The Wilderness (Complete)

[Rev Solomon]

Memories of war weighed heavily on a man. You never forgot the fear, the adrenalin rush, the riot of movement, the thundering guns, the stench of spent blaster cartridges and charred flesh. But what stayed with Reverend Solomon the most after all these years was the faces - the clones he'd broken bread with, shared briefings with, who'd watched his back as he led them into the metallic jaws of hell. Some had fallen in battle, and some had survived to betray him and his master in their blind obedience to Order Sixty-Six. But he remembered them all, and they invaded his dreams, the comrades who'd been left behind, whether to death or to the shroud of evil.

This night another face had joined their ranks, and his heart pounded as he lifted himself off his cot and rubbed his eyes in the dark of his cabin aboard the Exodus.

Twenty minutes later he had strolled to the observation lounge of the Whaladon with a mug of instant caf and his beaten copy of the Book of the Faith, not sure what he meant to do. He was too restless to sleep, too restless to read, and almost too restless to pray. Ever since he'd learned that Serena Laran had been captured by the Empire, she'd never gone far from his thoughts. Whether she had become another casualty to the machinations of the Dark Side or whether she still lingered in captivity, he couldn't tell. His senses didn't reach that far.

Or did they? They had forged a special kind of connection when they were Padwans, what now seemed like eons ago. Was it possible, with enough concentration, that he could find that connection again and sense her, whether she was alive or dead, maybe even deliver a message?

He didn't know the answer. But until Loki, Anbira, and Corell returned from Dac, he was powerless to do anything else. He sat facing the eternal stars, closed his eyes, and focused on his memories of Serena.

[Sol Iman]

Xagobah stood at the front line of the contest for the Mayagil sector, a contest which the Galactic Republic was rapidly losing. The Techno Union had just landed another three battalions of battle droids on its fetid, tropical surface to drive away the Republican forces and put down the last pockets of rebellion among the indigenous Xamster race, a peaceful, aboriginal species caught between two warring behemoths. Virtually all the remaining activities of the Republic on Xagobah were retreating actions, clearing paths for the last of their forces to withdraw so they could regroup and fight another day.

Which was why Jedi Padawan Sol Iman couldn't believe his eyes when he stepped into the fungal forest clearing at the head of his squad of Clone Troopers to find a young, red-haired human woman in robes kneeling over one of about a dozen stricken Xamsters lying on reed mats in the middle of their village. Like Sol, she wore a breather to protect herself from the purplish haze of spores and pollen the fauna spewed freely into the atmosphere, but the lightsaber on her hip was the only salient protection against the legions of clankers that were marching through the swamp not ten kilometers away.

"Serena?" he said, and several Xamsters milling among the hollow-fungus huts spooked and scattered away from him and his little retinue. He stepped carefully around the poor creatures lying sick in their beds. "What the frell are you doing here?"

[Serena]

"Sol?" She lifted her head, no smile in evidence under the mask of the breather. "Master Dremmel sent me to check on the Xamsters of this village." Serena wiped at her brow, damp with humidity and sweat. "There's a sickness... the other Xamsters haven't seen anything like it. Its quite fascinating..."

Her voice trailed off at the look on the other Padawan's face, and she stood to her full height, long red braid swinging against her back. "What are you doing here?" She resisted putting her hands on her hips, just barely.

[Sol Iman]

Sol stared back mutely. A sickness?

He gestured to the clones on either side of him. "We're scouting Seppy troop movements so the gunships can cover our retreat. Serena, we're pulling all Republic forces out of Xagobah within forty-eight hours. This isn't the time for Blue Stripe work."

He took a step toward her, and one of the Xamsters leapt between him and Serena, jabbering angrily at him and brandishing a two-pronged stick.

[Serena]

"Forty-eight hours?" Serena put out a hand, calming the Xamster's fears as she accepted Sol with her body language. "No, no, that isn't enough time. Its a similar strain to - I mean look at these white cell counts." She handed him a datapad full of stats and patient notes.

He didn't look at it. "You can disseminate this with Master Dremmel back at the main force."

"I can't leave them like this," she said, her voice calm to keep the Xamsters from overreacting. "This illness is unnatural. My master would be able to tell for sure, but... I think this is a test. Like an experiment."

[Sol Iman]

The diminutive bat-eared alien gave a guttural grunt and stalked away, eyeballing Sol and the Clonetroopers mistrustfully, but he gave Sol enough space to come closer and take a better look at Serena's datapad.

He frowned at the screen. He was no healer, and the medical readout meant little to him. He was ready to suggest that Serena could tell the Separatists all about it if she chose to stay, but then -

"Experiment?" He looked down at the Xamsters lying listlessly at his feet, eyes clouded and rheumy, mottled blue skin a few shades paler than it should be, with dark veins pressing up from beneath the scales. The one Serena had been tending was shivering in the muggy heat, and another one was swatting at the empty air above its face and mumbling to itself. To his untrained eye, it could have been any number of tropical illnesses - parasitic, viral, even the work of toxic spores. But if it was the work of the Separatists, Republic Command would need to know.

"You think this is a Separatist bio-weapon?"

[Serena]

"Yes." Serena spoke simply, but with conviction. "I need to get this information to Master Dremmel." Her green eyes were bright against her pale skin. "Maybe you can take it with you, see that he gets it?"

She knelt down again beside the sickest Xamster, who was shivering despite the heat. Putting her hand on his head, she started to regulate her breathing as she prepared for another healing trance.

[Sol Iman]

Sol looked helplessly at the scene before him, clutching the datapad in a white-knuckled grasp.

"Serena, if you've got enough data to send to Master Dremmel, I need to get you out of here right away. There are ten columns of heavy clankers just north of here. If you're right, it's only a matter of time before they come to check on their handiwork."

She was lost to her trance. Sol crouched by her side and laid his hand on her arm. "Serena, we have to go. The Techno Union won't care that you're a healer."

[Serena]

She sighed, releasing the Xamster and slowly opening her eyes. "You're right." Serena ran her fingers along the Xamster's cranial ridges, trying to soothe its fever even as she got to her feet. "I just... I hate to leave them like this."

The padawan looked around a little helplessly. "I'd suggest evacuation, but they'd never leave their malvil-trees." She spoke to the community leader, giving instructions on continued care of the sick, while Sol conferred with the squad of clones he'd brought with him.

By the time she was ready to go almost thirty minutes had passed and the clones were no where to be seen.

[Sol Iman]

Sol stood alone to await Serena, thumb tucked in one shoulder strap of his field pack.

"I've sent Sergeant Sev and the men to continue the patrol," he said. "I'll conduct you on the shortest path back to Master Dremmel. Sev's got a copy of your data, so it's sure to make it either way." She opened her mouth, and he raised an index finger. "No arguments."

[Serena]

"All right," she said, hitching up her holdall on her shoulder. "I was just going to say that I was ready." She offered him a small smile, just visible under the breather's mask.

After a few minutes of walking, Serena pushed another fungi branch out of her face, raising a cloud of purplish spores that danced in front of her. "I wasn't aware 'shortest route' was code for 'no path.'" She coughed, "Are you sure that we're going the right direction?"

She stopped walking, shading her eyes against the sun to look through the purplish haze. "I came that way, over those hills."

[Sol Iman]

"And Vulture Droids have been buzzing those hills all morning," Sol replied. "We're better off under cover."

They trudged downward through yellow fronds of mushroom filaments and into soggy footing. As they passed a stand of rigid, woody grass, Sol stopped and snapped off a stem about nine feet high and broke it in half over his knee.

"This'll make it easier," he said, handing one of the makeshift walking sticks to Serena. He took another step and sent up another puff of spores. "Agh. This stuff's everywhere."

He charted them a course that avoided the thickest parts of the fungus colonies. Large mushroom bells loomed overhead, leaking spore dust from their gills.

"What kind of symptoms were you dealing with back there?"

[Serena]

"Nausea, fever, shakes, hallucinations, although it seems to be different in each of the affected. The base infection is the same - respiratory trouble, much like what inhaling these spores does to humans. Like asthma... but more complicated. Once it gets rooted in the lungs," she coughed, using the stem to help her footing over some rocks, "it starts to affect the brain."

Serena took a deep breath, sweat dripping coolly down her back in the heat. "The first Xamsters affected died yesterday. That village lost another two this morning." Her hand tightened on the walking stick with frustration, "The others you saw... they won't last another two days."

[Sol Iman]

Sol could hear the outrage in her voice, and he felt it, too. Serena had a natural sensitivity bordering on the empathic. It worked both ways when she felt strongly enough about something. Sol thought that probably was a good asset for a diplomat to have. But a warrior had to remain objective. That the Separatists had unleashed such a weapon on aboriginals was bad enough. But now they needed to ensure that it was never used anywhere else.

"I'm sorry, Serena." He batted away a large, buzzing insect that seemed to be pondering a nice, bloody aperitif. "We'll come back and drive the Techno Union off this world. For now, we just need to make sure this plague doesn't spread."

It suddenly occurred to him with that she'd been in close contact with at least a dozen infected individuals. "How... exactly does it spread?"

[Serena]

"I'm not exactly sure. But I am fairly certain it is airborne." Serena tapped her breather. "Since I never took this off the chance of me contracting it is almost zero. And it looked like it was made specifically to interact with Xamster biology. We're in no danger."

She stopped for a moment, wiping stray hairs off her forehead where they were clinging damply. "Its really warm today." Serena looked around. "The pollen is getting thicker, too. At least, its not as hazy on the path I took before."

[Sol Iman]

"I've felt worse on Felucia," Sol said, squinting to keep the spores out of his eyes. He rubbed a hand across his forehead and looked at it, finding they were mixing with his sweat to produce a gray, sooty grime. "But not by much."

He was beginning to question the wisdom of diving so deep into the mushroom groves. He hadn't seen the haze this thick in the week and a half he'd been on Xagobah, and he was beginning to worry for the filter at the end of his breathing mask, which was whirring away at maximum.

"Wait, that doesn't make sense, does it? Why would the Separatists develop a vector that only affects the Xams--"

Sol stopped in mid-stride. Some hundred yards away, a flock of tulee birds flapped away on their leathery wings, bothered by some disturbance in the undergrowth. One look at Serena was enough to tell him she'd sensed it, too.

A moment later, their lightsabers were hissing in their hands as heavy blaster bolts screamed at them through the mushroom stalks.

[Serena]

Serena gritted her teeth as her lightsaber thrummed to life, and then forced herself to relax. Feel the Force. She instinctively moved her saber as blaster bolts made fungi explode all around them, deflecting two that would have ended her life.

The purplish smog created by the abundance of spores and pollen in the air was swirling at the source of the blaster bolts, and she could suddenly hear something large crashing through the mushroom grove. "Clankers? I thought this way was supposed to be safer?!" The blaster bolts ceased abruptly, leaving her ears ringing in the sudden silence.

She could sense the danger wasn't over, and the air felt thick despite her breather. As she was looking around, Sol grabbed her arm and they took off through the stalks. "They're trying to flank us."

Sure enough their trajectory took them straight into a B3 Heavy that was moving rather quietly through the fungi. She held her saber at the ready, but Sol leapt at it, his flashing lightsaber lopping off an outstretched limb. Serena turned the way they'd come just as more blaster bolts shredded the stalks behind them, splattering the padawans with apothecium and hymenium.

She deflected the ones that came too close, her body moving before thought as she used the graceful forms of Shien.

[Sol Iman]

With an upward stroke, Sol cleaved the super battle droid in two, and each sparking half collapsed into the mud. He turned to find Serena trying to backtrack.

"Not that way - they'll catch us in a crossfire. Come on!"

He leapt over the remains of the battle droid with Serena at his heels. As they passed under a low-hanging mushroom bell, Sol whipped his saber up through the stalk connecting it to the rest of the tree and brought it crashing down behind them. The billowing cloud would help to cover their escape.

They ran on instinct, leaping over fallen fiber logs and swampy cesspools of decay. The sound of blaster fire faded away, leaving only the primordial music of the fungal forest droning around them.

It wasn't until they crested a ridge and skidded down the loamy soil on the other side that they stopped to catch their breath. Solomon leaned back against the hillside and sucked huge lungfuls, now dripping with sweat. "Standard clanker sweeping tactics," he said. "Fan out in a line and march across the land, clean out any resistance they find. They're awfully single-minded about it, so now we're on the safe side of the patrol, they won't be coming back."

He glanced over at Serena, who was staring at him with a grave look on her face. "What? What is it?"

Sol followed her eyes down to the corrugated tube of his breathing mask. There was a gaping gash through it the size of a blaster bolt, ringed with twisting threads of partially melted plastic.

"Aw, frell."

[Serena]

Serena dug about in her holdall and pulled out an antihistamine hypospray that she unceremoniously pressed against Sol's neck. He jerked away from instinct, but it didn't hurt. "That should help stall the allergic reaction to the spores, but it won't last too long."

She lay back against the dark rich loam, coughing. "We're going to have to hurry." Serena stared up through the caps at the purplish haze, seeing spots dancing in the sky. She shifted her gaze, and the spots moved. The padawan rubbed her eyes, and coughed again. "Feeling a little dehydrated from running," she said, moving her mask just long enough to drink from her canteen.

She decided she was going to keep lying down until Sol told her he was ready to move. Dashing about in the mushroom groves had worn her out more than she would have expected.

[Sol Iman]

With a huff of frustration, Sol pulled the mask off and dropped it in the mud. It was useless now, and he didn't need the dead weight.

"I have some training in filtering toxins. Guess it's time to put it into practice."

He took a pull from his own canteen. As tempted as he was to wash his face, he knew it would be a futile effort, and he couldn't afford to waste the water.

Once his breathing was back under control, he stowed his canteen and held out a hand to Serena. "Come on. We'd better get moving again." He lifted her from the steep bank - something about the feel of her hand against his skin seemed strange, even with all the particles swirling in the air. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

[Serena]

"Dizzy," she said simply, holding onto his hand for a moment to catch her balance. "I haven't been keeping up with my fluids though, with the mask on its easy to put off drinking until later." Serena rubbed her forehead, leaving a dirty smudge against her pale skin.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment to clear her mind, and blocked out the headache that was starting up behind her eyes. Another sign of dehydration, she could deal with it later, once they got to the ships and Master Dremmel. "We better hurry if we want to make it before they leave without us," she joked, dutifully taking another pull from her canteen.

She was starting to feel chilled, and sweat was beading up on her forehead. Was that a symptom of dehydration? It... could be..? She pushed her thoughts to the side and gave Sol a smile. "Come on, before you get all clogged up with spores."

[Sol Iman]

Sol gave her an uncertain look, but he knew, joking or not, she was right. It was time to get a move on. "Don't spare the water," he said. "I've got a filter kit we can use if we run out. Let's go."

They set a brisk but manageable pace. Both of them were drenched in sweat, both from the heat and from the demanding terrain. There were places where the ground would melt under your feet, and you had to disentangle your ankles from the root fibers which quickly tightened around any possible source of decaying biomatter. The only fauna they saw were invertebrates - giant flies, millipedes the size of Sol's leg, a huge, yellow slug happily dissolving something with a bleached ribcage in its caustic slime. No clankers had come this way.

"The spores aren't that bad, actually," Solomon said after a while. "It's just like..." He snorted wetly. "Having a really stuffed-up head cold. How are you holding up, Serena?"

He heard her stumble behind him, and he whirled around to catch her. "Serena!"

[Serena]

As they were walking Serena started to feel more and more lightheaded, and she knew that even though she was drinking water now it may be too little too late to ward off heatstroke. But she felt cold. And the spots were back.

Sol said something to her while she was concentrating on remaining upright and walking forward. She was going to ask him to repeat himself, but tripped on a bundle of fibers and fell into his arms. Serena quickly tried to push away and regain her feet, but a fit of thick coughing racked her body.

She frantically pushed her breather off her face, gasping for air, her normally pale skin white and cold.

[Sol Iman]

"No, Serena--"

He grabbed for her mask to keep it on her face, but she fought him, and the strap came loose over her head. The mask tumbled out of their grasp and swung on its hose from the filter at her hip, dragging through the rotten mud at their feet.

But Sol was more concerned about Serena. He held her face between his hands to look into her eyes, which were sunken and unfocused. Fear rose up inside him like a flood.

Gently, he laid her down against a mushroom stalk. "Come on, Serena, stay with me! What's happening, what do I have to do?"

[Serena]

She sucked in a ragged breath, struggling to regain her composure. "Get away from me!" Serena pushed at Sol's chest with arms that felt like rubber bands, and then gave up. She lay quietly against the fungi, staring up at the hymenium nestled inside the cap that overhung her like a huge umbrella. "The Xamsters... it must have mutated to spread by touch."

Serena struggled to sit up. "It didn't come over them this quickly though." She pawed through her holdall, giving herself a hypospray of antihistamine and trying to think. "Its already affecting my brain; its getting difficult to string more than two coherent thoughts together. And I've got -" she coughed hard enough to make her fear she'd cracked a rib, " -got a killer headache."

[Sol Iman]

Solomon backed off, but only just. He could bring himself to abandon her in such a pitiable state, but he didn't know what he could do to alleviate it. He felt more helpless than he'd ever felt before.

"Krasst... Serena, just fight it however you can. Just hold on. We need to get you back to friendly territory and onto a medical ship. Here!"

He grabbed her canteen and held it up to her mouth. "Get a little more water in you. Take a rest. We'll figure it out from there, okay?"

It had already occurred to him, and he was sure she had to be thinking it, too - if it had overtaken her faster than the Xamsters, then it was likely the Xamsters weren't the primary target after all. And after breathing the same air as her for over an hour, it was likely he was as infected as she was. Which mean that by returning to the Republic forces, they could be playing right into the Separatists' hands.

Sol only hoped they could either find a cure or get into stasis before the plague spread any further.

[Serena]

She took his advice, even though he wasn't trained medically, and took slow, deep breaths. Her heart rate began to slow down closer to normal, and she sipped the water.

"We have to get moving," she said, slowly pushing herself up to her feet. "Maybe a little slower... but I'm able to walk now and I may not be later." Serena used her walking stick to lever herself up, and unclipped her dangling breather and let it fall to the ground. She stubbornly walked forward, circumnavigating a large mushroom and heading in the way they'd been going before she fell. "Let me put a hand on your shoulder... then I can delve while we're walking."

She put her slim hand on his broad shoulder, using her stick for support as he led her through the shrooms. The padawan half-closed her eyes, using the Force to locate the virus inside her body and work against it.

[Sol Iman]

As they trudged on through the Xagoban wilderness, Sol, ever the soldier, raced through the contingencies in his head. They were another ten kilometers at least from the Republic battle lines. If they were both healthy, they could have made it in two hours, even over difficult terrain. But if Serena's conditioned worsened, he would have to carry her, and if he started presenting symptoms, ten kilometers might as well have been ten light years.

"I'm going to try contacting Master Tau," he said. "It might give away our position with all these patrols around, but the Seppies haven't broken our encryption yet, and we need to let command know where we are. Just keep walking."

He didn't break stride as he pulled his commlink from his belt and keyed in the encryption and frequency.

"Iman to Tau. I have left my squadron on patrol and am escorting Laran back to base. Laran's been hit with some kind of Seppy bio-weapon. She's still mobile, but her condition is worsening, and I may be infected, too. Proceeding..." He paused to confirm his bearings on the planet's magnetic field. "South by southwest over fungal forest terrain. Request medical support if you can spare it. Will check in again in sixty minutes."

Sol switched the link to receive, but there was only the squeal of high-frequency static in response.

"Just means they can't respond right now," he said, uselessly. "That's not uncommon. So, uh..." He racked his brain for a subject of idle conversation, anything to keep her mind alert. "What have you and Master Dremmel been doing lately? I don't think we've seen each other since the Underground."

[Serena]

She was breathing a little easier, but there was an odd buzzing sensation in her head, despite her efforts to slow the spread of the virus with the Force. Serena kept her hand on Sol's shoulder for stability, and answered, "Master Dremmel's been busy working through the fallout of that mission. Liaising between the Senate and the Navy. I've been traveling with him, but while on Coruscant I am continuing to work with the Younglings."

She coughed thickly, not needing to imagine the spores taking root in her lungs. She'd felt them through the Force.

"What about you? Staying close... to the front lines?" Serena clutched him a little harder as they began hiking up, the heat a little more tolerable under the shade of some truly giant fungi. She wasn't feeling the heat any more though, her body beginning to shake as it battled the virus by raising her temperature and giving her fever chills.

[Sol Iman]

"Yeah. Master Tau and I have been here in the Outer Rim Territories most of the war. Kamino, Bpfassh, this miserable ice ball called Hoth... Say what you want about Xagobah, at least it's not fifty below."

He took a misstep and felt one foot slide in the mud. Serena stumbled behind him, but he managed to catch himself on a woody stem and keep his balance. "Sorry."

Sol found his way to more stable ground and, coming to a steep step up, turned to take Serena by the hand. "We've been mostly up against the Techno Union, so we've been seeing all the latest Baktoid Combat Automata has to throw at us. BX Commandos, Flamers, Heavy Missile Platforms... even a couple B3s, Ultra Battle Droids. Those are some nasty sumbiths, four meters tall and armed like a whole battalion."

It occurred to him that the mechanical monsters hunting them through the mushroom stalks might not be the best topic of discussion while Serena was battling a deadly virus. "You know what I'm going to do when the war's over?" he said. "I'm going to Chev's, that steakhouse down in the Senate district on Coruscant, and I'm ordering the biggest nerfsteak dinner they have on the menu. Big, thick piece of red, juicy meat, pat of butter melting on it, some fresh vegetables and a big baked potato on the side with everything on it. You got any plans?"

[Serena]

"I'll be working with refugees from the war," she answered, trying not to think about the clankers no doubt pursuing them. "Working with planetary governments to relocate those who can't go home, setting up clinics for the sick and schools for the young." Serena paused, and then considered that perhaps that wasn't what he meant at all.

Before she could amend her answer, however, she heard something behind them. The padawan stopped walking, releasing her light hold of Sol, and turned around, her lightsaber in her hand but not ignited. "Did you hear that?"

[Sol Iman]

Sol wheeled around, scanning the forest, but he couldn't see anything beyond the strange mushroom shapes and curling purple fog.

"I didn't hear anything," he whispered back. That didn't mean there wasn't anything, but in these conditions, with alien noises all around and random shapes materializing in the mists, a frightened, tired mind could imagine just about anything.

And Serena's fear was rolling off her like perfume - that surprised Sol. Ordinarily she was as calm as a leaf on a pool. Either she had changed since he'd seen her last, or holding off the disease was doing a number on her mental discipline. He didn't need the interference when he was already half-expecting something big and nasty to come clanking toward them out of the fog.

"Listen, Serena, I know you're fighting this bug with everything you've got," he said. "You've just got to hold on a little longer, okay? Master Tau's probably already got a LAAT scrambled to--"

A shot rang out from the purple fog - not a blaster, but a laser cannon, a massive blast of destructive power that knifed through mushroom stalks two meters thick, and its altitude said that whatever had fired it was big, bigger than a Super Battle Droid, bigger even than a recon walker. Something came toward them on grinding piston legs.

Sol grabbed the back of Serena's robe and pushed her on. "Go! Just go!"

[Serena]

She ran.

The walking stick was abandoned as she scrambled up the slope, pulling on the stalks of the mushrooms for leverage as she went. She could hear her blood rushing in her ears, and there was the stink of ozone all around her as laser fire lit up the purple haze of Xagobah. Serena stumbled and fell as she crested the slight hill, rolling down the dark soil in an awkward somersault until she crashed into a sturdy fungus.

There was a sudden silence around her, her ears not even ringing from the previous onslaught of noise, and then Sol came leaping over the ridge, pausing only to haul her to her feet. She embraced the life Force all around them, augmenting her reflexes and muscles as she ran after him, his hand clamped around hers as he led her through the fungal forest. Behind them she could hear the clank of mechanical legs, and then the mushrooms just behind them exploded as a laser blasted through it.

[Sol Iman]

Sol searched the passing landscape frantically for anything they could use for cover. Salvation appeared in the form of a burrow at the foot of a meters-wide trunk of a mushroom tree. It was large enough to hold the two of them, and the mud surrounding it looked undisturbed. If there was a creature inside, it couldn't be worse than the giant hunter-killer droid that they knew was trying to kill them.

"In here!" He tugged Serena toward the mushroom tree and dove inside. They tumbled over one another into the cool, damp darkness inside, disturbing a few trilobites which went skittering up into the hollow trunk above them.

Solomon clutched Serena close to him and listened, fighting to slow the frenetic rhythm of his heart and lungs. The grinding footsteps steadily faded away into the forest.

[Serena]

Serena stayed where she'd landed, nearly on top of Sol, as they both waited breathlessly. All she could hear was the rustle of insects, and after a moment she pushed herself up, trying to rearrange her robes into some semblance of order in the semi-darkness. There was a large tear in her trousers that exposed her thigh, and she carefully inspected her flesh but found no evidence of a blaster burn.

"Just a scratch," she whispered to Sol, who was looking at her strangely. Serena stifled a cough, her shoulders shaking until she was able to get herself under control. And when she reached out to the Force, to calm her racing heart and check on the progress of her illness. Except when she did...

"Its dark. Like I'm going blind..."

[Sol Iman]

Sol looked around in the gloom. It was dark under the mushroom trunk, but there was still plenty of light pouring in from the burrow entrance. "Just give your eyes time to adjust to the light. We'll rest a while and get going again."

[Serena]

"No, its like... tunnel vision." She was looking into her holdall again, pushing things around. "I can't feel the Force."

Fear welled up in her as she continued to paw through her medical supplies, but of course there was nothing in there that would help. Serena started and her head swiveled to the opening they'd used to get inside the mushroom. Even without the Force she could clearly hear a large droid crunching through the fungal forest nearby. "They're searching for us," she whispered, her heart jumping in her chest.

[Sol Iman]

Sol felt his insides turn to ice at that pronouncement. She couldn't feel the Force? That was an even more terrifying thought than being struck blind.

"I... I don't hear anything. Serena, you said something... you said something about hallucinations. Are you sure..."

Something prickled terribly in Sol's throat. He winced and tried to muscle through it.

"Are you sure you're not..."

He coughed to clear the blockage and tried to speak again, but he'd only made it worse. He doubled over, coughing up phlegm mixed with spores, until his throat burned and his chest ached.

[Serena]

"Sol!" She scrambled back to his side, easing him down to the ground and pressing the canteen into his hand. "Drink. Relax... try to take slow breaths."

Serena put her hand on his forehead, and she didn't need the Force to tell her that he was burning up. "You're feverish." They needed to get to the base immediately, but she could still hear the pistons of a large clanker out in the forest. And she was feeling increasingly lightheaded and the chills were fading in a rush of heat as her own fever picked up its pace.

"Can you try the comm again?" Her voice was quiet in the semi-darkness, still calm but with an uncharacteristic quiver.

[Sol Iman]

Sol took a large gulp from the canteen, spilling some of it on his face like a fool before he calmed himself. His chest heaved. "No, no, it's just the spores," he said raggedly. "They've got me all clabbered up."

He looked down at his hands, which had gone waxy and gray, and he knew it was worse than that. He fumbled for his commlink again and raised it to his mouth.

"Iman to Tau. Condition is worsening. Got one big clanker on the lookout for us. Might be a B3 Ultra. Are you there?"

He met Serena's worried eyes, which were bright in the light of the tunnel entryway. "I'm infected, too. Once the coast is clear, we'll keep on moving, but I don't know how much longer we'll both be mobile. We need support soon."

The link crackled back unhelpfully. With a sigh, he put it back on his belt.

"Serena, you said you can't feel the Force. Is it the disease? Or is it something in this environment?"

[Serena]

She fiddled with her obi, the thick fabric suddenly constricting against her slim waist. Just in my head, she reminded herself. "Being blocked from the Force is not a symptom of being infected with the pollen and spores of Xagobah." Serena hugged her knees to her chest, one knee exposed through the tear in her trousers. "It must be the disease. But... in the Xamsters there was nothing like this. I mean... maybe I should have known... but-" she coughed as quietly as she could, "I've never heard of anything like this before."

A virus engineered by the Separatists to affect mammalian Jedi and cut them off from the Force? It seemed too monstrous to be true - and it had started among the Xamsters, a reptillian species who's cold blooded biology had masked the virus' true purpose until it was too late. Serena closed her eyes against the sunlight trying to come through the opening, her headache quickly progressing into a full blown migraine.

"I don't know what to do," she said quietly.

[Sol Iman]

The situation was looking worse all the time. Sol racked his brain for a solution, but it felt like digging in quicksand. If this really was some kind of anti-Jedi virus, then maybe the Separatists wanted them to return to their own forces.

"Come on, we've got to think. We've got to figure out what's going on here. How is possible to cut someone off from the Force? Biologically? You couldn't kill off the midichlorians in our bodies, or we'd be dead. And... and I can still sense the Force, for now, anyway. So it can't be like a ysalimir null field. What does that leave? Hallucinations? Mental effects?"

He moved closer and laid his hand over hers as she hugged her knees. "Serena, what are you feeling? What's blocking you?"

[Serena]

She was breathing slowly and deeply, attempting to combat her fear through the usual tricks, but was losing the battle. "I don't now. Maybe the virus is affecting us on a cellular level, blocking receptors off from the..." Her voice trailed off.

"I'm sorry, its not easy to think right now." Everything was quiet outside, and she said, "Should we try moving? I don't want to stay here." She gripped his hand tightly for a moment and looked up at him with bloodshot eyes.

[Sol Iman]

Sol felt anger rising within him - anger at the Separatists for devising such a barbaric weapon, anger at Serena for succumbing to it so completely, anger at himself for failing to read the signs of her infection sooner and for sending his Clone soldiers away instead of bringing them and their field supplies along as an escort.

But he clamped down savagely on that line of thought. That anger wouldn't do a thing for them, any more than Serena's fear. Or mine, he added, chiding himself for singling her out. Serena wasn't herself. And chances were that he'd be in the same state as she was within a matter of hours, if not sooner.

"Yes," he said at last, "we should get going again."

He could only rise halfway inside the burrow, but he gripped the edges of the opening and stepped out into the light. The moment he straightened up, he regretted it. His head was light and fuzzy, and he almost toppled over. But he found his balance in time to lend Serena a hand.

"We should keep going that way," Sol said, pointing, and immediately he doubted himself. "No, wait... the tapani moss grows facing north. So we want that way."

They set an uneven pace, but at least they were moving forward, and the heat of the sun was was welcome on his clammy skin.

"All right, let's keep things positive," he said with more energy than he felt. "Get to know each other. I'll ask you a question, and you answer. Then you get to ask me one. Deal?"

She grunted in response, which he was willing to interpret as a yes. "Okay. You're back at the Temple, you've finished training for the day, all your duties are taken care of. You've got six hours to do whatever you want. What do you do to unwind?"

[Serena]

"Brush my hair," she said. "I brush my hair and look out the window at Coruscant and clear my mind."

Serena sighed, working her way over some rocks, her legs unsteady. "I guess that doesn't take me six hours. So I'll take a long hot bath too, with a good book." Ohh, a bath would be glorious. She grabbed at a stalk to help her over a slight hump in the ground, and it broke off in her hand. She stumbled, but caught herself before faceplanting in the dark loam.

"Same question to you," she gasped, resting a moment bent over with her hands on her knees.

[Sol Iman]

Sol turned to help her up when she was ready. It wouldn't do to push her too hard.

"If I have that kind of time, I'll go take a walk," he said. "Anywhere. Monument Plaza, Eastport, the Holographic Zoo, Chiba District, Little Ryloth... You can see the whole galaxy on Coruscant if you look long enough. Join a pick-up game of shockball, walk through an open-air market, eat a restaurant you've never been to before... There's nowhere else I'd rather live."

They found their pace again and came to a little brook running brackish out from between two fungal shelves. Sol found a spot that wasn't too deep and led the way across, holding hands for mutual support.

"You still work with the Younglings, right? Who's your favorite?"

[Serena]

She splashed through the water, holding his hand tightly. "No favorites," she said. "But that isn't true. Little Flyrid is hilarious, and so cute. Six years old... dimples... and hair that sticks up all over. He's -" Serena coughed into her other hand, not releasing Sol even though they were past the stream.

"He's a joy," she finished finally. A large dragonfly-like insect buzzed overhead, and then was joined by several of its brothers. A good sign; there was nothing scaring them off.

Serena tried to think up a good question, but ended up with: "Whats your favorite color?"

[Sol Iman]

Sol laughed at that, probably an icebreaker borrowed from her youngling classes, where favorite colors and holo characters were the foundation of social networking. "Blue, no question. Best color for a lightsaber."

He was tempted to throw that one right back at Serena, but thoughts of youngling class turned his mind elsewhere. "Do you remember anything about your home?" he asked. "I mean, your birthplace. Where you came from before the Temple. What was it like?"

[Serena]

She snorted at his answer, her own green bladed lightsaber dangling from her utility belt at her hip. Finally the terrain began to slope downwards, but was just as soft and treacherous, her boots slipping in the mud.

"My home?" It was an odd question - the Temple was her home. But her birthplace... "I was born on Chandrila. I don't remember much - suggestions of faces, people laughing. There was a big expanse of grass where we used to play with colored balls."

Serena sighed, her legs shaking as she stubbornly put one foot in front of the other. "My last memory from there is of a woman crying. My mother, I think."

[Sol Iman]

Sol had grown pensive. He hadn't asked many Jedi that question - it was just something you didn't talk about. Most of them had just forgotten where they came from, or simply chose not to remember.

"I was born on Coruscant," he said. "I haven't been able to find out where. I remember an apartment with a balcony that looked down on a big row of mag-lev trains. A woman cooking soup on a stove. I'd play in this little playground with my two older sisters, but we had to run home any time strange men showed up in the park. Slith dealers, most likely."

A chill overtook him, and he leaned against a fungus dome, shivered, and took another swig of water.

"I don't know if it's right that we don't see our families anymore. My mother and sisters are still there, somewhere on the lower levels. You don't get out of a neighborhood like that without help. If I knew where they were, I could help them."

[Serena]

She didn't feel qualified to talk about why Jedi were separated from their families. Serena rested as Sol did, closing her eyes for a moment and drinking from her canteen, her undertunic soaked with sweat.

As she breathed, the whirr of a piston was followed by the clank of something heavy trying to move quietly through the fungal forest. "They found us," she said, her voice thick with fear. She caught a glimpse of something metallic amidst the caps and stalks, and found herself barely able to breathe. Sol tugged on her hand, and she followed him as the two padawans slipped silently through the mushrooms, working to put as much distance as they could between them and their mechanical pursuer.

[Sol Iman]

They hurried away as quietly as they could manage through the thickest part of the undergrowth - though that wouldn't count for anything if the droid was carrying a bioscanner advanced enough to distinguish between humans and other fauna. He didn't even know if there was any warm-blooded creature in the local valley with the biomass of a human, and even if there were, a Separatist droid would be just as likely to shoot at any movement and then perform a postmortem analysis on the remains.

Sol stole some wild glances in the direction of the noise. Several times he saw something looming dark in the purple mist, but he couldn't identify it. If it was the Ultra Battle Droid, laser cannons would be the least of their worries. He'd be packing a plasma scattergun, a brilliant missile launcher, and a chemical flamethrower--

No sooner had he thought it than he heard the telltale roar of burning fuel under pressure. "He's trying to burn us out of our cover," Sol hissed to Serena.

[Serena]

Eyes wide at his words, Serena looked over her shoulder to see the the caps behind them crisping and flames beginning to put on an appearance. She released Sol's hand and took off running, stumbling and slipping in the cool mud beneath the mushrooms. She wasn't so panicked as to leave the cover, and Sol quickly followed her as the fire grew closer.

She looked back at him, then slipped in the slick mud and landed on her rear, sliding down a steep decline and picking up speed. Serena grabbed about her for something to slow her down, but the fungi were too smooth and wide for easy hand holds. She spread her feet apart, staring down between them getting covered in muck, and managed to plant a boot firmly on a stalk as she went by.

Unfortunately the impact merely spun her around in the mud, and after a few moments it was all over as she landed against a patch of tall thin shrooms. The fungi felt like foam covered durasteel as she hit it with her back, and she lay there for a moment, dazed.

[Sol Iman]

Sol slid down the embankment after her - if nothing else, it was an efficient, if messy, way of getting out of the line of fire. Flames tended to burn up rather than down hills, and there wasn't anything in the mud dry enough to light anyway. They were safe for the present.

Aside from the malignant disease wreaking havoc on their nervous systems, and the fact that all friendly forces would be abandoning them in the space of two days. If they even survived that long.

Sol hit the floor of the ravine with a squelch and a thump within a few meters of Serena, breathing raggedly. "Let's not do that again," he said. "Are you all right?"

She looked back at him, muzzy from the fall and from the progress of the disease. With shaking hands, Sol pulled out his commlink. "Iman to Tau. Come in. Iman to Dremmel. Any Republic forces, please respond!"

He hit the side of his commlink violently. "Damn it, give me something here!"

[Serena]

Serena spoke from where she lay. "Calmness, Sol. It does us no good to give into our emotions." But her own voice was shaky, and she was scared.

After a moment she began moving, joints aching and shivering from the coolness of the mud. They needed to distract themselves again, and she did so with a question, the first think that popped into her head.

"If you could have dinner with any one person, living or dead, who would you pick?" Her voice was clear, but quiet.

[Sol Iman]

She was right, and he knew it. He was disgusted with himself for letting his anger show in such a juvenile way. But, no, even that disgust was counter-productive. Focus. He needed his focus.

He closed his eyes, forced himself to breathe slowly through his nose - and then heard Serena's question and burst out laughing. "Oh... well... Gosh, let's see. I'd love to have dinner with Master Yoda someday, but I hear his taste in food is a little... uh... Let's say Maxa Jandovar. I've got every one of her albums. Anyone who can get that kind of sublime sound out of a vandfill is someone I'd like to meet."

He sat motionless. The part of him that was driving them onward blindly through the forest seemed to be floating away for now. Rest... that's what he needed.

"Who was your first crush?" he asked, smiling widely into the mist.

[Serena]

She blushed under the mud on her face and propped herself up, leaning against the fungi behind her. Her back was sore. "Uh, you'll laugh."

Sol promised not to, although she could almost hear him laughing already. "Obi Wan Kenobi. I met him when I was a youngling and he was a padawan... those eyes!" Serena pretended to fan herself. "So dreamy. He paid attention to me and wasn't annoyed by my questions." The thought entered her head that he better not ask if she had any current crushes. She immediately banished it from her mind, but suddenly felt transparent and a little desperate to change the subject.

But... would it be so bad to keep the current trend?

"What about you? Any girls catch your eye when you were younger?"

[Sol Iman]

"Oh, plenty. I had four girls picked out of our Youngling class before I found out from the other boys that girls weren't cool."

She gave him a look that, even in her febrile daze, said she wouldn't be satisfied until he gave her names. "Um. There was Sinoa Alcor, had lunch with her a few times... Thaya Bileska, the blue Twi'lek girl. I don't know if she counts, because she wouldn't even speak to me. And... Loklorien s'Ilancy, though she was a few years older than me. Funny, now we spar almost every day, at least, when we're at the Temple together."

[Serena]

Now she wished she'd left it alone. She tugged at the strap of her holdall and discovered that it was full of mud. She turned it upside down to dump it out, and then dug through the mud to retrieve what she could salvage. It wasn't much, unfortunately.

Serena pushed herself up to her feet weakly, using the mushrooms for support. Her walking stick was lost. "We should get going." She made her way over to Sol and put her hand out to him as an offer of assistance.

[Sol Iman]

She was right, of course. Sol knew he was shivering in the mud, which seemed to suck the fever heat right out of his body. He took her hand and hauled himself to his feet. Fevered, sore, exhausted, alternating between freezing and burning up while choking on spores in a dank, decaying mushroom swamp - there had to be a new name for this kind of misery.

Then he looked into Serena's eyes and knew he had to be better than this. They were both treading water in a deep pool of despair. They had to fight to keep each other's heads above the surface.

"The clones will never find us in this ravine," he said. "We have to make our way out. Find a gentler slope somewhere. Then we can see about getting our bearings back."

A putrid little stream of watery mud gushed down the center of the ravine, making their progress slow and slippery. Sol scanned the ridges on either side for anything that could make their ascent easier, as well as any sign of their mysterious pursuer.

[Serena]

He was setting a fairly good pace through the slog and Serena was struggling to keep up with him. Sol scanned the ridge, and she looked up too, expecting to see the glowing opticals of a Separatist droid staring down at them. But there was nothing, only the towering caps of more mushrooms.

Serena wanted to just lie down and sleep, but kept herself moving by sheer willpower. "Wait a minute, you said four... and you only said three names." She slipped, nearly going face down in the muck, but caught herself on her hands and knees. "Can't - can't be worse than mine was!" She tried to sound upbeat, but she was exhausted.

[Sol Iman]

"Um..." Sol coughed surreptitiously and busied himself with looking for firmer footing across a mud pool. "...It was you."

[Serena]

Her heart beat a bit faster, and she was glad he wasn't looking in her direction as she pushed herself up out of the mud. "Really?" Serena grabbed at the ravine wall for support and tried to scrape most of the muck off her hands for a moment before just giving up.

[Sol Iman]

Just as he'd feared - she was appalled. He coughed again and tried not to meet her eyes.

"Yeah," he said, and he forced a laugh. "Pretty ridiculous, huh?"

[Serena]

Oh. Of course.

"Ridiculous is us being covered in mud and tracked by a killer droid in the bottom of a muddy swamp." Serena pushed past him and splashed through the pond he'd been looking for an easy way around. It didn't get too deep, barely to her waist, and she felt a little better once she was on the other side.

[Sol Iman]

Sol could practically feel the temperature drop, and he knew he'd said the wrong thing - only he wasn't sure in which direction. Girls seemed a lot simpler when he was six.

With a sigh, he pushed on through the mucky pond after Serena. As he climbed out the other side, he saw something that made his eyes go wide.

"Ack!"

His lightsaber hissed to life and struck like lightning, neatly bisecting a fat, hand-sized leech that had been scaling the back of Serena's robe.

[Serena]

"What the frell are you doing?!" Serena leaped away from him, her own lightsaber coming belatedly to life in her hand in case he pressed the attack. Without the Force the lightsaber was more dangerous than usual... and perhaps he was hallucinating that she was an enemy!

"Leeches," he answered, and she looked where he pointed to see the wiggling annelid in half on the ground.

"Ai!" She nearly dropped her lightsaber, then disengaged it and managed to snap it to her belt before hurriedly searching herself for other parasites. There were some smaller ones trying to attach to her boots, and she quickly scraped them off with a rock. As she moved, however, she had a strange feeling on her leg.

Sol was doing his own version of the get-it-off-me dance, and she carefully slipped her hand into her trousers where the fabric was torn and hanging loose just above her knee. Her fingers brushed against something, and she knew she had to grab it and pull it off, but instead she shrieked, "Its on my leg!"

[Sol Iman]

"Just hold still," Sol said, and he knelt down in front of her as she sat back against the ravine wall. Trying not to think too hard about what he was doing, he gripped the cuff of her pant leg and rolled it up past her knee to expose her thigh.

The leech had already attached itself at both ends, a pulsing black ribbon about five centimeters long. Sol pressed on her thigh to stretch the skin taut and, with his fingernail, carefully pried the parasite's jaws off of Serena, leaving a tiny, seeping ring of blood. The leech flailed to find another patch of skin to bite, but Sol yanked it away and threw it back toward the pond.

"You have any more? Aw, dang it..."

He sat down on his rear and pulled up his own pant leg to find three more of the worms wriggling up his shin.

[Serena]

Serena shuddered, and leaned forward, plucking one of the moving leeches off of Sol before it could attach firmly and throwing it back into the pond. It disappeared with a plop. "I think that was it... I hope." Her voice was tremulous, and she ran her hands up and down her wet legs to check for any other unwanted creatures.

After a moment she just buried her face in her hands, the long muddy rope of her hair falling over her shoulder. "Why is this happening to us?" She felt like crying, but no tears were coming.

[Sol Iman]

Sol did his best to shake the slime off his hands. He was about to rip off some kind of snide remark when he saw her with her face in her hands, looking like the whole oppressive weight of Xagobah was pressing down on her shoulders.

He moved over to her and set his hands on her shoulders. "I don't know," he said. "Because some Seppy slugbrain needed a test subject for his bioweapon. But, listen, it's not going to beat us. Not while we've got each other."

Hands on her shoulders somehow turned into a hug. She reciprocated, her fingers digging into the mud-flecked folds of his robe. They released slowly, as if they weren't quite sure what had just happened.

Sol reached down for his canteen and into his utility belt and somehow came up with a clean scrap of cloth. He dampened it with the canteen and set about washing the grime off of her face.

"We're gonna make it out of here, Serena. I promise."

[Serena]

That was something that he probably felt obligated to say, but it did make her feel better. His hands worked on her face, and she knew she should say something... or stop him... but she didn't want to.

It is not permitted! her conscience whispered. But if the Force was gone... would she ever be able to feel it again? Serena felt sadness pull her spirit downwards - and then she leaned forward, put her hands on the sides of his face, and kissed him. Her conscience tried to say something, and then sat back to see what would happen.

[Sol Iman]

He looked at her in surprise. It had happened too quickly for him to consciously react. Now she was looking back at him with an expression he didn't fully understand, some mix of fear, hope, and desire that made his heart pound in his chest. The sound of the Xagoban swamp seemed to drift away.

Words failed him, and instincts prevailed. He braced his arms against the wet earth of the ravine and leaned in to kiss her back.

[Serena]

As he kissed her she felt a riotous upswell of emotion flow through her, starting somewhere rather lower than her bellybutton. Their kisses were tentative at first, then more urgent as her headache eased and a buzzing sensation took over her ears.

What are you doing?! You are a Jedi!

Serena's eyes flew open and she turned her head to the side abruptly, gasping. "I - I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that." She wiggled out from between him and the wall of the ravine, and struggled to her feet.

[Sol Iman]

Sol rolled aside to let her escape, but he didn't hide the hurt and confusion on his face.

"Sorry, I didn't know I was that bad at it."

[Serena]

"No - its not that..." She pressed her hands to her hot cheeks, drying mud cracking on the back of them. Don't look at him. "I... We... the code..." she said a little desperately.

Her body told her what she could do with the Code, and her head was inclined to agree. Serena looked at him where he was kneeling, and sank back down to the ground, still within arms reach of him. She felt so confused.

Looking up into his dark brown eyes, she sighed. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since... the Under City."

[Sol Iman]

Sol was dumbstruck. It had been almost six months since their mission into the Coruscant Undercity - a mission that, despite some bad intelligence that had led to them walking right into the firing lines of Separatist artillery, had been fairly routine from his perspective. Even in the darkest reaches of the Underground, it had been a combat situation, and he had been in his element - far more in his element than he was right now. They had saved each other's lives more than once, but he didn't understand how he could have made such a lasting impression on her.

"Serena, I..."

What was she thinking now? What was his face telling her?

"I didn't realize I'd made such an impression," he finished sheepishly.

[Serena]

She looked down at her dirty hands. "You weren't supposed to. Attachments are forbidden..."

Serena opened her mouth to say something more, and then closed it. She put her hand on her chest. "My lungs are still burning, but my head feels clearer." She looked up at the purple sky far above them. "I still can't feel the Force..."

Her eyes widened at the sight of a battle droid trolling the top of the ravine several meters down from them, but getting closer.

[Sol Iman]

Sol followed her eyes up to the top of the ridge. He could see an indistinct form there in the mist, but he couldn't tell what make or model it was. The important thing was it hadn't seen them yet.

They sidled on across the face of the ravine walls, hoping to escape its notice.

"Oh, so now you're changing the subject?" Sol whispered. "We might not get another chance to discuss this, Serena. Denying our feelings doesn't mean we don't have them."

[Serena]

She looked sideways at him, her heart nearly jumping out of her chest - for two different reasons. "Yes, I arranged for a battle droid to hunt us to avoid this very situation." She stopped moving for a moment, concentrating on stifling another cough. When the urge passed, she continued on. The ravine floor was rising and the ridge was coming down to meet them, but there was still a way to go before they would be out of it.

He raised an eyebrow, and she lifted both of hers in a sort of facial shrug before suddenly narrowing her eyes. "Wait, our feelings? So you... I mean..."

[Sol Iman]

Oh, frell. There went his mouth again, always two steps ahead of his brain.

The whining of a servo motor drew his attention upward again. The droid was scanning for life, but they'd lost their line of sight behind a jutting fungus shelf.

"Sometimes to get through a war, you make yourself promises about what you're going to do when you get back," he said. "I promised myself a steak dinner. Sometimes... sometimes I saw myself sharing it with you."

[Serena]

She looked at him again, and slipped her hand into his. Before she could reply, however, blaster fire rained down on them from above. Nothing came close, but it came close enough. She yelped and the two padawans ran for it, ducking into a cave as the energy bolts splattered around them.

Serena clutched at Sol, terrified from the near misses. The cave wasn't deep, but it was deep enough to protect them for the moment.

[Sol Iman]

"This won't hide us for long," Sol said, breathing heavily. "It'll find a way down, and it'll be able to track us in here. I don't even know how it's tracking us, it's like it always stops just short..."

He trailed off and met Serena's eyes.

"...of catching us. Serena, have you gotten a look at this thing? A good look? Could you tell me what it looks like?"

[Serena]

She looked at him wide-eyed, and tried to think. Everything was a bit fuzzy and it was hard to concentrate when she could feel the hardness of the muscles in his arm under her hands. "Um, its... big?" she ended lamely.

Serena shook her head, not letting go of him. "I don't know. I thought it was a... but now I'm not sure what..." Her voice trailed off.

[Sol Iman]

"And do you still hear it now?" Sol asked, eying the cave mouth suspiciously. It was silent outside.

"It doesn't make sense. Why hasn't it sent for back-up? Why does it appear out of nowhere, take a few potshots at us, and then disappear completely?"

[Serena]

"It could be malfunctioning," she whispered.

Serena bit her lip, then reached into her muddy holdall and pulled out a thermstrip. She put it on Sol's forehead and then read the temperature off of it. "One hundred and three." She took it off and placed it on her own. "Whats mine? I... its easier down here. Than it was up top. At least, I'm not feeling any worse..."

[Sol Iman]

Sol snorked a nose-full of spores as he pressed the 'strip against Serena's forehead. "One oh two point five. No, you're right. We're both doing better, aren't we? Maybe..."

He winced and rubbed at his temples, trying to shake his thoughts into some cogent structure. "The physical effects may have gotten better, but my mind still feels like it's been run through a neural scrambler. Hard to focus on anything..."

A horrible thought occurred to him, one he didn't even want to voice. "Serena... the way we've been feeling. It couldn't be the virus, could it?"

[Serena]

She looked down at the thermstrip in her hands, and stared at it with unseeing eyes. "Its possible..." Serena sat down, back against the wall of the cave, looking out the opening at the floor of the ravine.

"But... no. I mean obviously the fever chills, and other physical symptoms are. But... I felt this way before. About you." She blushed fiercely, "Just I would never have said anything."

[Sol Iman]

Sol turned and sat down on the slick rock beside her, cross-legged.

"Well, if you're going to have these feelings, I'd much rather know about them than not."

Cautiously, because he didn't know what his boundaries were, he brushed the stay hairs out of her face and then took her hands in his own.

"It'd give me something else to look forward to after the war."

[Serena]

"After the war?" She sighed, but didn't take her hands back or move away from him. "After the war we'll still be Jedi."

She squeezed his hands gently, "Assuming we find a cure and are able to touch the Force again." The longer she looked at him the background noises of Xagobah began to fall quiet, the roar of her blood in her ears taking over. Serena leaned towards him slowly, hesitantly, and hoped he would meet her halfway.

[Sol Iman]

It was the most natural thing in the world. Both of them quivered with energy, longing for release, and all he needed to do was close the circuit. It wasn't a choice - it was gravity. And both of them were falling now.

It started with the lips and rapidly gained momentum. Sol caressed Serena's hair, then her neck and shoulders, and he felt her hands rubbing at his chest. And then her fingers closed on the crossing neckline of his tunic and slid downward, rubbing over his slick skin, and he met her hand there, ready to pull the fabric aside and give her unfettered access, when something in his mind rose through the haze of passion and desire and made him speak.

"Serena... why are we doing this?"

He closed his hand over hers, frightened to break the connection they were sharing, but just as frightened to pursue it further.

"After we leave this place... after we're back with Jedi... what happens then?"

[Serena]

She was breathing through her mouth, hand trapped beneath his, and blinked several times as she tried to put a few coherent thoughts together. "I don't know...

"...we could keep it a secret."

She could feel his heart beating underneath her hand. She reached out with her free hand and took his, putting it over her own heart.

[Sol Iman]

Was that what he wanted to hear? He wasn't sure anymore. Was it the disease clouding his thoughts, or was it her? Was he surrendering to his feelings too easily? Were they now at the risk of losing themselves? And if so, what would they find in return?

"Do you think you can do that?" he asked. "I've never kept that kind of secret from Master Tau before. But..."

He let it hang there and fell silent for a moment, listening to their hearts beating together.

"Serena, love doesn't fare well on the battlefield. This war is going to keep us apart. But maybe this has happened for a reason. Wars don't last forever."

He lifted her hand from his chest to his lips and kissed it. "Will you give me something to look forward to?"

[Serena]

She nodded, slowly, not knowing if the heat she was feeling was a product of her emotions or of the fever. "So serious," she whispered, a slight smile curving her lips.

She could keep it from Master Dremmel. A'na, of course, was another thing all together. Serena released his hand, though it stayed where it was against her chest, and leaned into him, her lips brushing his cheek. "I'll be here when the war is over."

[Sol Iman]

Sol mirrored Serena's smile - and then expanded it, until he felt he would burst. "I can't help but notice that you're here now," he said, and he wrapped her up in his arms, and they lost themselves in each other as the swamp noises beyond the cave turned to nightsong.

***

Sol woke slowly, wondering where dreams ended and memory began. He still felt feverishly warm, and his thoughts were slow and formless as if they had congealed overnight. He was aware of a soft, living weight draped across him, and he felt long tresses of hair in his fingers.

"Mmmm..."

He opened his eyes to see Serena's head lying on his shoulder, the remains of her Padawan braid spread wildly over the top of the robe he'd drawn over the two of them. He wasn't even sure whether it was his or hers.

[Serena]

Serena came awake in his arms, startled at first, and then she relaxed. She stayed where she was for a minute or two, just listening to Sol's heart beating. Then she sat up abruptly, the robe covering her falling back to reveal that she was just in her undertunic. Her long hair cascaded over her body, loosed from its elaborate braid at some point during the previous night, but it was dirty and tangled.

She coughed, suddenly desperate to clear her lungs from an overabundance of spores, and then looked back at Sol who was still lying down. "I think I figured it out."

"Oh?" He propped himself up on his elbow.

"The spores create an illness in some humanoids, including humans of course, who breathe them in. The virus mimics those symptoms - might even be derived from spores in some fashion which is why it was released here first, to make it look natural - but aggressively targets Force sensitive individuals, possibly by blocking midichlorian receptors.

"Anyway," she was twisting her hair into another braid, just a simple three strand one, "the spores are heavier than air. They settle down close to the ground, and I think that would mean that down here in the ravine they are thicker than ever. So..."

Serena paused, and then closed her eyes and shook her head. "Dammit, it was right there!" She tied off the braid and lay back down next to him, snuggling close to his warmth. "I thought I had something... but it slipped away."

[Sol Iman]

Sol absently stroked Serena's back as he tried to figure out where her train of thought had left off. "If the spores cause the same symptoms, shouldn't we be worse off down here? Or... do you mean the spores are somehow blocking the virus?"

He was no healer, so he didn't even know if such a thing was possible, but it would explain their higher energy, the moderating fever - maybe even the height of their passions the previous night.

Just to be sure, he leaned over and kissed Serena lightly on the lips. "Just wanted to be certain it wasn't a dream."

[Serena]

She kissed him back and then nuzzled her face into the side of his neck. "It still feels a bit like a dream. But yeah, I think that the spores could be blocking it. I don't know how exactly...not without the Force... and there's only one way to test it.

"Go back up to the top of the ravine." Serena turned her head to cough, her lungs full of phlegm and spores.

[Sol Iman]

Sol let out a weary sigh. "Right. Top of the ravine."

Then memory dropped a proton bomb on him, and he jolted upright, spilling Serena in the process. "The top of the ravine! Krasst, Serena, we need to get somewhere we can contact Republic forces! What time is it?"

He swept the robe aside and rooted around in his tunic, which he'd left in a heap on the cave floor beside him, desperately seeking his commlink.

"Oh-six-thirty local. They'll be bugging out before nightfall."

He shook what debris he could from his tunic and pulled it hastily over his bare torso. "We need to go if we don't plan on becoming permanent residents!"

[Serena]

His panic was contagious, and Serena struggled into her trousers and overtunic quickly, hating having to put on such filthy clothes again. "Once... we get topside we could get very sick, very quickly. I hope..." she pulled her obi tight, "hope we can get in touch over the comm."

She shook out her robe with rubbery arms, and shrugged into it, pulling her braid out from where it was trapped underneath it. "Master Dremmel may have my notes, if the troopers got back." Serena pressed fingers against her temples, eyes tightly closed as she tried to think. "He may have figured it out already, or passed it on to someone else who can. But they'll need quarantine suits for us until -"

She swayed a little, her head feeling light, but steadied herself against the mouth of the cave.

[Sol Iman]

"Easy. The two of us are still pretty beat up."

Sol pulled on his robe and stepped out onto the ravine floor. The sky overhead was shrouded in dull lavender clouds that turned to black toward the western horizon, and he heard a distant roll of thunder.

"Well... at least clankers don't like rain any more than we do."

They continued their course down the ravine, which steadily grew higher as the ridges on either side steadily grew lower. If breathing in the spores did help to hold off the disease, they would find out shortly.

"At least the Clones should be safe around us," he said. "Their armor won't admit any contact pathogens, and their breathing filters should--"

CLANK-hiss-CLANK-hiss-CLANK-hiss-CLANK-hiss-CLANK

It was coming from around a bend behind them, metal feet squelching in the mud. Sol grabbed a hold of Serena's arm and lurched forward. "Run!"

[Serena]

Serena yelped and forced her tired body to move after Sol, looking back to see what they were running from. They took a zig-zag path, and the tall fungi blocked her view as they ran.

"What is it?!" she tried to shout, her lightsaber in one hand but inactive. Except when she tried to talk she started coughing, and couldn't recover. She gasped for breath between thick coughs, stumbling after Sol as best she could.

[Sol Iman]

At last the side of the ravine on their left was less a wall and more a slope, and Sol turned straight into it, going on all fours to scramble up the side, hauling his way up on root fibers and, when he found a solid foothold, reaching down to pull Serena along as well. They dove into a thicket of tall, narrow, reed-like mushroom stalks whose roots were probably holding up the hillside, and fell to the ground, hidden by the swaying foliage.

And then it appeared on the path they'd just abandoned - a monstrous mechanoid lurching along on spiked metal boots, surmounted by a towering durasteel carapace four meters high with a single red ocular and more weapons than a brigade of droid marines.

It ground to a halt, sinking several centimeters into the mud, and scanned the vicinity, leveling its wrist cannons at the surrounding foliage. And then, with a thunderous crack and hiss, like a lightsaber's power cell exploding, it fired - a spray of deadly green plasma orbs that crackled and spalled as they sliced through the air and through entire stands of mushroom trees, bringing them crashing to the earth. And then, pivoting on its hips, the droid fired again, intent on sweeping the whole ravine.

Sol tapped Serena on the shoulder and gestured urgently behind them. They needed to find deeper cover before it turned in their direction. It wasn't interested in tracking at the moment - it could always identify their liquified remains in the smoking ashes of the reeds.

[Serena]

She stared up at the mechanical monster, a B3 Ultra Battledroid bristling with enough weapons to easily wipe the two Padawans off the face of the globe, and tore her eyes off it long enough to whisper to Sol. "Is...is it real?"

He looked at her, a little unsure around the corners of his eyes, and then nodded. Sol put his finger to his lips and gestured behind them again. She nodded her agreement, and started crawling through the reedy fungi. Trying to move quickly, quietly, and moving as little of the mushrooms as possible was just about all she could handle as a migraine bloomed behind her eyes.

After a minute or so she turned back, and Sol was nowhere to be seen. Serena panicked, halting her retreat to try to scan the area for him. Without the Force it was an impossible task, and she was certain that he was about to do something heroic and foolish.

[Sol Iman]

Sol rushed through the reeds some distance away, hoping to draw the monster away from Serena and then... he wasn't sure. All he knew was that they were in no condition to outrun it over open country. He wasn't sure whether he'd caught its attention yet, but he got his answer when it spat a spray of plasma shot directly at him, forcing him to dive to the ground. The mushroom-reeds around him had been shorn at waist-height as if by a massive lightsaber, and the broken stems still smoldered.

Sol wriggled forward and then stumbled to his feet again, igniting his lightsaber like a beacon. "That's right, over here, clanker!"

The B3 Ultra took an earth-quaking step toward him, and a panel opened up on its shoulder. Sol didn't have time to shout before it fired three Brilliant bio-seeking missiles, anti-personnel devices that could cut through regiments of Clone troopers like warm butter. Sol lunged toward the monstrous droid, cutting its firing angle so steep that the missiles buried themselves in the ground behind him, sending up eruptions of boiling mud.

With a roar, Sol leapt at the droid cleaved through the air with his lightsaber. Its right claw fell smoking to the ground and cooled in the wet soil with a shriek, and a moment later the plasma cannon, bisected by the stroke, exploded in a plume of green fire. The droid rocked for a moment, then recovered its balance. It lifted its metal-clad foot into Sol's body, snapping several ribs and sending him sailing backward through the air.

[Serena]

Serena stood up as Sol went flying through the air to the right of her, her heart thumping and blood roaring in her ears as she ignited her lightsaber. The four meter droid stopped its pursuit of Sol and swiveled to face her, red optics no doubt scanning her. It pointed an arm at her and the rapid fire blaster cannon attached to it immediately began shooting, sending her dashing through the reeds as fast as she could.

The Force still evaded her, and her breathing was ragged before she'd gone more than a few steps, but stopping and attempting to block the bolts on her own would be suicide. The droid paused, and Serena looked down at the saber in her hand. With a grunt she threw it through the air at the Ultra, green blade spinning end over end until it buried itself in the droid's torso.

Sparks flew, but then the blaster cannon fired again and she was running, and this time she was defenseless. Not only that, but her vector was about to bring Sol back into the line of fire.

[Sol Iman]

Sol's chest and abdomen burned in agony, and he reflexively curled up to try to protect his broken ribs. He'd landed some five meters away from the droid and skidded in the mud another three. It took a dedicated effort to stay conscious and alert, and to track Serena's progress toward him as the monstrous droid opened fire with its wrist blasters.

Sol grabbed for his own lightsaber, which had fallen out of his grasp and was half-buried in the mud just beyond his fingertips. With a roar of pain, he sat up far enough to grip the hilt and tossed it blindly toward Serena.

The Ultra battle droid loaded another rack of Brilliant missiles, prepared to wipe out its opposition once and for all.

[Serena]

Serena's head swiveled towards Sol, and she saw the lightsaber hilt come towards her. She snagged it awkwardly out of the air, thumbing the switch to activate it as she turned back towards the battle droid.

It was loading missiles, and she took a deep breath as it positioned the rack to blow them away. You are a leaf on a stream...part of a dam... diverting and controlling the waters... Serena felt part of her surge up and out as she willed the launch mechanism to jam. She held the lightsaber in front of her as though she could use it for defense against the coming attack, and then the droid launched the missiles.

Except that they didn't launch. A wisp of smoke rose from the missile rack, and then Serena was blown backwards by the explosion as the missiles detonated in the launch chamber.

[Sol Iman]

The explosion left a smoking crater in the droid's shoulder, splintering its ocular and distending its massive armored carapace. The whole thing swayed on its feet with a sound of groaning metal like a wounded beast howling in distress. Sol stared in open-mouthed shock as he realized that Serena had just used the Force.

The Ultra teetered perilously and stumbled to keep its balance, and as it did, it swung its remaining arm toward them, igniting the pilot on its flamethrower. Sol sensed that they had a very narrow window of opportunity to end the battle. Grimacing, he lifted his right hand, palm outward toward the droid, and dug as deeply as he could to find the leylines of the Force running in and around him.

He needed focus. The disease was all about distraction, imbalance, discord - hallucinations, slow response time, strong emotion, while the Force was all about focused energy and control. But in energizing their passions the virus had also given them something to focus on.

Serena...

He found the energy boiling around them and pushed with everything he had inside him.

The Force blast splashed across the Ultra Battle Droid's domed chest, sending it tilting rapidly backward. Serena's lightsaber tumbled from the sparking wound it has made and extinguished itself in the wet ground, and the droid sent a towering plume of fire vainly into the sky as it toppled back into the ravine and fell with an almighty crash.

[Serena]

She lay on the ground, dazed, Sol's lightsaber held tightly in her hand. She had touched the Force, but again it was gone, leaving her sick and exhausted in its wake.

Serena managed to proper herself up on her elbows in time to see the Ultra teeter over the edge, and then she lay back, just concentrating on trying to take the next breath. Her activity plus the higher altitude seemed to be giving the virus an edge. She was dimly aware of Sol staggering over to her, holding her.

He was talking on his commlink, and she gripped his other hand as tightly as she could, every breath a wheeze. Then there were clone troopers all around them, and they were loading her into an RTT. She lost her grip on his hand, and cried out for him, frantic not to be separated. Not yet.

[Sol Iman]

Sol gripped Serena's hand as long as he could, even as the Clones surrounded him, and as one trooper in medical stripes pressed a mask full of oxygen and medicinal vapors over his face. He clumsily pushed the mask away long enough to say something to Serena, some words of encouragement that were lost in the press of bodies, and he was placed on a stretcher and loaded onto a separate transport.

And that was the last he had seen of her face-to-face.

***

The years passed, and the war spun on like a Charybdan maelstrom, a tireless storm that consumed ships and worlds and sentient lives and left others broken and battered at the edges. And yet, at long last, the end was in sight - General Grievous had been routed in the skies above Coruscant, Chancellor Palpatine had been granted temporary executive power over the whole Republican Army, and the Jedi were pursuing the remnants of the Confederacy to the last of their fortified dens. Sol Iman and Master Soren Tau were accompanying the 909th aboard the Star Destroyer Regency to cripple the Geonosian droid factories and secure the planet once and for all - what was to be one of the last great offensives of the Clone Wars, and Sol's final mission before he and Master Tau were called back to Coruscant to end their tour of duty.

But for now, Sol was at peace, alone in his quarters clad lightly in a fawn-colored tunic, sitting down in front of the wall-mounted comm unit. He'd been authorized to make one last transmission from hyperspace before they entered the battle zone.

He keyed in the frequency, channel, and encryption, and he waited patiently as the unit negotiated the hyperspace connection. And then she appeared on the screen, and he smiled warmly.

"Hello, Serena."

[Serena]

"Sol!" Serena smiled happily at the vid screen, her long hair loose and hanging down her back. "It has been too long."

She felt like a goofy teenager, not a Jedi Knight, and she took a deep breath and smoothed her face into something a little more befitting of a Jedi. "Everything is well with you, I hope?"

On the desk in front of her, just out of sight (she hoped) of Sol, she was fidgeting with a stack of datacards that Captain Kata had sent to her quarters with information about the Outer Rim planet they were headed for on the morrow. Her first solo mission, she was determined to do her best and be a good representative of the Jedi Order.

[Sol Iman]

"I'm fine," Sol replied, drinking her in. "Things were a little hairy on Ryloth, but... I had something to pull me through."

His grin faltered for a moment, then came back even brighter. "But look at you, Master Knight! I never got to congratulate you. I hope this means you won't be ashamed to be seen with a lowly Padawan?"

[Serena]

She blushed, "Oh, I think I can manage. And, thank you. I'm to have a padawan of my own soon enough, probably after this mission.

"Oh!" Serena added, "My first mission! I couldn't even tell you where Master Dremmel is right now, and that's a little mind bending." She felt like she was starting to babble, so she fell silent, just in time to knock over the little stack of 'cards with a misplaced finger.

She bit her lip. "I can't wait for this war to be over."

[Sol Iman]

He didn't miss the gesture. He knew there was a longing in his eyes when he said, "Neither can I. It's been too long. Claimed too many lives."

There was a momentary silence, and messages passed between them unsaid. Even on a secure channel, there were things they couldn't say - things that couldn't be recorded, or the Jedi Order would ensure that they never saw each other again. Wait... wait just a little longer...

"That's why I wanted to call you," he said, determined to make this a happy conversation. "I can't tell you where we are, of course, not over this line... but I've been told Master Tau and I will be relieved as soon as current engagement is won. I'll be coming home, Serena."

[Serena]

She smiled, "That is great news. I can't believe we're so close... to the end of the war." She ran her fingers through her hair, nervously untangling a section that she had pulled over her shoulder. "I have been thinking about it a lot, lately."

It seemed unreal that they had not been in the same place at the same time since Xagobah. And that despite the time apart her feelings for him had only grown, not dissipated. She looked through the screen to him, a little wistfully. "I'm looking forward to that steak dinner."

[Sol Iman]

He wanted, even now, to raise his hand to the screen and touch the image of her cheek - to share that tactile contact with her, illusory though it was, and to let her know he was doing it, but it would have looked too suspicious to an outside observer.

"So am I," he said. "So am I."

They shared the silence of hyperspace for a few moments before Sol spoke again.

"I have something I want to show you," he said. "Something I picked up on Ryloth." Her eyebrows rose just enough for him to see it - he relished that connection, even though it was spread over light years. "I'll give it to you when we see each other again. I promise."

[Serena]

"I look forward to it," Serena said very properly, and then added with a touch of mischief, "Padawan Iman."

She didn't know what to say... didn't know what she could say without giving away their secret to any who might see this transmission. "I... "

"Jedi Laran?" Captain Kata was outside her door, rapping gently. "We're ready for you."

"Oh, Force, I have to go. I'm glad you called, Sol. And maybe the next time we talk it will be at Dexter's over a huge slab of meat." Serena felt like her heart would break when she had to terminate the transmission after he said his good bye. She had to hope that he could read between the lines of their conversation to what she had really wanted to say.

I love you.

She scooped up her datacards and ran out of the room, hurrying to make it to her meeting before she could be considered late. He was coming home, to the Temple! She wasn't even sure her feet touched the ground on the way to the briefing room.

[Sol Iman]

The transmission ended, and Sol sat alone in front of a darkened screen.

Slowly, he looked down at his hand and at the thin, silver ring that he'd been rubbing gently with his thumb while they spoke.

"I love you, too."

[Rev Solomon]

Reverend Solomon opened his eyes and stared into the eternal starlight beyond the transparisteel aboard the Whaladon. He reached into the front pocket of his tunic and felt the little circle of metal tucked inside.

"It's the promises that keep us going," he murmured. "I haven't forgotten, Serena. I haven't forgotten."

And he whispered a prayer that the currents of the Force would carry the message to her, wherever she was.