CHAPTER TWELVE:

CHAPTER TWELVE:  EVOLVING RELATIONSHIPS

 

          Hours after setting out on their little expedition, Anakin found himself more confused then ever as he watched Tahiri sitting down in the sand with her back to him.  Either then asking him to take off his socks and boots – which he had adamantly protested against doing – and to come join her, Tahiri had made little attempt to communicate with him.  She seemed content to explore the area that had once served as her home on her own.  Anakin himself had spent most of the afternoon by the landspeeder lost in thought.

          Tahiri was still pretty embarrassed about the whole 'thank you' ordeal, which explained why she was doing her best to avoid talking to him.  He just didn't get it – or her for that matter.  If she had meant the kiss as more than just a thank you, why didn't she just tell him?

          He would have spent the rest of the day thinking about it, but Tahiri was approaching the landspeeder, her clothes and face covered in dust.

          "We should start heading back," she told him, averting his gaze, "it's going to be dark in a few hours and we don't want to be out here when that happens."  She did not have a wrist chrono, but just by watching where the twin suns were settled in the sky, she knew it was around sixteen hundred hours.  Knowing what time of day it was just by looking at the sky, was one of her old habits she had not lost when she had left the Sand People.

          Wordlessly, they climbed in the landspeeder.  It was going to be a long, quiet ride back to Mos Eisley but that was fine with Tahiri.  As unusual as it was for her, she did not feel much like talking.

          As it turned out, the trip was a whole lot shorter than they both had expected.

          They had been traveling for a whole five minutes, when the landspeeder's engines started coughing, followed soon after by clouds of smoke coming out from under the hood.  Seconds later, the speeder's engines stopped working completely and it dropped half a meter, hitting the sand with a loud thud.

          Anakin had a worried look on his face as he climbed out of the speeder.  He lifted up the hood, and thick, gray clouds of smoke poured out from it.  Coughing, Anakin waved his hand back and forth in an effort to clear some of it away.  When it did clear, what he saw did look encouraging.

          "Can you fix it?"  Tahiri said, coming out to join him.

          Anakin scratched the back of his neck.  "I don't know," he said, leaning in and inspecting the damage.

          "How bad is it?"

          "Pretty bad," he answered, "the wires that connect the repulsorlift propulsion engines are burnt through.  I might be able to rig something together to get it working again," he sounded doubtful though.

          "But you can fix anything," Tahiri protested.

          "No I can't," he said, looking up from the mess in front of him, "I can fix a lot of things but that's if I have the proper tools and parts with me.  And I don't think we have any of that with us."

          She had not wanted to hear that.  If Anakin didn't think he could fix it then they were in trouble.  She could not explain it, but she knew they needed to get moving.  "What can I do to help?"

          "Check the landspeeder and see if there's anything in there we might be able to use to fix this,"

          "What exactly am I looking for?"  Mechanical stuff was not her department.

          "Any tools or spare parts,"

          She nodded and went to search the vehicle.

          She rummaged through the speeder, checking beneath the seats but finding nothing.  She opened the compartment beneath the dashboard and found a rusted looking hydrospanner.  It did not even look like it worked, but it was all they had so she would bring it to Anakin.  If anyone could make it work, he could.

          When she returned to show him her find, he had his face stuck under the hood of the vehicle.

          "Did you find anything?"  He asked her.

          She didn't answer him.

          "Tahiri?"

          When she still did not answer him, he looked up from the speeder's engine.  Her face had gone ghostly white and she looked scared.

          "Tahiri, what's wrong?"

          Eyes wide, she said, "They're here,"

          "Who's here?"

          And then he heard it.  The deep moan of a very large creature followed by inhuman shouts and shrieks.  Tusken Raiders.  They must have seen the smoke and were coming to investigate.  Anakin swallowed hard.  He had heard of his Uncle's own encounter with the Sand People, and if Ben Kenobi had not rescued him he probably would have been killed.  But no one would be coming to rescue Tahiri and he because nobody knew they were out here.  They were on their own.

          Anakin ignited his lightsaber and Tahiri did the same, though he noticed she did it somewhat reluctantly.  He understood her reluctance to fight.  A tribe of Sand People had been her only family at one time, taking her in after her parents' deaths.  Although he seriously doubted this was the same tribe that had taken her in.  Even if they were, they were not likely to remember her.

          He could hear their shrieks getting louder the closer they approached.  He and Tahiri stood with their backs to each other, ready for an attack from any angle.

          Tahiri could not understand why the Sand People were making so much noise.  They would always find a way to sneak up or entrap their prey because that was how they hunted.  Unless they had really changed that much since she had left, but that did not make any sense.  If they made that much commotion they would scare away their unsuspecting prey.

          Then it hit her: this was not the real attack.  It was merely a diversion to make them think they would attack them from the sides because that's where all the noise was coming from.

          Tahiri looked up the cliff wall in time to see four Tusken Raiders descending down it.  Anakin followed her gaze.  Seeing they were spotted, the four Raiders jumped down the rest of the way.  Anakin expected them to be at least momentarily stunned afterwards – they were anything but that.  Thrusting their gaderffii sticks high above their heads, they cried out in their strange language and charged the two Jedi.  They paired off: two against Anakin and the remaining two against Tahiri.

          Anakin jumped out of the way of their first swipe at his head, but he had feeling he would not be able to keep doing that.  The two Tusken Raiders were too aggressive and unorthodox for him to plan any type of strategy he could use against them.  They didn't give him a second to catch his breath.  Maybe if I disarm them, they'll have the sense to see they're outmatched, he thought hopefully.

          He stared into their goggle and breath masked faces as they charged towards him again.  This time, he held his ground and struck out with his lightsaber against their weapons.  He cut one of their gaderffii sticks in half, but the second Raider avoided his swipe and the pointed end of his weapon grazed the flesh of Anakin's arm, sending a searing pain up his left forearm.  He did his best to block it out.  He needed to concentrate.   

          The one he had disarmed ran at him full throttle.  These guys just did not give up.  Not wanting to kill it, he used the force to hurl it into the cliff wall with enough force that the Raider did not get back up.

          His other attacker circled him warily, after seeing what Anakin had just done to its companion.

          Anakin found it strange that only four Tusken Raiders had come after them.  A whole tribe must consist of at least thirty or forty of them.

          That was when he saw two full-grown banthas, with a third one in tow, heading in their direction.  The first two had three riders each on their backs.  Anakin concluded they had to have been the source of the original noise, attempting to distract them from seeing the Tusken Raiders who had been trying to sneak down the cliff wall.

          He circled his remaining attacker, seeing Tahiri had one left to deal with as well.

          The remaining Tusken Raider was honking at Tahiri in its bizarre language.  It was talking – if you could call it that – way too fast for her to even pick up one word of what it was saying, but she knew a battle cry when she heard one.

          After regrettably having to kill the first one that had attacked her, she was searching for alternatives so she would not have to do the same thing again.  Half of her was torn at having to kill them, while the rest of her knew it was either kill or be killed.  That was the kind of world the Sand People lived in.

          She tried a different tactic this time.  Anticipating its next move, she ducked out of the way of its thrashing gaderffii stick and tumbled to the side.  It was difficult for her to get a read on the Tusken Raider's mind because it was such a jumbled mess of aggressive feelings and survival instincts – that she miss-guessed its next move.  She tried to jump out of the way, but the Raider's finely toned reflexes were too fast.  It rammed its gaderffii stick against her shins and sent her sprawling onto her back.

          The Tusken Raider honked in triumph and held its gaderffii stick high above its head.

          Tahiri felt like she was four again: terrified as the Sand People towered over her, waiting for them to attack her.  It was the same situation she was in now.  She was that frightened little girl, frozen in place, who could not even bring herself to ignite her blade.

          The Tusken Raider cocked its head to the side when she did not make a move to escape, and the hold on its weapon wavered slightly as it brought it down towards her chest.  She braced herself for what would happen next, but it never came.

          She watched the Tusken Raider cautiously back away from her, its masked face locked on hers while it yelled something to its companions.  The other Raider, still engaged with Anakin, broke off its attack with the other Jedi.  Together, they picked up the two fallen Tusken Raiders and carried them to the waiting bantha's.  They mounted the beasts, and the remaining Sand People obediently followed them away from the two Jedi.  They rode away in single file, and disappeared past one of the rock cliff sides.

          Anakin helped Tahiri to her feet.  "Are you okay?"  She looked a little dazed.

          "Yeah, I'm fine,"

          "What happened?"

          "I think it recognized me,"

          She knew how crazy it sounded but she didn't care.  That was the only explanation as to why it hadn't just killed her outright.  Was it actually possible that had been the tribe that had rescued her?  Could they really remember her after her so many years?

          "Hey," Anakin said gently, knowing the direction her thoughts were taking, "we should get moving.  We may not get lucky a second time,"

          It was then she noticed the scarlet colour that was in patches on his clothes and spreading across his lower left arm.

          "You're hurt," she said, alarmed.

          "It's nothing,"

          "And its going to stay that way," she grabbed his shirt and dragged him back to the landspeeder – or rather what remained of it.

          While the two of them had been fighting for their lives, the other Sand People that had rode in on the banthas had made quick work of their vehicle.  They had ransacked it, taking whatever they thought was valuable and tearing everything else apart that they thought wasn't.  That included parts of the engine and anything that had been lying loose in the speeder.  Pieces of the vehicle that had been ripped off were now lying strewn about in the sand.

          "I guess that solves our problem of whether or not I can fix it," Anakin remarked.

          "What's left?"

          "Nothing that will be of any use to us, except this," he pulled apart what was left of the driver's seat and dropped it into the sand.  He opened a compartment that had been beneath it, pulled out a small survival pack and handed it to Tahiri.  "Now I understand why they put a secret compartment in here,"

          She sifted through the pack, finding two canteens full of water – and a third one that was empty, a standard med kit, a glow rod, and some food rations, probably enough to give them two meals out of it.

          She took out the med kit and started cleaning Anakin's wound.  It was not too deep but it might get infected if he didn't keep it covered.  She saw wince as she applied the disinfectant to the gash, but he didn't complain.

          "How far do you think we have to walk?"  He said to her, as she bandaged up his arm

          She shrugged.  "It's at least a day's walk, maybe more.  And we only have a few hours of daylight left.  We should cover as much ground as we can before it gets dark."  She finished wrapping up his injured arm and put the med kit back in the pack.

          Swinging the pack over his shoulders, Anakin let Tahiri lead him back to civilization.

          Anakin realized he could not have picked a better person to be trapped in the Tatooine desert with.  Tahiri knew this place like the back of her hand and pushed forward without hesitation.  He was thankful she knew where she was going because everything out here looked the same to him.  There was just sand, sand and more sand.  They came across outcroppings of rock and small caverns in cliff walls every so often, but they had seen no signs of life since their encounter with the Sand People back at the Jundland Wastes.

          Anakin's skin felt dry and his lips were chapped.  He knew he was going to have one, painful sunburn when this was all over.

          There was no shade, so they were forced to walk in the impossible heat, only taking short five-minute breaks from it in the tiny caves they would come across.  A few times they had been forced to take shelter for longer because of the many sandstorms that would pass through the desert.

          They were rationing their water, taking only small sips when necessary.  That was why they had decided on only talking when necessary.  Otherwise, their mouths would become drier faster and they would need to drink more water.

          Tahiri walked a few feet in front of him, constantly scanning the area to make sure they were heading in the right direction.  Out here, she was in her element.  She was completely at ease with the situation they were currently stuck in.  He had never seen her so comfortable with taking charge like this before.

          He stared at her back, wondering if a part of her was still upset with him for the way he had reacted to her kiss or if she was still thinking about it – because he certainly still was.  With nothing else going on, he couldn't get it out of his head.  He hoped their friendship would not suffer because of it.  Anakin sighed.  When did things between them get so complicated?

          "You're staring at me," Tahiri said without turning around.

          "Sorry," he said, his cheeks reddening.  Had he really been looking at her for that long?

          "It's getting dark," she said, looking up at the approaching dark sky.  "We better find somewhere to spend the night,"

          Anakin had not even noticed that the twin suns had almost set.

          They decided to backtrack about half a kilometer to where they had spotted a small cave in the cliff rocks.  The opening was large enough for them to get inside without stooping over.  When Anakin turned on the glow rod, they saw there was not much more room for them to do anything besides stretch out their legs, but it would do for one night.

          Anakin dropped unceremoniously to the cave's floor, relieved to be off his sore, aching feet after so long.

          Tahiri noticed the bandage on his arm was covered in blood.  She took out the med kit and sat down across from him.

          "You should have said something," she chided him as she took off the bloody bandage.

          "I didn't think it was necessary,"

          "When did you think it would become necessary?  When you bled to death?"

          "What's your problem?"  A little cut was making her a lot more upset then she should have been.

          "Nothing," she said, putting a fresh bandage on his arm.

          "You're upset with me because of what happened earlier,"

          "Nothing happened earlier except a stupid mistake," she said without looking at him.

          "I didn't think it was a mistake," he said after a few moments of awkward silence.

          Tahiri snorted and this time looked at him when she spoke.  "Riiight.  That's why you wanted to know why I did it,"

          "You just surprised me, that's all," he tried to explain to her. 

          "I don't need you to spare my feelings, Anakin," she said to him in an icy tone.

          "Tahiri – "

          "Don't worry, it won't happen again,"

          "Tahiri, would you please just hear me out?"  She was being so impossible.

          "Why?  So you can tell me that what happened was an accident and that it doesn't change our friendship?  I really don't want to hear it, Anakin,"

          Without thinking, Anakin leaned forward and kissed her full on the lips.  She stiffened at first, and then kissed him back with equal force.  It was the most impulsive thing he had ever done.  It felt different then the last time because now he knew that he wanted to kiss her.  He was disappointed though, when she abruptly pushed him away.

          "What?"

          Her face completely serious, she said, "did you do that because you wanted to or because you thought you had to?"

          "I kissed you because I wanted to," he responded without hesitation.

          "Oh,"

          Not knowing what else to do, he went to kiss her again, but she placed both hands firmly on his chest to stop him.

          "Are you sure you want to do this?"  She said.  "Because once we start this we'll never be able to go back to being just friends,"

          "I think it's worth the risk," he said, gently caressing her cheek with his hand.

          "You have no idea how weird I've felt around you these last few months," she confessed.

          "I think I have some sort of an idea," he said with a smile.  "You wonder why you suddenly feel awkward around someone who's supposed to be your best friend.  And why everything you say or do when you're with that person makes you self-conscious, but there is nowhere else you would rather be then right there with them."

          "Something like that," said Tahiri.  "It sounds like you've thought about this a lot."

          He blushed.  "Well, it's not like I've spent endless hours thinking about the possibility of you and me together."

          "I've spent a lot of time thinking about it too," she said, placing her hand on top of his.

          "And what did you think?"

          "That it would be kind of weird since we've known each other for so long," she admitted, "but it's the kind of weird I wouldn't mind getting use to,"

          And this time when he went to kiss her, she didn't try and stop him.  When their lips connected neither one pulled away.  This was their first real kiss.  Tahiri ran her fingers through his dark hair and Anakin pulled her closer to him.  She melted into his arms and Anakin had never imagined kissing her would feel this good.

          When they parted, Tahiri leaned her forehead against his.  "You know, I don't think your Uncle had this in mind when I said I was coming here to help you,"

          Anakin chuckled.  "You're probably right about that,"

          "So," she began slowly, her brilliant green eyes staring up at him, "what do we do now?"

          "We should probably get some sleep.  We've got a long walk ahead of us tomorrow,"

          It had not dawned on him until that moment that the sleeping arrangements had just gotten that much more complicated, but Tahiri soon solved the problem.  She turned off the glow rod and moved beside him, nestling her head in his shoulder.

          "Goodnight, Anakin,"

          "Goodnight, Tahiri,"

          She didn't say anything else, so he thought she had drifted off to sleep – then he heard her say his name.

          "Anakin?"

          "Yeah?"

          "I had a really good time today,"

          Anakin smiled, though he knew she would not be able to see it in the darkness.  "So did I,"