Just as the last sight Jacen perceived before his eyes closed had been Tenel Ka, his eyes opened to see her hovering over him, a concerned look on her face. He yawned and stretched, a little, noting that there was no longer any pain in his shoulder. Relief relaxed the firm, tense line Tenel Ka's lips had formed. She sighed and sat down on the bed beside him. She was now back in her black Jedi robes, but her hair hadn't been braided yet.
"How are you feeling?" she asked quietly, resting her hand on her arm.
"Like hell," Jacen smiled, grinning for her benefit.
Tenel Ka smiled too, "It's good that you can joke now, because you could have died. Kanortine expected you too, everyone did. I nearly killed him."
Jacen frowned, "What to you mean? They expected me to die?"
Tenel Ka looked at him, puzzled, her mouth slightly open and her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
"Jacen, every other contestant that went in there only had to face another person. Kanortine was saying how he wanted to make it even, since you were a Jedi. I thought you had gone in there expecting only one person," Tenel Ka explained.
Jacen sat up straight in bed, suddenly feeling very much awake. He pulled the sheets up as he realized that he wasn't wearing a shirt.
"But I went in there without knowing anything about what I would face. They just said it was a gladiator fight and stocked me up with weapons. I thought everyone had the same thing," Jacen protested.
Tenel Ka's eyes had fire in them, and her mouth was set in an angry line.
"That… that… " she muttered a phrase in Dathomiri, her hand clenching and unclenching.
"Hey," said Jacen, raising his arms and taking her shoulders, "I survived didn't I? I lived through it and that's what matters."
He paused for a moment, then he hung his head and dropped his arms.
"I feel horrible Tenel Ka. I had to kill so many animals and creatures today. I can't believe that the pirates would starve them and beat them just so that they would be angry and eager to kill me. It's cruel," he stated mournfully.
Tenel Ka leaned over and looked deep into his eyes, studying him. She softly said, "You don't have to do this for me you know. I can find some other way to get out of here without you nearly killing yourself. They took away my lightsaber and yours, but we've gotten out of tighter spots. You don't have to do this Jacen."
"Yes I do," he argued.
"Why?" she asked, with her face only centimeters from his and her breath hitting his cheek.
"Because it's you," Jacen whispered, then abruptly leaned forward and kissed her, cutting off any further arguments. He reached one hand behind her head and wrapped the other around her back, pulling her closer. Just the way she responded, opening her mouth slightly, sliding her arm around his neck, sent tiny shivers up his spine and he tightened his hold automatically, unwilling to let her go. All the trials he went through, he would face them for her, because of loyalty to the friendship he had sworn to her at the beginning of the academy days, and because of the dizzy and light-headed way she made him feel lately. Like a true witch of Dathomir, she exerted some kind of tantalizing magic over him, and he wondered how long she'd been weaving this spell. Maybe it was that time they'd gone to Hapes after Tenel Ka had lost her arm, or the time they'd been captured by the Diversity Alliance and had escaped together over the freezing blizzard side of Ryloth's landscape. He respected her, admired her, and at some time he hadn't realized or noticed, he'd fallen in love with her.
He moaned slightly as Tenel Ka shifted from kissing his mouth to trailing tiny, delicate kisses down his neck and she immediately backed off, sitting up with a startled expression on her face as if she hardly expected to find herself in this position.
"Jacen? Are you okay? Am I hurting you? I'm sorry," she started to apologize, embarrassed and worried.
"Believe me, you're definitely not hurting me, but Tenel Ka, where are we anyway? And don't I still have a race today?" he started to get up, afraid that missing the race would disqualify him.
One race, one loss and Tenel Ka belongs to Kanortine, a negative voice at the back of his head reminded him. Tenel Ka's hand reached up and pushed Jacen in the chest back onto the bed.
"Don't even think about getting up," she scolded, "You don't have to race today, Kanortine moved things around because he wanted you in there. You draw a lot of crowds. In any case, you were dipped in bacta for three hours, then when you got out I made sure they brought you here. This is my room in Kanortine's palace for the duration of our stay."
Jacen finally noticed the elegant surroundings and the soft, delicate material the bed covers were made out of.
"How did you get them to move me here?" Jacen asked curiously.
"I payed Kanortine for it with rainbow gems of Gallinore. I had some on the Rancor Tooth.
"Ah," Jacen replied, then paused for a moment, thinking, "Tenel Ka, how did you manage to attend the fight? You weren't allowed to before."
Tenel Ka looked as if she would have liked to avoid the whole subject and shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, he said I could come if I tried to look like a princess for once. I wore the dress and let some artists put the make-up on me, and in exchange, he let me come along. I thought I could be some help," Tenel Ka explained, then scowled, "I felt so useless."
Jacen leaned forward and brought his arms around her, embracing her tightly.
"Just seeing you there was enough to help me. Don't feel like that, it's not your fault we're here," he consoled her, then continued, "Did I mention that I could have died when I saw you? You're beautiful you know."
He heard Tenel Ka make a disgusted sound, "It was just the dress and make-up, I had nothing to do with it."
Jacen snickered, "Right, whatever. The dress was just an accessory. You're beautiful all time and you just don't realize it."
Tenel Ka didn't say anything to this statement, and Jacen took advantage of the moment. He picked up where she had left off, kissing her softly on the base of her neck and slowly working his way up to her mouth, delighting in the smell of her skin and the brush of her hair against his cheek. Through the Force he could feel her amusement, her mirth at his eagerness and his infatuation. He wondered for a moment what would become of this relationship if he continued in the direction that part of him wanted to go in. She had the power here. She was a Dathomiri warrior, and in her people's tradition, a woman had dominance and control over a man. But with his Force perception, he could tell that beyond her enjoyment at his obvious attraction to her, there was loyal honesty, a deep and fluent understanding, and he knew that she truly loved him back.
With that in mind, Jacen broke the kiss, content to merely look at her, and smiled widely.
Tenel Ka smiled back at him. She was about to lean forward and kiss him again, when the doors of the room flew open, and Kanortine walked in, flanked by two of his body-guards. He smirked at them, knowing he had them feeling like guilty children caught in the act and felt glad about interrupting them. He did find them in a rather compromising situation, Jacen still had his arms around Tenel Ka's waist and she was leaning against his chest, when he still didn't have a shirt on.
Instead of releasing her though, he only stood up, bringing Tenel Ka with him, and he only dropped one arm, leaving his other on her waist. Her hand went to her hip and her chin came up in defiance.
"I'm glad you're feeling better Jacen Solo," said Kanortine, "You will race tomorrow at dawn. I suggest you get some sleep."
As he spoke the sentence, he looked pointedly from Tenel Ka to Jacen and then back again. Jacen stiffened and crossed his arms across his chest indignantly, while Tenel Ka bristled, equally insulted.
"You paid for his keep in gems Princess," Kanortine continued slyly, "He is in your care for tonight. Value what time you have, he may very well die tomorrow."
His information dispensed with, Kanortine spun and left the room, his cape whirling behind him. The bodyguards followed swiftly after.
"The nerve of that…" Tenel Ka began heatedly, but Jacen silenced her by putting a slight pressure on her arm.
"Just out of curiousity, where you planning for me to sleep tonight?" he asked jokingly.
Tenel Ka missed the humor and replied, "The bed. However, I was planning to use the couch."
Jacen considered for a moment then responded, "Don't bother. We're responsible, we can both use the bed."
Tenel Ka gave him a skeptical look, but she nodded, then moved over to the left side. Jacen slipped back under the blankets where he'd been sleeping before.
Tenel Ka turned off the glow panels with a switch on the nightstand next to the bed, then curled contentedly underneath the covers, her head resting on Jacen's chest.
"Goodnight Tenel Ka," he said softly.
"Goodnight Jacen."
Tenel Ka awoke before dawn, and for a moment she wondered where she was. This didn't look like her room in the Jedi Temple, this wasn't what her bed felt like, and she certainly had never woken up laying next to another person.
Then it all came back to her. The fight, Jacen falling to the ground covered in blood, her standing by the bacta tank helplessly praying that he would be alright. She remembered the way his hair was plastered against his face from the storm and the way his eyes accquired that dreamy, faraway look as he gazed up at her in great pain. She remembered dealing with Kanortine, persuading him to give Jacen into her care for the night. The happiness he'd felt at waking up to see her, and especially the way he'd kissed her were still vivid in her mind. She couldn't believe her easy-going, innocent eyed friend could kiss her with that much passion, or have held that emotion inside of him for that long.
She shifted in bed and turned to see Jacen's sleeping face above hers. His dark-brown hair was ruffled and his arms were around her neck and back, gently holding her against him. She carefully slid out from his grip and bent her head to briefly touch her lips to his.
Tenel Ka sat on the edge of the bed, watching the first pink rays of sunlight start to enter the sky. She tried to mediate, to focus on keeping calm and in control, but her concentration broke as she heard Jacen sigh in his sleep and reach out with his hands, seemingly searching for something. Tenel Ka tried to erase the sound from her mind, but it sounded too much like the way he had last night when he'd kissed her.
Desire. Friendship. Lust. Love. What was love really about anyway? Couldn't she retain that understanding and thoughtful Jacen and call that love? What separated love from friendship, after all, was it physical attraction? Mutual respect and admiration? How could one tell the difference? Maybe love was determined by actions, and if that was the case, then Jacen definitely loved her. He was risking his life for her right now. Somehow though, Tenel Ka knew that it ran deeper than that. Why, she didn't know, but it seemed hard to distinguish love and comradeship the more she dwelled on it. Love was like faith, intangible and unexplainable, but somehow, you believed in it.
Tenel Ka knew that Jacen had a physical attraction to her. She'd felt it the night before, and she could feel it now. Yet, it was only a small, miniscule detail of the feelings he held for her.
Tenel Ka rubbed her temples in frustration. Maybe she should just forget about certain details of the past two days and go back to just being friends with him. But that would be cruel, she would have been leading him on before and that was as awful idea as any to Tenel Ka.
Jacen stirred again, this time mumbling something incoherent under his breath. Tenel Ka reached out and put a hand on his forehead, sending him into a Jedi healing trance, giving him strength she knew he would need today. When she finished, she kept her eyes closed, enjoying the peace for a moment.
Opening her eyes, she found Jacen in the same state of wakefulness, his brown eyes watching her with a knowing twinkle. She wanted to smack the silly grin off his face so her stomach would stop fluttering.
Too long she thought about this, and with lightning fast reflexes, Jacen sat up and grabbed her around the waist then tackled her. He rolled her over on her back, his hands pinning her shoulders down into the bed.
Jacen grinned and then promptly tilted his head down to kiss her.
It wasn't a gentle kiss or a "good-morning-I-missed-you," type kiss. This was a "I love you and I want you," type of kiss, hard and forceful. Tenel Ka's eyes widened as he ran his right hand down from her shoulder to her hip, sliding his other arm under her neck. She pulled her mouth away abruptly, gasping.
"Jacen," she said breathlessly, "Let go!"
She thought she might have spoken too harshly, maybe he hadn't been quite awake yet, still dreaming, and would be ashamed. Jacen's eyes were directly above hers and she read the same thing in his eyes she'd felt in his kiss.
"Jacen," she warned again, making her voice a little sterner.
Jacen blinked and shook his head, then rolled off to the right. When she sat up, he gave her a softer, simply affectionate kiss on the cheek.
"You and Jedi healing trances make an interesting combination," Jacen joked, "A powerful combination."
"I see that," Tenel Ka said, "Did you sleep well?"
Jacen gave her a look that said, What do you think? and smiled.
"And you?" he asked.
"Fine," she replied, then looked out the window, "Dawn is soon. Come stand by the window and I'll heal you before you go. You'll need it for today."
If the nights on this planet seemed beautiful, then the mornings were incomparable. Tenel Ka could see the mountains from the window and the lightening sky starting at their craggy edges. She smiled and turned her back to it, facing Jacen.
He closed his eyes and put his hands on her hips as she raised her hand to his forehead and concentrated hard. She reached deep down inside where her strength lay, before turning completely around and stretching her senses outside of her and all around her. She could feel the vastness and complexity of life. She could feel her own inner conflict, the struggle to do what she thought was right and not stray from the light side path. She could feel Jacen beside her, serene and calm with caring for her radiating from inside of him. She could feel his pain and his guilt and his worries for the future, both immediate and far-reaching. It was amazing.
Then, through the link in the Force that they shared, Tenel Ka reached her most positive feelings and thoughts, and extended them through the solid form of their bond, up through her hand into him. She closed her eyes to increase her focus, and she heard Jacen gasped and stepped back from her, but maintained the touch of her hand against him. If she could have seen what he saw, a silent, peaceful face of royal beauty, with red-gold hair outlined in the first yellow rays of dawn light, she would have understood his awe. Yet she didn't, so she carefully gathered her power back into herself and removed her hand from him.
For a moment they only stood staring at each other, not really comprehending what they had just done, but whatever words each of them would have said were rudely cut off by Kanortine entering the room, flinging the double doors opened with a flourish.
"Jedi, I'm afraid your time together is at an end," he announced with bravado, "I must take Jacen Solo with me to prepare for the next race. Tenel Ka Chume Ta' Djo is welcome to attend, provided she wears proper attire."
Jacen spared a dagger glance in Kanortine's direction, then turned back to Tenel Ka.
"I'll be okay," he reassured her.
Tenel Ka just nodded and looked at the floor, not wanting Jacen to see the worry and doubt in her eyes.
Jacen stepped closer and then lifted her chin with his hand, then leaned forward and kissed her briefly, almost as if he was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop if he did more. With a cocky smile in her direction, Jacen turned and strode swiftly from the room.
Tenel Ka watched him go, a weight settling on his heart and dread trying to work it's way into her mind. She shook her head in irritation, then stalked across the room to the refresher to get ready for the race.