The Fight on Dagobah (original)

There was a loud crunch as the body of the ship settled onto the ground. Kess' eyes opened quickly, lacking the morning grogginess from normal sleep, and she sat up totally alert. Her headache was gone and her arm didn't hurt. Not one part of her body felt sore. She looked around in pleasant surprise. The dim lighting in the berthing cabin blinked several times before it went completely out. Heavy foot falls echoed where the floor to the bridge had lowered as a ramp out of the ship.

She hopped out of bed completely refreshed, and dressed in the first set of clothes she ripped from her military issue duffel bag. She heard his boots splash in a puddle, walking away, and unfamiliar cawing of what might have been a bird. She was struggling to pull on a sweatshirt over her arm cast and tank top, but a warm, wet air gently filled the ship and she instantly began to sweat. She tossed the sweatshirt back into the bag and let curiosity plague her mind about where they were. She heard no deep hum of power, no speeders zipping by, no voices. . . . just far away caws and cackles and an occasional splash.

The humidity in the air grew thicker as she approached the ramp and for a moment she thought they were on a remote part of Yavin 4. Then she realized that she had absolutely no idea how long she'd been out. They could have been anywhere.

Kess stepped out onto the surface in bewilderment. The jungle was grayer and swampier than Yavin. Snakes slithered through the trees, the evil cackles she heard were coming from every direction, but usually from a distance (thank the Force). If the ground wasn't a puddle, it was muddy. A thick mist blanketed the dirt and occasionally drifted up into the giant, gnarling trees.

Luke had hiked several meters into the jungle and was just standing there, staring even deeper into the brush.

Within only a few steps, clots of mud clung to her shin high combat boots. She stopped to shake it off once, but soon knew that there was no way of avoiding the extra baggage and just decided to get used to it. A warm breeze blew her long hair over her shoulder, several strands tugging against the bandage on the side of her head and stinging. She stepped up behind him and squinted in the direction he was looking, but couldn't make out anything of interest in the thick foliage up ahead.

"Where are we?" It came out as a whisper by accident. The creepiness of this planet sent chills up her spine even though her skin was already covered with a thin sheet of perspiration.

Luke didn't look at her. "Dagobah," he said as though the location was supposed to be profound.

Kess looked around in nearly a complete circle, looking for any signs of intelligent life other than themselves. "Never heard of it." When he said 'hide out for a few days', she had border colony in mind, maybe even a densely populated vacation spot, but certainly not this. "We're not really going to stay here are we?"

Luke raised a brow at her, but turned around with a smile and started strolling back to the ship. "You've never heard of it because its existence has been forgotten. It's name and its coordinates have been erased from all the navcomputers in the galaxy for over a hundred years. . . . A convenient hide out, wouldn't you think?"

Kess wrinkled her nose at the slithering, swampy jungle. "Yeah, but who would want to hide here?"

"Master Yoda did." He called back. He didn't turn around when he pointed directly behind him to the six-foot-tall rats nest of briar patch and vines. "That was his house."

Kess squinted out to the gray-green pile of live spaghetti and thought she detected an actual shape out of the mess. If it was a building at one time, it was completely overgrown by jungle now. But then, this Master Yoda of his could have been a frog for all she knew. Then his house wouldn't have had much to change into.

Suddenly she realized that he was leaving her alone in the depths of the beetle ridden bushes and waded in the mud to rush back to the ship.

Luke brought out an equipment case and plopped it down on a patch of firm, wet ground by the time she caught up. She paused to look questionably at the case as he returned and he came out with another, setting it down next to the first.

She brought up a shy finger, "Um, what are you doing?"

He turned back to the ramp for another load. "Unpacking. What does it look like I'm doing?"

She stepped to the ramp to follow him, but he met her at the dark passageway with one sleeping roll in each hand. She eyebrows raised at him in paranoia, "We're not going to stay in the ship?"

He passed her by and tossed the padded rolls to the growing pile, "Why would we?"

Her eyes shot out of her head and darted around the tress to see the huge snakes and featherless birds. "Why wouldn't we?"

Luke grinned a little and returned for something else. "You can stay in there if you want to. But I've been awake in this thing for days. . . I just need some fresh air, that's all."

She smelled the rotting vegetation and wrinkled her nose. You call this air fresh?

It didn't take her long to realize that the cases were for nothing more than a dry places to sit. She joined him at his little campsite when she saw him pull out a ration box. It was then that she noticed that she was starving to death. Even though there were two cases as seating options, she sat on the same case that he did, staring at him innocently.

Luke looked nervously down to the woman he'd gotten in a rip roaring argument with not so long ago, but now sat close by his side like a dog wagging its tail for a treat. He smirked and held up the ration box in a silent offer. Her white teeth flashed and she quickly picked out a finger food to stuff it in her mouth.

He watched her for a moment, grinning quietly at her puppy-like beg for food, and the hard knot he had in his throat for days finally began to soften. The thin material of the tank top clung to her chest and its low cut neck revealed cleavage that was shiny with sweat. He watched her place the last bite of the taqat roll on her tongue and, one by one, suck the crumbs off nail-pointed fingers. She was licking the last morsel off her thumb by the time innocent brown eyes looked up at him, "What's the matter?"

Luke blinked and shook the stars from his head. He gave her the entire ration box and slid off the equipment case to kneel in front of it trying to think of something he needed out of the thing right now. He flipped open the metal latches and lifted off the lid thinking that, usually, when his mind wandered off like that, he would bring up some kind of casual conversation about the Force to distract her from noticing it. Now, the Force suddenly felt like a forbidden subject between them and he dug through the box's contents in a stiff silence.

Kess watched his back and ripped a bite off a second helping with her teeth. His shoulders had suddenly tightened; he let out a stiff breath through his nose. These were usual signs that something deep was on his mind and she tried her hand at the only strategy that ever worked: an innocent question on a discomforting subject. "Did those datacards you gave me make it on this trip?"

Luke's movements paused. He pulled his empty hands from the case and turned around to sit down on the ground. He leaned his back against the case, facing her with narrowed eyes when he pulled them from the breast pocket of his khaki shirt. His expression clearly said that he had hoped she wouldn't remember them. He glanced down to identify one from the other, and tossed only one of them over.

She brought her hand up to catch it in the air and raised her brows. She said expectantly as she chewed. "I don't get the other one anymore?"

He dropped his hands and the card to his lap and crossed his ankles in front of him, "I was hoping that, since we are already on this trip, I could talk you into-"

She swallowed the bite quickly to interrupt him, "I am not telling my father about this, Luke. . . . Not now. . . . Not if you want me to live long enough to graduate."

Luke met her stare, closed his mouth, and folded his arms at his chest, "What do you think he's going to do?"

Kess dropped the ration box onto the case next to her, cussing in her mind that the plan backfired again. Quickly, she stood and tried to casually walk away, but paused. There was nowhere to casually go.

Luke watched the stiff sigh through her nose and read the sign clearly that he'd touched on a tender subject. He thought about crossing blades with Darth Vader and recognized that he'd automatically assumed Kess' father could not have been that wicked. Luke had no idea why she was so afraid of him, and therefore, the upcoming incident could very well be as bad, if not worse, that the threats of murder from his own father. He just couldn't imagine how.

Then he reminded himself that he was no longer her teacher and had no right to ask or pressure her on the subject. In fact, he'd decided in hyperspace that the best thing he could do was contain every sliver of unsolicited advice. Hopefully, the sudden lack of attention would pull her back to him that much sooner.

He held the datacard by the corners between his middle finger and his thumb and spinned it softly with his other fingers. He stared at it imagining the data he knew was inside. After she'd reacted so harshly about Vader, he wondered what she was going to do when she heard that Obi Wan and Ben were the same person. For a moment, he considered telling her now, just to get the beating over with.

Kess stepped toward the ship and crooned her neck to study its outer fixtures. "Is there anything on this baby to fix?"

"No. Why?"

She sighed in disappointment and stepped away from it again, "I'm just bored."

He wave a hand at the dense jungle, "Go for a walk," he offered like he didn't really care, and then stressed, "You won't be bored. That's for sure."

Kess scanned the trees and easily spotted the camouflaged lizards and spiders that swarmed them, "No thanks." With a deep sigh she stepped back over to him, leaning over just long enough to grab another taqat from the box in his hand, and sat back on the case. After a bite, she looked out to the trees again, and the only part of her body that didn't have goose bumps was her left arm, motionless in the cast.

She looked down at the cast, the sand-olive plaster was already beginning to fray, and concentrated on what the nerves in her arm were telling her. They told her that the wound didn't hurt at all anymore, and she decided that it was time to take the thing off. "You got any tools?"

"What kind?" he asked through a mouthful.

She studied the thin sheet of plaster that contained her arm. "Something that'll cut."

Luke brushed the crumbs from his hand and pulled the lightsaber from his belt. He held in the air with raised eyebrows.

Her breath stopped when she saw it and lowered her voice, "I don't think so."

He let out a sick grin and jammed the D-ring back in its latch. "There's probably something in that box," he said with a casual gesture.

Kess went to the brown case he pointed to and pulled off its lid. The tense silence between them was amplified by the wild cawing of the far off birds and the quiet splashes from the nearby amphibians. With a deep sigh of depression, she found a set of heavy duty shears and sat down on the ground in front of the case. She tried to ignore him, since he seemed to be trying to ignore her, and struggled to bring her right arm to an angle that wouldn't cut off her fingers as well.

"Want some help?" he offered, but there was a tone in his voice that poked deeply into her aggravation.

Kess dropped her hands to her lap, "What is your problem?"

Luke shrugged and perused the ration box for the next morsel, but the tone in his voice was still there. "I'm sorry. I thought I was being polite."

She brought up the shears and whined at him, "Well, you're not trying very hard." She snipped at the plaster on the back of her hand, "You've been so friggin' quiet and everything you do say has this icy tone in it."

Luke didn't look at her, "Do you blame me?"

Kess pressed her lips together and glared at him for a second, but went back to the operation on her arm. "If you didn't want me to quit so bad then why didn't you try to talk me out of it?"

Luke bit the side of his tongue in a curse. The forbidden subject wasn't going to be ignored, but Luke no longer had the patience to try to avoid a fight. "If you wanted me to talk you out of it, then you shouldn't have bothered to quit." His deep voice went even deeper. "I don't take well to mind games."

The insult hit her as hard as it was supposed to and she gave him the same grating tone in return, "Well, honesty sure as hell wasn't working."

Luke's chewing came to a halt and his eyes drilled holes in her head. "I had very good reasons for not telling you-!"

"And they were?"

He pointed the finger food at her roughly, "I was afraid that I was going to get that very reaction. I knew you wouldn't be able to handle it."

Kess curled her lip at him, "I didn't quit because he's was your father, I quit because I'm sick of being left in the dark. You didn't tell me about Vader, and even now you won't tell me what you know about grandpa." She waved a hand at the datacard that had found its way back to his breast pocket and started pulling the shredded plaster from her arm.

Luke closed his eyes, pressed his mouth and sighed stiffly.

"Ever since that day grandpa showed up, you've been tight as a drum." Brown eyes flared at him, and were scared about bringing it up again, all at the same time. "You're 'big secrets' don't work well with your 'big mistakes', Luke." She chuckled sadly as she kneaded her arms muscles awake again. "Sometimes I wish you would turn to the dark side for a little while, even if you have to turn into Vader Junior to do it. . . just so I can get one or the other out of you."

His nose curled in the air at this, "What do you think I'd do if I turned?" He put a hand on his knee and leaned to eye her. "Do you think that's what's going to get me to lower you to the ground and-" his chest yanked in the air before he said it. He couldn't even say the words.

Brown eyes flicked up at his sudden silence, and they started to smile at his expression . Kess lifted her chin with daring. "Say it."

Luke's heart physically swelled with a sweet sort of pain. He tried to cool it off with carefully breathing, but it didn't do much good. He closed his eyes and swallowed. "Not until you're training's over."

"My training is over," she corrected, thick with insinuation. "I quit. . . Remember?"

Luke stared at her for a long time. His voice came out nervous, "Well, you're not training with me, but you're still training to be a Jedi. . . . " His eyes squinted at her uncomfortably, realizing that she never actually said she'd continue without him.

Kess pulled the shredded plaster from her arm and kneaded the sleeping shoulder muscles. She chuckled at him, "Do you realize that it took you a whole ten seconds to think that one up?"

Luke blinked again and pulled his eyes to his lap. He wiped a hand over his face, cursing himself under his breath.

Kess grinned at him, "You know, every time you do that, you just get more frustrated." She folded her arms at her chest, "and then you just get even more pissed off at yourself the next time you do it."

He was still rubbing his wrinkled nose. "Do what?"

"Try to stomp out your emotions like that." She suddenly giggled at him and whipped her hair over her shoulder. She looked down at her wrist as she rubbed it awake. "It's kind of cute actually," she muttered a bittersweet grin.

Luke looked at her with sarcasm, "Well, let me go find my father's helmet and let's just see how cute I can get."

Her eyes twinkled at him, "You want to know what I think?"

Luke pushed himself off the ground. "No."

Her smile widened. "I think that you're scared you are going to turn in to your father more than anyone else is. You get mad at yourself every time you show any emotion at all, you won't even let yourself laugh without feeling guilty about it." She crossed her legs and leaned forward. "You are so convinced that you have to control all your feelings that you're suffocating and it's driving you nuts."

Luke's defenses skyrocketed for reasons he could not quite pinpoint. He tried to rub the ripples from his forehead and stepped away from the tiny campsite. He placed one hand on his hip and hissed at her, "You are the one that is driving me nuts." He needed to go meditate again. He needed to get out of the intense company, the insinuating questions, the nagging. . . He started to walk away.

Kess swallowed her giggle and rose her voice at his growing distance. "That's just because I can read you like a book, without the use of the Force, and you can't stand it."

He turned with a wince and a whine, "If you could read me that well, we wouldn't have gotten into this fight in the first place."

She was still sitting down, resting easily against the equipment case, but her chin lifted high to stare at him down her nose. "Fine." She said loud and quick, but there was a grin in her eyes just before she closed them and lifted her hand in his direction.

Luke's eyes flashed wide as he instinctively jumped back when her Force ability prodded at his chest to peak inside. He'd forgotten that he wasn't the only one with this ability anymore. He slammed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. He didn't have to lift his hand to keep her from getting in. "You're not invited."

"You see mine all the time," she argued and wrinkled her nose to keep wriggling her way into his soul, just to see what was coloring up his cloud.

His gritted teeth smiled a little. He put his hands on his hips and let his chin drop. "That's only because you advertise it." His face calmed a great deal, and as it did, Kess' wrinkled that much more.

"Owe!" Her eyes opened and glared at him. She shook her hand in the air as if he'd just pinched it.

No matter how trained she got, he was still going to be nearly twice as strong. He was Darth Vader's offspring after all. His eyes opened to glare this reminder at her, but the blue of his eyes were filled with something else entirely. He looked at her like a mortal that was so brokenhearted at the moment that he wasn't half a strong.

Her voice softened a little, and her chin lifted again, "You work so hard to keep me from seeing what's in your chest that you forget it comes out of your eyes just as loudly."

Luke closed his eyes and folded his lips closed again. There was a small knit between his brows when he dropped his hands from his hips. He turned his back to her and started strutting rapidly away.

Her confidence disintegrated when he walked right by the ramp of the ship and kept walking. "Where are you going?"

"To get some firewood," he said without turning. His stroll had quickened into the shrubbery.

She scrambled to her feet and called out, pointing at the unmistakable unit in the open case behind her, "Why don't you just use the heat-lantern?"

He ducked under a low tree branch and snapped back, "Because I feel like doing it the old fashioned way!"

Force senses or not, she was now convinced she could read him as well as she claimed. Kess bit her lower lip to keep from smiling, "Want some help!"

"No!"

And then he was out of sight. Kess giggled at his desperate departure as she sat down again. She sat back down pull the ration box into her lap and ate with both hands.


Over an hour later and a kilometer away, Luke ripped a dead limb from a tree, clenching his teeth in the process and tossing it roughly into the small scattered pile.

He just needed time away from her, he convinced himself. Yes, time. A few hours to not have to listen to the eager questions or the impatience in her voice. Time away from the flirting and the arguing. Time where he didn't have to bite his own tongue or hold his own hands down. He reached up the gnarling trunk again and cussed out loud. "Women." He ripped a small branch from its mother and threw it roughly on the ground. "Why did my first apprentice have to be a woman?" The word and its synonyms rolled in his head, women. . . vixens. . . aliens. . . .

And her name followed it. Kesselia Kenobi Lendra. . . Skywalker. . . .

His movements paused as he thought about it. He wanted children. He wanted a quiet place on a quiet planet with no Empire and no Alliance. No military and no politics. He wanted to laugh out loud without the people around thinking that he'd lost his mind. He wanted to lose his temper without everyone, including himself, thinking he'd suddenly change into Vader. He remembered moments of her exploding temper and the sound of her free laughter and he wanted to be eighteen years old again; a young, eccentric, reckless farm boy strutting up to a city girl in the streets of Mos Eisley, and flirt his way into a date.

Luke's shoulder collapsed into the gray trunk as he realized it.

He wanted to be human again.

"Human mating customs, strange they are." The familiar frog-like voice said aloud and cackled his cackley laugh, "Yes, yes. Very strange indeed."

Luke closed his eyes and his head dropped into the tree trunk.

"Jedi mating customs. . ." the voice lowered in smiling seriousness, "different subject entirely." Master Yoda glowed into existence with the same old wide eyes, the same old gimerstick, and the same old cryptic wisdom.

Luke rolled his back onto the tree and smiled weakly at his Master, thanking the Force that someone showed up to clue him in on what he was doing wrong.

Yoda stepped just feet from where he stood, continuing the instruction, "With human Jedi, stronger the need to mate is, because they know."

Luke slid his back down on the tree and sat on the ground. He propped his elbows on his knees and dug his fingers into his bangs. "They know each other," he clarified quietly. It made perfect sense. "When you can sense the other's emotions, feel what they're feeling, know what their thinking. . . you fall in love a hell of a lot faster." He rubbed his temple and slammed his eyes shut. He didn't just say that word out loud, did he?

Master Yoda waddled forward to him and pointed the gimerstick at him. "Remember your lessons. Every emotion you had, you mastered control. Love is no different. Complex, it is not. Stronger than the others," he shook his head as if thinking, "it is not."

Luke asked timidly, "Is it on the dark side?"

Master Yoda's eyes widened and his ears perked as he chortled at the boy. "Hee hee hee. If the dark side love is, than how would we breed more Jedi? Hmm?"

Luke dropped his head and smiled pathetically as the 900 year old Master laughed at him. Here he was, a full grown man and he still needed fatherly advice about women. He had grown so lonely over the years that it occasionally drove him tears. That loneliness had mutated into pure frustration when the young, brown-eyed, Force sensitive, city girl was planted right in front of him and he couldn't touch her. It was almost like the woman was hand picked for him. She would be his first Jedi, with the same interest in decrypting the Force that he had. She had the same dedication to the New Alliance and her commission. She knew more about Artoo and his X-wing than he did. She had an attitude. She had fun.

Yoda looked at him seriously. "A Jedi Master you are. . . You tell me." He leaned on his stick and began to turn away. "Tell me. How do you control an emotion?"

Luke dropped his head back against the tree and swallowed hard at the answer, "You face it."

Yoda frowned and nodded, "Anger. Tell me how do you face anger."

Luke put his hands out in front of him and dismantled the idea, "You investigate it, interrogate it. . . pick it apart and calm the different pieces-"

Yoda roughly pointed the gimerstick at him, "And you don't calm it with violence!"

Luke breathed slowly, "Right."

"No different love is. Calm the pieces." Yoda lowered his chin, "But not with mating."

Luke opened his mouth to defend himself, but knew better. He sighed wearily again, gave Master Yoda a weak smile and nodded. "I can't touch her until her training is over," he whispered in disappointment. "Just like Ben said."

Yoda's hairy brows raised in humor at him. "Already touch her often you do. It is she who cannot touch you."

Luke's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "No, Master, what I meant was-"

"Hech!" Yoda cursed him for questioning him and stabbed his gimerstick at the ground "Know what you meant, I do."

Luke angled his head, "If I let her touch me, it's going to make it worse."

The little man perked up again, "For whom?"

Luke swallowed. His eyes shifted to think on that.

Yoda's round face and wrinkled mouth aimed at him. "Control. . . . Do not deny."

Luke closed his eyes in complete understanding. Stuffing the emotions back down his throat was the wrong example. Exploiting any teacher-student relationship was all out bad karma, but Luke had used the law like a crutch. Deep down in her Force-sensitive soul, she knew exactly how Luke felt about her, making him the complete hypocrite. He was so busy trying to teach her how to bend in the wind, he hadn't realized how stiffly he was keeping her at arms length with a rigidly locked elbow.

Yoda waddled up so close that Luke could have reached out and verified that the being wasn't really standing there. Yoda rose a hand and a Force-powered finger print pressed deep into Luke's chest. "Let her know… the way she knows how to know." If his stick were real too, it would have poked Luke in the chest. "You know. She does not know." He sighed, "That is why you argue."

Luke thought on this a long moment and nodded. "I understand."

"Abbreviated your training was." Yoda said quietly. "Teach you everything we could not. On this emotion, more than her Jedi Master, Kesselia knows… and a better Master you will be if from your apprentice you learn."

Luke's lips parted with a want to argue. He didn't realize how much of a control freak he'd become about it until someone ordered him to let some of it go. The thought of letting her in was terrifying.

Yoda looked at the ground for a second and turned away, "The tree you came for." He paused looking in the apprentice's direction. "She is not ready." He leaned on his gimerstick and began to step away. "Test when ready. . . not when convenient."

Luke bit his lips together. The tree was a desperate idea to inadvertently show her the strength of the dark side and hopefully convince her to come back. She wasn't ready to venture out on her own; especially after she had to use the dark side to push Rogue Twelve away from the Star Destroyer. Luke knew how close she had come to turning.

In his regression, Yoda started to waddle away.

Luke scrambled to stand, "Master Yoda, wait."

Yoda stopped and turned patiently around, raising his chin.

Luke shoulders began to melt. "Ben. . . " Just when he expected it to be denied, he realized how badly he wanted it. "Does he disapprove?"

Yoda's ears drooped a little, "Biased Obi Wan is. To him, like a son you are. And a granddaughter she is." His eyebrows rose with humor, "Heh, very biased."

Luke blinked at him childishly. "I need to know."

Yoda continued to waddle away as though he hadn't heard him. "Human mating customs. Hech." The green elderly rose his voice to a guttural growl. "Who introduced you?" He paused and glanced back at Luke one more time with a grin in his giant eyes.

In other words, don't ask stupid questions. Embarrassed, Luke put his hands on his hips and smiled at the ground. He looked back up to Yoda with a new glow to his face. "Thank you."

"Hmph," Yoda grumbled as if this whole thing was a burden to his schedule. His eyes smiled at Luke before he turned and leaned on his stick. As he waddled away, his ethereal image faded into the dark jungle.

Luke sat down where he stood and put the lesson to work. The birds cooed, the frogs croaked and Luke meditated to figure this out. When he kissed her in the clearing, he had momentarily lost control. He would have taken her down and made love to her right then and there if Ben hadn't shown up. But he would have done it out of sexual frustration.

He hadn't fallen for her yet. Not like now. That's what he was scolded for.

He had worked so hard to ignore everything that was going on inside. He had denied to himself that he was losing sight of the objective as though denial would make the problem go away. But the problem was not going to go away. The emotion was not going to go away.

Luke smiled and blinked rapidly as he happily did what he was told. With a deep, calming sigh, he closed his eyes and concentrated, digging into his swirling colorful cloud. He reached the giant red lump in the corner, bursting at the seems in invisible containment, and let it out.