A Bittersweet Homecoming/Part 3

"Your Majesty?"

Jedossen e Solo stirred, peeling his cheek off the palm of his hand and looking down the length of his speeder toward the driver. "I'm sorry, say again?"

"I said, we're here, Your Majesty."

A glance through the speeder's tinted viewports showed they had arrived indeed. Jedossen had lost track of the ride somewhere around the edges of Capitol Square. Clearing his throat, he said, "Right. Well, let's—"

He reached for the handle of the door, but two of his CorSec Protective Service agents beat him to it, and a third tugged him back into his seat. "Stand by, sir."

Little more than a week ago, Jedossen would have rolled his eyes. I'm pretty sure Master Dumiel would know if someone was waiting outside to murder me, he might have said. But that was before—before his niece and nephew had been assassinated under the protection of three Jedi, one of them a Jedi Master; before he had had to look into his sister's eyes, knowing he had sent her children to their deaths; and before he had watched the burden slowly settle on Corsica's shoulders, one weight after another, and seen in her an agonizing reflection of his younger self. Jedossen no longer lived in the blissful days before, and so he sat back and said nothing as the plainclothes CSPS agents stepped out to sweep the square with detection equipment and release a couple probe droids.

After a few minutes, one of them slapped the side of the speeder twice with her palm, and the agent who had remained in the speeder said, "After you, sir."

Jedossen looked no more like a king than his bodyguards did like CorSec agents—had he shaved his beard and mustache, he might have gotten hired onto a freighter at the spaceport and never drawn a second glance—and the light drizzle probably made them all harder to see, but he jogged toward the door anyway; it only took one holojournalist or probot to capture his image and set tongues wagging. The doors of the Green Jedi Enclave were sealed against the night, but Jedossen, along with Diktat Daikros and Senator Rose, had been given his own access codes.

The sweeping corridors and soaring ceilings of the Enclave made Castel Solo look like a tool shed, and the entrance hall was no different, but this late at night, only a droid stood in the hall. Bowing, GJ-405 said, "Good evening, Your Majesty! Welcome back."

"Thanks, JeeJay."

Could a droid start? It was the closest term Jedossen could think of for the movement. "I'm flattered you remember me, Your Majesty! Master Dumiel has already retired, but I'm sure he'll be delighted to receive you…"

"That's all right, JeeJay," Jedossen said, raising a hand as the droid toddled toward the wall comm. "I'm not here to see Master Dumiel."

"Oh, but he would insist—"

"No, JeeJay." Jedossen didn't raise his voice—he rarely did—but the droid stopped anyway.

"I…as your wish, Your Majesty. How may I serve you, then?"

"I'll be all right, I know where I'm going. But would you mind putting my guards somewhere comfortable while they wait for me?"

"Of course, Your Majesty."

"Your Majesty," started Sergeant Crine Brask, "a couple of us should—"

"No. Wait here."

With Maik Todden and Garee Doid among the dead on Commenor, Sergeant Brask was the new ranking NCO in Jedossen's CSPS corps, and clearly not eager for a repeat. "Sir…"

"JeeJay, apart from us, who's in the Enclave?" asked Jedossen.

"Masters Dumiel, Zylorus, and Arodion, and Jedi Knights Cas-Valo and Deckell, Your Majesty."

Jedossen gave Sergeant Brask a look. "If one of the Green Jedi—or Master Arodion—is planning to assassinate me, we can't trust anybody at all."

Jedossen thought he knew some of the arguments Sergeant Brask wanted to make, but he hadn't just brought the man along for his rank. Though CSPS and the Jedi usually moved in different circles, Crine Brask was among the most outspoken supporters of the Corellian system's various Jedi in general and Tyson Dumiel's move to restore the Green Jedi in particular. As competing beliefs warred on Sergeant Brask's face, Jedossen didn't interrupt the fight, and he was rewarded when the sergeant sighed. "Yes sir. Comm if you need us."

"I will. But this may not be a short visit, so don't come prowling unless I call."

The advantage to voicing sentiments like that around CSPS, rather than Jedi, was that even the best-trained CSPS agents couldn't hear the way Jedossen's heart rate picked up a bit; all they could measure was his expression and posture, and, as the head of state and living symbol of Corellia to his people and the galaxy at large, Jedossen e Solo had long since learned to govern those. Sergeant Brask nodded, and JeeJay gestured toward what Jedossen knew to be a sitting room. "If you'd like to come this way, gentlebeings…"

Jedossen turned the opposite direction, but JeeJay called, "Your Majesty?"

"Yes?"

"Would it be impertinent of me to express my condolences on the loss of your niece and nephew?"

Jedossen's heart slid up into his throat; he swallowed it back down before he spoke. "No. No, I appreciate it, JeeJay."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Marble and plasteel carried sound and made stealth impossible, and Jedossen found himself hurrying from one carpeted patch to another to mute the squeak of his rain-slicked boots and the splatter of water droplets dribbling off his coat. In the years since Tyson had taken up residence in the Enclave, he had usually visited Jedossen at Castel Solo, and even when Jedossen had come to the Enclave instead, their conversations had only ranged over half a dozen rooms. But professional conversations with Tyson Dumiel were not Jedossen's only experience with the Green Jedi Enclave, and he found old memories stirring as he walked the silent halls—wistful, bittersweet remembrances of simpler times when they had both been far younger…before a crown and a Council seat had built a wall of duty between them…

After a few wrong turns and returning to a central hub more than once—Jedossen didn't know which Jedi was depicted in the statue at the hub, but being ten meters tall made it easy to recognize—he found himself facing a door that touched his heart's memory. His fingertips traced the images etched on the plasteel, but when his hand drifted toward the access plate, he hesitated. Coming here had seemed the right choice, the only thing left to him…but what if his presence was unwelcome, or even made things worse? What if she didn't—

The door opened. No one stood on the other side, and Jedossen recoiled, but he had seen too many Jedi tricks at work to be daunted for long, and he stepped inside. The ceiling was double height, but the room was so sparsely furnished it might have been an observation deck for the view of the sea outside. A KeyBed dominated one rounded corner of the curved room, while little fish swam through a series of interconnected, floor-to-ceiling aquarium columns around the room; all was as it had been decades before, and Jedossen wondered idly if historical preservationists or maintenance droids fed and replaced the fish. The greens here were seaweed and sea foam, woven through the carpets and the long drapes, but Jedossen knew that only from memory; only the aquarium lights illuminated the room as the door sealed, and Jedossen saw the gleam of Coronet City's nighttime lights on the rain-dappled Jeweled Sea.

But beautiful as Corellia's capital and its environs might be, they had not brought Jedossen to the ancient Jedi stronghold. "I thought I'd find you here."

Her back to him, Nawsa Arodion stood at the window, forehead pressed to the glass as she gazed down on the city. "You know me well. Still."

"Always." When she said nothing else, Jedossen said, "I hoped I'd find you here."

Was it a trick of the dim, or did she stiffen? What did that mean? It had been many long years since last they had stood in this room together, but somehow the weight of those years melted away for him. Did they not for her?

Nawsa sighed. "Your thoughts are troubled, Your Majesty."

That she called him that didn't bode well either, but though he had no Force gifts of his own to turn the tables, Jedossen didn't need them; he had only to listen to her voice. "Yours too, Nawsa."

Stepping deeper into the room, Jedossen saw the silhouette of her hand squeeze tight as she asked, "Shouldn't you be with your family?"

"I have been, all day. We went back to Castel Solo after the burial…"

All that royal bearing and head-of-state manner didn't mean a thing with Nawsa; the hurt slipped right through into his voice. She bowed her head. "I didn't belong there."

"You're family." When she said nothing, Jedossen pressed, "Galera loved you—"

"Please," she whispered. "Jed, please don't."

He didn't push, but he stepped closer; he could almost reach out and touch her now. "You would've been welcome, Nawsa. Always."

It took her a moment to reply. "You went back to Castel Solo…?"

"And we spent the day together," Jedossen picked up, taking the hint. "I loved Galera and Satir, but…it was different this time, Nawsa."

One traitor hand reached for her, but Jedossen drew it back. Taking a spot at the window too, he laid both hands on the transparisteel, but he was no longer seeing the waves. "When it was Jacen, and his kids, and Rubi, then Arewsa and I were the same—our siblings, our nephews. But Satir and Galera were her children, and Boriga's.  Corsica's…Corsica's brother and sister…and I'm just…"

Nawsa turned to him, half-raising a hand that she stopped before she could touch him. "What is it, Jed? What else?"

Jedossen shook his head. "Looking at Corsica…Force save me, it was like looking at me—like opening a window into the past. Thinking you're just the periphery, that you can help out without ever being the center of attention, that you can chart your own course, plan your own future…be with the people you love…"

He glanced at her in his peripheral vision. "And then in the blink of an eye, in one terrible day, I went from being a spare for the spare to being the next in line to be king. And as much as it daunted me to go through it, it was ten times worse watching it happen to Corsica—watching it hit her, piece by piece.  At least I was a grown man—a young man, but still an adult.  Corsica's only fourteen!"

He sighed. "I never asked my mom if it was like this for her, watching me that day."

"Of course you didn't." Nawsa lowered her hand, but stepped closer. "She had to bury two children and two grandchildren. You wouldn't have made it harder for her like that."

"And I didn't want to make it harder for Arewsa and her family. Let them sleep; I don't think any of us have done that too much this last week.  When Corsica's ready, we'll talk."

"You never expected it, but you've been a good king." When Jedossen made a noncommittal noise, Nawsa tilted her head. "What about you? Are you all right?"

I will be, in time, he had told Jendaya Rose when she asked. I'll be all right when the Sith are brought to justice for this crime had been his response to Neran Daikros. I'm doing my best to remember all the good times we got to share with them, he had said to Corsica in the gentlest tone he could muster, trying to give her even some scrap of comfort.

But this was Nawsa.

"No." He heard the thickness in his voice and winced, but her question had finally given him permission to drop the king mask. "No, Nawsa, I'm so entirely not."

Nawsa squeezed her eyes shut. For a moment Jedossen wondered if she could sense the depth of his grief, but she shook her head and said, "I'm so sorry, Jed. I know it's not enough, but—"

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Jedossen started, but he stopped when her eyes opened into the most un-Jedi-like expression of commingled anger and pain he had ever seen.

"I am so sick and tired of people telling me that." Her voice shook. "I briefed the Jedi protecting Satir, but they all lost their lives. I was five meters from Galera, but I didn't stop the knife, and I couldn't heal her.  All the power of the Force, and I failed them.  I…failed you."

Jedossen could stand it no more; he took the last step between them and took her face in his hands. "Why were you there? Why were they there?"

Nawsa's eyes widened. "Jed…"

But there was no stopping now. "Neran wanted someone from the royal family to go, but I could've begged off, and he'd have sent Jendaya or someone else. Hell, I could've gone myself!  But no, I had to send Satir and Galera, I had to give them that much extra preparation.  And I could've let other Republic Knights guard them, or let Neran fight it out with Chancellor Thini about sending Tyson and Ainar, but no, I had to be the clever one, I had to have the solution that made everyone happy…I had to get you dragged into this mess too.  I'm sorry, Nawsa…I…"

He set his forehead against hers, and the hands she had laid on his chest slipped behind his back and clung to his shoulders, and for a long moment the only sound was the soft patter of rain on the window, the muted gurgle of water in the aquariums, and their breathing. How many years had it been since they had been this close—since Jedossen had held her like this, warm in his arms? Too many…

He brushed the tip of her nose with his, and her breath warmed his lips…but at the last moment she turned her cheek and set her head on his shoulder. Jedossen wrapped his arms around her, the last—the only—person he could be totally honest with, who knew and had his whole heart, and they cried together for a long time. He cradled her head with one hand while her fingertips dug into his back.

"Do you remember the last time we were here?" she whispered.

Like it was yesterday. "Of course."

Jedossen imagined a hundred things she might say, how she would tie this moment to that one, until she asked, "Do you still play?"

He glanced over his shoulder at the KeyBed. "Not as often as I'd like—not enough to stay as good as I was."

"Will you play for me?"

If there was a thing Nawsa could ask that Jedossen could refuse her, he had yet to find it. He sat at the old instrument, cracked his knuckles, and began to stitch a melody together. He hesitated at first, taking easy pieces to warm up, but Nawsa stood behind his bench and set her hand on his shoulder, and her touch refilled the strength that had been bled from him over the last few days. After a few moments, the music began to flow, and he felt confident enough to transition into a song he had written long ago, a gift for Corellia's most promising young Knight…

After only four measures, she sat on the bench beside him and set her head on his shoulder. He told himself the rain added melancholy to the old, familiar notes, but in truth, the song had always been bittersweet, even when he had been a spare for a spare, envisioning no more burdensome role than a handful of engagements, a few patronages of worthy causes, and whatever else King Jacen might throw his way. Even then, when he had just been Jed Solo, Nawsa had still been a Knight; perhaps some part of him had always known it would never be.

He found his fingers holding the last few notes, unwilling to let them end. The final chord hung in the air until Nawsa reached onto the keys and took his hand. "Thank you, Jed."

"Anything for you."

They sat together, his head resting against hers. She said, "I'm sorry I didn't offer a eulogy for Galera. I just…I couldn't bear it."

"Arewsa and I didn't either. Family shouldn't have to." He squeezed her hand. "Besides, Neran and Jendaya did them proud."

Nawsa's chuckle limped off her lips, but it was something. "The Diktat made the right choice going first. It would have been cruel the other way around."

Jedossen gave himself permission to laugh too. Neran Daikros had served alongside Galera while she sat on the Corellian Council, and he had obviously taken the time to write and revise his speech, which had come out more stirring than most for a man given to clear, simple language and frank conversation. Jedossen thought the worlds of the man for the care he had shown the task. But Jendaya Rose was something else entirely.

Jendaya could be direct too when it suited her, but Jedossen had listened to some of her speeches when she campaigned for the Senate seat, and even had the chance to hear her in person in the Senate rotunda. Already one of the finest Corellian orators alive, she had outdone herself today; barely a week after Satir's death, still grappling with her own grief at that loss, Corellia's senator had given a eulogy Jedossen was sure would be preserved in Corellian archives for all time. When he had finally managed to blink through his own tears, he had seen dozens of beings—men and women, Corellians and aliens alike—openly weeping, Selonians slashing the air with their tails, Drall clawing the fur on their heads, Humans beating their breasts.

"She's got a gift," Jedossen said. "Neran captures Corellia's spirit, and Tyson can get the blood pumping, but Jendaya…"

He trailed off as Nawsa picked her head up off his shoulder. "What is it?"

"He asked me to stay. Tyson.  He asked me to join the Green Jedi."

Jedossen snorted. "No surprise there. After that business at Allanteen, I'm sure the call to arms doesn't seem quite as urgent."

"…Ainar asked me to stay too."

Jedossen turned on the bench to face her. "Would you?"

She ran her hands over her face. "I can't, you know that…"

"Oh yes? I know you, too.  If it was nothing, you wouldn't have mentioned it to me."

Nawsa arched her neck and stared at the ceiling, the blue aquarium glow lighting her features; middle age and the cares of the Jedi Order had lined her face a little, but she would always be beautiful to Jedossen.

"This war isn't soldiers and ships, Jed—not really. It's a war in the Force, light and dark.  And when the light doesn't stand together, we risk being swallowed up one by one."

Many of the Corellian Defense Force officers with whom Jedossen had once served would have taken great umbrage at that—and, given his patronage of charities for wounded veterans and survivors of the slain, he could see their point—but he took it in stride. Beyond the fact that he had seen demonstrations of Force powers great and subtle alike, he had known so many Jedi, for so long—and Nawsa had philosophized like this as long as he'd known her—that he accepted the reality that the galaxy was suffused with a metaphysical dimension he would never know or fully understand. And though he was not a man given to any particular piety, with Satir and Galera's murders just the latest in an endless string of crimes and abominations, it took little faith to see the Sith not only as agents of evil, but of the true, archetypal Evil.

"But you're already spread out, aren't you? Mali and Master Cazars way up north, plus thousands of Jedi all over the galaxy.  Maybe it would be better for the Jedi to spread out, so the light is everywhere." He studied her expression. "Or does it not work that way, and I'm just little cargo hopper trying to go to lightspeed without a hyperdrive?"

"I…I don't know. If I left, I'd be abandoning everyone in the Order—everyone relying on me, trusting me to lead them.  And who knows how many Jedi I'd pull away?"

"Jedi you'd pull here to protect us, right? To safeguard Corellia—the whole sector.  It works for the Tapani."

"I think that's more a case of it just not failing yet."

"You'd make it work here." Jedossen tried to keep the emotion out of his voice—the longing for Tyson and Ainar to be right, for there to be some way to make this real. "You'd lead them well."

"Grand Master of the Green Jedi." Nawsa's face twisted. "Not a title I ever wanted."

"Well…if you came back…you could have others."

Whether she heard the hesitant setup in his words or just felt his emotions, Jedossen wasn't sure, but conflict and curiosity fought too hard on her face for her to have been oblivious. "Like…?"

"Queen of Corellia?"

The words would not be contained, but the moment they were out, Jedossen felt fatally exposed. He saw, too late, that being here not only recalled the past for him, it made him think too much like the man he had been decades before—young and stronghearted, confident a declaration of love would be enough. Not to hold her—even as a young Knight, Nawsa had been bound for great things across the galaxy—but to anchor her; to make Corellia that sweet homecoming the proverbs promised to her sons and daughters who ventured across the stars.

Nawsa's eyes widened in the dark. "Jed…"

Jedossen e Solo had always felt more restrained than Corellia's other leaders—less commanding than the Diktat; less stirring than Jendaya; and, even as a child, never as boisterous as his brother Jacen, the king who should have been. In a galaxy beset by war, and on a planet often roiled by political give-and-take, it was important that the House of Solo be the people's rock, the steady coordinates to which they could always set their navicomputers to bring them home. But for all that, Jedossen had never lacked a Corellian's courage, and, faced with the best chance he might ever get, he pulled the lever and let the ship carry him where it would.

"It's been a long time since we were last here, Nawsa." He cupped her cheek with one hand. "I'm a bit older and more than a bit grayer, and…well, about a hundred percent more a king, too. But none of that has changed a thing for me—there's never been anyone for me but you."

Her eyes closed into a stricken expression, but she leaned forward until their foreheads touched again. "Jed, you—"

"Pretend for a minute," he whispered. "Pretend you're not a Council Master and I'm not a king. Pretend there's no war, nobody counting on us—pretend there's just you and me.  I love you, Nawsa; I never stopped.  Do you still love me?"

She opened her eyes, and Jedossen saw the Jedi Master there on her face. But her eyes caught fire and she squeezed his hand until it ached, and clasped his other hand to her cheek. "The stars will burn out before I stop loving you."

And she kissed him then, kissed him as if no more than a day had parted them, winding her fingers through his hair to hold him to her. He took her in his arms, and they toppled off the bench to the soft carpet, and as the rain picked up to a storm that drummed the window pane, they shared each other's fire to stay warm…and pretended.

Jedossen blinked back to consciousness in the dark; he had missed whatever signal woke Nawsa, but he had dreamed too long of having her back in his arms not to miss her when she left them. She padded toward the door, clutching her Jedi robe tight around her, and Jedossen propped himself up on his elbows. He could just make out the horizon across the Jeweled Sea; it was still perhaps an hour and a half until dawn.

The door opened, and Jedossen squinted against the light that silhouetted Nawsa. He just heard her voice over the gurgle of the aquariums. "What is it, Ainar?"

"I'm very sorry to disturb you," Ainar Zylorus replied; Nawsa blocked the door—and, with it, the view inside the room—but Ainar's voice carried. "I woke a little early today; all the others are still asleep. But Tyson will probably wake within the hour, and I thought you both deserved the chance to decide whether you want him to find CSPS here when he does."

Jedossen rubbed his face, but reached for his clothes in the dim. By the time Nawsa returned to his side, he was half-dressed.

She slipped her hand through the placket of his shirt before he could button it, and his heart raced when she laid her palm on his chest. "Are you so certain what I'd want?"

He held her hand there a moment and touched her cheek. "I know you always. I know you'll give a decision like this more thought than the time it'll take Tyson to wake up, and I wouldn't rob you of that."

Her nails dug into his chest. "I love you, Jed."

"And I you—until the stars burn out, and beyond."

She slipped his jacket over his shoulders and buckled his gunbelt around his hips, then they shared a kiss that might have been the first of a new life or the last in a bittersweet farewell. He held her a moment more, then stepped out into the Enclave.

Ainar had waited for him, and walked at his side on the way back to the lobby. "Your guards are ready whenever you are, Your Majesty, and I'll wipe the droids' memories."

Though he had no shame about the night, there was some awkwardness in knowing Ainar knew or could guess—or perhaps could even sense—most of it. But a Solo knew how to put his personal feelings on the backburner to do his duty, and it came all the easier because Ainar had done Nawsa the kindness too. "Thank you, Ainar. I appreciate your…discretion."

"I'd be happy if she stayed," Ainar answered. "And I'd be happy for you both. But that should be totally her choice.  Tyson's a good man, but he's hell bent on getting the Green Jedi going again—I agree with him, but if he's going to convince Nawsa, it should be because he's right, not because of…her feelings for you."

Jedossen didn't exactly want emotions taken out of the calculus, but he certainly didn't want Tyson to use them that way. He could find no way of better expressing his gratitude than he already had; it all fell short. Before long, they were back in the entrance hall, and the CSPS guards were formed up and ready. Sergeant Crine Brask sent a couple of them out to check the street while Jedossen shook hands with Ainar.

"Thank you for all the support the Jedi gave the funeral."

"We're proud to serve, Your Majesty, always."

Lowering his voice, Jedossen added, "Whatever she decides…don't let her blame herself, will you? I loved my niece and nephew, but I know Nawsa—anything she could do to protect them, she did."

Ainar nodded. "Hopefully enough of us repeating it will help her believe it. For what it's worth, Your Majesty, I hope she stays…and not just for the Green Jedi."

Jedossen managed a smile. "So do I, Master Jedi. So do I."