Hapes- Jaina's GFFA- Thursday night

[thatwaslucky]

Rey had been nervous about this from the time it was suggested, but now that she was here she felt incredibly out of place. She had a room in a place called The Fountain Palace and that alone made her think they'd all made a mistake in bringing her here. And once it was time for this get-together, Jaina came to get her.

"Is there anything I should be prepared for?" Rey asked on the way there.

"What's the fun in telling you that?" Jaina said with a lopsided smile.

Oh, good.

Noticing Rey looked a little nervous, Jaina told her, "It's fine. Just a few girls hanging out, casually."

"A scavenger, an empress and a queen, casually," Rey pointed out. It was incredibly daunting to be her right now.

"And we're all just normal people," Jaina said. "So see, you'll be fine."

Their destination was an ornate set of doors at the far end of a hallway, where Jaina rapped on the door before opening them. Rey followed her inside, where a regal-looking woman with her hair done up in braids stood from an expensive sofa. She was missing an arm at the elbow, and Rey wondered if she should be concerned at the number of Jedi amputees she kept meeting.

Of course this specific Jedi was a queen of sixty-four planets, and Rey suddenly didn't know what to do. She awkwardly started to bow, or was she supposed to curtsy, she'd never done that in her life, but she was stopped by the redhead saying, "That's not necessary."

Rey straightened.

"Told you, we're just girls hanging out," Jaina told her. "Rey, this is Tenel Ka. Tenel Ka, this is Rey."

"Hello," Rey said, still feeling completely awkward. Her experience with royalty was Leia, who went by "General" now, and a democratically elected pirate boyfriend. This was new.

"Sit," Tenel Ka said, gesturing at another expensive sofa, and Rey took a seat. "Make yourself comfortable."

"That might take a bit," Jaina warned her. "It's probably easier to just get into it."

Tenel Ka looked at Rey, gauged her expression for a moment and probably decided small talk wasn't going to be very helpful, and nodded. "I believe you wanted to speak to us about training."

"Um. Yes," Rey said slowly, not exactly sure where to start. "In my time, there aren't any Jedi left. It's just me, and my training is probably unconventional. So Master Skywalker wanted me to hear how it was for others."

"So you can restart the Order."

"Maybe. I don't know. I'm nowhere near close to being able to do anything like that," Rey admitted. Some days it sounded like the hardest thing in the galaxy.

Tenel Ka gave a curt nod, and said, "Very well. Jaina and I were both trained at the Jedi praxeum on Yavin 4 when we were fourteen years old."

Rey blinked. "I thought they started early."

"In the old Order, sure," Jaina said, getting up to pour a glass for each of them like she owned the place. "And my brothers and I never remembered a time before we were getting some kind of training. When Uncle Luke started the academy he had to recruit adults, older teenagers, people who would have been trained if things had been different. By the time they were ready for us... well, we weren't the oldest but we were among the first of the new generation. Though considering the kinds of things we were doing at fourteen it's probably for the best that we didn't start younger…"

"Training things?" Rey asked.

Jaina walked over to hand her a glass, maybe filled a little higher than standard because this could be a tough conversation and they all deserved it, then gave one to Tenel Ka. That probably went against some royalty rule, but surely the rules were different when you'd known each other most of your lives. "Not really, but we used it as training, sort of."

"Some of us were consistently in trouble," Tenel Ka clarified.

"Hey, you were there too," Jaina pointed out.

"What kind of trouble?" Rey asked, interested.

Jaina waved a hand. "Kidnappings, ending plagues, taking down crime syndicates… Basic stuff like that."

Rey's eyes flicked to Tenel Ka, whose expression had not changed, and realized that that was not a joke. "And I haven't done anything yet."

"You have trauma, that means you've done plenty," Jaina told her with a shrug.

"What has your training been like?" Tenel Ka wondered.

Rey paused, then relaxed when she looked over at Jaina. She had gotten really used to omitting details as needed to not let Anakin's secret out, but… he was here, so. Tenel Ka had to know at least some of it. "I only found out about all of this a couple years ago. Luke- my version of him didn't want to train me, and then, well, he died. So I train with Leia at home, but more often I'm in Fandom, training with Master Skywalker."

"How has that been for you?" Tenel Ka asked carefully. So carefully.

"Good," Rey said immediately. She was very aware of how it had to look to people who knew the situation. Maybe she was a little defensive about it. "He seems pretty determined to make sure I don't repeat his mistakes."

"Good," Jaina said. "Because that has been a problem here."

Rey looked between them both, waiting for elaboration.

"You can speak on this better than I can," Tenel Ka told Jaina.

"I should have brought the bottle over," Jaina sighed.

Rey sipped her drink for the first time, only now thinking of it.

Jaina actually went to get the bottle, topping off all the drinks already before taking a seat again. "A lot of people did a lot of stupid things, out of stupidity, or naivete, or hubris. Restarting the Order has been... "

"A series of fits and starts," Tenel Ka supplied.

Jaina pointed at her and nodded.

"How so?" Rey asked.

"Well, Uncle Luke started his Jedi school with twelve students at a Massassi temple near where a long-dead lord of the Sith was able to influence and possess one of his students into turning to the dark side," Jaina explained. "When he turned back after destroying a planet, not only was he allowed to stay, but I guess it didn't occur to anyone to move the school from there."

Rey gaped at her.

"Yeah, it's fun whenever he tries explaining to people what happened," Jaina said wryly. "He spent a lot of time disagreeing with Uncle Luke, too, encouraging divisions in the Order during one of our wars, which we really didn't need. He came around eventually, but who knows what would have happened if he hadn't had to drag me out of places I shouldn't have been going."

"You-" Rey said, frowning.

"Yeah. I'm an idiot, too. My case was complicated," Jaina said, frowning too. She'd been, if not suicidal, then actively nursing a death wish. And she'd done some pretty terrible stuff, including to the other woman in this room, and had never come clean about it even twentysomething years later. "But really, I of all people should have known how stupid that was and why. And yet."

"But you came back," Rey said.

"People do, sometimes. When they want to, or have a good reason to."

"Some people are so convinced that they're right that there's nothing that can be done," Tenel Ka said seriously.

Rey kind of figured who that was about, though she wasn't aware of the history there. Still, she found herself considering that.

"Don't think about that too hard," Jaina told her.

"I wasn't!" Rey protested.

Jaina turned to Tenel Ka. "She's got her own Jacen, of sorts."

"That is interesting," Tenel Ka said, watching Rey in a way that made her feel a little like she was under a microscope.

"I don't think it's the same thing," Rey told her.

"He's literally Mom and Dad's son," Jaina said.

Rey shook her head. "It's not the same thing."

There were similarities, sure. But what had always stood out to Rey was when Jaina had told her that Jacen's downfall had been that he hadn't considered her at all in the end.

...It was a very different situation there, in Rey's mind.

"I need clarification on that," Tenel Ka said slowly.

"Oh," Jaina said, "in Rey's time I don't exist, but Mom and Dad have a gaslighting emo creep who decided Grandfather had the right idea."

Tenel Ka's expressions the whole time had been very measured, but this was probably the closest she got to shock. Rey just sipped her drink out of discomfort. It was true, but she didn't have to say it.

"And he killed that version of my dad," Jaina added, because she couldn't not, and that was one reason she was going through her drink so fast.

"You do have your own Jacen," Tenel Ka frowned. "What are you doing about him?"

"There's not much I can do," Rey said. "Make sure I can face him when I need to. Otherwise… we're not friends."

Tenel Ka nodded, and said, "I can provide some training resources while you're here."

That had kind of been Jaina's reaction when she'd found out what was going on, and Rey was both heartened by people wanting to help, and felt more pressure because of it."How many people have turned and come back?" she wondered, mostly to take the attention off herself.

There was a long pause, and at first she wondered if they hadn't heard her, and then she realized that they were counting.

"Too many," Jaina decided finally. "I think, in a way, people got lazy about it. Rather than doing the right thing from the outset, I think people got used to the idea that they could just be saved. And that is a problem."

"How would you fix that?" Rey wondered.

It was Tenel Ka who spoke first. "Allow there to be actual consequences. I would prefer any person return to the light, but the victims of their actions face consequences of what's been done, why shouldn't those who commit the acts?"

Jaina nodded solemnly. "What's tough is that I don't know that the current Jedi Order could manage to come up with anything that would help there."

"But you're a Master," Rey pointed out. "You could do something."

"I'm no longer part of the Order," Jaina said. "Neither of us are."

Rey blinked, looking between them. "Why not?"

"I have a consortium to lead, and a daughter to raise," Tenel Ka said matter-of-factly. "I couldn't devote myself completely to the Jedi, so I resigned."

"Because Uncle Luke threw down the gauntlet on that while he was making some really dubious decisions," Jaina said.

"He wasn't the only one," Tenel Ka said wryly.

"Okay, but we're not explaining that to the kid," Jaina said. Did anyone want an explanation of Killiks and arm-rubbing today? No. No they did not. "And I kind of got kicked out of the Order."

"I didn't know they could do that," Rey said slowly, refraining from asking what Jaina did to get kicked out.

Because, of course Jaina would tell her. She would have done that without the alcohol. She was just a lot looser with it. "It was semi-mutual. I didn't plan on the Empress job, but had to do it, and they really didn't like that. So I left the Order but refused to give up my title, because I earned it."

"I can't believe that Luke wouldn't help," Rey said.

"Oh, Luke's retired," Jaina said with a sigh. "Which is a whole other thing."

Neither of the other women spoke, knowing what was coming.

"So," Jaina said, sitting on the edge of her seat as she spoke, "I think we got to the point where things were working well. And he retired. And that's good, he earned that. But, the people who were left on the Council were not at all prepared and they should have been. Mostly I think they like arguing."

It was probably for the best that Sia wasn't here too.

"What are they arguing about?" Rey asked.

"Anything you've got. I'm pretty sure the reason I didn't become a Master sooner was because I was the one who kept getting tired of it and would run out to do whatever needed to be done while they were still fighting over whether we should do anything at all," Jaina said. "So if and when you restart anything, don't let it come to that."

"This does sound exactly like what Luke wanted to avoid," Rey admitted, and she didn't like that.

"Which one?" Jaina asked.

"Which one?" Tenel Ka repeated.

"I think there's three," Jaina said. "No, wait, Fandom Ben's is four. Then ours, hers, and Tiny Uncle Luke."

"Um," Rey said, tilting her head.

"He was my age and now he's younger than me. It fits," Jaina insisted. "There was a Tiny Mom, too."

"I don't like any of this information," Rey decided, since now that meant she had kissed Tiny Luke and now she had to repress it even harder.

"Don't mind her," Tenel Ka told her. "She's had quite a bit to drink already."

Jaina frowned, and looked at her glass before looking at what the others were drinking. "You two haven't?"

"No."

Rey shook her head.

"Okay, get on that," Jaina told them. "There's a lot more to get into."


[This is alllll Fry's fault. NFB, NFI!]