Fic: "If You Call" (14/15 J/Z AU; sequel to FaIC)
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten | Part Eleven | Part Twelve | Part Thirteen
x-x-x
Zekk didn’t see much of Jaina over the next four days. She had escorted him more or less immediately to the Hawk after his not-rescue, and ordered him to neither get caught again (Brakiss had, apparently, been a predictable leader and escaped) nor leave without letting her know. She had commed him twice (and Raven, he was dreadfully certain, at least once) in the meantime, but hadn’t left the underground compound since the Jedi began the mass arrests. Kyp had stopped by once, to turn Scooti into jelly and send Hrul through the roof, but also to mock Zekk and let him know that Jaina was both fine and pissed at Zekk. Zekk had rolled his eyes and sent the Jedi back with sandwiches.
The newspapers didn’t miss the influx of Jedi lawyers and evidence collectors; they printed both facts and speculation before the first day had ended. Raven gave him a narrow look over the headlines as they shared breakfast the next morning. “Just stopping by, was she?” Raven asked blandly. “Thought she’d take down a slavery ring for her vacation?”
“The Solo family,” he replied, “is a bunch of adrenaline junkies. She can’t help herself.” His mouthful of omelette turned sour.
“And you…?”
“Saw a chance to do some good. Fire me or get used to it, but I’m not apologizing for that.”
Raven grumbled something, but returned to her breakfast.
Peckhum, for his part, called in reinforcements as soon as he heard that Jaina and Zekk hadn’t seen each other in days.
“Man,” Mique told Zekk on the third day, “you’re embarrassing us at the Flash. Beryl has a girlfriend now, just since you left. Asked her out the same day they met, even.”
Zekk would have liked very much to know when his love life became a matter of the Flash’s honour. Instead, he set his jaw. “Things are really crazy right now. We’re not avoiding each other, she’s making mass arrests and other-legal stuff, collecting evidence, interrogating people. It’s- What happened?” he asked when both Mique and Peckhum disappeared.
“That clatter was Peckhum dropping the comm,” Mique said with boundless patience. The image focused back on the bartender, who must have picked it up again. “I’ll give it back when he can’t see his grandchildren disappearing anymore.”
“I will hang up on you,” Zekk threatened.
“Dude,” Beryl interrupted from off-screen. “Would you, already? Peckhum’s turning awfully purple, the longer you take to fix this.”
Obviously, Zekk needed new friends. Or at least for his old ones to find their own damned love lives.
x-x-x
Zekk spent a full day in the open market looking at old and slightly broken mechanical parts. He bartered far too long for a very broken skybike, even when he noticed that most of the front half was just barely attached. It would take months to fix it, even if Jaina was as much of a mechanical whiz as she claimed.
He lugged the heap of junk back to the Hawk late in the evening, when most of the stalls were closing down, and the suns had set and left a cooler breeze. Scooti was set on going to another club; Hrul, having found out about the Dustbowl’s happenings, looked like a nightmare nanny as he followed the mechanic off the ship. Zekk and Raven stayed in and played card games. By the end of it, they were both very drunk, and Raven was hassling him about being the Jaina Solo’s boyfriend. Zekk, drunk enough to be resigned to how many people were poking their noses in his love life, decided that Raven’s joviality meant he could keep his job.
A job, Raven slurred very early in the morning, that would involve leaving Mos Eisley in three (technically two) days.
x-x-x
Zekk finally bought flowers. At the time, it had seemed like the only way to keep Peckhum from having a stroke over Zekk’s heretofore lack of holo-film gestures. Peckhum’s face had faded to a sort of fuchsia when he saw the red starflowers. “And don’t forget to dip her for your kiss,” Peckhum had said, sounding a little less desperate, to which Zekk had given him a very sceptical look. Peckhum had made a sound as if he was struggling mightily, before consoling himself: “At least you have flowers. They’ll send a message.”
When Zekk gave the bouquet to Jaina, however, she looked as if this particular message had been written in Old Nubian, long before the characters had even matched up with Basic letters. “Um,” she said. Belatedly, she took them, but he couldn’t help but wonder if she thought they would bite her nose off. “Thank you.”
Zekk scratched the back of his neck, and glanced around his room. At least, he thought, they had decided against having their talk in public. “They’re flowers,” he told her.
She made a face at him, but looked less like she had never watched a holo-film in her life. “I know what they are, Zekk.” She paused. “They’re very pretty.” The what the kriff am I supposed to do with flowers was very loud, for all it was unspoken.
“You put them in water. The florist said.” Zekk sensed this conversation had not started well, especially after the drunken message he had apparently left on Jaina’s comm machine the day before. Jaina, when she had called in the middle of his noon hangover, had sounded as if he’d only rambled on for hours about her eyes, or somesuch nonsense, but Zekk felt certain that he was not quite that hopeless.
“Look, Peckhum watches way too many holo-films, and this was the least awkward peace offering.” Zekk bit his tongue before he mentioned the serenade or the proposal. If the flowers were awkward, then joking about proposals would be…unwise.
Jaina was still staring at them, but a smile made headway. “You do realize I kill everything, right? Even Jacen has stopped getting me pets and plants.”
He relaxed a little when she ducked her face to smell the bouquet. “Well, they’re cut flowers, so really, they’re already dead.”
Jaina touched one of the petals, then set them down on Zekk’s desk. “Well, tell Peckhum thank you.”
They stood for a moment in increasingly awkward silence. Jaina began to fumble with her multi-tool, and he took note of the deeper shadows under her eyes. She looked calmer, though, resolute rather than running on just vengeance and caffeine. He wondered if anyone had left her alone with Traest yet, or if Kyp had even left her anything to deal with.
“So, the truce is over,” he said, wishing he had managed to organize his thoughts in the waiting time. Now, he decided, would be a good time for his instincts to work their magic.
A grin bloomed on Jaina’s face, but she ducked her head to hide it. “You agreed to a free hit, as I recall.”
He winced. “I’ll talk,” he insisted over anything she might have said. “I just-I thought you were going to marry Jag.”
“We already established your inexplicable faith in tabloids, Zekk, and it wasn’t a very good reason to run off and ignore me for months. Were you ever going to contact me, or have you just been scrambling to deal this whole time on Mos Eisley?”
“I was going to,” he protested firmly. “But by the time I knew you weren’t engaged, I knew you’d be pissed at me, and-”
“There’s this thing, Zekk, about being an adult, where you face things.”
“Oh, like you’re one to talk. Just because you managed to drag your ducks in a row for once before me-”
“Right, it’s my fault.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he snapped. “I just-after our talk, about the future-and then in your message you said you had something to tell me- I didn’t want to see you settle for Jag.”
“First off, Jag’s a great guy, so leave him out of this. Second, I’m glad you have such a high opinion of my romantic choices that I’d ‘settle’ for anyone. You didn’t even know about Traest at the time.”
“No, I didn’t, so it never made sense to me why you-the thing with Jag. I thought you weren’t taking any risks.” Jaina looked incensed, and she raised her hands as if to shake him. Zekk hurried on before she could say something like Traest doesn’t explain anything when he really, really did. “And I knew that I-” Zekk stumbled, suddenly, swallowing as his mind snagged like old cloth on wire.
Jaina’s expression settled, as if she sensed his answer was coming; her shoulders braced. “Well, then, what’s the real reason?”
He forced the words out, because it would get easier after the first part. “You were right about me…stalling. You still shouldn’t have arranged that interview, but-I needed to get out of Coruscant.”
“But what does that have to do with you avoiding me for six-”
“Because I couldn’t find out you were engaged to Jag and then leave!” he insisted, frustrated. “And I couldn’t hear that you weren’t engaged and still planning to visit once a week, because I would have wanted to stay and just keep on-” Zekk’s throat had dried out completely, and his voice died with a sharp squeeze. He coughed and walked to his sink to pour himself a glass of water. He avoided looking at Jaina as he drank. “I had to leave, or I wouldn’t have ever, and I couldn’t let anything stop me.”
She almost paused, but said, “You should have said something, or-”
“I know, but I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I was just-I was furious with you for being right, and with myself for… I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to keep going.”
“A message,” she insisted, “or even a holo after you’d left, a holo after a couple weeks, even. How was bumping into me half a year later enough?”
He inhaled deeply, and wondered absently how long she’d looked for Traest after his disappearance before it slapped her in the face, then dismissed the thought as both unfair and irrelevant. Instead, he turned to face her properly. She wasn’t furious, but tired, definitely. Her jaw was firm. You get to fix this one, her crossed arms told him; and don’t cop out by asking about my comm message, either, snipped her eyebrows. A year of friendship, and the past several days, though, made Zekk think that he could pull them through this.
Jaina broke the silence first; she never could stand to let it sit. “I want you to be everything you can be, I would have-I’m old enough, I would have left myself, if I thought…”
“I needed to do this on my own.” He flushed. “It isn’t good enough for months of silence, but it’s the truth. I’m sorry, I can’t change it.”
“Yeah,” Jaina said, “there’s a lot of that to go around.”
“Yeah.” Zekk paused, then swallowed. “So, think you can forgive me?”
She smiled a little, still looking tired. “This doesn’t fix everything, but- ‘Course. Friends.”
He had known that, hadn’t he, and it was still a relief, but strangely tempered by a sense of dissatisfaction. “Friends.”
Jaina glanced away, then back with the same smile. “Yep.”
“So about that free hit I gave you, should I be expecting that soon?”
She shrugged, smirking. “I just arrested my manipulative ex-fiancé. Unless you disappear again, I’ve got more than enough outlet for relationship revenge.”
Zekk opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it.
“What?”
He shook his head. “I just wondered-” He gauged the shadows under her eyes, her scraped-clean fingers, and the number of times he’d pushed her in the past two weeks. “It doesn’t matter.” They had time; they could both wait for more truth.
But Jaina inhaled deeply, hardly seeming to brace herself at all, and straightened. “No, what is it? Something about my kriff-up love life.”
“You don’t have to answer,” he said quickly. “You were right, I saw an opening and I’ve been digging around without care.”
Jaina snorted. “Zekk, I just arrested my ex-fiancé. I’ve been processing hard drives of information for his file for the past five days on only a little more sleep than I did during the mission. Plus, you already interrogated me about everything, I’m almost getting used to it.”
“Never mind.”
“No-” She sighed. “Really, there probably won’t be a better time.” She crossed the room and sat on Zekk’s bed. She deliberately folded her hands in her lap. “Fire away. As your friend, I have no problem telling you to kriff off.”
Zekk hesitated, then pulled his chair close to the bed. He sat, and watched her carefully for a moment. “The tabloids marry you and Kyp every other week, and then-then throw in flings and affairs with guys you’ve never met, let alone the ones you have.”
“Ah, I see.”
“That night you first told me about Traest, after you’d left, I tried some holo-searches, but I couldn’t find anything that connected you to Traest, let alone information about your engagement and break-up. Even your team doesn’t know about it, except for Kyp.” She didn’t look angry yet, even though her expression had closed in. “How is that possible? Even if it was better then-”
“It was much worse, actually.” Jaina’s fingers twisted together until her knuckles were white. “My mom was Chief of State; you should have seen the paparazzo’s treatment of my first mission, it was- As crazy as it is now, I don’t have photographers stalking me, at least not usually.”
“You couldn’t have paid off all of them-”
Jaina laughed. “Not with all the credits in the galaxy.” She paused, slanting her eyes up at him. He half-expected her to get up and run, even fancied he could read the urge in her tense frame, but she stayed resolutely still. “With Traest-it all happened so quickly. There probably are other holo-images out there of us, discarded photographers who didn’t realize what they had. And I…went rather off the rails for most of it. Clubbing, drinking, and-” Her throat constricted, and her cheeks flushed deep red. “I’d been penning up a lot of stuff, and Traest figured out how to make it keep spinning out even worse than it was. The press had a field day.
“But it wasn’t all public. Traest kept himself out of the holo-cameras whenever he could, and acted like a casual friend when he couldn’t. Everything else stayed firmly behind locked doors.”
“Okay, but after the engagement-”
She shook her head. “I don’t think even the tabloids expected anything real from my behaviour at the time. But it happened so quickly. I had barely told my parents when I found out-” She hesitated, her eyes flicking up to Zekk and then away. “He’d been feeding Brakiss information about my family, dismantling their missions, my mother’s work. There were even a few assassination attempts on my family.” She swallowed. “Anakin was in the hospital for-”
Zekk reached out and took her right hand. She stared only a few seconds before threading her fingers through his. Zekk looked at their hands for a moment, thinking. “Traest never told the tabloids, did he?”
Jaina tried to pull her hand away, but Zekk didn’t let her. She settled for glaring at him. The silence stretched.
“Unless he just couldn’t prove anything.”
Her expression shuttered completely. “He had more than enough proof. Of everything.” She paused again, then sighed heavily. Her hand relaxed in his. “I scoured the holo-net for weeks, expecting a storm with every channel change, but he never said a word. I don’t know, maybe he was holding onto it for the right moment.”
Even Jaina, Zekk thought, didn’t believe that. Her knuckles were turning white again, though, and her expression was too controlled for it not to be edging toward misery. It was enough for now; he’d figure out the rest later. “The two of you didn’t react to each other the way I expected,” he said instead.
Jaina’s lips twitched. “Were you expecting holo-net declarations of thwarted love? Believe me, hurting a girl’s loved ones is a lot less romantic in real life.”
“I think it was more complicated on Traest’s side than you like to believe,” Zekk said, because apparently he couldn’t help himself.
Jaina snorted in disgust. “Yes, he loved me so much, it was all just a bizarre way of getting my attention. Like, he was trying to prove himself to me.” She rolled her eyes. “That isn’t love, that’s a load of lies and brainwashing.”
“I could have been him,” Zekk said without thinking. He looked away from her; he hadn’t meant to remind her, if she had forgotten.
Jaina, however, gave his hand a sharp yank. “You are- Zekk, look at me. You are nothing like Traest. It’s not some theory, you turned Brakiss down.”
“Because I thought he was crazy. If I’d known-” He caught her non-flinch, and amended his phrasing. “If I’d had any reason to believe him, I might have taken the chance. I could have met you in the middle of a duel.”
Jaina shook her head, stubborn. “Traest wanted the work, excitement. You’re-”
“There are a thousand reasons to take the wrong path.”
Jaina swallowed her retort, and instead told him, “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t give into Brakiss. There’s enough trouble in this galaxy without turning to ‘what ifs.’ You’ll make yourself crazy doing that.”
Zekk rummaged for a smile, and wondered if she would take her own advice. Well, he decided, he’d known even before the more-than-friends part that Jaina would be a marathon, and one with plenty of ways to end terribly-if they let it, which Zekk was determined not to do.
Jaina cleared her throat. She sat straighter and crossed her legs at the ankle. “Alright, now that’s out of the way. Any idea where you guys are headed next?”
Zekk shrugged. “Back toward the Core. We rarely come this far out. I think Raven said something about Corellia.”
Jaina grinned. “Corellia’s always good for smugglers. ‘Course, they just call it trade, there.”
Zekk gave her a reprimanding look. “Raven would want me to assure you that it’s all very legal transportation. Legal in every district. Upstanding, even.”
“Of course,” Jaina agreed, still grinning. “Trade, just as I said.”
“What about you? Are you going back to Coruscant for the trials soon?”
“To Coruscant, probably, once we finish up here, but it’ll probably be months before the trials start. I’ll be on- and off-planet a hundred times before all the sentences have been handed out. I just try not to get in the prosecuting lawyers’ way.”
“When you need me-as a witness-just let me know.”
“The lawyers will serve notice,” she said.
“But let me know once you find out,” Zekk insisted, feeling another pang of dissatisfaction. “You have my comm number now, I have yours.”
“Right. But the lawyers might still be quicker. I’ll be all over the place, even when the trial is ongoing.” Jaina’s expression had lightened a little, but hadn’t lose its insistence that you fix it this time, which just made him more frustrated. What else was he supposed to do? Time, he consoled himself. Jaina had never been the easy choice, and he couldn’t expect to mend everything in a single conversation.
“Busy saving the galaxy?” he suggested fondly.
“That, and keeping Kyp out of trouble. The second one’s a full-time job.”
They shared a mischievous look that was almost right. “Right, the first part you’ll just have to do in your sleep,” Zekk said.
“I’ve been doing it since birth,” Jaina agreed. She paused and pinned him with what he had come to recognize as her Jedi look. “If you ever want to train, or even just find out more…the Jedi praxeum will always be open to you. And there are alternatives; you don’t have to study full-time, if it doesn’t work for you. “Not everyone goes on to be knighted and work for the New Republic.” She held his gaze steady, perhaps seeing his lingering doubt. “At any time, no matter what happens between us.”
“You could never take the training and then work elsewhere,” he said. “Not even for flying. You’d think it was a waste.”
She looked uncomfortable. “When I was younger, I thought so. And-I couldn’t, wouldn’t, no. It’s a good life, worth something. After Traest, especially-I was such so selfish, I was sick of myself by the end of it, and so many people in the galaxy need help; I could never leave them.”
She visibly switched gears then, tucking some loose hair behind her ears. “But it isn’t for everyone, even those who are Force sensitive. It can be very dangerous. And it isn’t the only way to help, let alone lead a good life.”
With everything he had seen on Jaina’s mission, and despite the times he’d witnessed Jaina struggle, training as a Jedi felt inevitable as his next breath-or as continuing on with Jaina. He had seen too much now, the risks and reasons, the costs and the hope that things could be different, the idea that he could play a role in the change. “Not yet,” he told her, but it sounded to Zekk like someday, and maybe even someday soon.
Jaina smiled widely, genuinely. “My uncle already knows about you. You only ever have to talk to him.”
“I doubt I’ll ever make an appointment with Luke Skywalker, Saviour of the Galaxy, to chat about training options,” Zekk remarked, raising an eyebrow.
Jaina rolled her eyes. “You threw snowballs at Jaina Solo, who’s no slouch in galaxy-saving thank-you-very-much; I think you can manage Jedi business with the leading Jedi Master.”
“I thought I’d just bring along my Jedi friend to show me around,” Zekk said, smiling at her.
“Yeah, I could do that.” Jaina stood suddenly, making Zekk draw back. “Well, I still have mountains of paperwork to do,” she said, walking toward the staircase.
Zekk twisted in his chair, then stood to see her properly. She was looking stubborn again, even a little defiant. “Okay,” he said, sensing that he had not, in fact, fixed nearly as much as he had hoped. “We’re leaving tomorrow. Will you-”
“I’ll stop by,” she said, still backing toward the stairs. “What time are you leaving?”
“Noon, I think. That’s when Raven’s contract ends for the landing bay.”
“I’ll come. I should be able to arrange a quick break from paperwork. The others will probably go out tomorrow night anyway.”
“Jaina-” He stopped.
She paused on the third stair. “Yeah?”
He stared at her. Something was off, but he couldn’t pin it-she was looking at him as she had a hundred times before, not even really you fix this anymore. “Never mind,” he finally said.
She smiled and left. Zekk would just have to figure it out on his own.
x-x-x
Peckhum, for his part, gave Zekk a look of profound disappointment. “If you can’t figure it out on your own, Zekk, there ain’t nobody who can help you.”
Part Fifteen
Cut!lyrics: Let It Be Love by Craig Armstrong.
The last chapter is quite short, and already written, so it should be up within a week. Until then, please R&R :D
x-x-x
Zekk didn’t see much of Jaina over the next four days. She had escorted him more or less immediately to the Hawk after his not-rescue, and ordered him to neither get caught again (Brakiss had, apparently, been a predictable leader and escaped) nor leave without letting her know. She had commed him twice (and Raven, he was dreadfully certain, at least once) in the meantime, but hadn’t left the underground compound since the Jedi began the mass arrests. Kyp had stopped by once, to turn Scooti into jelly and send Hrul through the roof, but also to mock Zekk and let him know that Jaina was both fine and pissed at Zekk. Zekk had rolled his eyes and sent the Jedi back with sandwiches.
The newspapers didn’t miss the influx of Jedi lawyers and evidence collectors; they printed both facts and speculation before the first day had ended. Raven gave him a narrow look over the headlines as they shared breakfast the next morning. “Just stopping by, was she?” Raven asked blandly. “Thought she’d take down a slavery ring for her vacation?”
“The Solo family,” he replied, “is a bunch of adrenaline junkies. She can’t help herself.” His mouthful of omelette turned sour.
“And you…?”
“Saw a chance to do some good. Fire me or get used to it, but I’m not apologizing for that.”
Raven grumbled something, but returned to her breakfast.
Peckhum, for his part, called in reinforcements as soon as he heard that Jaina and Zekk hadn’t seen each other in days.
“Man,” Mique told Zekk on the third day, “you’re embarrassing us at the Flash. Beryl has a girlfriend now, just since you left. Asked her out the same day they met, even.”
Zekk would have liked very much to know when his love life became a matter of the Flash’s honour. Instead, he set his jaw. “Things are really crazy right now. We’re not avoiding each other, she’s making mass arrests and other-legal stuff, collecting evidence, interrogating people. It’s- What happened?” he asked when both Mique and Peckhum disappeared.
“That clatter was Peckhum dropping the comm,” Mique said with boundless patience. The image focused back on the bartender, who must have picked it up again. “I’ll give it back when he can’t see his grandchildren disappearing anymore.”
“I will hang up on you,” Zekk threatened.
“Dude,” Beryl interrupted from off-screen. “Would you, already? Peckhum’s turning awfully purple, the longer you take to fix this.”
Obviously, Zekk needed new friends. Or at least for his old ones to find their own damned love lives.
x-x-x
Zekk spent a full day in the open market looking at old and slightly broken mechanical parts. He bartered far too long for a very broken skybike, even when he noticed that most of the front half was just barely attached. It would take months to fix it, even if Jaina was as much of a mechanical whiz as she claimed.
He lugged the heap of junk back to the Hawk late in the evening, when most of the stalls were closing down, and the suns had set and left a cooler breeze. Scooti was set on going to another club; Hrul, having found out about the Dustbowl’s happenings, looked like a nightmare nanny as he followed the mechanic off the ship. Zekk and Raven stayed in and played card games. By the end of it, they were both very drunk, and Raven was hassling him about being the Jaina Solo’s boyfriend. Zekk, drunk enough to be resigned to how many people were poking their noses in his love life, decided that Raven’s joviality meant he could keep his job.
A job, Raven slurred very early in the morning, that would involve leaving Mos Eisley in three (technically two) days.
x-x-x
Zekk finally bought flowers. At the time, it had seemed like the only way to keep Peckhum from having a stroke over Zekk’s heretofore lack of holo-film gestures. Peckhum’s face had faded to a sort of fuchsia when he saw the red starflowers. “And don’t forget to dip her for your kiss,” Peckhum had said, sounding a little less desperate, to which Zekk had given him a very sceptical look. Peckhum had made a sound as if he was struggling mightily, before consoling himself: “At least you have flowers. They’ll send a message.”
When Zekk gave the bouquet to Jaina, however, she looked as if this particular message had been written in Old Nubian, long before the characters had even matched up with Basic letters. “Um,” she said. Belatedly, she took them, but he couldn’t help but wonder if she thought they would bite her nose off. “Thank you.”
Zekk scratched the back of his neck, and glanced around his room. At least, he thought, they had decided against having their talk in public. “They’re flowers,” he told her.
She made a face at him, but looked less like she had never watched a holo-film in her life. “I know what they are, Zekk.” She paused. “They’re very pretty.” The what the kriff am I supposed to do with flowers was very loud, for all it was unspoken.
“You put them in water. The florist said.” Zekk sensed this conversation had not started well, especially after the drunken message he had apparently left on Jaina’s comm machine the day before. Jaina, when she had called in the middle of his noon hangover, had sounded as if he’d only rambled on for hours about her eyes, or somesuch nonsense, but Zekk felt certain that he was not quite that hopeless.
“Look, Peckhum watches way too many holo-films, and this was the least awkward peace offering.” Zekk bit his tongue before he mentioned the serenade or the proposal. If the flowers were awkward, then joking about proposals would be…unwise.
Jaina was still staring at them, but a smile made headway. “You do realize I kill everything, right? Even Jacen has stopped getting me pets and plants.”
He relaxed a little when she ducked her face to smell the bouquet. “Well, they’re cut flowers, so really, they’re already dead.”
Jaina touched one of the petals, then set them down on Zekk’s desk. “Well, tell Peckhum thank you.”
They stood for a moment in increasingly awkward silence. Jaina began to fumble with her multi-tool, and he took note of the deeper shadows under her eyes. She looked calmer, though, resolute rather than running on just vengeance and caffeine. He wondered if anyone had left her alone with Traest yet, or if Kyp had even left her anything to deal with.
“So, the truce is over,” he said, wishing he had managed to organize his thoughts in the waiting time. Now, he decided, would be a good time for his instincts to work their magic.
A grin bloomed on Jaina’s face, but she ducked her head to hide it. “You agreed to a free hit, as I recall.”
He winced. “I’ll talk,” he insisted over anything she might have said. “I just-I thought you were going to marry Jag.”
“We already established your inexplicable faith in tabloids, Zekk, and it wasn’t a very good reason to run off and ignore me for months. Were you ever going to contact me, or have you just been scrambling to deal this whole time on Mos Eisley?”
“I was going to,” he protested firmly. “But by the time I knew you weren’t engaged, I knew you’d be pissed at me, and-”
“There’s this thing, Zekk, about being an adult, where you face things.”
“Oh, like you’re one to talk. Just because you managed to drag your ducks in a row for once before me-”
“Right, it’s my fault.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he snapped. “I just-after our talk, about the future-and then in your message you said you had something to tell me- I didn’t want to see you settle for Jag.”
“First off, Jag’s a great guy, so leave him out of this. Second, I’m glad you have such a high opinion of my romantic choices that I’d ‘settle’ for anyone. You didn’t even know about Traest at the time.”
“No, I didn’t, so it never made sense to me why you-the thing with Jag. I thought you weren’t taking any risks.” Jaina looked incensed, and she raised her hands as if to shake him. Zekk hurried on before she could say something like Traest doesn’t explain anything when he really, really did. “And I knew that I-” Zekk stumbled, suddenly, swallowing as his mind snagged like old cloth on wire.
Jaina’s expression settled, as if she sensed his answer was coming; her shoulders braced. “Well, then, what’s the real reason?”
He forced the words out, because it would get easier after the first part. “You were right about me…stalling. You still shouldn’t have arranged that interview, but-I needed to get out of Coruscant.”
“But what does that have to do with you avoiding me for six-”
“Because I couldn’t find out you were engaged to Jag and then leave!” he insisted, frustrated. “And I couldn’t hear that you weren’t engaged and still planning to visit once a week, because I would have wanted to stay and just keep on-” Zekk’s throat had dried out completely, and his voice died with a sharp squeeze. He coughed and walked to his sink to pour himself a glass of water. He avoided looking at Jaina as he drank. “I had to leave, or I wouldn’t have ever, and I couldn’t let anything stop me.”
She almost paused, but said, “You should have said something, or-”
“I know, but I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I was just-I was furious with you for being right, and with myself for… I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to keep going.”
“A message,” she insisted, “or even a holo after you’d left, a holo after a couple weeks, even. How was bumping into me half a year later enough?”
He inhaled deeply, and wondered absently how long she’d looked for Traest after his disappearance before it slapped her in the face, then dismissed the thought as both unfair and irrelevant. Instead, he turned to face her properly. She wasn’t furious, but tired, definitely. Her jaw was firm. You get to fix this one, her crossed arms told him; and don’t cop out by asking about my comm message, either, snipped her eyebrows. A year of friendship, and the past several days, though, made Zekk think that he could pull them through this.
Jaina broke the silence first; she never could stand to let it sit. “I want you to be everything you can be, I would have-I’m old enough, I would have left myself, if I thought…”
“I needed to do this on my own.” He flushed. “It isn’t good enough for months of silence, but it’s the truth. I’m sorry, I can’t change it.”
“Yeah,” Jaina said, “there’s a lot of that to go around.”
“Yeah.” Zekk paused, then swallowed. “So, think you can forgive me?”
She smiled a little, still looking tired. “This doesn’t fix everything, but- ‘Course. Friends.”
He had known that, hadn’t he, and it was still a relief, but strangely tempered by a sense of dissatisfaction. “Friends.”
Jaina glanced away, then back with the same smile. “Yep.”
“So about that free hit I gave you, should I be expecting that soon?”
She shrugged, smirking. “I just arrested my manipulative ex-fiancé. Unless you disappear again, I’ve got more than enough outlet for relationship revenge.”
Zekk opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it.
“What?”
He shook his head. “I just wondered-” He gauged the shadows under her eyes, her scraped-clean fingers, and the number of times he’d pushed her in the past two weeks. “It doesn’t matter.” They had time; they could both wait for more truth.
But Jaina inhaled deeply, hardly seeming to brace herself at all, and straightened. “No, what is it? Something about my kriff-up love life.”
“You don’t have to answer,” he said quickly. “You were right, I saw an opening and I’ve been digging around without care.”
Jaina snorted. “Zekk, I just arrested my ex-fiancé. I’ve been processing hard drives of information for his file for the past five days on only a little more sleep than I did during the mission. Plus, you already interrogated me about everything, I’m almost getting used to it.”
“Never mind.”
“No-” She sighed. “Really, there probably won’t be a better time.” She crossed the room and sat on Zekk’s bed. She deliberately folded her hands in her lap. “Fire away. As your friend, I have no problem telling you to kriff off.”
Zekk hesitated, then pulled his chair close to the bed. He sat, and watched her carefully for a moment. “The tabloids marry you and Kyp every other week, and then-then throw in flings and affairs with guys you’ve never met, let alone the ones you have.”
“Ah, I see.”
“That night you first told me about Traest, after you’d left, I tried some holo-searches, but I couldn’t find anything that connected you to Traest, let alone information about your engagement and break-up. Even your team doesn’t know about it, except for Kyp.” She didn’t look angry yet, even though her expression had closed in. “How is that possible? Even if it was better then-”
“It was much worse, actually.” Jaina’s fingers twisted together until her knuckles were white. “My mom was Chief of State; you should have seen the paparazzo’s treatment of my first mission, it was- As crazy as it is now, I don’t have photographers stalking me, at least not usually.”
“You couldn’t have paid off all of them-”
Jaina laughed. “Not with all the credits in the galaxy.” She paused, slanting her eyes up at him. He half-expected her to get up and run, even fancied he could read the urge in her tense frame, but she stayed resolutely still. “With Traest-it all happened so quickly. There probably are other holo-images out there of us, discarded photographers who didn’t realize what they had. And I…went rather off the rails for most of it. Clubbing, drinking, and-” Her throat constricted, and her cheeks flushed deep red. “I’d been penning up a lot of stuff, and Traest figured out how to make it keep spinning out even worse than it was. The press had a field day.
“But it wasn’t all public. Traest kept himself out of the holo-cameras whenever he could, and acted like a casual friend when he couldn’t. Everything else stayed firmly behind locked doors.”
“Okay, but after the engagement-”
She shook her head. “I don’t think even the tabloids expected anything real from my behaviour at the time. But it happened so quickly. I had barely told my parents when I found out-” She hesitated, her eyes flicking up to Zekk and then away. “He’d been feeding Brakiss information about my family, dismantling their missions, my mother’s work. There were even a few assassination attempts on my family.” She swallowed. “Anakin was in the hospital for-”
Zekk reached out and took her right hand. She stared only a few seconds before threading her fingers through his. Zekk looked at their hands for a moment, thinking. “Traest never told the tabloids, did he?”
Jaina tried to pull her hand away, but Zekk didn’t let her. She settled for glaring at him. The silence stretched.
“Unless he just couldn’t prove anything.”
Her expression shuttered completely. “He had more than enough proof. Of everything.” She paused again, then sighed heavily. Her hand relaxed in his. “I scoured the holo-net for weeks, expecting a storm with every channel change, but he never said a word. I don’t know, maybe he was holding onto it for the right moment.”
Even Jaina, Zekk thought, didn’t believe that. Her knuckles were turning white again, though, and her expression was too controlled for it not to be edging toward misery. It was enough for now; he’d figure out the rest later. “The two of you didn’t react to each other the way I expected,” he said instead.
Jaina’s lips twitched. “Were you expecting holo-net declarations of thwarted love? Believe me, hurting a girl’s loved ones is a lot less romantic in real life.”
“I think it was more complicated on Traest’s side than you like to believe,” Zekk said, because apparently he couldn’t help himself.
Jaina snorted in disgust. “Yes, he loved me so much, it was all just a bizarre way of getting my attention. Like, he was trying to prove himself to me.” She rolled her eyes. “That isn’t love, that’s a load of lies and brainwashing.”
“I could have been him,” Zekk said without thinking. He looked away from her; he hadn’t meant to remind her, if she had forgotten.
Jaina, however, gave his hand a sharp yank. “You are- Zekk, look at me. You are nothing like Traest. It’s not some theory, you turned Brakiss down.”
“Because I thought he was crazy. If I’d known-” He caught her non-flinch, and amended his phrasing. “If I’d had any reason to believe him, I might have taken the chance. I could have met you in the middle of a duel.”
Jaina shook her head, stubborn. “Traest wanted the work, excitement. You’re-”
“There are a thousand reasons to take the wrong path.”
Jaina swallowed her retort, and instead told him, “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t give into Brakiss. There’s enough trouble in this galaxy without turning to ‘what ifs.’ You’ll make yourself crazy doing that.”
Zekk rummaged for a smile, and wondered if she would take her own advice. Well, he decided, he’d known even before the more-than-friends part that Jaina would be a marathon, and one with plenty of ways to end terribly-if they let it, which Zekk was determined not to do.
Jaina cleared her throat. She sat straighter and crossed her legs at the ankle. “Alright, now that’s out of the way. Any idea where you guys are headed next?”
Zekk shrugged. “Back toward the Core. We rarely come this far out. I think Raven said something about Corellia.”
Jaina grinned. “Corellia’s always good for smugglers. ‘Course, they just call it trade, there.”
Zekk gave her a reprimanding look. “Raven would want me to assure you that it’s all very legal transportation. Legal in every district. Upstanding, even.”
“Of course,” Jaina agreed, still grinning. “Trade, just as I said.”
“What about you? Are you going back to Coruscant for the trials soon?”
“To Coruscant, probably, once we finish up here, but it’ll probably be months before the trials start. I’ll be on- and off-planet a hundred times before all the sentences have been handed out. I just try not to get in the prosecuting lawyers’ way.”
“When you need me-as a witness-just let me know.”
“The lawyers will serve notice,” she said.
“But let me know once you find out,” Zekk insisted, feeling another pang of dissatisfaction. “You have my comm number now, I have yours.”
“Right. But the lawyers might still be quicker. I’ll be all over the place, even when the trial is ongoing.” Jaina’s expression had lightened a little, but hadn’t lose its insistence that you fix it this time, which just made him more frustrated. What else was he supposed to do? Time, he consoled himself. Jaina had never been the easy choice, and he couldn’t expect to mend everything in a single conversation.
“Busy saving the galaxy?” he suggested fondly.
“That, and keeping Kyp out of trouble. The second one’s a full-time job.”
They shared a mischievous look that was almost right. “Right, the first part you’ll just have to do in your sleep,” Zekk said.
“I’ve been doing it since birth,” Jaina agreed. She paused and pinned him with what he had come to recognize as her Jedi look. “If you ever want to train, or even just find out more…the Jedi praxeum will always be open to you. And there are alternatives; you don’t have to study full-time, if it doesn’t work for you. “Not everyone goes on to be knighted and work for the New Republic.” She held his gaze steady, perhaps seeing his lingering doubt. “At any time, no matter what happens between us.”
“You could never take the training and then work elsewhere,” he said. “Not even for flying. You’d think it was a waste.”
She looked uncomfortable. “When I was younger, I thought so. And-I couldn’t, wouldn’t, no. It’s a good life, worth something. After Traest, especially-I was such so selfish, I was sick of myself by the end of it, and so many people in the galaxy need help; I could never leave them.”
She visibly switched gears then, tucking some loose hair behind her ears. “But it isn’t for everyone, even those who are Force sensitive. It can be very dangerous. And it isn’t the only way to help, let alone lead a good life.”
With everything he had seen on Jaina’s mission, and despite the times he’d witnessed Jaina struggle, training as a Jedi felt inevitable as his next breath-or as continuing on with Jaina. He had seen too much now, the risks and reasons, the costs and the hope that things could be different, the idea that he could play a role in the change. “Not yet,” he told her, but it sounded to Zekk like someday, and maybe even someday soon.
Jaina smiled widely, genuinely. “My uncle already knows about you. You only ever have to talk to him.”
“I doubt I’ll ever make an appointment with Luke Skywalker, Saviour of the Galaxy, to chat about training options,” Zekk remarked, raising an eyebrow.
Jaina rolled her eyes. “You threw snowballs at Jaina Solo, who’s no slouch in galaxy-saving thank-you-very-much; I think you can manage Jedi business with the leading Jedi Master.”
“I thought I’d just bring along my Jedi friend to show me around,” Zekk said, smiling at her.
“Yeah, I could do that.” Jaina stood suddenly, making Zekk draw back. “Well, I still have mountains of paperwork to do,” she said, walking toward the staircase.
Zekk twisted in his chair, then stood to see her properly. She was looking stubborn again, even a little defiant. “Okay,” he said, sensing that he had not, in fact, fixed nearly as much as he had hoped. “We’re leaving tomorrow. Will you-”
“I’ll stop by,” she said, still backing toward the stairs. “What time are you leaving?”
“Noon, I think. That’s when Raven’s contract ends for the landing bay.”
“I’ll come. I should be able to arrange a quick break from paperwork. The others will probably go out tomorrow night anyway.”
“Jaina-” He stopped.
She paused on the third stair. “Yeah?”
He stared at her. Something was off, but he couldn’t pin it-she was looking at him as she had a hundred times before, not even really you fix this anymore. “Never mind,” he finally said.
She smiled and left. Zekk would just have to figure it out on his own.
x-x-x
Peckhum, for his part, gave Zekk a look of profound disappointment. “If you can’t figure it out on your own, Zekk, there ain’t nobody who can help you.”
Part Fifteen
Cut!lyrics: Let It Be Love by Craig Armstrong.
The last chapter is quite short, and already written, so it should be up within a week. Until then, please R&R :D