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Beyond her crossed legs, beyond her clenched hands, her eyes shut and her ears full of a dull roar, Jaina Solo knows Anakin Skywalker is watching her. Mind of a test pilot and heart like a newborn pup, he’s part of Jaina and part of Jacen. In the Force he’s unapologetic — fully himself, not minding at all he’s been conjured up from decades dead in a curious overgrown temple Master Luke Skywalker unearthed from the cursed curiosities of Yavin 4. The cool shadows inside and woolamander calls and humid heat outside all faded when Jaina sat inside the stone circle where the Force, Luke said, reached through time. Jaina squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to maintain the meditation under her regard of it.
How?
In this moment of distraction Jaina thinks of wolves, and does not know why.
I saw my father, Luke had said yesterday, looking aside in that way he has; maybe it’s the scarring that makes him tend that way or maybe when you get old and wise you develop that tic. He’d like to see you, too.
Ghosts aren’t uncommon. It’s just another known power of the Force to be able to talk to them, especially to Skywalker ghosts. Curious troublemakers, mom says.
Jaina wrests her thoughts back to the temple and the invitation. Meditation is like flying: you have to know what speed to go based on the things around you. She concentrates and glides on no-thought.
The vision crests over a horizon. If there is a landscape it’s hard to focus on; maybe it’s a pastel sky at sunset, the two of them floating in it. The man in front of her shakes a brown hood from off his head. He’s older than Jaina, younger than Master Luke. Thick hair, sun-tanned skin. My grandfather.
Anakin Skywalker smiles like an ace in a hangar. In the Force he speaks less in words and more in impressions. “You don’t look like your grandmother. But I can sense the ways you’re like her: your bravery, your loyalty.
“You’ll always come back to those.”
His smile changes. Where it was a grin advertising Anakin Skywalker to the hangar and the world, it becomes softer, more proud, more secret, and for Jaina alone.
The vision fades. Behind her, Jaina immediately senses in the Force, stands her own father. She breathes in and out on a count of four, letting the tattered remains of the vision float into her awareness and away like the dim memories of a dream. She and her brother knew the stories of Darth Vader, knew how Anakin had come to Luke and Leia and been rejected or redeemed in turn and at different times. She had fought against dark Force users many times. To see Anakin was neither a unique shock nor a unique ethical puzzle.
But something about him being family — something about that face in living color, not blue-tinted and ripped across by hologram lines —
Jaina’s dad smells like jungle dew and his leather vest. The familiarity of a tight hug fills her with warmth, especially after the clinical nothingness of the meditation. Instinctively she withdraws the way she had been reaching through the Force for Anakin, long practice from knowing her father preferred to communicate in a different way. Han Solo in the Force is like a gun port: a wall, but watchful.
“You opened the channel?” He holds her at arms’ length.
Jaina blinks at tears. “He was there. Just like Uncle Luke said.”
Han slings an arm around her shoulders as they leave the dim, green shadows of the small temple. “You want to share what he said?”
You’ll always come back to those. “He seemed proud of me. He said I’ll be all right. Do you think he’s right?” Jaina Solo is at the age where she is beginning to discover not everything her parents say is rule of law. Still, she wants backup.
Han looks at the trees and at his feet. Could be navigating the jungle, could be searching for words. Probably both. Even Jaina, whose feet know the vines and rocks and hillocks for kilometers around the temple, has to watch her step here.
“Don’t ask me whether Force spirits can se the future,” Han says with good humor. “Luke doesn’t even know that. Not sure I’d trust anything Anakin Skywalker says farther than I can throw it. Plenty of people would say the same thing about me, though, so who knows.” He stops for just a second to meet Jaina’s eyes. When they start walking again, he doesn’t have to watch his feet. “I trust how you feel about what you saw in there. As long as it felt friendly.”
He had. He didn’t even feel scared … and not cold, like Vader. Calm, like Luke.
Jaina ducks out from under her father’s arm and lets herself walk the path by rote, back as they were on the paths she had memorized. Anakin would always be Vader, always a warning. One conversation hadn’t changed that. She would have to watch herself so that she didn’t fall to the dark, by her own standards or Anakin’s. But for now, she feels like she has a map for that path, too.