Covalent Bonds

Chapter 35

In the primary infirmary, it was as he had visualized, Bant's supple webbed fingers clasping around his waist as far as her petite physique would let them, her smooth warm head against his shoulder. She held him for a very long time without speaking.

"Bant, it can't be two years," Obi-Wan said at last, pulling back to observe her.

She looked the same, but then she would until she passed into the Force, many years from now. The only difference between two years earlier and today was in her aura, a banked, peaked thing with all her timidity and none of her quiet strength. It's like she is Tahl's opposite number, no spirited words, no fire. Bant's fire has been extinguished and she has no words of explanation. "Bant?"

"Obi-Wan, this isn't a dream, is it?"

"No, old friend. As real as real can be." She clung to him like a suckerfish.

"Ah, yes. Ah, yes." She straightened his tabards like they used to do for each other when they first became Knight, then pressed both hands to her mouth. "Am I showing too much feeling?"

She always worries about that. "You are absolutely the correct color, Bant. Not too green, not too pink, just the right shade of orange sunset that I remember." And I don't know what to make of this.

"I'm packaging bacta strips today for the next Jedi team to take with their medkit." Bant counted ten to put into the durasteel box, then added ten more. "For safety's sake, you know." Silvery eyes reflected his concerned stubbled face. "This kit might be for you and Anakin. I wouldn't want the responsibility of not preparing you for ... for ... " She threw in another handful without counting them and then sealed the container. "There."

"Bant, why are you wearing your hood indoors?"

She pulled it farther down her domed forehead. "I'm wearing it all the time, like Luminara does her cowl. It's my fashion statement in our new Code, do you like it?" Bant giggled.

Oh, not good. "Bant -- "

"Bant, I need you to examine Master Yoda for his ongoing problem and then see to Padawan Skywalker's quarterly checkup." Luminara Unduli's voice was softer than Obi-Wan had ever heard it. "And I'll arrange for your quarters to have the humidity level raised ten more degrees."

Bant lay her head against Obi-Wan's shoulder again.

"Now, please, Healer."

"'Healer.' Yes, 'Healer.'" Bant stiffened as if she were a vertebrate. "Oh, sure, Luminara. Obi-Wan and I can comm each other tonight or he can visit me at home. Can't he?" Bant tucked her hands inside her robe and nearly disappeared completely as her hood fell forward. She froze, awaiting Luminara's reply.

"Certainly. I'm too busy to socialize tonight, but you and he can -- "

"You didn't have to escort me back here, you know, Luminara. One of the walking wounded clones could have done it. I'm all right."

"I needed to meet with Master Yoda in person, Bant, you know that."

"Stuff it, Luminara. Holograms and holocams and holotransmitters, that's what they were made for." This was the Bant that Obi-Wan knew from her apprenticeship to Kit Fisto, sterner stuff than his first impression of her five minutes ago.

"Bant." I need to negotiate.

"What."

"Later, I'll come over with Anakin. Ninth hour?"

"Fine." Bant slid away on soft-soled boots.

"She's seen too much death, Obi-Wan. She says that she wants to see new life and forget about its natural end. I haven't the time to give to her case that she needs, so I brought her back for Regork." Luminara herself seemed lethargic. "She's incorrect about seeing Master Yoda and I'll remind her of that later. I do need to see him in person, about something big." She tapped the side of her nose. "You probably know about it, being on the Council, but I'm still in the dark."

Can't tell you, sorry. "Regork sees patients in his quarters now. Changing the subject, Lu, but Anakin and I were attacked by a nasty member of the plant kingdom on Gelgelar." He undid his belt.

"Swamp nettles?"

"Ahhh, don't even think that!" Obi-Wan removed his outermost tunic. "No, a mobile relative of the gripvine family. It squeezed us and wrapped us up for its own very personal use after it tasted us, I suppose you could call it, with roothairs that probed everywhere." He pulled off his boots. "We were also nearly drowned."

Luminara prepped her exam table with slow swabbing movements. "You had to ingest some water. Symptoms?"

"Nothing major. We'll need a clean bill of health before the week's end." He pulled on the usual smock. "I'm ready."

xxxxx

Obi-Wan wound his obi slowly around him, smoothing each fold although it would be hidden by his belt in any case. When he couldn't stall any longer, he turned to face his friend.

"Something I ate?" Don't let it be anything more than that, not when Anakin and I are renewing our lives together. And our love.

"Obi-Wan, you have grown a uterus since I last examined you on New Holstice." Luminara called on all her professional and private sense of control to deliver this news. She could have sworn that the Force hitched uncertainly.

Time began again. "Lu, just when I think I know you well -- "

"It's true. Look." She punched up her screen to holo mode and an obscenely large knees-to-navel section of a human body sprang into the center of the darkened room. "See this?"

Obi-Wan peered at a thing that looked like the head of an antlered kybuck. Luminara tapped a control and the revolving organ turned solid pink, growing a small tube out its neck that didn't match Obi-Wan's muted memory of human female internal physiology from Winna Di Yuni's half-hour class for Padawans.

"Yes -- "

"It's a uterus and ovaries. No vagina, though, everything completely internal." Thank the stars for small favors. "I've got to do some more research, but from what you've told me about your jaunt on the orbital platform closely connected to Siri" -- and just how close were you? -- "and the Spaarti radiation's overtaking your shields, well, it looks like Siri has been imprinted upon you in an unusual way. Scans show that these organs are yours genetically, as if you were born female in that four hundred-fifty cubic centimeter area only."

"I haven't ... there's nothing missing, is there? Nothing lost?" A huge hand squeezed his chest and shallowed his breathing. "Nothing ... important?"

"No. You simply have both sets of reproductive organs for your species, the new female one similar to that of an underdeveloped internal conjoined twin. It's developed interestingly" -- Luminara warmed to her subject with the enthralling newness of being the first to document something like this -- "because you've formed a tube from your uterus to your digestive tract to osmotically release menses there and that is what was showing up as a highly noticeable symptom. Menses leaving a female body naturally, as they always do in nongravid health." This news contributed to his glassy stare, and she told the rest of her present findings, as she had to. But gently. "Obi-Wan, you are healthy. The interface that your body has grown between the different genders" -- Obi-Wan turned a sickly green visible even in this dim light and Luminara shoved a uncovered specimen container closer with her toe, just in case -- "I've never seen before, but since you are currently healthy, it's doing its job to keep potentially dangerous waste materials separate from any other system by a one-way transfer. Everything flushes out, you see." She brightened as an idea struck. "Changelings do this all the time. Gurlanin and Clawdites, for instance, change genders frequently, I'm sure." Most likely Wesell didn't have to change internally, but still ... build him up, Luminara. "This can be repaired, and you need only stay with me overnight."

Obi-Wan paced before the exam table and ran fingers through his hair, back to front, front to back, resisting the impulse to tear out chunks of it. "Siri, she -- oh, you can't think -- we didn't do anything, just hugged after our mission was over with and she thought only of my safety when I held her on my lap in space -- I need to sit -- " Luminara shoved Obi-Wan into a chair and notched up the roomlights more as she dimmed the hologram. She held his head down almost between his knees until he regained color. The Force smoothed out. "Siri and I never did anything, I swear to you, Lulu, only one I've ever imprinted with is Anakin, oh -- " Luminara straightened Obi-Wan from his uncomfortable position and put an arm around his shoulders. They sat quietly for some minutes.

"Siri! If I've developed this, does she now have -- "

"No. Her examination was that of a thirty-six Standard-year-old female human, prime of life, actually." Siri does have balls, but only in her mind.

"How did she ... escape?"

"She hadn't any Force protection next to her, so the radiation passed through her and onto your equally unprotected gut. You, from what you've told me, were directly behind Siri, allowing the cloning radiation to map her organs' genetic template onto you and that's when your body ... accepted it as part of your genome. I think it has to do with your enhanced closeness to Anakin's midichlorian count, your body's new ability to absorb information and due to the lack of shielding in the lower torso, well ..." She paused delicately. "You did, um, stop what you and he were doing to get closer than" -- what is usual -- "you two had been prior to your Trow mission, didn't you?"

Obi-Wan looked down. "We did." And it was a profound Trial of the Flesh, unlike any other Jedi's has been. "We only resumed when you said that my midichlorians were on a par with his." He straightened in his seat, gazing into her blue eyes, Jedi to Jedi. "You said I was fully recovered from Trow. That I was better."

Unsettling to hear you're back to where you were, though I don't think it's my business. And Obs, you're not going to like what I must say next. "And so you are. As I told you weeks ago, you're even healthier than you were two years ago. Your midichlorian count is nearly toe-to-toe with Anakin's. But Obi-Wan, because you've resumed intimacy with him and you're currently fully-functional in this area as a female, I'm going to prescribe something for you when you and he are together, since the osmotic barrier needs more study. There's something I've not seen before in your aura directly over it, almost a blockage, well, I'll transmit these readings to my lab and have your bloodwork and tissue samples from New Holstice sent, too." More work, ahhhh ... "It's only practical, but you might not have thought of taking precautions when you, um, get closer to your Padawan, in certain ways, that is."

"Precautions."

"Rubbers. Or subcutaneous transmitters to block your female cycle, though I hesitate to add those to your hypersensitive metabolism when you'll come in for surgery soon anyway. Direct barriers are best, unless you choose to vary your metho-- "

"Please, Lu. I'll -- We'll deal with things until I come in for my procedure." Oh, Chosen One, I don't know how I'll tell you about this. We didn't take precautions in the tree, or on Gelgelar, but we did other things on Gelgelar since we had no privacy away from the clones. Oh, oh, oh. "But other than that, I'm fit for duty?"

He's amazing. "I'll sign you off."

"I'll see you after my next mission, then."

Meanwhile, on a bench in the Room of One Thousand Fountains ...

"Eh?"

"I said, Adi, that I'll need your help in planting false information in Regork's presence." The humidity from the nearby biggest fountain flattened Adi's headdress and turned Tholme's tail of hair into gray frizz.

"Surely you don't suspect Regork of duplicity?" The things I've confided in him from that couch, through the years ...

Blasted fountain, can barely hear her. But spies can't, either. "No, I don't. His lamp he bought off JediNow! since he was sentimental about it coming from his home world and it had the right look for his office. Dooku knew that about him and planted the thing, maneuvering the auction somehow so that Regork won it. It's been feeding information to the Separatists for many months now. It may have led Dooku to a great victory on Ansion. If he knew, not the individual Jedi strategy, but personal information about the two Master/Padawan teams, that could be in his favor." Curry her. "I don't suspect you, either."

I'm flattered, I think. "And why not?"

"Siri wouldn't keep it from me if she suspected you'd Turned, even if you'd asked her not to tell. She's too honest for that." She must have been a better actress in her younger days, to fool Krayn. Or something happened to her in those years to change her ... stay focused, Tholme.

Sentimental Regork led us to this danger, unsentimental Siri would not keep secrets from the Order. I ... approve of Siri. "Of course I'll help. Are you going to ask T'ra, too, or shouldn't I inquire?"

T'ra? "Why would I ask her? This intel needs to come from a regular patient to soothe any suspicions, not a brand-new one."

"I saw T'ra outside Regork's office months ago. She said she needed to meditate on his advice."

She never told me she was seeking his counsel.  Is it because we've stopped ---  "I'll think it over, but probably not. The fewer in on this, the better. So, can you pretend to be more distraught than usual and let some things slip?"

I can laugh at myself now. "Don't worry, I'll drink three cups of caf beforehand.  Letting myself go will be a treat. Do you want tears, too?"

"That won't be necessary, just semi-hysterics."

He almost smiled. "Expect to hear from you soon, then."

"Uh, by in person means only, Adi." He was frowning as he levered himself up with his cane and said by rote, "May The Force Be With You."

"Things will work out, Tholme." Feels good to be able to give encouragement. I couldn't have done it last year. "May The Force Be With You."

TBC

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