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The door hissed open and at the other end of the hall, Meri froze, her eyes wide with sudden trepidation. She turned her head and peered down the hall, and caught sight of a familiar silhouette stepping gracefully through the door. "Meri?" came her Master's voice. Her heart frozen in her chest, the young woman couldn't breathe... was it really him? Did he remember her? Did he remember... everything?
When he stepped into the light, her breath shuddered from her audibly, and her knees nearly gave way. She could see something in his clear blue eyes, something she recognized...
"Meri!" He was at her side, catching her as she sagged back, fighting the feelings that roiled through her. She was safe. He was there, at last.
**
Alex gently lowered the unconscious girl to the floor, and shaped her limp form into a recovery position, whipping off his robe to pillow her head. He checked her pulse, it was a little fast, but fairly strong: she would be alright. She hasn't been eating, he noted, and didn't question how he could tell, It's low blood sugar, and an emotional shock... I should have commed before I came up...
He settled onto his haunches, waiting for her to come around. He smoothed a tendril of hair back from her brow, a habitual gesture he didn't care to trace back, knowing he'd only find that same blank wall. His hand tucked the tress behind her ear and encountered the thin pattern of her Padawan braid. He pulled it free from where it had become trapped in her collar and laid it flat against the fabric of her tunic, smoothing it with a careful thumb. He could tell by the few escaping curly wisps that some of his own coarser sable was tied in with her own straighter, finer dark hair.
His apprentice. His student, his responsibility. Meri. As he sounded her name in his mind there was a deep twinge of... something, a sense of many layers of feeling and meaning to her simple name. He searched after it, but shook his head when no answers came.
After a relatively short pause, her eyelids fluttered and opened, and he was staring into deep, mossy brown pools. "Alex?" she asked, her voice soft and questioning.
He bent his head towards her as he answered her. "Padawan."
She struggled upright and bowed her head in a semblance of a proper gesture of respect, but her eyes were pinched shut, tight, as though she were blocking out a sight that gave her intense pain. "M... Master," she acknowledged, but the word seemed wrenched out of her. She wouldn't meet his eyes again.
Alex sucked in a breath, and felt the wind of the Force at his back, buoying him up. "Meri. I... we have much to talk on." He rose in a fluid motion and held a hand out to her to help her to her feet. Her eyes flashed to his in surprise, but as quickly, she turned away and pushed herself off the floor. Alex felt his forehead lower into a frown as he felt her rejection, but he schooled his thoughts and stepped away from her. He headed back down the hall to the entry to the lounge.
He paused in the doorway, and surveyed the room. The couches were a soft blue, and looked very comfortable, high seats deep with cushioning. The walls bore a few flat holos, one a seascape with high clouds scudding serenely past, and the other a more abstract rendering, sweeps of deep dark blues accented by a sharp slice of a vibrant yellow. They gave the room a tranquil but open feeling, an unseen current of movement underlying the whole. He wasn't sure if he liked it.
Turning to his Padawan, Alex gestured to the nearest seat in a clear invitation. Meri moved past him and perched nervously on the farthest piece of furniture, and Alex cocked his head, trying to figure out if it was a token of defiance, or a symptom of some fearfulness in her. He took the nearest seat to her, and composed himself to begin. She surprised him by speaking first.
"Master, I should not have run away. When you were in the infirmary-"
"Meri, that isn't important," Alex interjected. "I think I understand why you did it, and I think you did what you had to. I've spoken with Master An Paj, about your first Master, and everything. I do understand." He folded his hands inside his tunic's sleeves, and studied her face, but Meri kept her eyes carefully averted. "That isn't really important now.
"Meri, I passed the trials they set me, I will be renewing my vows to the Order tonight, in just a few minutes, in fact... but before I did so, I wanted to talk to you," he paused, and this time she looked up. He caught her gaze in his own. "Just us. You and I."
There was a flicker of something in her deep brown eyes, and she nodded, hesitantly, her graceful neck bowing like a flower on a stem. Alex couldn't contain a small smile, which broadened when a delicate upturning of her lips answered him.
"So, anyway, I wanted to see... if you were willing, I mean," he caught his lip between his teeth, and then gave a somewhat nervous chuckle as she arched a brow at him, a tiny gleam of humour deep in her dark eyes. "I am to renew as a Knight, perhaps I could renew as... your Master, too."
Meri's mouth closed and her smile vanished completely, as if it had never been. Alex was gratified that at least there was no hesitation in her nod of acquiescence. At her silent agreement, his own breath left him in a deep sigh: he was unaware he'd been holding it in.
"We should..." he shrugged as he struggled with the words. He hoped this sort of verbal bumbling was off-putting to her, although he also hoped that other, unremembered self would have been more facile, smoother with words. "We should make some sort of, erm, bond..."
Her eyes widened again, and he was stunned by their expressiveness. He held out both hands to her, one palm up, the other palm down, in the unique manner he'd long used to request a Force rapport, and he was surprised to see her answer in kind, settling her hands cautiously over and under his, palm to palm. Of course she would, you ninny, you taught her... Shaking his head to clear it of the clutter of such thoughts, Alex drew in a settling breath, and then locked eyes with the young woman.
He could tell that Meri was afraid, but struggling to master her fears: her hands trembled minutely in his own. He projected strength towards her, and then waited to see if she would accept the gift. He began to sense her presence as a warmth in the wind of the Force, a rich, subtly-scented breeze. She reached for him tentatively, and opened herself slightly to receive the gift of his strength, offering back her own form of fragile trust.
There was a hint there of something more, as the tendrils of thoughts touched and mingled, the shattered bond being rebuilt, strand by strand, but when he quested after it, she turned him away, with a saddened look. No, Master, he heard her voice in his head, Not there. Not yet.
He respected her privacy, and pulled back, offering instead some other piece of himself to her, and the sharing continued, until they were pulled out of their trance by the insistent buzzing from the commlink. A quick glance at his chrono told Alex what was so urgent: he was due in the arena in only a few minutes, and he'd not even changed into the clothes the Council had advised he wear.
"I'm sorry, Meri," he said quietly, and her eyes refocused on his. A shock of hot recognition shot through him, and he quickly looked away. "I... I have to go... the ceremony..."
She nodded, releasing his hands, and Alex scrambled to his feet. He turned back to face her, wanting to ask if she knew what had just happened, but she had already turned away, and was looking out the window of their quarters. Her face was reflected in the transparisteel, her eyes mirroring the darkness beyond the window. Dark eyes... the image haunted the soon-to-be-affirmed Jedi knight, as he gazed at his padawan's straight and slender back.
Alex watched her for a few moments, wishing indefinable things, but time pressed at him. He moved silently out of the room, to change quickly before heading down to the arena. When he'd done so, Meri followed him out into the corridor, assuming her customary place slightly to the rear of his right side.
Together, they moved through the Temple's many corridors and cathedral halls: master and padawan, reunited, but with many questions unasked, and unanswered.
**
Alex Arieh congratulated his friend, noting for the first time a bizarre overlay of his senses. It was as though he were seeing from two subtly different pairs of eyes, perceiving the events around him from separate but similar points of view. He tried to separate them, tried to see Rani or T'lor from only one point of view, to draw the memory images closer to the present ones, but it proved too difficult. His glance shot to his apprentice, and all of a sudden, one of those perspectives was removed. He repeated her name mentally, turning it into a mantra so that he would not forget her again: Meri Irhanah, Meri Irhanah...
When things in the arena had calmed somewhat, he was beckoned forward by the stubby green finger of the Council's eldest and wisest. He stood before the assembled Jedi Council, meeting each of their eyes in turn. He resisted the urge to kneel, for he was not a padawan about to be Knighted: he was a Knight and Master, reconfirming his dedication to the Jedi Order, and to his apprentice.
She was a warm presence at his side, her name a quiet song in his mind. He stood before the Council, and focused his gaze down on the most senior member of the Order. He was somewhat startled to catch a glimpse of some fleeting emotion in the Jedi Master's jade gaze, like the silver flash of a fish under green water.
Pity?
Yoda's eyes closed, and when they opened again all such traces were gone, freed to swim in the channels of the unifying Force. It was all the answer he would give.
The affirmation proceeded, the young Exemplar the Council had spoken to about researching such ceremonies had been thorough, and it went smoothly. It wasn't until Meri stood before him and locked her eyes with his, that Alex felt again somewhat disjointed. There was such intensity in that dark gaze, such hidden depths that Alex felt himself drawn in, almost magnetically. He pulled back out of respect for his newly affirmed status as her Master, blinking to re-gather his thoughts and watched as she looked away in a graceful movement and tight control.
For all that she was his padawan, he felt he might never know this enigmatic young woman. They spoke the words, renewing an Oath that had been made before, and then ripped from his memory.
When her eyes met his again, he felt a cold stab in the realms hidden under the white fog of his amnesia: there was something dying in her eyes, some familiar and necessary light fading. Too soon, it was gone as though it had never been.
Hope.
His mind's eye saw the image of a slim form collapsed at the feet of the Sith Witch, and his heart was filled with that same need for justice to be done.
He felt swollen with curious, half-identifiable emotions, and it was with a pang of regret for reasons he could not identify, that he released them to the Force. They rushed forth from him, superheated air from a vent, and he was left feeling cleansed, but also strangely empty, as if he were a hollow shell of what he had been before.
The End
Coming Soon... "That Which Is Remembered"
