AAAND I'm back! Trying to make up for three months of silence! XD Here's some more Hux and Ahalai for y'all! :)

Also, just a side note. Course Title is basically the equivalent of a PhD FYI. So... Hux having 4 course titles? Yeah that's kind of crazy, especially for a kid who didn't go to school until he was seventeen years old, because he was participating in his crazy father's idea of the hunger games, and was basically just trying to survive childhood.

Just something to keep in mind. :)

-D.

He was off balance.

And yet perfectly poised,

when he returned.

Ahalai had cried herself to sleep after he'd left. She would estimate she might have even reached the second stage of her cycle; not quite to NREM stage 3 or 4, however, so she startled awake as soon as he entered the room again.

He reminded her of fire. She wanted to run from it. From him….he was going to burn her whole, eat her alive … grace curled fluidly through his movements only to flare up and jerk maniacally like he had when he was seizing. He moved like a flame. Unpredictable. Uncontrolled. Unforgiving.

His blazing gaze locked on her and she pressed herself as far back into the corner again as she could. His pale eyes blazed like white light and melted her own until tears slipped, hot down her cheeks again. She glanced down at her bruised wrists that were swollen from his iron grip and shuddered. She did not look up again. She had that primitive, instinctual fear that if she did, he would pounce.

She hated this. Angry tears mixed with the melted scared one's.

"Helplessness is the worst kind of hell."

It took her several seconds to realize it was not her own thought. Her gaze snapped up and he was standing two feet from her. He was looking at her. Puzzling her. Trying to figure what she was thinking. He wrote the Wensti method of Cultural Integration, Segregation and Degradation. He knew what made people work better than she did. His Course Title was complete. She felt like she was gazing into a furnace. Like the skin around her face was tightening and shrivelling under the scrutiny.

"What?" She whispered. The heat had sapped her throat dry. There was no one to hear her scream anyways. No one who would come.

"Helplessness is the worst kind of hell." the fire-haired general repeated with a carefully blank and equally calculating stare. "Ilasri Autogren said that. Funny though, as an aristocrat of Coruscant, I don't think she ever experienced helplessness."

Ahlai didn't know whether to be comforted by his speaking calmly to her, or terrified out of her mind. So she just sat there and stared up at him, torn between the two.

The general stood two feet from her, studying her carefully before saying cooly. "You do know who Ilasri Autogren is don't you?" A flaming eyebrow arched reproachfully.

She nodded twice, catching her courage she began to stutter off a list off facts, because that's what she did when there was nothing else to do. "She was the greatest literature artist of the last century from Coruscant. She graduated from Tumlolett's Academy with two Course Titles in Literature and Poetry. She wrote 'The Turner's Tale', 'The Birth of Agony', and 'The Existentialist'. She-"

He held up a pale hand, "That's enough." He demanded.

She had been rambling again, hadn't she? She always rambled when she was nervous.

"I'm not sure I would go as far as to name a writer as an artist… but that's a matter of opinion. The Captain says you have a Course Title. Is that true?"

It was like a slap in the face. She felt that rage at the injustice flare again and she grit her teeth, furious that tears still burned her eyes. She wanted to be stone cold and resolved and glare back into his face for slapping her with that. With that almost Title. With that life accomplishment that was executed neatly alongside her father. She still glared, but she couldn't block the tears.

"Is that true?" He repeated, looking down at her demandingly. She was shivering she was so angry, so terrified, so furious.

"No!" She snapped to her feet, quivering, quaking, trembling. "No! I was never awarded my Course titles!" She bared her teeth at him and realized a second too late that she was leaning in inches from his face. She felt her eyes widen and the shrunk back in fear. His expression, however, had not faltered. He still looked at her with one flaming eyebrow raised reproachfully and was that a small smirk twisting at the corner of his cruel mouth? Rage returned in full force, but this time she had the sense enough to keep it in check.

"Never, awarded." He repeated. "But you were working on it?" Finally a frown brushed his brow, "Did you say, titles?" He put emphasis on the plural nature of the word.

She swallowed hard, out of fear or fury-likely both- and nodded.

"In what?" He clasped his hands behind his back and studied her like a professor who'd just discovered a spark of intelligence in the student he least expected it from. "The Captain said you knew what to do with my seizure, so what Title is that? Medical? Anatomy?"

"A combination of the two." She muttered. She wasn't angry anymore, frustrated and frightened, but not angry.

Both brows went up now,

"Medical Anatomy." He repeated. "I wasn't even brave enough to go after that Title."

Something proud burst in the pit of her stomach. But it was quickly swallowed by the dark pit of shame that reminded her that nothing was going to make her superior to this man. Ever again. He was her Charge, and she was his slave. She swallowed thickly again and began to study the floor intently.

"What else?" He asked.

She glanced up and he was looking at her with that same surprised interest. Unexpected intrigue.

She licked her lips nervously. Why did he care? So he got an educated bed-slave. The level of knowledge in her head didn't make her any more valuable now. She wasn't even considered a person in most systems now.

"Psychology, Literature, and Mathematics." She croaked.

Her Charge's lips parted but made no sound. His breath stopped in his chest and his pale blue eyes widened dramatically. He was shocked speechless. She glared at him. Because she was a woman and a slave he simply assumed that she had no intelligence, didn't he?

"Four-" He blinked hard and sucked in a deep breath. "You were working on four at once?"

Now she was offended.

"Did you think you were the only one capable of it?" She snapped and then slapped a hand across her mouth in shock that she'd said it out loud. He was going to kill her. The General didn't seem to have heard her though, he was just studying her face intently as though that might hold the answers for her education.

"What's your name again?"

She hated that he asked that question every time he met her. Did he honestly forget every time?

"Ahalai." She frowned.

"No, what's your last name?" He pushed.

Tears rose unbidden again and she looked down at her bare feet. "I don't have a last name anymore." She whispered.

"Ahalai means sorrowing." He informed her.

She couldn't help but roll her eyes, "Yes, I know. I picked the name."

"You picked-?" He frowned and then leaned back on his heels appraising her again slowly. "Are you of the Renailom people?" He asked.

She gave him a startled nod. Not many people knew of her culture, much less by name.

"So you gave yourself this name when you're family was executed." He explained almost to himself and so blunt it came out harsh.

She flinched and looked up at the ceiling, cursing the tears vemonenty in her mind.

"What was your name before?" He asked.

Before. Before the world ended and her life along with it. Before she was beaten and stripped of her identity, her family, her right to even her own body. Before she was Ahlai. Sorrowing and solitary.

"Manisha daughter of Badar."

The General sucked in a breath. "Badar." He repeated slowly. "You're father was executed for high treason and reporting to the resistan-"

"Yes, I know why my father was executed! I was there!" She snarled trying to hold back the sobs that so desperately wanted to claw free.

He went quiet and studied her again. His head was being held slightly off kilter, cocked lightly to the left.

"Manisha means?" He completely ignored her outburst, to her surprise.

"Intellectual; Knowledgeable; Wise; Well Learned; Brilliant; Intelligent…" She could almost hear her father list off the meanings of her name in his gravelly baritone of a whisper as he kissed her goodnight.

Those days were long gone. That whisper long dead. But the memories were still harsh and vividly sweet.

"And you changed your identity to 'sorrowing'." The General said, almost in a soft way. Not quite…. but almost.

She couldn't help but gape at him now. How did he know of her people? How could he possibly understand that the changing of name's ceremony was a changing of identity. Of renaming not your body, but your soul? How could he possibly know?

He understood culture and the workings of the human mind. That's how. And he wouldn't hesitate to use it against her. He would use whatever he had on her to brainwash or kill her and she knew it. That's what he did for a living. She would not appreciate any kindness he showed her. She would not fall for his snares.

He stared back at her with those pale, glass eyes and she could tell he was studying her as much as she was studying him. She met his gaze with her own and this time… she didn't back down.

She stood to her full height- the same six feet as his- and lifted her chin. She may be sorrow. But she was brilliant sorrow. She may be pathos. But she was equally Logos and Ethos. She may be a slave. But she was his equal in weight of the human soul.

Pale blue irises, hard as iron, locked on warm brown one's, soft as velvet. A dark face of deep understanding, pain and empathy, met a bone white mask of indifference forged by fires of cruelty she figured she'd never know the extent of. What kind of life made a creature like this one?

He suddenly turned his back on her and disappeared into the bathroom. He was dressed in a harsh cut military uniform when he returned, and all stray wisps of red hair were forced and slicked back into place. He was emotionless as he looked at her again.

Pointing a cruel finger at her face he demanded,

"Stay here." And turned briskly on his heel.

The door clicked shut and the lock hissed into place.

She didn't know if her kennel with the other slave girls was better than this prison with the mad general or not.

Was it better to have a cruel, intelligent Charge? Or a dumb brute of one?

She wondered, as she wandered over to his collection of books again, what her father would have said.

Run. He would have said. Get out of there, Manisha. Use your intelligence. Escape. But where would she escape to? The resistance didn't even try and save them. She was almost grateful he was dead and could not see what happened to her mother and sister and her. She didn't want him to see her like this. Nothing but a piece of pretty property, whose mind and intellect were nothing of worth. It didn't matter what he father had taught her her entire life. As soon as he died she was taught the true meaning of helplessness.

"Helplessness is the worst kind of hell."

Guys! They were talking to each other like... almost normal people! XD What do you think? Please review! :)

-D.