Crash and Burn

Drained of energy and without the will to keep his eyes open, he fell asleep. The dull glowing pain in his side and lower back seemed detached from him, along with the rest of his body, as though he was outside of himself and looking down at his own form through a dark haze. His injuries faced away from the small fire burning next to him, and his limbs were wrapped in heavy cloth to keep as much heat in as possible without irritating his cuts and burns.

An arm stretched over his shoulders, and he thought he smelled a familiar variety of old sweat with an undertone of ammonia. Comforted, he let go of the taut thread tethering him to his battered but healing body, and his consciousness drifted into the shadows.

When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his back, and he felt heavy. Every slight motion, even turning his head, took great effort, and only gradually did his sight return. The first thing he notice was something overhead, glimmering first with a hazy brown-gray color before brightening to a blend of red and orange. Sunlight warmed his face and a warm breeze lifted a few stray strands of his hair and blew them across his cheek and forehead.

"Anakin!" someone called. The voice came in slightly garbled, like it was transmitted over a speaker, but as she repeated his name, it became clearer and clearer.

Tahiri, he thought. He looked up at the clouds floating by overhead and saw the gas giant Yavin hiding partly behind them. Then he turned his head in the direction of Tahiri's voice, with difficulty. He didn't see anyone at all, and for reasons he didn't remember and couldn't even try to explain, he felt an urgent need to find her right away.

"There you are," she said, just as she leaned over him and blocked his view of the sky and the treetops. "What are you doing lying on the ground? Didn't you know what we were all supposed to be in the temple before noon?"

Something was wrong, very wrong, but Anakin couldn't make enough sense of the situation to find that something. He was pretty sure that he hadn't been on Yavin 4 that morning, but it was hard to remember.

He tried to sit up, and twisted over onto his right side when he felt skin on his left tear open. He thought he saw a snake rearing up a meter away, but then it flashed towards the forest, not to be seen again. "Bit... me..." he groaned.

"You'll be all right," Tahiri said. "Valin! Sannah! Run and get some water and a rag, and bring it back fast."

Anakin watched two heads covered with dark hair - one cropped short, the other in long braids - bounce away. The younger Jedi trainees wasted no time in their task, and in the few short minutes until their return, Tahiri held his hand and chattered on about the rebuilding of a fallen part of the temple and whether or not Peckham was going to be coming soon with supplies. He suspected that she was just trying to keep his mind off his agony - she was talking even faster and more than usual. It didn't make any of the pain go away, but when he winced and she squeezed his hand gently, he did find his mind beginning to drift.

Valin came rushing over with a full pail, and Sannah carried scraps of towels. Tahiri dunked the towels in the water and started to sponge away the blood from Anakin's bite. The sky spun and he felt ill, unable to maintain any focus on the changing landscape. "It'll only hurt for a minute or two," she said, soothingly, deeply. Her voice was a shade deeper than he remembered, but maybe he wasn't really hearing things the way they were, or maybe her tones were only settling into an adult vocal range, like his had a few years earlier, only with less of a stark contrast.

True to her word, she finished quickly, and the stabbing arrows in his side faded away. Her fingertips were cool against his skin, and drew away the last knots and throbs. Anakin relaxed on the ground, still too weak to get up, but feeling calm and safe where he lay. Someone would come and bring him back to the temple and care for him there, but at that moment he only wanted her to stay with him; one of the others could send for help. Maybe both of them. He waved his arm at the fluid shadows of Sannah and Valin, feeling a little bit guilty about dismissing them like that, but despite his placidity he felt that time was short and what time he could take with Tahiri now might be all that they would have for awhile.

She leaned over him again and said, "There, you're healing; last time there was more blood and more blistered skin to peel off. Another few days and you'll be up and about."

Anakin didn't remember her eyes being so dark. Their green color had gotten so murky and dark that they looked closer to brown. Was it just the shadows, the way the light beyond her gold hair brightened everything that its rays directly shone upon and darkened everything else? Or was he simply delirious and seeing things that weren't there?

It didn't matter. He smiled at her, and lifted his head a few centimeters. "Stay with me," he whispered.

"I won't go anywhere." They sat in stillness for a little while, with one of her arms around his shoulders and underneath his head, and the other resting near the site of his snakebite to siphon off any lingering smarting.

Anakin craned his neck around, facing her, and he stretched it towards Tahiri's face. She only looked at him with a puzzled expression, and then straightened up partway and pulled away from him.

"Kiss me, Tahiri," he said.

"What? Anakin, go to sleep."

He fell back against the ground, hurt again and this time in the soul. They'd taken their stolen moments in the forest and in dark corners of the Massassi temple before; what was different now? If she was mad at him for some reason, then she wouldn't be taking care of him, would she?

"No one else will see," Anakin said softly. "And if they do, they won't be mad." He willed his arm to move, up, up, his fingers brushing her cheek. He felt rougher skin than he saw, and he locked his gaze into her dark-green-brown eyes.

Tahiri was the first to break eye contact. She looked down and to the side, the corners of her mouth twisted, and then she looked at him again. There was a bit of a laugh on her lips, which she brought down near to Anakin's face, and she planted a light kiss on his cheek.

Anakin turned his head and pressed his mouth to hers before she could pull away. Her lips were dry, but they tasted like sweet mallow nuts, and the kiss that Tahiri returned was stronger than any other quick one they'd stolen in the past few months. Tender, but with force behind it.

He felt too warm then, flushed all over, and his tongue slid over her lips and the bits of short-fibered mallow nut shell that felt like they were still clinging to her chin, leaving it with a texture somewhat like a man's four-day beard. She took his head in both her large hands before he could get far, though, and touched her forehead to his. "Later, Anakin. Not now."

Tahiri stroked his hair and then stood up. She disappeared behind him, and he slowed his breaths and tried to redirect some of his blood flow back into his limbs and head. Eventually Anakin was able to get his pulse back down and the tightness in his pants loosened again. Clouds melted and tumbled over each other as he watched, and objects in the sky grew and shrunk, grew and shrunk, grew and shrunk... he began to grow dizzy, and called out for her again, before the colors before him mixed to a uniform dark gray.

When he was lucid again, he was lying on a raised area of dirt, about the size of a small pallet bed, raised two decimeters from the rest of the ground. A tiny fire bent under the power of a stiff breeze, and he was alone.

"Tahiri? Where are you?" It was only after he had spoken the words that he realized that his brief sojourn to Yavin 4 had been nothing more than a dream, and he was once again in the middle of nowhere with Jacen.

Jacen.

"Sithspit," Anakin muttered.

"Oh, good; you're up," Jacen said. He knelt by Anakin's side and laid a hand over Anakin's forehead. "Feels like your fever's going away. You were burning with it earlier."

"Jace, were you eating mallow nuts?" Anakin asked worriedly.

"When? Oh, this morning. I had a few. Don't worry, I left some for you."

Anakin felt hot again, but only from the neck up. "Listen, uh, I'm sorry about what happened. I thought you were Tahiri. You looked like her, and, and I thought I was on Yavin at the temple, and..."

"I know. You called out her name, and you had a high fever. High enough to make you delirious and see people who aren't really here."

Anakin put his hand over his face and squeezed his temples with his thumb and middle finger. "Okay... I thought you might not want to talk to me now or something." Especially given the physical reaction that might or might not have gone unnoticed. "I miss her. I know it's only been three weeks, but she and I haven't been apart for that long in... well, since last year. And she was a kid then. We were just friends, and it's like as soon as we go beyond that, we're separated. I want to see her again and soon."

Jacen nodded. "Well, you'll be eighteen in a couple of months. If you weren't thinking about girls, I'd be wondering why not. And when I say girls, I don't mean Mom and Jaina."

"Yuck," Anakin said, making a face. "I want Tahiri to be my first. I already decided that a long time ago, but she wasn't ready, so I'm going to have to wait."

"First or only?"

"Maybe both. What about you? Somebody said you slept with Tenel Ka, but I didn't know whether to believe it or not."

Jacen raised an eyebrow at Anakin and sat down with a pair of clean rocks, each about the size of one of his hands. He pried open a mallow nut and ground it between the rocks while he talked. "Who said that?"

"Nuh-uh. That would be telling."

"I'm not answering unless you do."

"Oh, fine. Alema said it, and she said Tenel Ka was lucky. There! Now, confirm or deny."

"Alema's the one talking, huh?" Jacen smirked and dumped a mass of mashed nut into their metal cup, then started crushing a second one. "Well, she's overstating things a little. Tenel Ka and I played around some but we never went all the way. She said she didn't want to risk getting pregnant and causing problems because everybody on Hapes would be wondering who the father was, and they'd figure out pretty quickly that it's none of them, and then the baby would be in danger and so would I be if anybody found out."

"Aha, so you are a virgin."

"Same skipper you're in," Jacen pointed out, "and unless we get through the winter and find some way home, that's not going to change." He filled the cup almost to the top with water and sat the water-and-mallow-nut mixture in a pile of hot ashes, then tilted his head and looked at Anakin, deep in thought. "There are some things they didn't teach us at the Academy, you know. Controlling breathing, controlling blood flow - that's fine and good, but messing with hormones at the molecular level is tricky even for Masters. So, if you're ever in need of some time alone, just tell me to leave for a little bit and I will."

Anakin nodded, not sure exactly what to say. "Uh, all right. I'd tell you to leave now but I'm still hurting. Still thinking about Tahiri," he hastily added. "The real one."

"I figured that." Jacen smiled. "Here - drink up, but don't burn yourself. I'll go looking for more food tomorrow, and see if there was anything dropped by the troopers that we could still use - anything that didn't get burned up."

"Okay. Thanks." Anakin had his meager dinner and, though he was still hungry, felt stronger. He decided that the second thing he would do when he got home was get the biggest bantha steak he could at Lora's Diner and eat the whole thing himself. The first thing he would do would be to find Tahiri and ask her to give him a real kiss. Even if he had to admit, just to himself, that Jacen was better at it.