Chapter 19

The snow was like a single wall of flying ice, impossible to see through. Jag drove through instinct, feeling his way along the route he knew so well. He moved at a creeping pace, his lights turned up as high as they would go. He saw no sign of Jaina anywhere.

He berated himself over and over as he crawled the speeder along the snow banks, searching for any sign of his missing wife. He saw none. How could he have been such an idiot? He had let his temper get the best of him, something he hadn't done in years. Not only was it an emotion he had practiced on keeping in check for years, but it had cost him what he held most dear. He didn't know what he would do if he couldn't find her.

At that moment, he didn't care what she had done to him. Of course, it didn't hurt any less or make him any more soft to her dishonesty, but rather made him realize that he would love her the same if she had turned every secret the Chiss held and turned it over to the Vong. Even if it had not been his choice, he had made a commitment to her. Jag wasn't one to go back on his word, and so he was determined to fight to understand why she had done what she had done. He was just as eager to make her understand why he had left her off Spike Squadron's recruiting list.

The wind buffeted his speeder with a particularly strong gust of wind, sending it tilting onto one side. He wrestled with the controls, tugging on the stick until it righted itself. The weather concerned him just as much as anything else. She could survive in normal Csillian weather, but in a storm this size her chances were minimal. He had already been searching for close to an hour and a half. If she had broken down already—which she must have—her speeder would be consumed in the snowdrift soon. If he didn't find her quickly, he might never find her at all.

The wind picked up again, this time in a gale too strong for him to resist. The speeder was flung onto its top. Without repulsors to support it, the speeder flipped in two complete rolls before he could pull it under control. His head spinning and stomach rebelling, Jag slowly pulled the speeder to a stop. Not only were his odds of finding her alive dropping every minute, but the storm was making it impossible to make any progress.

Looking outside the viewport, he saw he was laid against a snowbank, a huge mound in the otherwise flat surface of the Csillian landscape. He started to power the engines back up when he noticed a glint on the side of the drift. A metallic glint. He leaned forward, peering out of the transport and into the blizzard.

There it was again.

Excitement jerking him back to awareness, he flung the door open hastily and practically ran through the storm to the snow hill. He dug in the snow rapidly, then let out a hoot of elation as the hull of his wife's speeder appeared under his gloved fingertips. He swiped franticly, fighting against the flying snow and ice until he had cleared the door. He gripped the frozen handle in both hands, jerking as hard as he could.

It wouldn't budge.

He pulled again, desperate to know what lay on the other side. The handle wouldn't even bend. In a burst of frenzied haste he drew his charric and fired it into the opening mechanism. The snow melted instantly, along with much of the workings of the latch. He grabbed it in both hands then, pulling with all his strength.

It swung open all up and open so suddenly and so violently its hinges creaked with the strain. Inside was a sight Jag wasn't prepared to see.

Jaina was curled in a fetal position in the back seat, arms wrapped in a death grip around her knees. Her face was as white as the snow outside, and her clenched fingers were bluish in hue. She lay too still, her mouth partially opened. Jag's heart fell somewhere around his ankles, and he leapt over the front seat into the back. His hands searched her neck, hunting manicly for her carotid artery. At first there wasn't even a ripple of a pulse; then there was a flicker, a fluttering just below the surface of her skin.

Hope exploded in his chest, and he ran his fingers through her hair thankfully. "Jaina," he whispered, "Jaina, can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Not giving up, he pulled her into his arms, then stepped out into the chest-high snow. He threw her limp form over his left shoulder, not even bothering to shut the door to the ruined speeder. He trudged through the snow and wind, biting back the pain from the cold and trying to keep balanced with Jaina adding weight to one side and the wind blowing from the other.

Glad he had been in too much of a hurry to close the hatch to his speeder, he laid Jaina gently across the seat, climbed in behind her and shut the door quickly. She still hadn't shown any signs of revival. He knelt in the floor beside her seat, not knowing exactly what he should do. Carefully he ran a hand over her face, tracing the line of her jaw. To his surprise, she moved, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering violently. Anticipation building in his gut, he leaned forward until his lips were a whisper away from her ear. "Jaina," he said, his internal ache making it come out in a groan, "wake up. Please don't leave me. I still need you. I love you."

Her eyes fluttered open, the large brown orbs staring unseeing at the ceiling of the craft. "I'm...so...cold," she shivered, her teeth chattering as she spoke. He wrapped her in his arms, hugging her close. Then he began to pull away, intending on shedding his jacket to wrap her in. But she latched onto his warmth instinctively, her arms snaking inside his parka and around his torso and holding on for dear life. She was so cold against him it was like holding a bar of ice, but he pulled her close anyway, wrapping the folds of his parka around her petite form. She continued to shiver, vibrating in short, violent spasms. He continued to caress hair gently.

"Jaina," he said finally, "we need to get you to a medic." He attempted to ease himself out of her grip as he spoke.

Her hands curled in knot around the back of his shirt, holding him firm. "Don't leave me," she shuddered. "You're so warm."

Although little disappointed that warmth was the only reason she wanted him to stay, he continued to hold her close. He closed his eyes, letting himself luxuriate in her presence. It was all too easy to forget the fight they had had only a few hours prior. But he couldn't let it wait. He didn't want her to come back to her senses and force him to go away before he had a chance to apologize.

"Jaina," he whispered, "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for everything. For yelling at you, for being so judgmental, but especially for letting myself be influenced into keeping you from what you deserve. I had no right to do that. There's nowhere I'd rather have you, Jaina, than right by my side. I love you. I'm so sorry."

Her only response at first was to bury her face a little deeper against his sternum. Then finally she replied, her voice muffled and weak. "I never meant to hurt you. I thought it was the best way to save everyone. The Jedi can do so much for the war effort if I could just get them to join..." she trailed off in another fit of shivers, her teeth chattering wildly and her body shaking in violent convulsions. Jag held her tight, running his hand over the ridge of her spine comfortingly. It almost seemed ridiculous now to think the woman in his arms could ever do anything selfish, anything untoward.

But she had. And even now that the threat of death loomed over her he couldn't deny or forget the fact. But he could forgive it. "I believe you thought what you were doing was best. And I hope you can believe the same of me."

"I'll never lie..." shiver, teeth chatter, "to you again. Not if it kills me."

Jag smiled. "I won't either. Never. Whatever else happens to us, Jaina, I want to know that I can always count on you, on us."

She looked up at him for the first time, her brown eyes registering his words. "I love you Jag. And from this moment on, there's nothing in this galaxy that's going to take precedence over my relationship with you."

He kissed her.

After finally managing to get Jaina warm enough to free him, Jag powered up the speeder. Its ignition worked, but the craft itself refused to do any more than idle. He pushed the throttle as far as it would go, but that only served to rev the engine. He checked the gear again, saw that it was in place, and tried again. It didn't budge.

Jaina—still much colder and weaker than was safe—sat up and leaned over the front seat. "It's the repulsorlifts," she said softly. "Did you wreck this thing, or something?"

Jag gritted his teeth angrily. "I flipped it."

Even in her state, she managed a giggle. "The infamous Colonel Fel, veteran of two wars, survivor of the Vong incursion, flips a landspeeder on his home planet."

He gave her a mock-chastising look. "Ha ha ha, I'm so amused by your wittiness. So what does flipping this thing have to do with the repulsorlifts?"

She shrugged—or maybe she shivered?—then laid back down in the seat. "I don't know why they aren't working; just that they aren't. I can't sense them functioning like they should."

Jag tapped his fingers on the dash nervously. "It's so cold out there a lot of the snow was iced over. When I rolled it could have been hard enough to knock something loose. Or maybe lodge ice in the fibrillator cap."

"Whatever happened, you can't crawl under this thing without the repulsorlifts working, and you can't fix the repulsorlifts without crawling under it. So I guess we just have to wait."

Jag threw her a look over the seat. He wanted to argue, but there was no argument. Still, it pained him to keep her from medical attention for so long. He told her so. She smiled weakly.

"I can always go into a healing trance, Jag. But right now I need you back here." She stretched out her arms, waiting for him.

He looked at her uncertainly. "Jaina, I don't think this is the best time—"

She laughed lightly, her voice musical. "Jag, I meant I was cold."

He blushed, but just climbed over the seat and into her awaiting arms. She wormed her way inside his coat, searching for the optimum warmth. She was still far too cold. Jag was worried, but kept his concerns to himself. There was nothing he could do to help her that he wasn't already doing. He could only pray that the storm subsided soon and someone came looking for them.

"I'm hungry."

It wasn't a complaint, Jag thought, but a statement. "Me too. I wish I could hail someone on this comm, but no one answers. They have to be at least be looking by now."

She twirled a lock of hair around her index finger as she spoke. "You don't think they figured no one could have survived that and didn't even bother to search, do you?"

"No. My mother wouldn't let anyone rest until she had seen a body. It took her a two years to actually believe Chak was dead. She wanted to hold out until there was proof, she said."

"What happened to him?" Jaina asked.

Jag sighed heavily. "He never returned from a scouting mission to Oro Banho. Search parties said his clawcraft crashed in a river. They found the remains of the fighter, but never recovered a body. Mother refused to believe he was dead without a body, but finally gave in to reality."

"Reality?" Jaina asked. "How do you know she wasn't right? A mother's instinct is often right, Jag."At the tortured expression on his face, Jaina knew she had said the wrong thing. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to open old wounds. I wasn't thinking."

Jag waved her off, but didn't reply otherwise. He turned back to the viewport, which was covered in snow. "Maybe I should go clear off the ice."

Jaina snorted derisively. Jag looked back to where she lay on the seat. Her mind and spirit had recovered, but her body had not yet adjusted from the harsh conditions it had been exposed to. She was prone to cold spells still, even though the weakness had faded. The lack of food didn't help any. She would need treatment for her overexposure when they were rescued.

"What for? So we can see the white outside the speeder?" she snorted derisively. Jag was too lost in thought to think of a proper comeback. Jaina sighed in frustration. "Will you stop looking at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like if you take your eyes off me for half a second I'll vanish into thin air."

He could only smile. "Maybe that's how I feel."

She rolled her eyes sarcastically. "Jag?"

"Hmm?"

"I need you back here again."

He grinned, crawling back across to lay down beside her, then enfolding her easily in his embrace. "Jag?" she asked again.

"Yes?" he replied, looking down into her upturned face. She grinned wickedly.

"I wasn't talking about being cold."