Chapter Text
Prologue
The bedroom was silent, which might have been a less miraculous thing, were it not occupied by two teenage girls – one nineteen, one a rather newly minted sixteen – who were usually vivacious and loud. The door was shut as well, which was an oddity in its own right; Jaina Solo, the eldest, and to whom the silent bedroom belonged, rarely shut her door unless she was sleeping. She was also home much less often than her younger sister and, being of legal age, given to many more freedoms – freedoms which were, she thought grimly, wasted on her, and coveted by the more extroverted and adventurous Noura.
Jaina sat with her back against her bed, her legs folded neatly in front of her, arms crossed across her chest. She watched the jewelry box that sat before her, her head tilted at a slight angle, and her lips pursed in a cool, calculating way that others often joked took her face from a spitting image of her father to a spitting image of her mother.
"Will you stop with that look?" Noura asked, breaking the silence in an annoyed hiss.
She sat across from Jaina, on the opposite side of the ominous jewelry box, her legs drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Her chin rested on her knees, and her lips and nose were scrunched up tensely.
"It's just my face," Jaina retorted. "I'm thinking."
"Well, stop! You look like Mom," Noura snapped.
Jaina glanced up, and found her sister glaring at her, and it was the first time either of them had taken their eyes off the jewelry box. The jewelry box, which Rouge had given Noura such a short time ago, for her sixteenth birthday, and which Noura had opened about three minutes ago and slammed shut again, right before placing it between them.
They stared at each other for a long time, and the silence buzzed and grew louder – haunting them, and looming like a physical dark cloud. Noura's bright blue eyes were skittish and angry, and Jaina's were guarded – she forced herself to remain as calm as possible, because Noura could have gone to someone else. Noura could have tried to handle this by herself and then who-the-fuck-knew what could have happened.
"Stop it," Noura demanded again.
Jaina scowled, which changed her expression, and Noura bit her lip, anxiously scraping it over and over again. Jaina held back a sigh, and tapped a finger on her arm, tilting her head slowly to the other side.
The jewelry box lurked between them.
"You have to open it and look, Noura," Jaina said finally. She lifted her chin. "It's been longer than three minutes."
Noura paused, her lip caught between her teeth. Jaina saw a little speck of blood start to bloom where her incisors dug in, and frowned. Noura gave a violent little shake of her head.
"Or I can leave it closed, and then everything stays in the jewelry box," she muttered.
Jaina raised an eyebrow.
"Haven't you been…mentally preparing yourself to look?" she asked.
Noura winced.
"I've…been," she began faintly. "I've…well, no! I mean, yes, but…only if it's…you know, like," she faltered. "Negative," she whispered.
Jaina laughed, and then hurriedly tried to stifle it. It was just – such a Noura thing to say; only consider the consequence that was desired, the best-case scenario. Don't ever dwell on the worst of the worst. Well, clearly Noura had applied that thinking to the decisions that led up to this moment.
"Okay," Jaina said, taking a deep breath. She held Noura's gaze. "That's likely," she said firmly. "You said you were only two days late. That isn't that abnormal. Some women never end up bleeding on a pinpoint schedule," she pointed out logically.
Noura licked her lip, then tucked her head for a moment, then looked away. She cleared her throat shakily.
"Noura? You said it was only two days."
"I may have been lying," Noura said finally, her face flushing.
Jaina unfolded her arms and placed her palms on the floor on either side of her, her heart rate jumping.
"Well," she started.
"It's, um," Noura said faintly, "been, um, a week…and a half...and a few more days."
Jaina's eyes widened incredulously.
"Noura, are you fucking stupid?" she hissed before she could stop herself – and then she put a hand to her mouth, cringing.
Noura's face swung back to her accusingly.
"You swore you would not be judgmental and – "
"You lied about the chances of it being – "
"It's the same, though, it's the same thing, you promised to…be supportive and, like, help, and…Jainy, please, you're my sister, I didn't want to go to anyone else," she trailed off, biting at her lip again, and Jaina held up her hands.
"Okay," she said softly. "Okay, I'm sorry. It's just that – I assumed you were being your typical overdramatic self," she explained, an undercurrent of panic running through her – for Sith's sake, when Noura had finally managed to get out the words 'I think I might be pregnant,' Jaina had very nearly rolled her eyes. She'd gone along with this assuming Noura was just…being Noura!
She was more than a week late?
Jaina's heart plummeted, rammed into her stomach, and then tumbled with all the rest of her vital organs basically into her feet. She could – she could just feel it, all of a sudden, this was not going to be some hilarious, hijinks story they told at family dinner when Noura was older, this was going to end in something horrible, like Noura begging her to tell their parents -
"You have to look," Jaina said firmly. "Now, Noura," she ordered. She grit her teeth, rubbing her forehead. "Or can't you – can't you tell? I think Mom told me she knew the minute she got pregnant."
"You have to know what you're looking for," Noura retorted. "Yeah, like I was going to go ask her, 'at what point, while you were having sex with Dad, did you notice your life was about to be absolutely fucking ruined' – "
"I wouldn't ask her either," Jaina interrupted hastily. She did not point out that it was unlikely their mother had that specific, devastated reaction to the conception of – well, any of them.
Noura began to chew on her thumbnail, eyeing the box.
"I have desecrated that box," she hissed. "Aunt Ro is bursting into flame somewhere. She can just…sense…sluttery."
"Sluttery?" choked Jaina, snickering.
"Why do you keep laughing?" snapped Noura.
"What do you want me to do, start sobbing?" Jaina asked, exasperated. "I don't cry."
Noura's eyes began to well up, and her lip trembled.
"Will you look?" she asked. "Please, Jaina."
Jaina took a deep breath. She felt bewildered and intimidated, yet she had always taken her position as elder sister very seriously, and despite the magnitude of the situation, she was glad Noura had come to her. Noura so often seemed…dismissive of her, or oddly alienated from everyone other than their father, and it was a relief that some part of her did see their family as the safest place.
She sat forward and picked up the box, holding it gingerly in her lap.
"Do you want me to tell you, or look, and then show you?" she asked calmly.
"Tell me. No. Show me. No. Just…open it, and then give it to me. Don't say anything," Noura said, nodding. "I need…I guess I have to actually find out. Myself. To look," she murmured.
Jaina nodded. She flicked open the neat little clasp on the box and opened it to peer at the two items inside – one was a blood test, that really had been ready in a mere thirty seconds, and the other a more traditional sani strip – Noura had locked them both away immediately, and they had begun their vigil.
Jaina looked at both, noted the indicators, and then wordlessly turned the box around and handed it to Noura. Noura took it, held it in her palms as if it were poisonous, and stared at the two items – which Jaina knew were both showing a very bright, gaudy, neon positive.
Noura looked up at her sister, her bright eyes filling with tears again. They shimmered there, precarious and threatening. She was silent for a moment, frozen, her lips pursed in a picture-perfect representation of helplessness, and then she gave a quick gasp, her eyes widening, and burst into tears.
"They're going to kill me," she whimpered.
She wrenched her hands upwards and flipped the jewelry box onto the floor, spilling its contents. The blood test and the sani strip bounced to her feet. Noura bowed her head and buried her face in her palms.
"Oh, no. No, oh no. No! Jaina, Mom and Dad are going to kill me!" she cried, tucking her body forward into her knees, making herself impossibly small.
Jaina stared at her, biting the inside of her lip, trying to be the calm, wise older sister that Noura obviously thought her to be. She herself tried to process the information, all the while thinking it unimaginable – Noura was little, Noura was her baby sister, it couldn't possibly make any sense that she could be -
"Um," Jaina uttered softly, at a loss herself. She fumbled for something to say. "Well, maybe not, I, um, don't think Dad's killed anyone in like, at least six years," she said faintly.
Noura started to sob harder, looking up in disbelief.
"Are you trying to be funny?" she shrieked, and then slapped a hand over her mouth in horror – no one was home, but the instinct to hide this, all of it, was raw and immediate.
Jaina winced, licking her lips.
"I don't think so," she said apologetically - she didn't know what else to say, but it was a fair bet to at least assure her little sister – "Noura, no one is going to kill you."
Noura shook her head, nearly clawing at her face. She kept nodding. Jaina lunged forward, and crawled over to her, shifting to sit next to her. She put an arm around her and pulled her close, turning Noura's face away from the life-altering items on the floor.
"No one's going to kill you," she said again, keeping her voice a brave, reassuring whisper.
"Oh, yeah, they're going to love it. The teenage daughter of the last Princess of Alderaan, the angel of the Republic, the savior of democracy, a fucking disgrace, a total fucking speeder wreck."
Jaina sighed heavily. Noura had always had a specific sensitivity to the way she thought – thought – their mother perceived her. It didn't feel like now was the time to rehash that tired old argument. Noura was scared, Noura was hurting, and Noura was facing a harrowing consequence of her impulsivity, and Jaina was – if nothing else – still young enough to be a teenager, and to grieve, and to bond, like one.
"Dad," sobbed Noura. "Dad is never going to look at me the same."
"That's not true," Jaina said sharply.
She could not…fathom what the reaction to this was going to be, or what the fallout might be like, but Jaina had a very different opinion of who their parents were as people, and she felt that no matter how angry they might be, their first instinct would be to protect.
"What am I going to do?" Noura whimpered, her tears wet on Jaina's shoulder.
"What do you want to do?" Jaina answered quietly.
"I don't know. I don't know."
Jaina put her hand up to Noura's scalp and ran a hand through her hair, silent, offering herself as strong support, and then came Noura's frightened, desperate plea, bubbling up from the muffled depths of her anxious heart –
"Jaina, I can't…I can't…will you tell…will you tell Daddy for me? If you tell…because then he can tell," Noura nearly choked on the word, "Mom."
Jaina had no doubt that their father would immediately agree to handle telling their mother. That was just what Han Solo did for his daughters – he took care of them, he stood up for them, he moved mountains for them. More than anything, though, Noura needed to assert her power over this, and Jaina hugged her, but she shook her head.
"I'll be there," she assured her. "I'll have your back, but," she swallowed hard. "You have to tell. You. This is your story."
Noura groaned weakly. She clasped Jaina's hand and held it tightly, and she stopped talking, choked up, distracted by her own tragedy, and Jaina rested her head against Noura's temple, fixing her gaze on the splayed open jewelry box, and because it was one natural way she could help, she closed her eyes and wove an intricate emotional shield around Noura, enough to help her cloak her own projections with just enough subtlety, buying them time to strategize.