~19~

Good Night


The dance lasted well into the new day, until one by one the children of the village fell asleep on the benches and their parents reluctantly carried them away to bed, and the musicians began to tire, as did the dancers laughing and cheering in the center of the floor. At last, in the wee hours of the morning, Ilsa Lendene led the Yavin crew towards their dwellings in the midst of a crowd of other Whills traversing the narrow dirt paths between the houses, some nursing sprained ankles and bruised shins from unskilled partners, but smiling just the same.

Anakin held Tara's hand as they traipsed up a slight rise towards a dwelling near the back of the village. Joy had pounded her indecision into submission, and she hummed quietly to herself, her head resting lightly on Anakin's shoulder, her fingers laced tightly in his.

"That was some fun, wasn't it?" he asked, and she hummed a 'yes', nodding vigorously against his shoulder.

"We should take up dancing around the academy," he added. "I bet Mara would teach us some tricks."

"You'd still have no rhythm," Tara teased softly.

"Maybe so, but I could at least step on your feet artfully," Ani grinned, and stopped, swinging her around onto his arm and leading her in a clumsy waltz along the path. She laughed, feeling giddy as she tripped over stones and felt his arm muscles tense in response, always holding her up, always ensuring that she wouldn't fall.

And yet, as she relished the feeling of his arms around her waist and the purity of his smile, she thought of all the times she'd let him down, when regret or uncertainty had stood in the way of moments like this, when it didn't matter where they were or when, or why, just that they were there together, and she felt somewhat guilty.

Here he had always given to her willingly, unflinchingly, and been patient and had always met her at the door to their apartment when she returned, shamefaced, from one of her panicked escapades from the commitment of being his lover, his girlfriend, his roommate. And she had always been the one to run away, to feel the need for solitude, and time to forget the feeling of his hands on her shoulders, her waist, her back, the way such touches sent shivers through her and made her feel ashamed to desire someone she couldn't give her heart to, at least, not completely.

To share his bed and his living space without a total commitment to his heart seemed a sacrilege to traditional Tara, and on the ship, she had never felt the need for distance more strongly. Which is why she had declined to share his bunk; a minor matter at face value, but a deeper rejection than was absolutely necessary, she thought now.

Which was why she abruptly stopped skipping girlishly along the path, and pulled Anakin against her, pressing her lips skillfully against his, to the effect that he suddenly seemed to relax, his arms automatically finding their way around her waist, his mouth moving in tandem with hers. Standing there, they left the walking crowd behind, and the village became invisible, and neither one thought of anything for a minute or two.

It was Anakin who broke away first, reluctantly, and his eyebrows came together immediately. His face was dappled with shadow, and he looked older, more skeptical.

"Why the sudden thaw?" he asked her quietly, managing a tone that was jovial enough at face value, but counteracted by the hesitance in his eyes.

Tara bit her lip, trying to conjure up Dave's advice from the ship, about taking his childhood in stride and swapping indecision for a bit of physical pleasure, though it seemed selfish now.

"What do you mean?" she asked, feigning innocence.

Anakin sighed. "This on-again, off-again stuff, Jaks. Joking around in the laboratory one minute and avoiding me in the hallways the next, being pissy on the ship and then acting like … like this. It's like someone finally took your heart out of cold storage, and I want to know why."

Tara considered for a moment everything that had transpired in the past forty-eight hours, and was suddenly hit with a stab of crashing desperation. Conflict with her boyfriend seemed to be the least significant thing at this moment, standing here, on unfamiliar terrain, and for the first time in goodness knew how long, her thoughts were stilled long enough for one particularly potent one to emerge above all the others: I need you.

She opened her mouth to say it, already anticipating the explanation that he'd demand, dreaming up some words that might possibly express how much she appreciated that he was experiencing this along with her, that he knew all about adversity and isolation and had been struck with the potent surrealism of their situation, but perhaps time had caused her face to become more expressive, her eyes more reflective of the troubled mind behind them, because Anakin simply smiled, cupping his hand around her small shoulder.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I didn't mean that."

"Me too," she replied, and they kept walking. "I've been so … dumb lately."

"Hardly," Ani chuckled. "Who was the one who found our way here?"

"I don't mean scientifically. Just … personally." She sighed. "Something about this place makes me want to stop feeling so overwhelmed all the time now. It's like I've finally seen everything the galaxy has to offer me."

"You're having a hard time believing in this too?" Anakin asked.

"Absolutely. I find it so … incredible that these people managed to foil the Emperor by building all this from nothing." She gestured at the low, sturdy dwellings surrounding them, the implications of home, and love, and life above all else. "He'd be pissed if he knew."

The two of them laughed for some inexplicable reason then, uncontrollably for at least five minutes, perhaps venting their amusement at the improbability of the circumstances – coming all this way to have dinner and a dance and to find themselves arriving at the front door of a house, bigger even than their shared academy apartment with its sagging futon and sun-faded drapes.

"It's unlocked," Tara said, testing the wooden latch.

"Let's go," Anakin shrugged.

Inside, they found that someone had already been to tidy up the clearly vacant dwelling – the lanterns hanging from the wall had been lit, bathing the single room in flattering yellow light, and the comfy-looking bed nestled in its wooden frame had been turned down and festooned with thick, woven blankets. Somehow, their bags had found their way from Luke's arms to the floor beside the door in which they stood squished cozily together, and whoever had been tending to the room had even hung their flightsuits up to air out on a wooden rack pushed underneath the large, singular window on the back wall. Tara wondered if Najou or Wedaika had been responsible for prettying the place up; it seemed logical.

"This is nice," Anakin said, and Tara hummed agreement, going to the bed and stretching out upon it, yawning widely.

"Home-y," she commented. "A little sparse, though."

She was thinking wistfully of the apartment – when she and Anakin had moved in together, they'd squashed together their respective belongings with such vigor, surprising themselves with how well Tara's sand-colored floor rugs coordinated with Anakin's scratched, wooden desk, and how nicely their knickknacks had melded together upon the shelves, and how naturally they'd both made the transition from having too much space to not enough.

Love is all about acceptance, Tara thought, shyly watching as Anakin pulled off his cloak and robes and began rooting around in his bag for his trusty sweater jacket. I haven't been accepting enough of Anakin.

It was such a basic revelation; she was ashamed that she hadn't thought of it before and suffered endless nights of fitful indecision, sleeping on the couch when there was room for her in the bed, or hogging the bed when she should've just taken the couch.

The Whills were an infinitely accepting people, from what she'd observed so far. They took what they'd been dealt with great patience and perseverance. Their unflinching compliance to the beliefs of their religion had even extended as far as love: there was none of this awkward stage between dating and marriage, this in-betweening, hovering back and forth between certainty or doubt for the future of the relationship. It was like science – black and white. It would either work, or it wouldn't.

I need a refill of faith, Tara sighed inwardly. Maybe I used all of mine up fighting pointless battles over bathroom rights or who gets the side of the bed nearest the window. Maybe somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that it was possible to love without conflict. Maybe it's the drama that gets in the way of truly feeling.

The mattress rocked slightly as Anakin flung himself onto it, laughing crazily like a little kid as he tackled Tara into the pillows, interrupting her thoughts. She screeched, giggling, which only seemed to egg him on as he pinned her to the bed by her legs and tickled her stomach ferociously until she gasped for mercy between shrieks of laughter.

"The neighbors will complain!" she exclaimed, making a futile attempt to grab his wrists.

"Only because you're screaming!" he laughed, digging his fingers harder into her belly and making her squeal and kick.

"Come on, stop it. Stop it!"

But Tara knew, as did Anakin, that in love, commands are reversed, and sometimes 'stop it' can mean 'keep going', and 'no' can mean 'yes', and 'I hate you', when it really comes down to it, means 'I love you so much' on some subconscious level.

So that when Anakin tired of tickling her and both of them lay panting and giggling on top of the blankets, all the things that had been said took on a new appearance, one that was clearer in the dim light in the dwelling, and the way that Tara could feel Anakin's pulse strong beneath his rough palms as he gazed at her from across the pillow, his eyes shining.

"I love it here," Anakin said, and with those words, Tara felt that he had just completely justified the entire mission. Dictated that everyone's duty was to find a way back into themselves on a deeper level than before, as they had. Or maybe he was really just saying 'I love you."


Lilandra was only dimly aware of Cace following her as she hiked back up the steep embankment to the path. Her sandaled feet sank in the soft mud, and with each labored step, her soaked robe wetly separated itself from her ankles and then swung swiftly back to conform to the contours of her bones and muscles with the precision of a magnet, convicting her feet with a soft, admonishing slap.

"Lilandra, wait," Cace puffed from behind her. He had been using her name with more frequency now; the sound of it troubled Lilandra greatly. "Why the rush?"

She glanced quickly back at him, but his eyes were on the muddy path, and where he was walking.

Her rush was to flee the depth and feeling she had seen in Cace's eyes back at the temple, that lusty determination in each awkward, prophetic statement he made to her.

That brief moment of illumination, when she'd felt, standing so close to him, like she could touch the tension between them, and the wanting to break it that had created in her head the crazy idea that she should kiss him, that had startled her. She had surprised herself more by doing nothing but hanging on to the moment.

There was something about Cace that had held her back from her usual instinct to go for what she most desired, made her want to behave, to speak only when spoken to, to keep her rampant sexuality in check. At the same time, she pined to impress him, to show him that she could be more intelligent than frivolous, more perceptive than impulsive and misinformed, as she sometimes seemed.

They had forged a certain covenant of trust back at the temple; to want anything more from him than to be the sole bearer of his ten-year secret seemed to be a sacrilege. But she had.

Indeed, now Lilandra Ilkhaine was embarrassed. But she still trusted him.

And in trusting him … she felt she liked that sensation, of being understood in addition to being desired.

She had no doubt in her mind now that she could ask him loosely to spend the night with her, and he would gladly oblige; they had both been drinking copious amounts of wine with dinner, they had danced and talked and even empathized with each other, and there was a definite attraction between them, Lilandra was certain. But to leave it at that would be to leave a task unfinished. Things had progressed much farther than a name, yet her name was all he had to say, and she felt her heart sinking into her shaking knees.

She feared greatly that she was losing the control she so desperately needed to wield over all in her world. She feared greatly that if the roles were to reverse, and *he* were to make an advance upon her first, she would not have the will to refuse.

All told, it was herself she didn't trust.

She needed a way to determine the score, calculate her odds of winning with her emotions intact.

As if answering her prayers, thunder rolled again in the sky above, and a fine drizzle began to fall, coating the tree leaves with soft, cool water.

"It's raining," she called behind her, a hint of gratitude emerging in her voice. "I'm soaked, you're soaked, we're both freezing … don't *you* think we should hurry?"

He made a noise of reluctant assent behind her, and they squelched onward, the physical strain of walking uphill the only thing keeping them warm.

On the path, it was much darker than before, as the dance had ended and the lanterns had been extinguished, and Lilandra limped along with rainwater dripping in her eyes, her spirits becoming further dampened. Her feet ached from the dancing and the walking flat foot, and her legs were cramped from the cold.

With the deep darkness surrounding her, and the rain forming a thick, misty curtain in front of her eyes, she didn't even see the jagged stone jutting out of the ground in front of her until she was upon it.

Her sandal snagged, and she stumbled a few feet and fell hard, hitting the ground with a force that knocked the breath right out of her lungs. Her chin hit the ground, cracking her teeth together and rattling her head, and there was the faintly audible hiss of separating flesh as the craggy peak of the stone tore a deep gash along the length of her shinbone, from her knee to just above her ankle.

Instantly, a crimson river burst forth from the wound, and Lilandra lay immobilized with shock on the path, unable to even breathe until the first stab of pain shot through her leg, and she gasped.

"Lilandra! Aneh myeh!" Cace sounded a tiny bit exasperated.

In agony now, and still shocked, Lilandra struggled onto her scraped elbows and eased herself onto her back, hearing the wet crunch of gravel beneath her. There was then the sound of large and potentially sharp fragments of rock being kicked out of the way as Cace hurried over.

"Are you alright?" he asked from somewhere beside her.

"No," she whimpered. For some reason, he laughed softly at this, and dropped to his knees beside her on the path, his fingers seeking and instantly finding the source of the dark liquid pooling between the stones. Producing the lighter from his pocket, he flicked it, and Lilandra felt stinging warmth on the soles of her feet as Cace sliced the darkness with the tiny flame, assessing her wound.

"Is it bad?" Lilandra asked, biting her tongue to keep from screaming, trying politeness. She could only see the concerned arch of Cace's eyebrows by the firelight as he suddenly clamped his palm over the torn division between muscle and bone.

"It's pretty bad," he replied honestly, tightening his grip on her leg as a few rivulets of blood spilled through his fingers and over his knuckles. Her leg promptly went numb, no longer flesh but made of needles of tingling cold that shocked her to the tips of her fingers. She couldn't stop a couple of disparaging tears from squeezing from between her eyelids, and she shuddered.

"We should definitely hurry back now," Cace said, removing his hand from her wound and extinguishing his little flame. Darkness devoured the faint glow that remained in the air.

Lilandra gripped her calf, biting her lip. "I don't think I should walk."

There was a silence, broken only by the pattering of the rain on the leaves of the trees towering above them.

"Do you want me to carry you?" Cace asked finally.

"No," Lilandra replied, too quickly. "Maybe I can roll back, ha-ha."

In truth, she would've liked nothing better than to have Cace carry her back to the village. He knew it, too. They were playing now, to the invisible gallery.

"That's not funny," he said, but chuckled again anyway for some reason.

Carry me, Lilandra thought, as loud as she could.

"Just let me carry you," Cace said. "We need to dress that wound before it gets infected."

She sighed, half out of relief, and half out of actual discomfort. She drew her knees up from the wet ground, trying to calm down enough to slow her pulse, which drove the blood from her veins in frantic throbs. Cace's hands slid across her back and underneath her knees, and lifted her off the sharp stones.

"Drop me, and – " she threatened; she stopped with a miserable moan. It was pointless.

He simply made an amused noise, and began picking his way gingerly along the path, his footsteps measured and careful.

She tried to let herself relax in his arms, but she was afraid, and she knew he could tell. The sight of the torn flesh and the blood glistening thickly on her leg made her stomach turn. She gripped Cace's shoulder, whimpering. He stopped, shifting her in his sure grip, and gently breathed cool air on her forehead, which soothed her vaguely.

She kept her eyes closed then, concentrating on the bobbing rhythm of his steps, the raindrops falling on her face, the warmth of her cloak, and gradually, she felt herself relaxing, falling back into reality but ignoring the fantastical – like the fact that any fresh-faced collegiate girl in her right mind would've died to be her right now: wounded in the arms of this unassuming god. Somehow, once she'd gotten past the pain, the circumstances did become sort of funny, in the flawed context of a comedy of errors.

When she opened her eyes, Cace was striding purposefully towards a dwelling quite near to the outcropping that hid Verina's home. She relished the sight of its slanting wood tiled roof, glistening in the faint lantern light that glowed in the single window facing them.

"Home, sweet home," Cace announced, setting her down on the soft grass outside the low doorway and steadying her with his arm.

"Praise be," she sighed, leaning on the wall and lifting her cloak to check on the state of her leg. It was bleeding less, but the severity of the wound was all that more apparent now in the absence of escaping life-fluid. A flap of skin had been entirely torn away from the front of her shin, leaving a deep, tender, crimson gash that was the width of her thumb and at least ten inches long. The image impressed itself upon Lilandra's memory, and she wondered why she wasn't feeling more pain.

"We should clean that up and wrap it," Cace said. He looked hesitant.

"I can do it," Lil offered. "I just need some cloth and …"

Disinfectant. Tara's asleep by now, and she's got all the first aid supplies.

"What do you use to clean wounds around here?" Lilandra asked worriedly, praying that Cace wouldn't say that here on Terapinn, they just sort of left things up to chance and the good will of the Maker.

"You don't want to know," Cace said mysteriously, tapping his nose, but he was only joking … at least, Lilandra hoped he was only joking.

"I'll go find something," he said. "Dry clothes as well?"

"I've got some, thanks. I'll just … go change. Yeah."

She was feeling very stupid and incompetent all of a sudden, limping through the unlatched door of the dwelling.

Her bag had been left inside the doorway, and she dragged it laboriously to the bed, where she fell gratefully backwards, her legs sticking awkwardly out over the end of the mattress. She tried hard not to bloody up the sheets too badly as she located and slipped into a pair of knee-length cotton pants that left her wound exposed, and a sleeveless white shirt. Very tasteful, she thought, catching a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror hanging above the bed – another stolen Imperial relic, she supposed. Impressive.

Cace returned, arms laden with long strips of fabric, a vial containing a questionable, milky substance, and a worn olive jacket. He found Lilandra lying stretched out on the bed with her leg in the air, making faces at herself in the mirror. She didn't appear to have noticed his return. She stuck her tongue out at her reflection, and then grinned, and then pulled down her lower eyelids and stuck out her tongue again, and then arranged her features into a look of feigned austerity.

Cace watched this with great amusement. She looked decidedly different when she wasn't covered with yards of fabric, he thought, taking in her muscular arms and the smooth, tanned skin of her unharmed leg, and the thin ribbon of flesh visible between the waistband of her shorts and the hem of her shirt.

She's got a pretty face, too, he reminded himself, swimming up from languorous stupor and guiltily approaching her. This is going to be hard to explain tomorrow morning if anyone saw us come in here.

"Here," he said, attracting her attention. "Got some supplies."

She was sitting up in a flash, heat spreading across her cheeks.

"Great, thanks," she replied appreciatively, with an edge of forced maturity. "I can do it."

"Are you sure? Maybe I'd better just clean it for you. I don't think you're familiar with natural disinfectant." He shook the vial at her.

There was a brief moment where she must've seen the indecision in his eyes, coupled with thinly veiled attraction, because she was eyeing him dubiously, calculatingly.

"Whatever you say, Doctor Lendene."

So he sat on the bed beside her, pulling her leg across his lap, and tipped the contents of the vial into one of the rags he carried before applying it to the cut. Lilandra gasped without meaning to as the liquid hit her open wound like a hot wire, and she saw Cace wince apologetically when her leg jerked self-mindedly out of the way of the rag.

"Sorry," he mumbled, dabbing away at her skin.

"It's okay," Lilandra whispered, her heart beating fast.

*This is the game*, she reminded herself, her stomach suddenly flip-flopping. She was all too aware of Cace's gaze idly wandering the various parts of her body barely obscured by her makeshift pajamas. *You get what you ask for, and this is all a part of it.*

The self-consciousness she felt bothered her. Oh why, *why* did she feel so nervous all of a sudden? Because he was sitting here with her, dressing her injury with careful attention to her physical comfort, indicating that he'd considered her body, her well being? Or because, as he quickly fashioned a neat tourniquet from another strip of fabric, Lilandra realized that this was the part of every entendre she hated the most: the inevitable goodnight.

"Done," he informed her, gently patting her shin. Her skin prickled at his touch. "Want to try walking a bit?"

"Yeah, might as well," she nodded.

She allowed him to pull her into a standing position, and he held her close to him as she took a few tentative steps across the floor.

"We've turned you into a gimpy! A credit to my doctoring abilities," he commiserated with mock disappointment as she put her weight on the bad leg and immediately crumpled, falling halfway before he caught her by the waist and hoisted her up again.

"I've survived worse," she said through gritted teeth. "Say, Cace – what's the jacket for?"

Lilandra had just noticed the olive green soldier's coat lying on the bed.

"It's mine. It gets awfully cold here at night, and, well." He paused, his eyes flicking to her thin shirt. "I don't think you'll be warm enough. I thought you might need it later on."

"Oh." Lilandra felt dizzy all of a sudden.

"It came with the lighter," he added, grinning.

"That's very considerate of you," she said, and yawned widely. *Awake!* she ordered herself sharply. *This is important. You can't miss it.*

"Tired?" Cace asked.

"Just a bit," Lilandra replied lightly, though her eyes wanted to close. It occurred to her that she was still standing in his arms, her stomach pressed to his, their faces probably unnecessarily close.

"Well, my hut's right in front of yours, so if you need anything, just shout," Cace said, looking down, and Lilandra got the impression that he was just stalling for time. Excellent. Her anxiety dissolved. She wondered if he could feel her pulse, standing this close.

"Literally," she smirked, and waited for him to chuckle. But he didn't seem to have caught the joke, because he didn't move. It was *her* move.

"Well, are you going to bugger off and let me recover?" she asked with a sly smile, and having seen her duty clear, pulled away slightly from his reassuring embrace.

There was a flash of indecision, a heart-stopping pause on the part of both them, Cace perhaps considering the magnitude of what he was tempted to do, Lilandra wondering hesitantly if he would, and then –

"Not yet," he whispered, and pulled her by the elbows back towards him, kissing her on the mouth.

His concentration was expert, but the execution was awkward, and the total effect thrilling and bewildering to say the least, and abruptly, Lilandra began to laugh, right in the middle of his intended romantic moment. The game was hers. Winner take all.

Happiness filled her to the tips of her fingers as they pulled gently at the hem of his shirt – nothing strident, just playful enhancement of the moment.

Surprised by her giggles, he drew away.

"I've done something to amuse you?" he asked, sounding a little insulted. After all the indecision, he'd finally drawn up the courage to be as impulsive as she … and she was laughing at him?

"I'm sorry, Cace," Lilandra said bemusedly, feeling lightheaded, disbelieving, fulfilled and yet ravenous at the same time. "That was a surprise, that's all."

"A good surprise?" he asked doubtfully.

Redemption time.

"You be the judge."

Amending her shock, she grabbed his shoulders and kissed him back, harder this time. No sense in being a *greedy* winner.

She ran out of breath quickly, though, and stepped back again, blushing furiously as she gulped air.

There was a moment's hesitation that followed this exchange in which neither of them did anything at all, but stood rather numbly in the center of the floor, looking at it quite deliberately, Lilandra realizing with a mixture of horror and pleasure that she was fifteen again, unsure of what to do with her lips next, afraid that words from them would spoil the moment but forbidden to proceed silently until they both could summon the courage to make eye contact.

And then she dared to look up, thinking she was giving in first, and saw that Cace was already grinning bashfully, looking proud of himself, and there was a flash of encouragement in his eyes and an expectant tension in his body –

Third time lucky, they met in the middle, his hands on her waist and hers falling in line across his back, parallel bars of skin pulling him in, drawing them together.

Leaning into him, slipping into a natural stance and a presence of mind far from the world of Terapinn, the future or a past memory flashed through Lilandra's mind. They could've been any two people, anywhere – on a street corner under a halogen globe, in the middle of the Yavin jungle, anywhere but this outpost, anyone but a senator and an unwillingly celibate farmer. That was the beauty of it.

For the time being, desire was a permissible notion, and his lips were warm and tasted good, and he filled her arms when he inhaled, and she felt herself sliding away, holding on tight.

It was a long time that they stood there, fastened to each other, always the same desperation, the knowledge that now might be the only time they could be together like this inspiring the course of their starving hands and mouths.

When at last they broke reluctantly apart, Lilandra felt compelled to voice her conclusions.

"It's been an interesting evening," she said truthfully, and he actually blushed, looking awkwardly at his feet, keeping his hands on her waist.

"You sure don't mince words, Senator," he smirked.

"If I did, I'd be generalizing," she replied. "Some things demand accuracy."

"Did you have a good time, though?" he asked. The sparkle in his eyes told her it was an empty question; he didn't really mean it.

"You really are a man," she scoffed, pushing him lightly aside.

He pulled her back, kissing her again, with a conviction that made her smile against his mouth. He was a right old professional at this now, but then, the expressions of attraction need only genuine passion to instruct them.

"You know where I am if you need anything," he murmured cordially into her ear, brushing his fingertips against her temples. "Goodnight, Lilandra."

Li*lan*dra. Oh my goodness.

"Goodnight, Cace," the senator replied, falling away into blissful oblivion before he was even out the door, before she could demand an explanation, before she had a chance to spoil the moment with petty details. Some things demanded accuracy; this sure wasn't one of them.

The only reminders of her injury were the dull ache in her ankle where she'd twisted it in her fall, and the thick crimson streak blossoming on her bandage, glistening where slowly, imperceptibly, her blood was seeping away.