the one who ran off, how about if we spill your guts all over the sidewalk? We can pick them apart in public and see how much it can hurt.”
He swallowed his questions-even the most obvious one: how had she managed to cover this up at all, let alone completely? Patience, he reminded himself. And at this point, he probably should seriously consider flowers-or maybe a broken gadget, he amended. “Fine,” he said after a moment.
Jaina tightened her ponytail, and adjusted her shirt’s neckline. “The speedbike’s this way.” She pulled him into the alley.
He did a double take at the red vehicle, forgetting the tension that lingered between them. “Someone rented you a speedbike? In the city?”
Jaina’s grin suggested a very different kind of guts spilling. “Aren’t you glad we had that conversation first?” She tossed him a helmet. “Be glad my father’s Han Solo.”
“Oh, stars.” Maybe, Zekk thought, Beryl had had it right all along. “Someone is going to get horribly maimed, aren’t they?”
Preferably the person interrogating me about personal information, said Jaina’s wild grin. “Just don’t try this on your own. It requires Solo genes and mastery of the Force.” She straddled the seat and waited for him to settle behind her.
Despite Jaina’s recklessness and even her current frustration with him, Zekk felt a curl of anticipation in his gut. He’d never agreed with Beryl for long, after all, so he sat behind Jaina without any further delay. He could see her smile and the gleam of her eyes without looking at her face; familiarity with her mischievousness or Jaina’s theory of Force sensitivity, he couldn’t be sure. (He wasn’t the Jedi type, he reminded himself, but he kept seeing Jaina’s face from the previous night.)
Jaina revved the repulsion engines as she turned the bike from the wall. “You might want to hold onto something.”
x-x-x
Part Eleven
cut!lyrics: You Found Me by The Fray. I'm actually obssessed with that song for this 'verse, despite it being taken quite out of context. This is why I should listen to a song once, read the lyrics, and *then* get excited :p
Also, it is snowing. AGAIN. I think I'll move back to Vancouver, where there is no snow. OH WAIT.