finding new lights

The darkness was complete. The silence echoed.

A sharp snap, then light was born into the darkness, slowly at first...then illuminating the people standing there...and then spreading out some distance. Rex had lit a glow rod. The light wasn't the best. It wouldn't last forever. But it was better than nothing.

"Are you warm enough?" he asked her quietly, his face serious as he took off his helmet. Some of his brethren were comfortable in the helmets all the time, removing them only to sleep in secure locations. He liked to look beings in the face, to know that they knew he was meeting them eye-to-eye. And he simply didn't want the reminders at the moment.

"Yes," she told him, not thinking about it, almost hissing the word.

His concern was real. She stood nearly as tall as he in her slightly heeled boots. But she still seemed so delicate to him, so perishable. They'd been out in the elements for two days now with only the slimmest of rations-nutribombs-to sustain them. He and his men were more than adequately protected in their waterproof, temp-regulated armor and helmets. She wore the seeming jedi uniform - - the tall boots, basic slim trousers, a fitted tunic of sorts and the ever-present hooded robe. The pale orange light reflected off her face, revealing the thick, dark hair that fell past her shoulders. The soft lips, smooth cheeks. The circles beneath her eyes.

"Are you certain?" He'd build her a fire from his own uniform if need be, but he needed to know now so that there were no surprises later.

"Are any of your men trapped?" she asked, moving to the wall of stone that now encased them.

"No," he answered immediately.

"They escaped?" she asked, her brow furrowed as she looked over her shoulder at him. They'd left the squad at the front of the cave while they investigated how deep it was and what might be cohabitating with them. She'd regret the decision, made at the time to preserve their safety.

"No," he answered. His chin lifted as he regarded her, his shoulders straightened and his chest puffed up. And his heart raced. His men had not escaped.

"I don't understand," she complained as she put a foot in a groove and started to pull herself up. Her aim was to start moving rocks from the top so as to first vent and then escape the cave-in. "Your helmet doesn't pick up here?"

"There's nothing to pick up," he told her, still frighteningly close to attention.

"Nothing to pick up?"

"They're no longer with us, General." His voice was tough, chiding.

And she finally got it.

"Damn it," she muttered, dropping back. "Dammit." Her whole body collapsed upon gaining the hard dirt floor. She simply folded where she came down, falling into a position of meditation. Only it looked more like dejection or self-recrimination to Rex. "I'm so sorry," she told him, looking up. Tears shone on her cheeks in the dim light like silvery streaks in her otherwise dusty face. Rex's helmet made a handy stool and he moved to sit beside her.

"It happens," he told her, clapping her shoulder. She shook her head. "I agreed with leaving them out there. Neither of us knew this was going to happen-"

"My decision, my responsibility."

"Mine," he corrected. "My squad."

"I'm so sorry," she breathed again.

"There was no comm chatter immediately following the explosion," he told her. "So it was either a natural cave-in or pre-existing charges - - booby traps."

"Not artillery, because then there would have been some sort of communication and even if we couldn't pick up a channel you'd have picked up that a frequency was in use and being blocked?"

"Got it," he affirmed. "You're getting good at this."

Her voice was a void of emotion. "What a thing to accomplish."

They'd moved rocks. They'd looked for other openings. They'd found only a sinkhole type of drop that went down as far as Afir's liquid cable hooked to Rex's static line could reach. Even at that depth, with the lantern held away from her, she couldn't see the bottom. Couldn't hear the thump of a fairly good sized rock hitting the bottom. That was when they'd gone back to moving rocks.

It took some doing, some foresight and planning and an appreciation for engineering.

"Well?" he asked.

She shook her head. He couldn't see it, but he figured from her silence that she was either transmitting or frowning. "Still no signal," she admitted finally.

"Not good."

Rex slid to the side so that she could wiggle back out of the tunnel they'd created near the top of the pile of boulders. They'd been a significant ways in when the collapse occurred. So far they'd dug through probably ten feet of rock - - carefully assessing each step of the way to avoid causing major cave-ins on top of them. They weren't close enough to the surface to transmit a call for help.

His helmet worked. The infrared worked. He could 'see' her heat signature as well as the last set of vitals for the men at the entrance to the cave. He'd received no additional data, though, and couldn't get through, so that meant there was probably forty or fifty feet of rock separating them from fresh air. And whatever was keeping them from transmitting.

"Are you afraid?"

"Yes." He was silent - - thoughtful - -for a long span of many heartbeats. "Are you?"

She pursed her lips and looked out over the scene unfolding before them.

"Only when I'm not with you," she said quietly. She looked up at him with her clear, shining eyes. Eyes that haunted him at night when he tried to sleep. Eyes that beckoned him during the daylight hours.

That was when he lost his mind.

He reached down for her, drawing her closer, then letting his eyes slide closed as he pressed his lips to hers.

A whimper. A sigh. A sound like rending from his own throat, and he deepened the kiss, drawing her lips gently apart. He didn't know what the hell he was doing. On a couple different levels. The gentler sex hadn't been a subject of Kamino's flash trainings, other than differing signs of respect and aggression towards them as leaders and regents of allied worlds.

Rex figured he had to be doing something right when his jedi princess shifted closer to him. The feel of her fingertips in his hair, soothing and kneading the nape of his neck, made him want to purr like one of the big jungle cats they'd been taught to be wary of.

"Oh, gods," she moaned as she pulled away and ducked her face into his neck.

He let his breath hiss out and petted at her back.

Overstepped this time, big boy, he told himself.

"I don't know what to do with this feeling inside me," she confessed. "I don't know how to do this…"

"I have you," he promised. He couldn't help but press a chaste kiss to the sweet temple so near him. "I'm sor-"

Her sob broke off his apology and his arms tightened around her as hers snaked around him to clutch him tighter. The feeling in his gut changed from hot churning to cold stone.

"I shouldn't want this. Not like this," she confessed. "I should push you away. Pull back. Passion is against our mandates. Attachment is forbidden us." He felt tears now, hot and searing as they soaked into the high neck of his armor's liner.

"I'm sorry - - I'm so, so sorry," he began again, chanting it as he rocked her.

"I'm not built like the others," she whispered into the black air around them. "There's something in me that's not quite jedi."

He figured he'd be condemned to any being's hell for his complete agreement there. There was something intoxicating about her. Something beyond the pleasure a man felt in a fine female form that called to him. Something otherworldly about how she made him feel inside.

"I believe that, Princess," he groaned. "I believe you're a better human for it, if not a better jedi."

She shook her head as she pulled back slightly to look at him.

He cupped her pretty, tear-streaked face. "I never meant to cause you more angst, love," he told her. "I didn't think…before…"

She watched him. Watched his mouth while he spoke, then met his eyes with hers. "I've never felt what I feel when I'm with you before." She swallowed. "I don't want it to end here. I don't want to wonder-"

The movement of his head tilting closer to hers would have been imperceptible to anyone else. But she felt it. And it drew her.

The answering shift brought her to him again and he claimed her mouth once more.