Saga - ST Awake And Arise (K/J, Finn/Rey) Post-TFA [Ch 9 up 2/21/16!]

Yeah. I need another fic like I need another hole in the head.

I agonized over whether to put this in "Saga - ST" or "Saga - Legends". I may change it later.

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Title: Awake And Arise
Author: DantanaSkywalker
Rating: PG-13
Timeframe: AU, post-Legacy Of The Force, post-The Force Awakens
Characters: Jaina Solo, Kyp Durron, Leia Organa, Poe Dameron, Rey, Finn
Genre: adventure, angst, romance
Keywords: character death, angst, romance
Summary: Alternate Universe. On a mission for Luke Skywalker, Kyp Durron and Jaina Solo encounter an anomaly that sends them hurtling into a strange new reality where they never existed, and the First Order seeks the extinction of the Jedi. Contains spoilers for "The Force Awakens".
Author Notes: I'm just playing in the world, I don't own it. Nothing's used with permission and anything weird is entirely the fault of my brain.


"Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n."
-- John Milton, Paradise Lost


--Chapter One--

Near the edges of space where the Western Reaches met the Unknown Regions, two StealthX fighters dropped out of hyperspace to recalculate the next jump in their long journey, from Ossus to Bakura.

“Okay, I was trying not to say anything, but I have to. I really had enough of Bakura during the Vong war,” Jaina Solo said, via comms, to her wingmate. “Why is Uncle Luke sending us there again?”

“He wasn't all that specific,” Kyp Durron replied. “Just said that he got a message from someone named Malinza Thanas, and since he can't go, what with dealing with Daala and all-”

“Malinza Thanas?” Jaina swore. Her irritation at her uncle reached Kyp where he sat a few dozen meters off her port side.

“What? Who is she?”

“Remember when I was on Bakura with my parents, and I nearly died and there was that whole mess with Tahiri?”

“... Vaguely.” A little more than vaguely, since Jaina had excitedly told him not long after that Jag had said those three little words to her, and she in return, and it had been a gut stab to the Jedi Master. But he didn't let on.

“Thanas was the brat that got me into that mess.”

“Oh.”

“Which is probably why Luke told you and not me, because if he'd told me before we left Ossus, I would never have got in my fighter.”

Kyp’s voice was wry. “Probably, yes. Though why he's sending us is a mystery to me. We're not the most diplomatic in the Order.”

“Yeah, we're the ones he sends when he needs something bludgeoned.” Jaina made a frustrated sound.

“What's taking so long with those calculations?” Kyp asked his astromech.

The droid tweedled a reply.

“What do you mean, anomalous readings? Where?”

An unseen shockwave rocked the two X-Wings, sending Kyp’s droid into a screech of terror.

“Kyp, my readings say-” Jaina’s voice cut out in a burst of static.

----------

Jaina watched in horrified fascination as an energy field the size of a star rippled out of the nothingness before them, vaguely blue at the edges and black in the middle.

“Is that a black hole?” she asked herself. “That can't be.”

“Reverse thrusters!” Kyp ordered over the comms, and Jaina snapped to attention, flipping switches and yanking up on the throttle.

They almost made it.

The gravitational pull was too great, and both fighters were yanked into the field as it buckled and folded. There was a bright flash-

The next few moments were a confused scramble, as the two Jedi found themselves hurtling straight into a firefight between X-Wings and TIE fighters. Reflexively, Jaina fired back at a TIE that shot at her, and pulled her fighter into a tight spiral away from the main battle. In the distance, a dying star gave a last, pathetic flicker and then went cold, plunging everything in the system into darkness.

“What the kriff?” she demanded of Kyp, who had mirrored her move.

“No idea, Sticks. Watch it, tin can on your six.”

They could have avoided the comms, but needed them to monitor what was suddenly going on around them. That, unfortunately, made them visible to the TIEs swarming around them. Jaina was too busy fighting to devote much attention to the question of what, exactly, had just happened, or what was going on.

She flipped her fighter around and blasted the enemy ship before it could properly target her. “Transponders on the enemy aren't broadcasting as Imperial Remnant,” she told her partner. “They're something else. And there's a Super over there.”

Kyp clicked in acknowledgment, too busy to verbally respond as he fought to shake off his own tail. After he'd shot it down, he asked, “Loverboy didn't mention anything going on in this area, did he?”

She narrowed her eyes at her controls. “No, Head of State Fel did not inform me of any Imperial activities in this sector. Given I haven't spoken to him in four months, I don't know if he would have anyway.”

Her astromech informed her that there was chatter on a commonly-used New Republic frequency, so she clicked over to catch it.

“Red Four, Red Six, cover me. I'm going in.”

“Good luck, Poe,” another voice replied.

Jaina turned her attention to the fight below, and her eyes widened in horror. The planet beneath them had been converted into some sort of superweapon, with an emitter bigger than the Super Star Destroyer in orbit around it.

“Oh, Force, Kyp, what the Sithspawn is that?” Jaina asked, flipping back to their private frequency.

“No idea. But whoever Poe is, he just made it go boom.”

When the Millennium Falcon shot past her, followed by a dozen or so X-Wings, she jolted in surprise. The last time she'd seen her dad’s ship, it had been painted grey, not the original sandy color. But its transponder said it was the Falcon, alright.

“I got eyes on ‘em!” came the voice of the unknown Poe. “Let's go home.”

The planet visibly cracked, heat and flames erupting from deep below the surface through the weapon. The TIE fighters abruptly abandoned the fight and retreated for the Super Star Destroyer. Jaina instructed Rowdy, her astromech, to scan the planet.

To Kyp, she said, “Rowdy says the core of the planet has begun to-”

Before she could finish, the planet exploded in a huge fireball, sending out plasma and solar flares. Jaina whipped her fighter around, Kyp right on her starboard, and accelerated away as fast as she could at sublight speeds.

“Do that,” she finished lamely.

Coordinates fed into her navicomp. Jaina felt a mental question from Kyp, sent back a “Why not?” This was suddenly much more important than whatever Malinza Thanas wanted, in Jaina's mind. They could come back here if they needed to, but with the planet suddenly a new star--and how did that happen?--getting away seemed a wise course.

With a shrug, she told the computer to accept the coordinates and make the jump.

----------

They dropped out of hyperspace above a lush, green planet with a semi-tropical forest over most of it, the poles covered in icier conditions. Jaina rapidly did a scan of the planet, while consulting her navicomp’s databank and archives.

Then she started, a shock running through her. She flipped the frequency of her comm to ship-to-ship with Kyp’s StealthX. “So, uh. Problem.”

“What's that?”

“Navicomp says Ileenium system. Specifically, D’Qar.”

There was a long pause from her fellow Jedi. “Uh. Wasn't D’Qar destroyed by the Vong shortly before that battle on Ylesia?”

“Yeah. There's something seriously off, Kyp, and I don't just mean whatever that rift was we got sucked into.” Jaina eyed the other X-Wings as they descended to the planet. “For one, the Falcon wasn't with us on that run to Bakura.”

“No, it wasn't.” The Jedi Master sounded grim. “Be on your guard.”

“Don't have to tell me twice.”

----------

They followed the squadron down to the planet’s surface. Jaina landed next to Kyp at the edges of the airfield, outside of a vegetation-covered building made of dark stone, and sat for a moment, watching the bustle. Eventually, she popped the canopy and hopped down, using the Force to assist. Kyp did the same.

Turning to the Falcon, they watched as a young woman and a tall Wookiee left the freighter, the Wookiee carrying an unconscious man. Jaina blinked, then nudged Kyp in the side.

“Hey, Durron… What am I looking at?”

“... Chewbacca.”

“Oh, good, I'm not hallucinating.”

The Wookiee followed the medical team, leaving the young woman by the Falcon’s ramp. A familiar figure cut through the crowd and went to her, making Jaina start.

“Mom!” she blurted.

But Leia Organa didn't hear or even notice her. She just went to the unknown woman and hugged her.

“Something is very kriffed here,” Kyp muttered. “Who's the girl? Where's Han?”

Leia pulled away from the girl and turned. As she did, she caught sight of the pair standing to one side. Her brown eyes narrowed and she scanned them in their dark flightsuits, gaze fixing on the lightsaber hanging at Jaina’s waist. She strode toward them, the girl following in her wake.

“You two,” she said. “Who are you? I don't know you.”

Kyp’s hand went to the small of Jaina’s back in silent support. The young woman beside Leia had obviously felt the wave of anguish that had shot through Jaina, and she looked between them with big hazel eyes. Jaina’s mouth opened but she obviously struggled to respond.

“Kyp Durron,” he said, drawing Leia’s attention. “And this is Jaina… Durron.”

She was going to strangle him later, but it had been the only thing he could think of, not wanting to say “Solo”. In fact, she'd turned her warm brown eyes to him and was giving him a look that should have fried him where he stood.

“You're Jedi,” Leia stated. “Aren't you? Are you Luke’s? How did you escape?”

Kyp and Jaina exchanged looks. Then Jaina said, “I think this is a conversation we'd best have in private. But first, um… Where's Han Solo? That's his ship, the Millennium Falcon.”

A look of pain came over Leia’s features, and the young woman grabbed her arm. “Ah… I suppose you hadn't heard. Han was … Killed recently, by the First Order.”

Jaina took a step back, bumping into Kyp, and he caught her hand. Her shock and grief were palpable. “Killed? What? First Order?” she echoed. Nothing made sense, and the grief rolling off of Leia was like a fog, threatening to suck them in much as that strange energy field had.

Leia stared hard at her. Kyp privately wondered how she seemed so calm on the surface, when she was such a roil of torment below. “I think we do need to have that conversation. Rey, I think you should come with us.”

Kyp shrugged and motioned for them to lead the way.

----------

As they entered the base, Kyp was calm but cautious and guarded. Jaina edged closer to him as they followed Leia and Rey, who carried a familiar lightsaber stuffed in her belt, into the low stone structure. Kyp kept his hand at Jaina’s elbow, worried by the emotions she was trying to keep hidden but couldn't.

What was going on? Han was dead. Luke wasn't here. There were no other Jedi. The only Force sensitives Kyp could sense besides Jaina were Leia, this Rey, and a pilot they passed in one of the corridors.

Leia paused when they encountered the pilot. “Poe, a moment?”

He stopped, rotated on one boot, and snapped a salute. “Yes, General?”

“Come with me for a minute.”

Whoever Poe was, besides the pilot from before, he fell into step behind the two Jedi. Once inside what was apparently Leia’s office, he leaned against the wall by the door.

Leia pulled a blaster from a drawer and aimed it across the desk. Her eyes were steely. “The Jedi are all dead. Are you Ren’s Knights?” she demanded.

Kyp held up his hands, projecting calm and assurance towards Leia. “I can honestly say I have no idea who Ren is or what you're talking about.”

Leia gestured with the blaster. “Where did you get those lightsabers?”

“I made mine,” Jaina told her. “Kyp got his from a fellow student who died, back at-”

She stopped and sighed. “Let's start over. I'm Jaina Solo, Jedi Knight, and this is Jedi Master Kyp Durron.”

“Solo,” Leia repeated. “As in Han Solo.”

Jaina nodded. “As in, my parents are Han and Leia Solo.”

Everyone stared at her except Kyp. He kept his eyes on the pilot, whose hand kept edging closer to his blaster.

“Excuse me?” Leia repeated in a soft, dangerous voice. “I don't have a daughter.”

“Apparently, not here, you don't. Um. Thing is? Kyp and I were out near Bakura, on a mission for Luke Skywalker, when we encountered… an anomaly. Our fighters got pulled into what appeared to be a… Fissure in space. I'm guessing it was a temporal rift. We found ourselves, on the other side of it, in the middle of a big battle near a dying star. When the coordinates went through on a Republic frequency to our navicomputers, we ended up here. Thing is, where Kyp and I are from? D’Qar was destroyed almost fifteen years ago.”

Rey turned in confusion to Leia. “But Luke Skywalker is missing. How can they know him?”

Poe straightened. “That is the stupidest story I've ever heard. Seriously?”

Leia held up a hand to him. To Jaina, she said, “You're telling me you're from an alternate reality?”

“Yes.” Jaina gestured to the lightsaber Rey carried. “That lightsaber belonged to my uncle, Luke, before he lost it at Bespin. He got it back shortly before I was born, and he gave it to a woman named Mara Jade, who he later married. She… Died a few years ago at the hands of a Sith Lord named Caedus.”

“How do we know you're telling the truth?” Poe asked.

“You don't,” Kyp said. “There's no one here to vouch for us.”

“I say we lock them up til we can verify this,” the pilot said. He drew his blaster.

Having been ready for the move, Kyp gestured briefly and yanked the blaster out of Poe’s hands with the Force. “You can try, but it won't go well.”

Poe and Leia were suddenly focused on him, their body language telling him that they had recognized the casual threat in his voice, and realized he was the most dangerous thing in the room.

Rey, on the other hand, practically vibrated with excitement. “I did that!” she exclaimed. “Against Kylo Ren!”

“Who's Kylo Ren?” Kyp asked.

“He's an evil son of a Hutt who works for the First Order, pet of Supreme Leader Snoke,” Poe said. He glanced at Leia, as she sat heavily in her chair. “You guys really don't know this stuff, do you?”

“Really.” Kyp ejected the blaster cartridge and pocketed it before tossing the useless weapon back to Poe. “I'm going to take a wild guess and say the First Order is equivalent to our Imperial Remnant.”

“Yes, I suppose they are,” Leia said after a moment. She studied Jaina with new eyes. “You look like me, when I was younger. Except… I can see Han in you.”

Jaina unzipped her flight suit and pulled out the blaster pistol she'd carried for several years. “Do you recognize this?” she asked the older woman.

Leia took it from her, looking amazed. “This is Han’s blaster. but he had it with him, when he- Where did you get it?”

“Dad gave it to me when I was knighted,” Jaina told her. “Back during the Yuuzhan Vong war.”

“The what?” Poe asked.

“In our reality,” Kyp said, and had to pause at how strange it was. “We were invaded by a race called the Yuuzhan Vong. They conquered half the galaxy before we defeated them. Lost a lot of people, over three hundred trillion. Half the Jedi, too. That was almost twenty years ago.”

“Was that what happened to D’Qar?” Rey asked.

Jaina nodded. “They selected it as one of the breeding planets for their ships. It's a very long and complicated story. I lost a brother during the war. Darth Caedus killed the other, before I defeated him.”

Leia’s head jerked up. “How many siblings do you have?”

“None, now. Anakin died when I was eighteen, Jacen died… A little over a year ago.” Jaina’s hand went to her lightsaber and she gripped it for a moment.

Leia sat back in her chair, the blaster forgotten. “Anakin.”

“After my grandfather.”

Leia’s gaze flicked to Rey, and she said, “Rey, why don't you go check on Finn? I'm sure they've got him stabilized by now. Poe, show her where the hospital wing is. She should get checked out while you're there.”

“Yes, General.”

Rey and Poe left. Leia motioned Kyp and Jaina to take seats, which they did.

“I didn't believe you until you mentioned Anakin,” she said. “Only a few people know even now that Anakin Skywalker was my father.”

“Also Darth Vader,” Jaina said.

“Yes. He was. Kylo Ren-” She stopped and closed her eyes. “Kylo Ren killed Han. It happened shortly before you came through the rift. That battle was to destroy the Starkiller Base.”

“What's that?” Kyp asked.

“A very big weapon that fired … I'm not sure what you'd call it, precisely. It sucked in the energy of the sun and redirected it to destroy planets. They destroyed the Hosnian system a few days ago.”

Jaina looked at Kyp. “Suncrusher?”

“Or Centerpoint Station,” he remarked.

“What are those?” Leia asked.

“Weapons we’ve had to destroy,” Jaina said. “The Suncrusher made suns go nova. Centerpoint was a giant, planet-destroying laser.”

Leia frowned. “This would be a little of both, I suppose. Rey, the girl you just met, was taken by Kylo Ren. He fancies himself a Sith. He was Luke’s apprentice until Snoke got his hooks in him. Han went to get Rey.”

“She's Force-sensitive,” Kyp stated.

Jaina was quiet for a moment, looking at Leia. “She's Luke's daughter.”

“... Yes.”

“She doesn't know, does she?”

Leia shook her head. “Please don't tell her. She needs to hear that from my brother.”

“Won't hear it from either of us,” Jaina said.

The general stood. “I don't know how you got here, but we could certainly use your help while you're here. At the moment, I can't devote any resources to helping you find your way home. I'm in the middle of a war and trying to find my brother.”

“We’ll help how we can.” Kyp put his hand on Jaina's arm. “Rey said Luke is missing, that the Jedi are dead.”

“One of Luke's students, his personal apprentice…”

“The Kylo Ren you mentioned,” Jaina said.

“Yes. Only that wasn't his name then. He fell under the influence of Supreme Leader Snoke, who wants to destroy the New Republic and bring the Empire back. He turned several of Luke's students against the others. Luke survived, as did Rey. I'm not sure how Rey ended up on Jakku, but Luke left to go find the first Jedi Temple. He felt he'd failed, and… sent himself into exile, I suppose.”

“And left the galaxy to deteriorate?” Kyp snorted.

Jaina jabbed him. “I'm not sure what help we can provide. I don't know why we're here, or how, or…”

She sighed. “I feel like I'm having a very weird, bad dream.”

“I know what you mean.” Leia studied her in silence for a moment, then looked to Kyp. “I have to go see to some things. You're welcome to make yourselves at home. I'll probably have you bunk with Rey and Poe, respectively, unless you'd prefer together…”

It took a moment for Jaina to get Leia's meaning. She took a big step sideways, away from Kyp, cheeks pink.

“With Rey is fine,” she said.

Kyp fought the urge to stick his tongue out at her.

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BTW, this is the PG-ish version of this story. If you want the adultier version, PM me. No minors.

 

I wondered how long it would take for the universe-hopping fics to pop up! This is a great start.

 

Thanks! To be honest, I had this idea well before the movie opened, I just took a while to let it gestate, then filled in the rest when I finally saw the movie. It's up to 22k words so far. O.O

 

Woohoo! Woohoo! Cool universe-hopping thing indeed. Very plausible reactions from everyone and understandable levels of "what is going on". But naturally the reference to Anakin would clinch things.

 

An Alternate Universe crossover. I like this idea a lot. And so far things look particularly interesting. Just wait until more revelations come their way on both sides of this situation.

 

Thanks! I have a bunch of backstory planned for later about why that particular thing convinced Leia, but I may or may not actually get it worked into this story. I've got enough planned on this (and just about enough written!) to split this into two stories. I'll probably end up doing that.

I'm really surprised that mine seems to be the first one!

 

--Chapter Two--

After retrieving their flight bags and their astromechs, they each took showers and then met in the barracks hallway, dressed in their Jedi robes. They hadn't had much with them in the way of luggage, after all. As Leia had said, Jaina was assigned a room with Rey, and Kyp was bunking with Poe. The Resistance pilot was affable about it, simply pointing out that his previous roommate had died at Starkiller Base, so the bed was free.

“This is so strange,” Jaina said, looking around as they made their way towards the mess. “It feels like Borleias, doesn't it?”

“Kinda.” Kyp stepped behind her so a Bothan could pass them. “I keep thinking I'm going to wake up at any second, but the longer it goes on, the more I'm beginning to realize this is actually happening.”

“I know.”

They took a right and came across what appeared to be the command center. There was a commotion, with a very familiar pair of droids right in the middle of it. The Jedi stepped in, curious to see what was going on.

A blue and white astromech, the sight of whom filled Jaina with happiness for a moment, trundled forward and projected a map of the galaxy, with a section missing. A smaller orange and white droid, of a design Jaina had never seen before, excitedly beeped at Poe. The pilot retrieved something from the main command station and inserted it into the little droid, who then rolled over and displayed a smaller map, finishing Artoo’s projection.

“Luke,” Leia breathed.

Jaina stepped further into the room. “That's in the Unknown Regions,” she said. “Not Chiss territory, but still.”

“Chiss?” a dark-haired man with a beard asked. “And who are you?”

“They're Jedi,” Leia said. “They've been away a long time. Luke apparently sent them on a mission just before the massacre.”

“Twelve years is a long time for a mission,” he said skeptically.

“Not if you're really deep undercover.” Jaina gestured to the map. “The Chiss are an insular race, located more over here by Dantooine, Sernpidal, and this area, but deep in the Unknown Regions. Blue skin, black hair, red eyes.”

“I still want to know who you are,” the man insisted.

“Jaina Solo,” she said. “Yes, relative of Han Solo. Somewhat distant, before you ask. My partner, Kyp Durron. Who are you?”

“Captain Temmin Wexley. But everyone calls me Snap.”

Jaina eyed him for a moment, then dismissed him, going back to studying the map.

“Have you been to this part of the Unknown Regions?” Leia asked Jaina.

“No, I never made it that deep.”

The general glanced at Kyp, who shook his head. Kyp had never been to Chiss space in the first place.

“I think we’ll send Rey, Chewie, and Artoo to find Luke,” Leia said. “But not today. Everyone needs rest first.”

“Why not send the Jedi?” a Mon Calamarian asked from the other side of the command console, and Jaina started at the voice. She hadn't heard it in years. Admiral Ackbar! She looked at Kyp, and he gave her a slight smile.

“Rey and Chewie aren't needed here,” Leia said. “We may still need the Jedi.”

----------

Leia, with hope in her eyes despite her continued grief, gave the Jedi an in-depth debriefing on who Snoke was, so far as they knew, what the First Order was and who its known commanders were, and what the Starkiller Base had been and how they'd destroyed it.

She didn't discuss the massacre of the Jedi by Kylo Ren, or say anything about her husband’s death.

That evening, however, there was a small gathering to mark Han’s passing. It wasn't the funeral Han Solo deserved, but it was all they could manage at the time. Preparations had already begun to move the base elsewhere, as the First Order had discovered their location. It would take at least a day, however, to dismantle and load everything.

Kyp and Jaina weren't invited to the gathering, which made sense to Kyp but obviously stung Jaina quite a bit.

“He wasn't even my dad here, I don't know these people. But Rey didn't know him, either!”

He slung an arm around her shoulders. “I'm sorry.”

“It's stupid to be upset about. My dad is fine. He's just not here.”

“Come with me.”

Curiously, Jaina followed Kyp up to the roof, where he produced a bottle of Corellian brandy and two glasses pilfered from the mess.

“Where'd you get this?” she asked, rolling the bottle between her hands.

“My flight bag.”

“You carry expensive liquor in your flight bag?”

“Not usually. This was intended for something.” Kyp took the bottle and poured them each a bit. Capping the brandy, he set it down between them. Lifting his glass, he said, “To Han Solo, the galaxy's most honorable scoundrel and the best older brother figure I could have when I needed one most.”

Jaina smirked. “To the best dad I could have asked for. Even if he was very human and sometimes let Mom down, he was almost always there when I needed him.”

They clinked glasses, then sipped at the golden-brown liquid.

“Much better than that horrible homebrew we had on Borleias,” he remarked after a moment.

Jaina snickered. “That stuff was awful.”

“I did enjoy the look on Fel’s face at that first taste.”

“Yeah, that was funny.” Jaina sighed. “I know we told Leia we’d help, but I want to figure out how to get home.”

“We’ll need to go back to where we encountered the rift,” he said. “But there's a really big fireball where we came through, so that could be an issue.”

Jaina finished her brandy. “We’ll figure that out when we get there, I guess. I want to see Rey off before we do anything. I also want to get the sensor scans from Rowdy run through the simulation computer here. Probably pass it off as a potential weapon the First Order was testing. Should do that tomorrow.”

“I'll add mine in, as well.” Kyp stood, offered her a hand up. “I'm going to bed. Interdimensional time travel takes it out of me.”

She snorted. “Yeah.”

----------

Jaina retired to her shared quarters, where Rey had already staked out one of the two beds, each against an opposite wall, with a rather narrow space between them. Calling the room "cramped" was generous. The Jedi didn't mind, especially since she knew the teenager was her cousin. The girl was a little older than her cousin Ben had been. She'd never had a female family member before. Too bad they couldn't discuss it.

As she readied for bed, in the pants of her robes and an old shirt she kept in her flight bag, Jaina braided her hair.

“So how old are you, Rey?” she asked.

The young woman had to think. “I'm seventeen? My family left me on Jakku when I was five, or about. That was twelve years ago.”

“You make me feel old,” Jaina muttered. “I'm thirty-four.”

“And you've defeated a Sith Lord?”

Jaina nodded. “Darth Caedus.”

She picked up her lightsaber, remembering the moment she'd driven it through Jacen’s chest. The memory didn't have quite the sheen of horror that it once had.

“I saw Kylo Ren kill Han Solo,” Rey said after a moment. “Han let him do it. His own son. Why?”

Jaina's head whipped up. “Kylo Ren is Han and Leia's son?”

Rey nodded. “Ben, I think? I didn't hear most of their conversation, they were too far away.”

The older woman blinked. Then she stood. “I'll be right back.”

----------

“So, Durron. Got a question.”

Poe had been affable about sharing his quarters with Kyp. His usual roommate had died at Starkiller Base, so the space was free. He sat on his bed while Kyp arranged his things, such as they were.

“What's that?” Kyp asked.

“You and Jaina aren't a thing, are you?”

Kyp paused in his own nighttime preparations and arched a brow at the younger man. “No. Jaina's presently single, if that's what you're asking.”

Poe kicked back on his cot. “You think she'd be interested in me?”

Feeling his eyelid twitch, Kyp ducked his head. “She does tend to go for pilots.”

There was a knock at the door. Sensing Jaina outside, Kyp rose.

He felt her agitation immediately, and she didn't speak, just turned and went outside. Kyp followed, wondering what had got her in such a state.

Jaina was silent til they reached the edge of the base. Then she whirled and said, “Kylo Ren is Ben Solo, the son of Han and Leia.”

“Seriously?” Kyp tried for words, failed horribly.

“I know. Rey just told me. Why didn't Mom- Leia mention that little detail?”

“You didn't tell her the truth about Caedus, either.”

Jaina shook her head. “I couldn't do that to her. And it's even worse now.”

“No kidding. What now?”

“I have no idea. Did you know Rey is seventeen? Seventeen. And she's about to go off and find Luke, who is hiding Force knows where and has been doing Force knows what for twelve kriffing years, with his daughter in virtual slavery on some desert backwater, while a Sith Lord and his stupid apprentice run amok.”

Kyp couldn't help but smirk. “Now do you see why I was so frustrated with Luke during the Vong war?”

“... Yes, actually. Leia says Luke went to find the first Jedi Temple. What the kriff is that going to do to help?”

He shrugged. He wanted to ease her frustration and worry, but didn't know how. “No idea.”

Kyp glanced over, noting the shirt she wore for the first time. It was black, with silver threads shot through. Something he would have worn in his flashier younger days. “Hey, that looks familiar.”

“It should. I stole it from you on Hapes.”

He lifted a brow. “So that's where it went. I never could figure out what I did with it.”

“Mine now.”

“What if I want it back?”

“Well, seeing as I'm wearing it, you'd have to take it back. But then, I wouldn't have a shirt.”

They both paused as other meanings to her words occurred to them. She blushed and crossed her arms over her chest, the flush of her cheeks barely visible in the dying light.

“So why'd you steal mine, and not one of Fel’s?”

“You have better fashion sense. And you loaned it to me in the first place, remember?”

“Along with my spare robes. I got those back, though. Pity. I could have fought you for them.”

She shook her head. “In your dreams.”

He smirked, eyes going to her chest. The flush climbed higher in her cheeks. “I swear, Durron, you are the one person in the galaxy that can still make me blush like I'm thirteen.”

Kyp's mouth stretched wide in a teeth-flashing grin.

“And I'm going to regret saying that, because you're going to use that power for evil, aren't you?”

“You know me so well.”

“Of all the people to get stuck here with, it just had to be you, didn't it?”

“It could have been worse, Jay. Imagine getting stuck somewhere with Valin Horn.”

She snorted. “If we could be serious for a minute? We need to get back out there and see if we can figure out how we got here and how to get home. But I realize that could take a while. We have to take readings where the rift was, see if we can figure out what triggered it. I doubt it's going to just open back up on demand.”

“I think the dying sun triggered it,” Kyp said. “At least, that's my theory. Though that's just what my gut is telling me. I'm not a scientist, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm completely lost here.”

“Okay, so a dying star opens portals between realities? That sounds insane.”

“Yet here we are.” Kyp looked up at the sky, filled with billions of stars. The patterns were unfamiliar, but that was nothing new. “I'm sorry about … Leia. Han. I can't imagine what you're feeling right now.”

She shrugged. “I don't even know what I'm feeling. None of this seems real. I'm told that Dad- Han is dead, but I didn't see it, didn't feel it. He's just absent. Mom is the harder part. To have her look at me and not know me is just…”

Jaina trailed off, glanced at him in the moonlight. “Actually, I'm glad it's you here. You know better than anyone else I know, besides Mom and Uncle Luke, what it's like to suddenly lose your whole family.”

“Unfortunately, that's very true.”

He also knew better than anyone what it was to kill your brother, but he didn't say that aloud. They'd already discussed it one night, not long after Jacen’s death. Then they'd never spoken of it again.

“So, wait. You've been using my shirt to sleep in for fifteen years?”

Jaina sighed. “Let it go, Kyp.”

“Not in this lifetime. Did Jag know?”

“... He had no reason to.”

“Ha!”

“I'm going to punch you in your perfect teeth if you don't shut up.”

Kyp laughed. “Go back to bed, Jaina.”

“I don't think we should mention Jacen to Leia.”

Sobering, he shook his head. “I wasn't going to.”

----------

They returned to the barracks, parting ways in the hall. Jaina let herself into her temporary quarters, found Rey marvelling at a stack of crackers from a packet she'd opened.

“You look like you've never seen those before.”

Rey shook her head. “I haven't. I've been living off portioned rations for twelve years. Those ones you put in water?”

Jaina looked her up and down. “No wonder you look a little malnourished. Those aren't meant to be a steady diet.”

The young woman shook her head. “It was all we had. We traded scavenged parts for food.”

“Where was this?”

“Jakku. Niima Outpost.”

“I've never heard of it, but with so many planets in this galaxy, that isn't a surprise.” Jaina's gaze fell on her flight bag and she smiled suddenly. “I'll bet I've got something you haven't had before.”

“That's a sucker bet,” Rey complained. “I haven't had most things.”

The Jedi pulled a foil-wrapped object out of a pocket on her bag, unwrapped it a bit, and broke a piece of the dark brown substance off, handing it over. Rey took it, eyeing it suspiciously as Jaina put the rest away.

“What is this?”

“Eat it before it melts.”

Rey popped the square into her mouth, and her hazel eyes went wide with surprise. “Ith ‘ith ‘ocolate?!” she asked around the mouthful.

Grinning, Jaina nodded.

The younger woman finished chewing and swallowed. “I think… I'm sure I had some when I was little, but I haven't had any since my family left me on Jakku. I don't remember. … May I have some more?”

“Sure.” Jaina quickly turned to her bag to hide her expression. Rey's life in desperate poverty was definitely something she was going to talk to Luke about when she saw him. No one deserved that when they had family elsewhere to take care of them, secrecy be damned.

She gave Rey a second piece of chocolate, amused at the delight she took in it. “Tell me how you got here.”

As Rey talked, telling Jaina her story, the Jedi moved her flight bag to the floor and stretched out on her cot. Instead of Rey's tale, or the startling news of Leia's son being Kylo Ren, she found herself thinking of Kyp. He obviously felt more comfortable here, openly flirting with her in a way he hadn't in years. Her confirming that she and Jag were once again in the “off” phase of their long on/off relationship made him more playful, apparently. She had to admit, she liked that side of him, and she had missed the bantering, the casual flirting and innuendo, the camaraderie she'd shared with the Jedi Master.

He'd had a girlfriend, though, hadn't he? Or several. There'd been a string of them for a while there, and while she knew she had no right to the feeling, hearing of each one had made her just a little jealous. Kyp wasn't hers. They'd established years ago that wasn't what they were to each other. Hadn't they?

She rolled over and pressed her face into her pillow, as Rey described getting free of her restraints by mind-tricking a stormtrooper. It was irrelevant that Kyp still made her blush like an idiot, still made her stomach do little flips. They would get back to their reality and she would put all this weirdness behind her. No First Order, no Sith sort-of brothers, no scrappy-but-innocent cousins, no flirting with Kyp Durron!

She would go back to … A life where she'd killed her twin brother, where the man she loved--sometimes hated, but always loved to varying degrees--was technically the enemy. A world where Kyp would withdraw and wouldn't look at her the way he had tonight.

Jaina sighed. Rey stopped speaking.

“What?” the young woman inquired.

“Keep going. So you pulled the lightsaber to you telekinetically, and…?”

 

Dantana Skywalker --

so many umphy great things in this update.

First - Jaina has great taste - chocolate! !!! A timeless delight!

Second, I agree wholeheartedly - duh! with Jaina's assessment about Luke disappearing for what possible reason and stranding Rey for never enough of one!

It must be strange indeed to not be recognized by your mother, to have your dad be alive in another reality but not in this one

Loved, absolutely loved the confusing do I wanna stay here or go home thingy because of the whole Kyp versus Jag dynamic. It does say quite a bit that Jaina gets blushes and butterflies with Kyp still and is jealous of Kyp's romantic entanglements and at the same time is off-on again with Jag.

LOL-ed at the comment that Jaina has a thing for pilots. Now would not that be a cool cross-pairing? Jaina/Poe?
Hmmm.

Now, if Kyp is right about a dying star being the trigger - whew! Getting home again will be tricky indeed.

 

I briefly considered having a bit of a Jaina/Poe thing, just for a few chapters, but Kyp was like, "I would pound him into hamburger!"

Re: dying star thing. They'd have to know exactly where/when a star was dying in their universe and hope to get to the same point at exactly the right moment to make it work. Which would be nearly impossible, of course. Plus, the galaxy isn't exactly the same in their universe. It wasn't just a "x didn't happen here, so y didn't happen" thing. It's more divergent than that. Who's to say that even if they knew of a star on their side dying, it wouldn't already be a black hole here or something?

 

--Chapter Three--

Jaina woke to an unfamiliar room, which had once been a fairly normal occurrence but was now disconcerting. Rey was not awake yet, and Jaina took a long moment to compose herself, after the strange new reality once more made itself known. She was still here; waking had not brought her out of a frightening dream.

It wasn't yet dawn, but some personnel were either up early or still up from the night before. She went to find breakfast, unsurprised to find Kyp already there, looking like he'd slept as well as she had.

He lifted a piece of bread at her by way of greeting. Jaina plunked her tray down across from his.

“Sleep well?” she asked.

Green eyes regarded her with little amusement. “Not particularly. Dameron snores.”

“So do you,” she reminded him.

“Not this bad.” He took a bite of what was possibly reconstituted eggs. “How'd you fare?”

“I get the feeling Rey has been alone too long and is desperate for friends, family, someone to care. She talked my ear off until past midnight.”

“I'd question the wisdom of sending her off to find Luke by herself, but Chewie is more than capable of watching out for her.” Kyp set down his fork and picked up his glass of blue milk. “I can't imagine how hard he's taking Han’s death. Those two were inseparable. Han’s reaction after Chewie-”

“Yeah. I'm really not surprised Han did a runner on this, though I wish I could say my dad was made of sterner stuff. At least, after Anakin died, they stayed together.”

Kyp shrugged. “I wouldn't run. But then, I tried that kind of thing once and it didn't go so well.”

She propped her elbows on the table, not really interested in her food. “After… Kun, right?”

He nodded tightly, speaking in a low voice so they wouldn't be overheard. “I'm still amazed that they let me off that easy. But a lot of people thought it was just. We were technically at war with them and they did try to assassinate the Chief of State.”

Jaina reached a hand over, lightly touched his arm. “You're thinking about Caedus.”

“What made his punishment extermination when mine wasn't?”

“You were sixteen and possessed by a Sith Lord. Your targets were entirely military. You didn't start a war. Caedus was… He did it all on his own. He arranged to have the heads of state of two governments killed. He murdered a Jedi Master.”

He turned his hand over so hers rested in his palm. “I felt guilty. I feel guilty. I picked fights with criminals in the hopes they'd kill me.”

“And there's the biggest reason. Caedus didn't feel guilty except at the very end, and then only because I beat him.”

More people began to trickle into the mess. Jaina withdrew her hand from Kyp's and went back to eating. She didn't like talking about Jacen. She still missed her brother painfully. It was something she was never going to completely get over, she knew.

Kyp eyed her with sympathy, but didn't speak.

----------

Rey, when she made her appearance, had dressed in new clothes--new to her, really--and spent breakfast asking the Jedi questions about the Force. Then she asked if it was possible to heal people with it.

“Sometimes,” Jaina said. “Mostly, yes. Why do you ask?”

The young woman rose from the table and motioned for them to follow her, which they did.

There was a fairly rudimentary medical suite, with a few beds and one lone bacta tank. Only one of the beds was occupied, by a dark-skinned man in a medically-induced coma. Kyp recognized him as the man Chewie had carried off the Falcon the day before. Had it really only been a day?

“This is Finn,” Rey said. “He's my friend. He fought Kylo Ren for me, and nearly died.”

“What are his injuries?” Jaina asked.

“Lightsaber wound to the shoulder, and across his back,” the medic said as she came over. “It nearly severed his spine. He really shouldn't have been moved.”

“We couldn't leave him there!” Rey protested.

Kyp put his hands on the girl's shoulders. “No, you couldn't. He would have died when the planet collapsed into a star.”

Jaina frowned at the medic, who gazed back unapologetically. “I'm assuming he was in the bacta?”

“Yes.”

"For less than twenty-four hours?"

"It's a higher-concentration blend," the medic said. "It heals faster in less time."

“Uh-huh. So why's he still unconscious?”

“We're giving his body some more time to heal and rest,” the human woman explained. “The bacta can only do so much in this case. Have you ever seen a lightsaber wound?”

Jaina grabbed the hem of her own shirt--the very same she'd bantered with Kyp about the night before--and lifted it, exposing a long, thin burn scar that bisected her abdomen almost horizontally, just above the waistband of her black pants. It was pink and a little waxy in texture, about the width of her finger. “Yes, you could say I have.”

“Where did you get that?” Rey asked, voice shocked.

“Courtesy of a Sith Lord. Before I killed him.”

Kyp wasn't looking at the scar. His eyes never left her face. The lightsaber wound hadn't been her only injury from that battle. Caedus had also crushed her hand, breaking nearly every bone in it. Kyp had been there, been among the Jedi who'd come to extract her after her battle with Caedus. He'd seen her cradling Jacen’s body, hunched over, injured and sobbing. He’d had to stand by and just watch as Jag Fel had comforted her, carried her away to get medical treatment. He'd hated feeling helpless then, and he hated the reminder now.

Jaina shook her head. “We can't do anything for Finn at this point. He's received better aid than we could give him, anyway. He just needs to rest until they wake him up.”

“I won't see that,” Rey sighed. “I'm leaving.”

“Why don't you spend some time with him?” Kyp suggested. “He should be able to hear you, even if he isn't conscious.”

Rey nodded. The Jedi excused themselves and left the girl to keep her friend company.

"That kid went up against a Sith for a girl?” Kyp let out a low whistle. “He's not much older than her, and he's not Force sensitive. How'd he not get killed instantly?”

“He's a former stormtrooper,” Jaina said. “He didn't want to kill people, and he helped rescue Poe when he got captured by Ren. So he defected. Rey is very fond of him.”

“Former Imp, huh? That seems to run in your family.”

She shot him a look. “Technically, I'm an aberration. Dad defected from the Empire and stole Chewie. Rey has a thing for Finn, the defector. Jag never defected.”

Kyp shrugged. “Close enough, for a while there.”

They fetched their astromechs and took the droids to the command center., where they loaded both sets of scan data into the computer.

“It will take time to program a simulation from these readings,” C-3PO informed them.

“That's fine, Threepio,” Jaina murmured.

The golden protocol droid tipped his head. “I am not accustomed to being addressed as such by anyone outside the princess’s family. The general, I mean.”

Jaina closed her eyes for a moment. “You were there yesterday. I'm related to Han Solo.”

“But you look like the general.”

“I never said how I was related.”

Suddenly irritated, Jaina stomped off.

Threepio turned to Kyp, who shrugged.

“Mind if we leave the droids here?” he asked.

“Certainly,” Threepio responded. “I do enjoy getting to know new astromechs.”

Rowdy blatted something, and Threepio whirled to look at it. “I certainly do not know you!”

Kyp decided to escape before Threepio decided to ask any pointed questions.

----------

Rey and Chewbacca left on the Millennium Falcon that afternoon, to much applause from the base personnel.

Jaina wished she was going to find Luke, but she understood why Leia was only sending Rey, Chewie, and Artoo. Rey was Luke's daughter, and it was part of her rite of passage, so to speak. And Jaina didn't want to go anywhere near the Unknown Regions ever again. She wanted to go back to that area near Bakura and try to find that rift. Try to go home.

Her fighter didn't need any tune-ups, really, but it was habit for her when she needed to think to work on something. The Falcon wasn't here, so that left either her X-Wing or Kyp's, and he was already doing something with his.
Dressed in her usual non-Jedi attire--the shirt she'd debated Kyp about, black cargo pants, and her old flight jacket--Jaina grabbed a ladder and went to work on her StealthX. She concentrated on scrubbing some carbon scoring off the fiberplast hull. It was more for her piece of mind than anything, since it wasn't messing up a sleek paint job. Once that was done, she opened the hyperdrive compartment and checked the wiring.

“Looks like you really know your way around the guts of a ship.”

One hand on the edge of the hyperdrive compartment to hold her balance, Jaina turned on the ladder to see Poe Dameron standing at the foot, looking up at her. “Been doing it all my life.”

“This sure is a nice ship,” he commented. “Looks like an Incom, but nothing I've ever seen before.”

Jaina glanced at the sleek, matte-black X-Wing with pride and patted the hull. “Yup. Incom StealthX. Based off a T-65XJ5. You're flying what?”

“Mine is a T-85,” he admitted. “Everyone else has T-70s. But mine came straight from the New Republic fleet. Everyone else got theirs secondhand. I defected and stole it.”

Jaina had to laugh. “So what's your rank?” she asked, brown eyes scanning his olive green uniform. The color reminded her of Kyp's eyes, and she glanced over to her fellow Jedi, even as she tried to squash the thought.

“Commander.”

She smirked and flipped the front of her jacket forward, showing him her rank insignia. “Colonel.”

“So you outrank me, huh?” Poe grinned. “How'd you get that one? You don't look old enough.”

She snorted. “I'm thirty-four. I've been a colonel since I was twenty-two. Well, I was until I retired at twenty-four.”

Poe blinked. “Seriously?”

“Major at twenty, lieutenant colonel at twenty-one, colonel at twenty-two. Not exactly battlefield promotions, but close.” She hopped down from the ladder, aware that she was annoyingly short next to the Resistance pilot. “It was a long and brutal war. A third to half the galaxy fell, and our fleet was decimated. Command was generous with those that survived. One of my promotions was compensation for them transferring my best pilots out of my squadron.”

“... At twenty?”

“Nineteen, actually.”

“Wow. I'm impressed. Not that you need to hear that, I'm sure.” Poe leaned against the ladder. “You gonna stick around a while? I know you probably want to find a way home, but we could use someone with real battle experience. Half our remaining pilots are practically still wet behind the ears.”

Jaina smiled a little. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

“That is very true. And you're making it difficult to flatter you.”

----------

Across the way, Kyp turned his attention to the repairs he was making and growled under his breath. By her X-Wing, Jaina laughed at something Dameron said, and Kyp gritted his teeth.

“You love her.”

Leia’s voice startled him, and he nearly drove the hydrospanner into his thumb. Biting back the instinctive curse, he put it down and turned to the general. She regarded him with a little amusement, and a surprising amount of compassion.

There was no point denying it. Everyone back home had known, even though he'd denied it in recent years. Hells, even Jaina knew. “Yeah,” he sighed.

“And?” Leia looked at him expectantly.

Kyp shook his head. “You have no idea how strange this conversation is for me. Where Jay and I are from, you hate me.”

“Why is that?” she inquired.

Where to start? No way was he telling her about Carida. No one here needed to know about that, and since Jaina didn't hold it against him, he could pretend it hadn't happened.

“The age difference, for one.” Kyp huffed out a breath. “It's weird that you're only, what, four years older than me here? Anyway, I'm fourteen years older than her. And as you told me frequently in years past, I'm cocky, obnoxious, brash, reckless, irreverent…”

She laughed. “Sounds like Han. Who was eleven years older than me, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know.” Kyp shrugged. “Plus, Jaina's been involved with this guy named Jag, off and on, for nearly sixteen years. He's a good guy, most of the time, but…”

Leia's brown eyes crinkled at the corners and she smiled faintly. “And what's he like?”

“Really stiff. He's the leader of the Imperial Remnant, actually. Keeps trying to get Jaina to give up the Jedi. But he does seem to love her.”

“Hmm.” Leia looked over to where Jaina and Poe stood. “I'm not her mother. I don't know what that Leia would say here. But I just lost my husband, after ten years apart. So I'll say this: Don't let doubts stop you. You don't know how much time you have or when it all ends. And that woman over there may be flirting with Poe, but she keeps looking over here.”

Kyp straightened, surprised. “What?”

Leia’s smile turned to a full grin, probably the first she'd had in days. “As for that boyfriend? He's not here.”

Then she turned and walked away. Kyp stated after her for a moment, before looking at Jaina.

It had always been so much more complicated than Leia made it seem. And yet… Was it really? This might as well be a fresh start for them, because from the looks of things, they were stuck here for good.

Jaina pretended to sock Poe in the shoulder, said something Kyp couldn't make out. In return, Poe angled a little closer. Even from here, his interest in Jaina was obvious.

Kyp had told Poe that Jaina wasn't attached. He had no one to blame but himself.

Grabbing the hydrospanner, he tossed it back into the tool box. Then he took a deep breath. Now or never, Durron, he thought.

Making a sudden decision, he started towards Jaina.

----------

Poe held in a snicker. Durron’s irritation could have been seen from space, and the more he and Jaina flirted, the blacker the looks the Jedi Master shot them.

He was interested in the petite Jedi, true, but the obvious jealousy of Durron, and the unconscious looks Jaina kept sending him, made it clear that Poe didn't really have a nexu in this fight. There was obviously history between these two, and that wasn't something Poe wanted to step into the middle of. Not against a Jedi who could probably beat him to a pulp literally without lifting a finger.

When Durron headed over, he murmured, “Incoming.”

----------

At Poe's warning, Jaina looked up to see Kyp striding towards them, expression somewhere between thunderous and determined. She'd known flirting with the Resistance pilot would probably make Kyp a little jealous, but he looked ready to pull the ears off a gundark. Her heart leapt into her throat. She'd only seen that precise look on his face once before, in a corridor on Hapes, when he'd looked at her in an extremely tight red dress and drawled that she couldn't possibly fight him wearing it, there wasn't enough room for the Force to squeeze into it.

Completely ignoring Poe, Kyp closed the space between them and, without a word, he caught her face in his hands, crushed their bodies together, and kissed her as if his very life depended on it.

She saw it coming, could have resisted. Didn't.

It was the most searing kiss Jaina had ever felt in her life, heat shooting straight to her toes. As Kyp's mouth moved over hers, demanding and possessive in a way she'd never expected, she found herself melting into him, unable to keep from kissing him back.

If she'd known kissing him would be like this, she'd have done it when she was nineteen.

After an eternity, he lifted his head. Jaina stared up at him, heart pounding, her brain a confused jumble. Vaguely, she heard Poe clear his throat and say, “And that's my cue to be elsewhere.”

“Slap me if you want,” Kyp told her, voice low and husky in a way that made her stomach--and other bits--do flips, “but I'm tired of trying to convince myself I'm not completely in love with you, Jaina Solo. I've been resisting kissing you for sixteen years, and I refuse to regret doing it now.”

Jaina realized her fingers gripped the front of his shirt, and she pried them loose. She was still processing that Kyp had kissed her. Not only had he kissed her, but he had made the earth beneath her feet move. Kissing Jag had never rocked her like that.

“Uh,” she said stupidly.

Kyp smirked then. “Did I fry your circuits, Goddess?”

She licked swollen lips. “You, ah… Stang, Kyp, now I can't think straight.”

“But you haven't hit me, so…”

Jaina realized that they had a very entertained audience, everyone finding the unfolding drama much more interesting than their duties. “Let's go talk.”

She caught his hand and pulled him towards the main building. Once inside, they took a left towards the barracks and she pulled him into her quarters. Then she locked the door.

“Murdering me in private?” he asked, joking to diffuse the sudden tension.

Jaina chewed on her lip and bounced a little on the balls of her feet, her mind spinning. He'd kissed her. After fifteen years of jokes and flirting and hints that he cared for her, he'd come out and said he loved her. Was in love with her.

She looked at him in silence, seeing him with new eyes. He'd always been there for her, when she'd needed him most, and never asked for anything in return. He'd stood by her through the whole mess with Jag, had never pushed.

Until today. Today, he'd sent her world spinning on its axis. And there he stood, looking handsome and surprisingly uncertain. Vulnerable in a way he'd never shown her before.

And it didn't hurt that he was handsome, had given her butterflies in her stomach since she was sixteen.

“Jaina?”

“I don't know why we’re here,” she said. “Why we're in this reality or what's going to happen. But I hate what I see when I look at Mom- When I look at Leia and see all those wasted years without Han. Kyp…”

She shook her head. “I wasted years on Jag. Why did you wait?”

“I didn't, exactly. I tried to move on. But I couldn't. And seeing you with Dameron… I couldn't help myself. I'm not apologizing.”

Jaina snorted. “I wouldn't expect it. And I don't want Poe.”

She took two steps--it was a small room--and pushed Kyp against the wall. He hit the stone with surprise, but it was nothing to what slammed into him when Jaina stood on her toes and kissed him.

Kyp's hands pulled her tight against him. Jaina slid her hands into his black curls, tilting her head to slant her mouth under his.

Kissing him made her head spin, was something she didn't want to stop. Jaina had never felt like this before. She broke the kiss, gasping for air.

“Kyp,” she said breathlessly.

He nipped at her bottom lip, slid his mouth along her jaw. Jaina cupped the back of his head, turning her face to capture his mouth again.

She let out a yelp when he boosted her into his arms and turned to place her on the bed. Jaina fell back, pulling him with her, and for several long minutes, let herself forget everything else.

It was amazingly easy to lose herself in Kyp's arms. Part of her had always known it would be, and had once been frightened by the idea. Now, she wanted the escape and the solace.

He shifted a little so that he wasn't squishing her, and rose on an elbow, gazing down at her with open adoration. Jaina ran her thumb over his lips, then smoothed her hand down his chest. She must have hugged him hundreds of times over the years, but this, lying here with him on the one-person cot, was light years more intimate.

“What are you thinking, Goddess?” he asked.

The revival of the old nickname made her smile. The vulnerability in his eyes told her she had to be completely honest with him, and with herself. Anything less would be doing both of them a disservice. After kissing him back, enthusiastically so, if she walked away now, it would hurt him. It would break him if she continued where this was headed and changed her mind after. And she didn't want to hurt him.

If she were completely honest with herself, she had known the moment he kissed her there was no going back. She wanted to keep going. She wanted him to keep looking at her like that, like she was the most important thing in his world. She wanted ...

“I don't want Poe,” she repeated. “I want you.”

Kyp’s hand curved around her hip. “Want, as in…?”

“At the moment, as in want.” She levered up, nipped at his bottom lip. “I'm willing to discuss beyond that in the morning.”

He groaned and kissed her hungrily. “Have you ever been with another Force user?” he asked against her mouth.

Time for more honesty. “No, just Jag," she admitted. "Is it different?”

Kyp shuddered and pulled her closer. “Really? Just him?”

“Don't want to talk about him. Is it different with two Jedi?”

“Very. Better.” He used a little nudge of power to ghost a caress over her skin.

There was only one thing she could say then. She might regret it later, or not. She sucked in a breath. “Show me."

 

*purrs* *MELTS!* SQUEEE! Your K/J - is amazingly nummy! Whew, that is one dude I will miss from Legends, although I'll miss Jag too it's the green-eyed ones that send me. Yup, definitely great advice about not wasting time because you literally don't know how much there'll be.

 

Thanks! I have had years to, ah, perfect the K/J 'ship. TBH, I see a lot of Kyp in Poe. Minus, you know, the complexes and the lightsaber.

 

Interesting cross-over! I like how Jaina tries to understand her cousin. It must be very hard to see this universe play out, especially with Leia not knowing her at all.

 

Oh, yeah. Her mom not knowing her is hard.

 

Whoohoo have I missed your Kyp/Jaina fics

I can't wait to see how this relationship turns out. Hopefully for good

 

Oh, I have no inclination to be cruel to these two. Yet.

 

better not be

 

Yet? Oh well if it's temporary and leads to more mush,

 

This is ME we're talking about. Of course everything will involve mush!

 

--Chapter Four--

It was dark when Jaina woke, half-sprawled over Kyp on the narrow cot, between him and the wall. He must have turned the light off after she fell asleep. With her cheek pressed to his bare chest, she grinned stupidly to herself.

She could hear the bustle of a base just waking up, a familiar but long-absent background noise. Kyp, still asleep, snored softly, one arm behind his head, the other around her. Jaina closed her eyes and listened to the thump of his heart under her ear.

It didn't surprise her that, after this long, things had happened so quickly. Sixteen years of repressed sexual tension was an enormous amount of explosive material, and if Kyp Durron was good at anything, it was blowing things up.

She snickered to herself and wrapped her arm tighter around him. It had been a long time since she'd felt happy, but she did now. The question was, what now? She knew how Kyp felt, but how did she feel about this?

There had been a crossroads once, a fork in the road where she'd had to choose between two men. Both had a devastating effect on her, and while she didn't precisely regret picking Jag at the time, part of her had always wondered if she'd made the right choice.

With Jag firmly in her past, and Kyp here with her, there was really only one way forward. And after the night she'd just had, there was no way she could walk away from him. Did she love him? Part of her always had, Jaina knew. But everything had been so difficult recently, she hadn't had time to sort out anything.

Kyp shifted in his sleep and his hand moved to her shoulder, fingers petting her skin. Jag had never done that sort of thing, retreating into himself even in slumber. Jaina idly drew a little heart with her fingertip on Kyp's chest and sighed.

If she wasn't completely in love with him yet, she would be soon.

----------

The growling of Kyp's stomach woke him. He opened his eyes to a dark room, an unfamiliar weight sprawled across his chest. For a moment, he had a flashback to Thelia, the woman he'd dated for several years. But it wasn't her.

"We missed dinner," Jaina said into his shoulder.

His heart swelled and he struggled to keep the emotion from spilling out, but he didn't lock it down fast enough. His bond with Jaina was still open from the night before, until he instinctively tried to close it off, to keep her from sensing his thoughts out of habit.

"Don't do that," she said.

"Do what?"

"Shut me out. You don't have to hide anymore." She pressed a kiss to his chest. "Please don't shut me out."

Kyp sighed and let her in, telling her without words how much waking beside her meant to him. He couldn't find the words, but he didn't need to. Jaina splayed her fingers over his chest and said, "I'm not going away, Kyp."

"I was afraid you'd change your mind this morning," he confessed.

"I made my choice last night."

He caught her hand in his. Her hand was small, almost delicate, but her fingers were rough with calluses from years of working on mechanical things.

"Lights," Jaina said, and the overhead bar light snapped on. Kyp blinked in the sudden illumination.

She sat up, her hair a charming, disheveled mess, and swung her legs over his. "Looks like you get to do the walk of shame today, Durron," she said with a laugh.

He grinned and shook his head in amusement. "I've got a feeling Dameron is gonna let me have it."

"Probably. He seems the type." Jaina dragged her fingers through her hair to tame some of the locks. "I was never interested, you know. I was flirting with him to provoke you."

Kyp paused in stretching. "Why?"

"Well, I didn't expect this , but because I was confused and feeling contrary, and... I don't know."

"Confused about what?"

She shrugged. " Our flirting. The way you make me feel. I've never really been sure what to do about it, until yesterday. Sixteen years is a long time to date someone, while being attracted to someone else."

Kyp scratched his fingers over his scalp and yawned. "You never let on."

"On purpose ."

Jaina got out of bed, which wasn't an easy task since she had to climb over him, and picked up his clothes. "I wonder if they have fast laundry units?"

"No idea, but I'll have a look." Kyp stood and took the bundle from her. Tucking it under his arm, he wrapped an arm around her to pull her close. "By the way... Good morning."

Jaina smiled, clearly self-conscious in a way she hadn't been before, and said, "Same to you."

She lightly touched the tattoo on his left bicep, a black circle with what looked like black flames emerging from either side. Kyp looked down as her fingers grazed over it. He knew she'd noticed it over the years, but she'd never asked.

She did now. “What is this?”

“Oh. I got that when I was sixteen. It's… A Sith tattoo.”

Jaina raised a brow. “And you haven't removed it?”

He shrugged. “I wanted the reminder.”

She covered it with her palm. “I don't hold it against you,” she whispered. “And I never will.”

He placed his hand over hers. “I know. I keep it to remind me how far I fell, and how far I've come since. Plus, it helped when I was undercover once trying to hunt down Black Sun operatives years ago. They just assumed that's what it meant.”

“When were you after Black Sun?”

“You were fifteen or sixteen. It was during that mess with Gallandro.”

Jaina made a face. “Oh, her.”

“That was how I got started with my Dozen and chasing smugglers, actually.” Kyp pulled his shirt on, hiding the tattoo and his muscles. He didn't miss the way she sighed in pretend disappointment.

He kissed her softly, then let her go. "Okay, I'll head out first. Meet you for breakfast?"

"Sure."

----------

Kyp left her to get ready for the day. She sat for a while on the bed, not thinking of anything in particular.

She picked up her commlink, pulled up the frequency for her mother. But there was no way to reach her parents. Did they know yet that she and Kyp had never reached Bakura? They should have been there four days before, should have located Malinza Thanas and relayed a message to Luke.

Sighing, Jaina put the commlink back in her jacket pocket and gathered what she was wearing for the day. The rest went back into her bag. They would likely be leaving the base later, the Resistance moving to their next location, and the Jedi... What? Would they go back to the place they'd come through the rift?

That was what she wanted to do, though from her talks with Kyp, neither of them had much hope in it.
There was a small laundry unit in the barracks refresher room, and Jaina stuffed both clothing and bedding in it before hopping in the shower. She was drying her hair, wrapped in a large, fuzzy towel, when Leia's blonde assistant and another woman came in.

"Hi," the blonde said brightly. "You're Jedi Solo, right?"

"That's me," Jaina said. "Jaina Solo."

"I'm Lieutenant Kaydel Connix," the blonde said, then gestured to the woman with her. "This is Jessika Pava."

"Nice to meet you," that one added. "Call me Jess, or Testor."

Jaina finished wringing out her hair. "Will do. I'll be out of your way in a second."

"Oh, no," Kaydel said. "General Organa sent me to find you. She said she was hoping to talk to you in Command when you're ready."

"Oh, alright. Thanks."

Jess peeled off to use one of the stalls. Jaina stepped behind a changing curtain with her freshly-laundered clothes. Kaydel spoke to her through it.

"I have to say, even if Snap is being obnoxious, the rest of us are excited that there are some Jedi around. I've never met a Jedi before."

Jaina pulled her--Kyp's--shirt on and tucked it into her pants. Then she stuck her head back through the curtain. "Not even Luke Skywalker?"

Kaydel shook her head. "No. He disappeared long before I joined the Resistance. I've only been here two years. Do you know him?"

Jaina hesitated before answering. "Yes" would be a lie, but so would "no".

"Quit harassing her, Kay," Jess said from her stall. "You want to know about Luke Skywalker, talk to the general."

The young officer looked chagrined. Jaina smiled faintly and said, "Can anyone really say they know Luke Skywalker? It's been a long time, anyway. Can't really say I know him now."

She pushed the curtain back and sat on the bench that ran the length of the area, to pull on socks and boots. The lieutenant seemed fascinated with her every move.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked Kaydel finally.

"Oh... I was just wondering... I saw you talking to Commander Dameron yesterday..."

Jaina recognized the tone, held in a smile, and said, "About my ship and my military career. Jedi Master Durron and I are... a couple."

And wasn't that a strange thing to say?

Finally, she strapped on her belt, with blaster and lightsaber. Jess came out of her stall, saw the lightsaber, and asked, "This is a stupid question, but can we see the lightsaber?"

Jaina laughed. "I guess you haven't seen one before."

She pulled the weapon from her belt and, pointing straight up, turned it on with the familiar, surprisingly comforting snap-hiss. Her weapon was purple, which she supposed appropriate: neither Sith red or typical Jedi blue, nor her uncle's vivid green like new plant growth. Kyp's weapon was nearly the same color, just a slightly more red, which was also appropriate. He was once a Sith, and she herself had gone dark for a time.

Ironic that Kyp, known across their galaxy as the Monster of Carida, had been her salvation.

"That is really wizard," Jess said. "Why do I have the urge to touch it?"

Jaina turned the lightsaber off and clipped it back on her belt. "I wouldn't. You'd lose your fingers."

Message delivered, the two women left Jaina to finish getting ready. She combed her hair and braided a section of it, drawing it across the top to hold the rest of her hair back and out of her face, securing it with a pin she kept a small collection of in her flight bag.

She paused in the doorway of the “cafeteria”, her heart fluttering at the sight of Kyp. He was seated at a table, with two trays and two mugs of caf, waiting for her. It was clear why he'd got her tray for her: there was a big line and the prepped food was looking a little low. That he'd thought to do it meant a lot.

She studied him as she crossed the room. Their link was still open, so he had to know she was there. But he didn't look up from his datapad. His silver-threaded black curls were damp, leaving water spots on the shoulders of his pale blue shirt, and she reflected that other men might have dyed their hair to cover the grey, but he didn't. When she'd been younger, she'd thought him vain. But if he really were, the grey would have been the first thing to go.

Lines creased the corners of his eyes, and a little across his forehead, the corners of his mouth, age finally catching up with the Jedi. She didn't mind, though, she realized. He was a man, not a boy.
He looked up as she reached the table, and his smile lit the world. “Hi,” he said, and pushed her mug of caf to her. “I hope it's still relatively hot.”

She'd expected awkwardness after the night they'd shared together, but there was none. He was still just Kyp, except now he was her Kyp. The first time she'd slept with Jag, the morning after had been something she still cringed about.

Kyp caught a flicker of the thought and raised a brow. She shook her head, their hands brushing as she took the mug.

“Thanks. I could use this. We've been summoned by the general. She wants- Well, she summoned me specifically, but I don't intend to hold any meetings without you.” She looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Partner.”

“Guess we finally figured out what that means,” was all he said.

They ate in silence, and quickly, neither wanting to keep Leia waiting. Kyp hadn't closed their bond, just scaled it back a little so it wasn't distracting. Jaina had never thought being linked to someone else so intimately would be comfortable, but it was.

Kyp's hand brushed hers, but he didn't openly take it. She knew he wanted to. She sent him a little nudge through the Force, and he smiled.

Leia was waiting in the command center, dressed simply in a jumpsuit and vest, with no visible rank insignia. She looked up when they entered. “Thank you for coming so quickly. As you can see, we’re in the middle of removing the equipment, so I don't have much time.”

“You wanted to see us?” Jaina put the tiniest emphasis on “us”, telling Leia that she and Kyp were a package deal.

Of course, Kyp's body language could have told the general that, his hand hovering at the small of Jaina's back, with next to no personal space between them. It would be absolutely no secret that Kyp had spent the night in Jaina's quarters.

“Yes. I know that your first priority will be attempting to return home, but I'm making a formal request, that if you're unable to do so, would you join the Resistance and help us fight the First Order? We're desperately in need of help.”

The two Jedi were of one mind in it, literally. There was no discussion needed.

“Of course,” Jaina said. “We can hardly sit back and do nothing.”

The relief on Leia's face was immense. “Thank you.”

A Sullustan with a hoversled came in and said something to the general. Threepio butted in.
“We can't disconnect the command computer yet, the Jedi haven't seen the computer simulation!”

Oh. Right.

Jaina gestured. “Let's see it, then, Goldenrod.”

Leia looked sharply at Jaina, but she didn't say anything to her. Instead, she said, “Yes, please, Threepio. I'd like to see this.”

Going from the data gathered by the two astromechs from their sensors and those of the two StealthXs, Threepio had programmed a reconstruction of the rift. The simulation was in little green dots, and did nothing to convey the sheer terror Jaina had felt in the moment.

It spiralled open into a huge funnel, sucked in the two tiny dots that represented the X-Wings, then folded in on itself. The data cut out before it completely collapsed.

They watched the simulation a few times, unable to see in the data any trigger. Frustrated, Jaina leaned her hands on the edge of the big, round projector and sighed.

“What was that, a wormhole?”

They looked up as Poe Dameron entered. He was dressed in his red-orange flightsuit. Gesturing to the display, he said, “Run it again.”

“Certainly, Commander,” Threepio said primly.

Poe's dark eyes watched the simulation. Silently, he gestured for it again. And a third time. “Whole thing took less than thirty seconds,” he said. “That's an awfully narrow window. Talk about wrong place, wrong time.”

“No kidding,” Kyp murmured.

Threepio downloaded the data for both readings and simulation onto a portable drive, which Jaina took. The Sullustan asked if he could begin moving the console.

Techs quickly unplugged the huge computer and began dismantling it. The most awkward piece was the projector dish in the middle, attached to a load of electronics underneath. It weighed at least four hundred pounds.

“We haven't had to move this thing in some time,” Leia commented. “We might need a few droids-”

Kyp gestured and the projector dish lifted into the air, floated over to the hoversled, and settled without a single wobble.

“Now you're just showing off,” Jaina commented.

He smirked. A moment later, everything in the room, excluding the people, rose a foot in the air. “No,” he said, “that was showing off.”

Jaina shouldn't have been surprised. She'd known since she was nineteen that he could move black holes. He'd been thirty-three at the time. At nearly fifty, he did more to hold himself in check, needing only to release the power instead of summoning it.

But still. The reminder that her lover was the most powerful telekinetic she'd ever met was impressive.

Their kids were going to be insanely gifted.

She blinked at the thought, and it apparently reached Kyp, because he abruptly dropped everything, catching it all just before it crashed down. He turned wide green eyes to her, but she studiously ignored him, flustered by her train of thought.

“Smooth,” Poe drawled.

Mentally, Jaina kicked herself. Less than twenty-four hours together, and she was already considering kids? She was so kriffing vaped.

"If we could dial the testosterone down a little," Leia said mildly. "As I said, we're moving the base. But I'm guessing you want to go back to where Starkiller Base was and have a look."

"Yes," Jaina said. "That was our hope."

“If you don't mind, General,” Poe said, “I'd like to go with these two and have a look myself.”

“Making sure we don't turn out to be with the First Order after all?” Kyp asked.

“Nah. I believe you if the general does. I'm just curious myself.”

Leia obviously struggled not to roll her eyes. “Go. But meet us at the next hideout.”

“Where to?” Poe asked.

“Yavin,” Leia said. She turned to Jaina. “You know it?”

“Know it? I used to live there. The academy was there.” Jaina's gaze cut to Kyp. “It's probably different now.”

Unspoken was that if Luke had never had his Jedi praxeum on Yavin in this reality, there was a very real possibility that Exar Kun’s spirit still lurked on the jungle moon.

He gave her a tight nod. If they had to, they'd deal with him. Kyp wasn't an impressionable sixteen-year-old novice anymore. He was a Jedi Master, had been a Jedi for more years than Luke had even been alive at the time.

“Maybe different, I dunno. My dad still lives there,” Poe said.

Kyp and Jaina exchanged looks.

“What?” Poe asked.

“Nothing,” Kyp said. “Probably nothing.”

----------

Rowdy trundled along after Jaina on the way to her StealthX, beeping and booping along the way. She only half-listened; though she understood binary, she was too distracted to pay attention to Rowdy's complaints of how prissy Threepio was.

After she'd lifted the droid into his space in the X-Wing, Jaina she climbed the ladder up to the cockpit, which Rowdy opened for her. She put her flight bag behind the seat, then picked her helmet up off the seat and rubbed a gloved hand over the black finish. It was dark, like the fighter, to prevent reflected light from giving away her X-Wing’s position. Small lettering on the left side said “Solo”. The right side had a little red emblem of the Jedi Order.

Inside the helmet, she'd tucked a plast-laminated picture, which she'd carried with her since she was sixteen. It depicted her family the last time the five of them had been together before the Vong war started: Han and Leia, the fourteen-year-old Anakin, and Jaina and her twin, Jacen. Her brothers were gone now, both of them. And if she were stuck here, in this strange reality, so were her parents.
She rubbed a thumb over her brothers’ images, Jacen holding two fingers up behind Anakin's head, both grinning broadly.

“You okay?” Kyp asked, from the foot of her ladder.

Jaina tucked the photograph back into her helmet. “Yeah.”

He reached up, lightly touched her leg just above the top of her boot. Didn't say anything, just let her know he cared. Then he went to his own StealthX.

As Jaina settled into her seat and put her helmet on, she reflected that Jag hadn't been into any sort of public display of affection. No kisses, no hand holding, barely even a stray touch. The one exception that came to mind was when they'd been at the beach on Mon Cal when she was twenty, around the time she'd nearly died on Bakura. He'd still been reserved, but he'd relaxed a little.

Kyp, on the other hand, had no qualms about it. Obviously. She blushed a little at the memory of that kiss, in front of the whole base. It had been unexpected but wonderful. Jaina didn't like feeling as if she were hiding a relationship. When she'd been with Jag, she'd longed to be open about it. It had been one of their constant sources of contention.

She looked over to where Kyp sat, presumably going through his preflight checks. She had started hers on autopilot while distracted, but everything looked good.

She felt the brush of Kyp's mind against hers, and nudged him back, smiled when he sent her the mental equivalent of a hug.

It was going to be incredibly easy to fall head over heels for him. She'd already lost her footing.

With a sigh, she flipped her comms on. “Saber Lead, all systems go.”

“Saber Two, all in the green,” Kyp said.

“Uh, I'm good to go,” Poe said after a moment.

“Not used to being subordinate, Dameron?” Jaina asked sweetly.

“No, I'm not, Colonel,” he shot back.

She grinned. “For the time being, you're Saber Three, but Kyp and I are pretty cooperative. We won't hold it against you if you forget your place.”

Kyp snorted audibly over the comms. Poe drawled, “Gee, thanks.”

She pulled up on the yoke stick and her StealthX smoothly left the ground. Her fighter had been specially equipped with the mechanism, since she favored it. Kyp's X-Wing had the two-handed wheel grip. He lifted off a fraction of a second after she did, and Poe followed after a handful more.

The comm crackled, Leia's voice coming through. "Saber Lead, this is Command. You are clear for departure. We'll see you at Base."

Jaina clicked over and said, "Acknowledged, Command."

"And may the Force be with you."

Jaina had to swallow hard, remembering the many times her mother had said that to her. She knew it was pretty standard, but still.

Kyp's mind tugged at hers, and she gave him a mental signal that she was okay. He withdrew.

Then she pointed the nose of her X-Wing towards the sky, and stomped on the thruster pedal.

 

Oh, I do love this!!!! The easiness of K/J together and the contrast of her with Jag He being more demonstrative for one thing and so supportive of her emotions. I am happy she and Kyp will be useful no matter when/where they wind up.

 

Kyp's always canonically been more into PDA. In Rebel Dream/Rebel Stand, even though she's just started dating Jag, he hugs her a few times. In Destiny's Way, they're very touchy-feely (though that's remnants of the romance that the author had to cut because of Aaron Allston shoehorning Jag back into the story). So while I don't think he's generally into making out in public, he's definitely more hands-on.

 

Kyp and Jaina forever

It's a shame they forced Jag back in because I suspect that Jaina would've been with Kyp. They would've made a great couple

Love the update and can't wait for more

can you tag me next time you update? please

 

--Chapter Five--

Due to their not knowing if First Order forces were still in the system, they planned an approach on the far side, which required a few jumps extra. During one recalculation, Poe decided to chat.

“So Jaina told me she grew up on Coruscant,” he said. “Must have been swanky. What about you, Durron? Grow up in luxury, too?”

Kyp knew Poe was just making conversation, wasn't trying to be annoying. He shoved down his irritation and said, “Spent my first eight years on Deyer, in the Anoat system. Spent the next eight in Kessel. My parents died there.”

There was a long silence from the Resistance pilot. “Man, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shoot my mouth off.”

“It's fine. You couldn't know.”

Then Poe made a speculative noise. “Deyer, you said? My mom was from Deyer. My dad is, was, her second husband, said the Empire killed her first husband, her kid, while stomping out a little group of protestors. It's what made her join the Rebellion and meet my dad.”

Kyp’s brow furrowed. “That's rough. How old are you, Dameron?”

“Thirty-two. I was born two years before the Battle of Endor. Parents raised me on Yavin. At least until Mom died when I was eight.”

“No kidding? What was her name?”

“Shara Bey.”

It was Kyp's turn to stare at his controls in silence. It was Jaina who broke it.

By laughing.

“Oh, stang,” she giggled over the comm. “This is all kinds of hilarious. I'm sorry, I'm not laughing about your mother, Poe, it's just…”

“What is it?” Poe asked, sounding offended anyway.

Kyp cleared his throat. “My mother's name was Shara.”

Jaina guffawed. “You guys are half-brothers!”

Poe radiated shock through the Force. He didn't say anything; his silence spoke volumes. Given that Deyer's colony had been pretty small, the coincidence was too much.

Kyp snorted. “Goddess, I love you, but please shut up.”

She only laughed harder. “Actually, I think Poe is this universe’s answer to you, Kyp.”

He sighed. “Well, that would explain a lot,” he said.

Poe, who was still clearly shocked by the turn in this conversation, asked, “Explain what?”

“Your Force sensitivity,” Kyp drawled. “How do you think you're the Resistance’s top pilot?”

“... Really?”

“Dead serious. You interested in learning to use it?” Kyp asked.

Excitement replaced the surprise in the other pilot’s voice. “Can I? Of course!”

Jaina clicked over to the private channel. “You want to take him on as apprentice?” she inquired. “Or should I?”

“I will. I'm not sure you have the patience for him.”

“I'm not sure you do,” she retorted. “We could do it as a team.”

He considered that. “That'll work. Master Solo,” he added.

“Luke hadn't given me that title yet.”

“Luke isn't here. I'm the only council member here, and I say you earned it. So did the others, we just hadn't made it official.”

“For what, killing my brother?”

He reached out to her, offering his love and support. He felt her resist for a moment, then felt her relent as she sighed.

Poe, on the open frequency, said, “Guys?”

Kyp clicked back over. “We were discussing who gets to train you.”

“And?”

Jaina said, “We're both going to do it. We’ll see what your strengths are and go from there.”

“What, were you using the Force to discuss this?”

She chuckled. “No. These StealthX fighters, which were made just for the Jedi a few years back, have built-in ship to ship communicators. We usually don't use them, since the comms give us away. These ships are meant to be flown only by Jedi, because we can communicate with the Force.”

“That's really cool. What other gadgets do they have? Why are they called stealth X-Wings, besides being black and invisible in space?”

“They've got cloaking, sort of,” Kyp told him.

“How do fighters that small have cloaking devices?” Poe was incredulous.

“Not exactly cloaking,” Jaina said. “But they have sensor negators, gravitic modulators, photon absorbers, and thermal dissipators.”

“We had to develop a bunch of tech in the war with the Vong,” Kyp added. “When the enemy can't be felt in the Force and their fighters are equipped with weapons that open black holes, you gotta get creative.”

“I don't wanna run into one of those,” Poe said.

“Really don't,” Jaina agreed.

“So if your comms are off, you're invisible?”

“Pretty much,” Kyp said. “They run on TibbanaX, which burns black out the thrusters, if you haven't noticed. Which reminds me, we may have to ground these if we're here too long. Don't know if they have our fuel here.”

“Yeah, that's a potential problem. We could probably retrofit for whatever fuel is available here if we need to, though I'm not sure how backwards, or sideways, compatible parts are going to be. I'll need to take apart the fuel system of one of the T-70s and have a look.”

“What talent don't you have?” Poe asked. “Pilot, Jedi, mechanic.”

“I can't sing,” she said after a moment.

Kyp snickered. “She really can't.”

"Okay, boys," Jaina cut in. "Calculations are up. Transmitting. Jump in three... two... one."

----------

The reversion from hyperspace was a little jerky due to the altered gravitational fields in the system. Jaina hushed Rowdy as she angled her fighter away from the new star, heading towards the old one.

It had never had a chance to go nova, all of its fuel sucked away by the Starkiller Base, leaving it to collapse into a misshapen ball of heavy metals. The immense cold of space had hardened the outside, though Rowdy’s sensors told her that the core of it was still technically molten. It didn't have the energy to explode, and it would likely take centuries, even millennia, for the planet-sized iron ball to cool.

“All I'm reading are residual heat signatures from the old star and the new one,” Poe told them.

“Same here,” Kyp reported. “Nothing like what we picked up before within this system.”

“Long-range reports the same,” Jaina sighed.

Kyp's voice was carefully neutral as he said, “I think this was a one-way trip, Goddess. If the theory holds that this star going out unnaturally opened the rift somehow, we'd need to know the exact time and place of a similar event on our side, given the thirty-second window.”

“There hasn't been an unnatural star death on our side in thirty-two years,” she said in exasperation.

Kyp was quiet for a long moment, and Jaina realized what she'd said.

Sorry, she sent through the Force. Didn't mean it that way.

Most Force communication happened in pictures, impressions. Sometimes, in really strong bonds, short sentences were possible. She hoped Kyp got the gist of what she'd sent, at the very least.

There was a hesitation, then he sent back, I know. True, though.

Aloud, Jaina muttered something that sounded like Chiss. Kyp asked, “Captain Cardboard teach you that one?”

“Kyp,” she said, with a little exasperation.

“Oh, right. Head of State Cardboard, sorry.”

She bit her lip to keep from grinning. It was stupid, and it was intended as an insult towards someone she still cared about, but the Cardboard thing had been running so long, it only made her laugh these days.

"And no," she said, "it was his sister."

"Who's 'Cardboard'?" Poe inquired.

"My ex," Jaina sighed. "Jagged Fel, the current Head of State for the Imperial Remnant back in our reality. Unlike the First Order, we're actually civil with them and they're not..."

"Homicidal control freaks?" the Resistance pilot suggested.

"Not as a whole, but Jag has his moments," Kyp said darkly.

She rolled her eyes. "Control freak, yes. Homicidal, not so much. If we're stuck here, Kyp and I need clothes. We weren't planning on starting over in a new reality with one change each.”

“Well, Coruscant is probably out, they're mostly loyal to the First Order these days,” Poe said. “Yavin has nothing. It's still a colony world full of little ranches.”

“How's Hapes looking?” Jaina asked.

“I don't think I've even heard of Hapes,” Poe confessed. “Where is it?”

“It's a Core world, on the Yavin side,” Kyp put in. “Technically, Hapes is just one planet, but it rules over sixty-two others in nearby systems. In our reality, Jaina is good friends with the Queen Mother.”

Poe was quiet for a moment. “Sixty-three worlds? I'd imagine they have a pretty big fleet.”

“Enormous,” Jaina said. “We could go there, scope things out, see who the present Queen Mother is. I doubt it's Ta’a Chume, she was ancient fifteen years ago.”

“I dunno, that woman is nasty enough to cling to as much power as she can for as long as she can,” Kyp said. “But yeah, I say we have a look, see where their inclinations lie.”

Jaina, who had the coordinates memorized, transmitted them to the other fighters. “Oh, and boys? I'm in charge on this one. Hapes is a matriarchal society. I mean it pretty literally when I say that, to be safe, don't speak unless spoken to.”

“That isn't fair,” Poe said.

“Not all things in life are,” Kyp pointed out. “We'll follow your lead, Goddess.”

“I'm not saying it to be bossy, I'm saying that men are literally possessions on Hapes. You'll need to be respectful and obedient, always walk behind me at least a pace, and act as my servants. If they're loyal to the First Order, one wrong move could get us killed.”

Finally, Poe said, “Gee, this sounds like so much fun!”

Kyp clicked over to the private channel. “You want to see if Tenel Ka exists here.”

“That and I want some decent food.”

----------

Getting to Hapes inconspicuously wasn't exactly easy while flying X-Wings, but as luck would have it, there was a small contingent of Republic ships in orbit when they reached their destination.

"Probably here to make sure the ambassador or senator is home safe," Poe said. "And wasn't on Hosnian Prime when it was destroyed."

"That or recruiting a new one," Kyp said darkly. "'Hey, sorry your senator got blown up. Wanna give us a new one?'"

Poe let out a snort-laugh noise Jaina had heard Kyp make before, usually when she said something really scandalous and he couldn’t believe it had come out of her mouth.

"Okay, let's try to stay out of the way as much as we can," she said.

They landed their ships near a New Republic transport at a general airfield, so that they would look like they were with them. Jaina had yet to get a clear answer on why there even was a Resistance, since the First Order was clearly an enemy of the New Republic. But then, she'd been involved in a few secret groups in her years, most notably during the Yuuzhan Vong war, when the New Republic's public stance had been one of neutrality or attempted reconciliation with the invaders that were systematically destroying them.

As she'd told them to, the men stayed a few steps behind her, Kyp being closer as her "personal servant". Jaina carried nothing, which actually bothered her a little. She was used to pulling her own weight. But Kyp didn't mind, just had her flightbag over his shoulder.

“I actually haven't been back to Hapes since Allana was born,” Jaina mused as they walked along a wide promenade lined with tall buildings. Those buildings had shops along the lower levels and residences on the higher ones. “Well, after that, since I had to deal with the Killik thing first.”

Kyp snorted. “That whole arm-rubbing thing was unnerving, but also kind of amusing.”

“Arm-rubbing?” Poe asked.

Jaina made a face. “To make a very long story short, some friends and I were brainwashed into joining this faction of bug people, who greeted each other by rubbing arms.” She demonstrated with Kyp. “It took a good year to break myself of the habit.”

“... And who is Allana?”

“My friend Tenel Ka’s daughter. My niece, actually.”

Kyp started, eyes going wide. Jaina snickered. “You didn't know that?” she asked.

“No, I actually didn't.”

“Yeah, she was Jacen's. I knew immediately, and Mom and Dad didn't try to keep it from me. I mean, she kinda feels like Jacen, so...”

She stopped suddenly. “Ooh. Um. You go on and find a place to stay. I need to look at something.”

Kyp glanced the way she'd been looking, but couldn't see what had caught her attention. “You sure we should be splitting up?”

“It'll just be a few minutes. And I think there's a hotel the next block over.” Jaina waved him and Poe away. “I'll catch up.”

“If you're sure…”

The two men reluctantly left, and Jaina hurried into the shop they'd just passed. A length of red shimmersilk had caught her eye, and her face split in a grin when she saw the dress.

Then her face fell. It was perfect, but she had no way to pay for it. She lightly touched the skirt, expression wistful.

“You're thinking of buying that for Kyp, huh?”

At Poe's voice, she turned. “It's… There's a long story behind it, but I once had one nearly identical to this. This is so stupid. I've got money and credits, but I'm pretty sure they won't work here.”

Poe checked out the price of the dress, and let out a low whistle. “Let me see the money. The credits might not work, but most places take hard cash.”

Jaina pulled out the wallet she kept in an inner pocket of her jacket and opened it. She had a mix of notes crammed in it, from various cultures. Poe took the stack and went through it.

“Valid, valid, worthless, iffy, valid, also worthless… Tell you what. I've got pay I haven't used in ages, why don't you let me help you out with this, and you can pay me back when you start getting money from the general?”

Jaina frowned. “Why would you do that?”

“‘Cause I'm a nice guy. Besides, I am a guy and I'm curious about how you look in the dress, too.”

She pretended to punch him in the arm.

Poe laughed. “Really, though, I know you and Kyp have it tough right now. If I can help you have a bit of home, I'm willing to do that.”

“How are you still single, Dameron?” she asked.

“Haven't met the right girl yet. Kinda difficult, being in the Resistance.”

“I know how that is.”

He inclined his head. “Go try it on. If it doesn't fit, this whole thing is moot.”

----------

“There's a ball tonight at the palace,” Jaina said as she and Poe met up with Kyp. “I figure you and I can get dressed up and sneak in, do a little spying.”

“Sounds entertaining,” he commented. “What's in the bag?”

“Clothes. You'll need to get something to wear, too. Do you carry much in the way of money, not credits?”

“Usually. You never know what you might need them.”

Poe spoke up. “We'll go while you get dressed up.”

“That works,” Kyp said amiably. “I found a hotel with a suite vacancy. We’re on level eight, room 803.”

----------

The room Kyp had booked--using Hapan credits, though why he had so many, Jaina didn't know--was really nice. It was a two bedroom suite, with a sitting room in the middle. The bedroom she and Kyp had featured a gigantic bed, an enormous tub in the 'fresher, and a multi-head sonic shower.

"Sometimes," Jaina said, as she looked around, "I forget how luxurious Hapes is."

Poe dragged Kyp out of their suite so Jaina could get ready. They'd invited him to the ball, but he said he didn't want to be in the way. “Besides, I can't remember the last time I got to sleep in a real bed and eat food other than rations on the base. This is a vacation. I'm gonna order room service and watch some holovids.”

Jaina was not a fussy person inclined towards fashion and fancy things. She knew how to style her hair and do her makeup because her position as the daughter of the Chief of State had pretty much required her to, but unless she had some function to attend, she rarely bothered.

But she wanted to make herself up tonight, to go with the dress. The dress demanded more than lip balm and a braid.

She was just finishing her hair when she heard the men return. Jaina pushed the last hairpin into place and checked her makeup in the mirror. Smokey eyes and a bold red lip were the extent of it, but the look was sultry. With curls tumbling around her face and shoulders, she felt… Pretty. Sexy, even. More confident in this than she had at nineteen.

Smiling to herself, Jaina slipped on the ridiculous shoes that the shop girl had insisted she purchase with the dress. They added quite a bit to her petite height, but were difficult to walk in.

“We run into trouble,” she muttered, “and I'm ditching these things.”

There was a knock on the door. “Jay?” came Kyp's voice through it.

“Just a minute!”

She stuffed her datapad, commlink, and lightsaber into the oversized red clutch and closed it. Taking a steadying breath, she went to the door and opened it.

Kyp had her back to her, dressed in black pants tucked into high black boots, and a nearly-black, dark red shirt. He and Poe were deep in conversation.

Poe's eyes widened and he motioned to Kyp. The older man turned. The moment he saw her, his green eyes turned dark.

“You like it?” Jaina asked.

One corner of his mouth lifted. "You sure you can channel the Force in that?" he asked, and Jaina knew he'd recognized it, knew its significance.

"I think I can manage," she drawled. "Now, how are we getting into this thing?"

 

Nyota's Heart, Falcon, JadeLotus, darth_treyvah, new chapter is up!