Beyond - Legends "lines in the sandy ground", First Line/Last Line challenge response - Jag/Jaina vignette

?lines in the sandy ground?

Genre: Drama, Angst
Rating: PG
Time Frame: FotJ (speculation and/or AU )
Characters: Jaina/Jag

Summary: After seeing a threat in the unknown regions with her Uncle, Jaina Solo comes back to Bastion, once again immured in the threat of something dark.

Notes: Written for the First Line/Last Line challenge. I received quote number 8. Which was: "Do you think they'll come, sir?" from Murder By Death (1976). This fic is purely speculation, and probably waaaaaaay out there, seeing as how I have not done more than crack a cover curiously of a Fate of the Jedi book.

Hey, a girl's got to stand up for some things, and the way Pro!Fic is going is one of them.

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[i]?lines in the sandy ground?
by Mira_Jade[/i]



?Do you think they'll come, sir??

The words of the guard next to Jagged Fel were quietly murmured, lost to the steady sound of the rain bearing down onto the vast city around them.

He didn't answer at first; didn't look up from where he had bowed his head, leaning his upper body against the knee he had propped up on one of the benches lining the edges of the landing-pad. His eyes were closed; silently counting the rain drops around him. The droplets caught in his hair, sliding down his brow, caressing his scar before he wiped the water away from his eyes.

When he looked up at the guard at his side; he knew that his gaze was hard, glazed over by memory and one too many strikes against a suit of armor for it to hold completely against the onslaught.

?I hope so,? he murmured to the other. The young man wearing Imperial red and black (the colors of his own, now) nodded.

While he wished that she would hold up her word on a level that simply wanted her near him in a basic sense of feeling; something inside of him knew that it was more. The knowledge of what she had said . . . what she hadn't said . . . what had trembled in her voice and fluttered through her words when she had contacted him that first time.

She; whom he never thought he would hear from again outside of an official sort of connotation, was the one to make the first move this time, treading across the ghosting ashes of a bridge that she had lit with her own torch.

He had wanted to be angry then, but her messages still rang in his mind . . . Making true anger impossible to hold onto. . .

[i]?Jag . . . what we found out here . . . you . . . I . . . I don't believe it myself.?[/i]

The simple words, left as a text only message against his viewscreen had been the first thing he had heard from her. It took her seven days in the unknown regions to say them; and another seven for him to hear from her again. . .

Against the low press of gray clouds, a flash of silver glinted. He stood straighter, feeling a peace settle over him as he imagined that he could feel her presence come closer; just as she could feel his in a literal sense.

[i]?I don't believe it . . . I can't believe it. And, while I don't have any right to ask for help . . . There's no one else I can really turn to. I need your help . . .?[/i]

At his side, the guards whom had been relaxing slowly straightened into a more formal guard ? worthy of the would-be bride of the Emperor, and a descendant of the Skywalker line. Years ago, he would have smiled at the pomp and circumstance ? knowing that Jaina was a girl happiest with dirt under her fingernails and grease smearing the porcelain skin of her cheeks . . . Years ago the memory of kissing the grime away and threading his hands through tangled tresses would have been a joyous one . . . it wouldn't ache with such a fierce bitterness as it now did.

The silver turned into a streak across the sky; and as the shape drew away from the swirl of grays and blues of the spacelanes above, he recognized the familiar lines of a warrior coming home.

A moment past where the splatter of the rain