The beach- Thursday evening

[solo_sword]

Jaina's portal was delayed. She had no idea how a portal could be delayed, but here she was. After a while of waiting at the causeway, she'd come to the beach, figuring that if she was going to be stuck waiting, she should at least get a change of scenery.

Watching the waves made her think too much, though. About her grandfather and Tiny Mom,

Comments

[auroryborealis]

After Leia left, Rory had spent the afternoon with the television turned off and playing with her daughter. And when Anakin had come home, she'd surrendered Juliet to him, because she knew him well, now. There was one daughter who unconditionally loved him now, at least, and he needed to remember that.

And she needed to make a phone call, anyway. So she'd escaped into their bedroom, searching through her contacts before she found the name she was looking for, and waited for Jaina to pick up.

[solo_sword]

By now Jaina almost expected Portalocity to be using some kind of automated system to tell her that her portal was canceled, so she picked up without looking at the ID. "Solo."

[auroryborealis]

"And hello to you too," Rory replied, amused. "Are you very busy, or do you have a second?"

[solo_sword]

"I'm waiting on a portal that's never showing up, so I have a lot of seconds," she said. "Hi, Rory. What's up?"

Though she could make some guesses.

[auroryborealis]

"Your mom came to visit me and Juliet today," Rory said casually. "The little one, I mean. Not your actual mother."

[solo_sword]

That was a good move on Leia's part, she bet. "How'd that go?"

[auroryborealis]

"Well, she didn't yell at me," Rory offered. "So I got off easier than your grandfather. She mostly wanted to know how I dealt with finding out and how I got past it. Poor thing."

[solo_sword]

"She's having a tough time, yeah," she sighed. "Dad's in carbonite where she is, too, so it's a lot at once."

[auroryborealis]

"I kept telling her that it gets better but I don't know if she believed me," Rory agreed. "She didn't know about the baby, either, so I think I might've made it weirder."

[solo_sword]

"Maybe a little," Jaina conceded. "I know at first I wondered if he didn't come here to start over fresh without any consequences. Though she's smarter than I was."

[auroryborealis]

"It'd look like it," Rory conceded. "I mean, new family, new body, and no one here knows? Yeah. I get it. It's going to take her some time to see it any other way, I think."

[solo_sword]

"It's going to take time for a lot of things," she said. Hopefully it took Leia less time than it did her.

[auroryborealis]

"She's got a bunch of people to help," Rory added, hopefully. "I just...hope she can forgive him, you know?"

[solo_sword]

"I think she can, though probably not right away," she replied. "My mom back home never got to work things out with him. She found out he was her father and Luke was her brother and then Vader was dead and that was that, and she eventually came to forgive him. This'll be hard, but at least they both have the opportunity to work it out."

[auroryborealis]

"I think it might be too late for her version of him," Rory said softly. "She said the rebellion didn't really have time to take his nuanced past into consideration, and...honestly, it's hard for me to discourage her."

[solo_sword]

"Too late for him how?" Jaina didn't count on that Vader living, but that didn't mean he couldn't be saved, either.