Author's Note: Thanks for reading and all replies would be very much appreciated.

Chapter 36

Remembrance part 3: Urukier Infirmary

An-Paj was shocked. Never in his career had he seen a Jedi so out of control. The room fairly hummed with dark energy and fearful emotions. Jedi Knight Meridith Irhanah was a hairs breadth from the dark side and the Jedi healer wasn't certain he could pull her back.

"No more," An-Paj murmured soothingly to Meri, his eyes focused on the trembling figure huddled on the infirmary bed. He ignored the utter chaos surrounding him as he studied the woman on the bed. She was only a shadow of her former self, wraith thin, and going out of her mind with the hopelessness and despair that was eating her very soul. Here was the power of the Union bond at work.

"I hope you can control that…thing," a disgusted voice broke his concentration and An-Paj turned cold eyes towards the healer that was stumbling to his feet. The human healer wiped the blood from his mouth and scowled. "Crazy Jedi!"

"Get out," An-Paj stated in a tone laced with menace. "Now." His eyes hadn't missed the broken constraints on the bed, nor the bruised red marks around Meri's wrist and ankles. Her hands and feet had even begun to swell from the tightness of the binders. It was appalling.

As the remaining healers and nurses scrambled to clear the room at the understated threat in An-Paj's voice, he had already forgotten them. Meri needed his attention now.

Yes, Meri needed him. Meri, who was rocking in grief on the bed clawing at the tight bandages to her wrist and mumbling incoherently; Meri, who's skin hung on her fine bones, who was crying so hard she couldn't breathe.

In her grief, he'd already been forgotten.

He wished the wise and noble Jedi Councilors could see her now. It had been so easy for them to make their decision while sitting high in their tower, never knowing or seeing what it had wrought first hand. They had condemned her to death as surely as if they had drawn a lightsabre against her themselves.

This was mercy? This was compassion?

An-Paj felt tainted to have been a part of it, and guilty. A once bright light of life that he had all but helped create, now all but destroyed. It pained him. He had known Meri Irhanah all her life. He had been one of the first pair of hands to hold her. He had patched her up and mended her during her mischievous childhood. He had seen her through the grief and pain of her first Master's death and shared the same relief a parent might when she'd accepted Alex Arieh as her Master. And now this?

Slowly he approached her, cautiously, as though he would have a wounded animal. Would she even allow him to help? Or did she hold him in part responsible? He couldn't blame her if she did so.

Suddenly Meri looked up at him, her dark eyes wild and full of terror.

It was like looking at a different creature. Who was he looking at? Where was the once calm and confident young Jedi? The sweet spirited girl? The mischievous child?

Recognition sparked in Meri's dark eyes as he stepped closer, near the bed, and she pulled herself to her knees, rocking faster now, but intensely focused on the blue healer. "Help me?" she pleaded brokenly. "Please, An-Paj, you have to help me."

For one moment, An-Paj saw a flicker of the real Meri buried beneath the darkness consuming her.

Then, desperately, "Please…help me…die!"

Shock flooded him leaving him momentarily speechless.

"No!"

The voice behind him startled him and An-Paj glanced behind him quickly. At first he thought one of the healers had ignored his warning, but then he recognized the worried face. Yes, Dylan Saluone, he was the one who had alerted the healer to Meri's condition.

An-Paj only shook his head slightly at the man, indicating and asking for his silence. He hadn't the time to talk to this man. Not now.

Focusing once more on Meri, An-Paj tried to reach for Meri's hands to still their frantic tearing at her bandages, but he was given another shock when Meri jerked away from him and tried to Force push him away.

"Meri, stop that!" he ordered sternly, easily controlling her feeble attempts at Force manipulation.

"No...please…stop this…stop me. Where's Alex? I need Alex…ohhh Force I want to die…please…die...I need him…I need him..," Meri's rambling trailed off as she renewed her attempts to claw at her skin. Her fingernails were shredding and had started to bleed. The sight of blood seemed to almost calm her, but she didn't stop, if anything she scratched harder and faster."

While she was distracted An-Paj grabbed both her hands with lightening quick reflexes. She shrieked and started fighting him and within moments An-Paj found himself sitting on top of her, pinning her hands to the bed.

"Meri! Meri, look at me!" he commanded, but she only tossed her head from side to side and tried to buck him loose. It had the same effect on him that a nerf would have trying to buck a bantha off its back. She had no strength. She was panicking, but he didn't know what else to do.

"Meri, Alex needs you to calm down." As he'd expected, the words got a response. It just wasn't the one he was looking for. The Force shove this time was enough to throw him almost completely off her, but he absorbed enough of the vibration to keep from being thrown against the wall and reassert his position over her.

"I hate him! I hate him…I hate him!" she shrieked hoarsely, and then broke down crying incoherently.

An-Paj let out a careful breath as she collapsed limply beneath him. Reasoning wasn't going to work. She was too far gone…he didn't even know if he could reach her mind beneath all the dark emotions controlling her, but he had to try.

Closing his eyes, he reached for the light of the Force, and used it to buoy him and strengthen his connection. Then cautiously, but determinedly he touched his mind with hers and met insanity.

It was like being sucked into a dark whirlwind of emotions that wanted to pull him down and pull him apart. It seemed like hours in which he struggled, where he didn't know what was up or what was down, or even which way was out. The light of the Force gave him strength and helped him push away enough of the darkness to find the little bit of Meri that was left. She was hiding so far down and inward that he almost overlooked her in the madness.

"Meri, can you hear me?"

There was silence and An-Paj could feel her confusion as she struggled to orient herself. Finally he heard a response in his mind.

"Yes."

"I can help you…if you'll let me."

"How? I'm not a Jedi anymore…I'm…it's dark. It's so dark…"

"No! The darkness only has a hold on you so long as you let it."

"I can't fight it any longer…so tired…too tired…want to die."

"Meri! No! Listen to me and do what I say."

"I'll…try…will try."

An-Paj hoped she would, because it would take strength and he wasn't sure she had much left. He himself didn't know if it would work, this was uncharted territory for him, but he could feel the severed connection of the Union bond pulling her down. It was like a huge vortex, unchecked.

"You must block it off Meri, your bond…must be blocked off!"

Oddly she didn't fight him on it. Perhaps she realized that the connection was no longer an avenue to Alex, but one to death. A Union Bond without the other half could only lead to suffering. At that moment An-Paj fully understood why the Council had forbid such a Bond. Its strength was terrifying. A Union bond connected two individuals so completely that it almost made them one. When broken, it was like cutting a limb from the living body. Without medical treatment the blood, the life force, would drain completely away.

While Meri struggled with the immense task of trying to cap off the severed bond, An-Paj pulled on the Force, lending her strength. It was like trying to patch a dark hole in the vastness of space. He didn't know how long they remained this way, she, suspended between light and dark, and he attempting to do all he could to help.

Finally, at long last the dark emotions began to fade like a mist under the hot sun. Slowly the flow ebbed, until Meri was limp beneath him and all that was left in place of the previous torrid emotions was emptiness. It was a vast, encompassing barren landscape in her mind.

Carefully, An-Paj released Meri's wrist and as he felt her relax, he moved off of her. Her eyes opened slowly and she stared blankly up at him. "Alex?" Her voice was high and thin, the voice of a young girl that was lost.

She started crying, deep racking sobs of grief that tore at ones gut and An-Paj pulled her into his lap to hold her, offering the only comfort to be given. And if tears were there to mist his eyes as well, who was there to see?