Okay, so before we kick this thing off I just wanna say that I am so sorry it's taken me this long to get this chapter out. I knew I was gonna be a little late on my usual upload schedule because of personal family reasons, but I had no idea it would take me this long. All I can say is that the universe conspired against me to keep this chapter from getting posted and I can only humbly apologize. I won't bore you with all the details, I know you don't care lol, and I'll post all the follows/faves/reviews in the next chapter as I do not currently have access to my email (yet more problems *exasperated sigh). Okay, enough complaining out of me. I know this chapter is a little short, but it is packed pretty full of stuff so I hope that makes up for it. Now on with the chapter!

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Painful Interlude

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"Roger Trek One, readings stable and constant." The response was so clear that he might've been standing right next to her, but for some reason, she was beginning to feel almost afraid. Her eyes darted around the tunnel, taking in every detail, trying to reassure herself that it was just her anxiety playing up, feeding on her excitement just like it always did, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right.

"Ori, you okay over there?" Suzie's voice brought her back to ground, calming her spiraling thoughts and putting her back on the mission track. She looked over and gave a thumbs up, smiling ear to ear despite the nagging voice in the back of her mind that was telling her to turn tail and run back to the ever shrinking opening they'd come through.

"Free and clear Suzie Q, just taking it all in." She gestured around them, seeing a mirror of her own glee and excitement well up in her friend's eyes. She'd always envied Suzie for her ability to live in the moment. There were never any what ifs in her mind, simply what she believed, what she wanted, and what she was doing. It sounded like heaven to Ori.

"We're actually doing this Ori. We're about to step into another universe. I told you the world would change today." She squared her shoulders and picked up her pace, Ori adjusting to compensate so that they could stay side by side. She didn't know what was going to be on the other end of this tunnel, but she didn't want her friend to face it alone.

She felt the tunnel floor shake, both women stilling, their senses tuned for any other anomalies that could spell trouble for them or let them know it was time to abort and head back.

"Trek Two to Mission Control, experiencing slight thread vibration. Can you give me a reading on the stability of the tunnel." She held out a hand for Suzie, her feeling of unease ramping into full blown fear as the shake became a tremor.

"Mission Control to Trek Two, reading appear stable. What is the nature of the anomaly?" The answer caused her mind to snap between what she was feeling and what the readings were telling her. How could they be feeling this if the tunnel was stable. Perhaps it was just reverberations from their own footsteps?

"The tunnel is shaking." She waited while keys were pressed on the other side of the comms channel. What were they checking? Nothing in their calculations had indicated any kind of turbulence in the void between the planes.

"Roger that Trek Two, reading faint fluctuations in field cohesion. Recommend turning back." There was fear in the tech's voice, more than would be present for a minor fluctuation, and she found herself looking over to her friend, her grip tightening as a loud snap sounded around them, the floor losing almost all stability.

"Suzie, we've gotta..." Her statement was lost as the floor of the tunnel unraveled beneath them, dropping her on her ass as the tunnel filled with sound. There wasn't supposed to be anything in the void, no air, no pressure, no light, no sound, just a blank expanse of nothing, but that was not what met her eyes as she and Suzie both clung to the slowly unraveling threads of their only barrier.

Around her, sucking at her feet, was a great gaping maw of blackness. The air that had made the tunnel habitable rushed past her in massive gusts, buffeting her around in the current as she pulled on the thread she'd managed to grab hold of, her other hand still clamped tightly around Suzie's. She fought to find purchase, pulling them both slowly back until Suzie could reach out and grab one of the tendrils of light herself, but they never seemed to get anywhere.

The void screamed at them both, clawing to pull them in, to swallow them whole, the glowing strands of their universe retreating and falling away into the inky nothing. She fought and she struggled, pulling them both toward the still swirling portal that was now their only escape.

She woke to find herself on the floor, sheets tangled around her ankles, hands bloody from where she'd clenched her nails down into the delicate flesh of her palms, and one terrified looking Luke Skywalker kneeling over her, his warm hand still pressed to her forehead. She wanted to thank him, to wave him off and tell him she was alright, but as she opened her mouth to speak, all the came out was a strangled sob.

She felt herself being pulled forward, the sheets seeming to untangle themselves from her legs, leaving her sweat soaked skin exposed to the open air. Tears streamed soundlessly down her face, her shoulders shaking with each gasping breath she took, the air stinging a throat torn raw from the screaming she'd no doubt been doing in her sleep.

A hand began to rub soothing circles against her back, each rotation pulling her further and further from the memory that seemed to haunt every moment that wasn't otherwise engaged. She could still feel the tunnel's springy texture under her feet, could still feel the faint warmth of the light the strands emitted. Her hands still burned with remembered pain, and she could almost feel the hand she'd clasped so desperately in her own, trying in vain to save her friend.

"Oria, come back, you're safe now." Luke's voice was soft and sure, giving her a life line to follow back out of her troubled subconscious. She tried to pull up what little they'd covered in training, tried to visualize her emotions, but all she could see when she closed her eyes was Suzie's terrified face, looking up at her through the window of her helment, surrounded on all sides by that gaping black maw.

His heart beat was what ended up drawing her focus, thudding softly against her cheek, registering as a dull rhythmic thud that she could verify and count. She began ticking off beats in her mind, timing them out, matching them against her own racing muscle until it began to slow. She tried to match his breathing, inhaling with him, exhaling with him, reminding her body how to be calm, until her world was no longer spinning and her mind began to still.

"I saw it." He said, his tone so full of fear and pain. It shocked her to hear what she felt coming from him, a person who seemed so far removed from it all, but it also made her feel strangely better. At least now she could confirm she wasn't over reacting to the whole ordeal.

"I'm sorry." She said, pulling slowly out of his arms. She'd managed to worm her way to a corner in her sleep, her body recreating the desperate, and ultimately futile, struggle to save her friend from oblivion. She curled her body against the wall, resting her head against the cool surface. "No one should have to witness that." She said, her eyes gazing out into the middle distance.

"No, they shouldn't." Luke said, his voice heavy with meaning. "You're bleeding." He reached out, his fingers closing over her wrist, only to have her wrench it away, pure blind fear racing to him across the link he still hadn't managed to close.

"Sorry. Just...don't, please." She said, pulling her hands in to rest against her chest. He could see her Force Print darkening, turning an ugly shade of plum, looking almost like a bruise all around her, and he felt his heart constrict with pain.

"I'll be right back." He said, standing and striding quickly to his room, pulling out the first aid kit he'd taken to carrying around with him. Han had a tendency to injure himself in some small way on almost every mission and Luke had learned that it was always better to be prepared. He took a moment to calm himself down as he moved back into Oria's room, finding her still curled in the same corner where he'd left her. It wouldn't do to have them both panicked and upset, and of the two, she had far more right to it than he did.

He knelt beside her, opening the first aid kit and holding his hand out to her, palm up and fingers relaxed. He smiled softly as she mimicked his motion, resting her hand in his, though she maintained that worrying blank eyed stare at something only she could see. Tears continued to spill unheeded down her cheeks, though the sobbing had stopped, and he busied himself with bandaging her hands to distract from the worry and anger he could feel welling up in his chest.

While his hands worked, his mind began to categorize everything he'd seen when her mind had invaded his own. He'd seen it all, every expression, every detail, the abject terror on her friend's face as she slipped away into the black emptiness that existed between the worlds. No wonder she was having such a hard time controlling her emotions.

"I'm sorry I woke you." Her voice broke him from his thoughts, pulling his attention back to the moment at hand, and the weary eyes that were trained on his troubled face. She looked so small in that moment, so tiny and scared that he felt his heart break. How he wished he could erase the horror from her mind, make it so that he never had to see that look again, but only she could do that.

"It's okay, like I said before, I would much rather you wake me than have you suffer through that alone. But we do need to talk about it Oria." He watched as emotions flashed wildly across her face. First there was fear, then anger, a brief moment of understanding, and then a kind of stony resolution that he somehow knew could only be followed with a denial.

"I can't, not yet, not right now. I know I need to control my emotions, that fear and anger are a path to the dark side, but I just can't deal with it right now." She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes as she spoke. She knew he would be disappointed at her refusal, would most likely be arming up for an argument, but she just couldn't bring herself to relive what she'd just seen again.

"Oria, it's more than that. You weren't screaming, at least not that I could hear, you woke me by projecting your memory into my mind. This link, it's stronger than it should be, stronger than anything I've ever seen or read about, and so long as you are refusing to deal with this, it'll affect the both of us. Now I want to give you time to heal, really I do, but I need to be able to focus." He turned his hand slowly, giving her time to object before his fingers closed slowly over her wrist, joining their hands and sending a flash of panic across their link.

"Don't call me that." She said, her voice barely above a whisper. Her eyes seemed fixated on the back of his hand, fresh tears welling up in her eyes as she once again became lost in memory. He was sorely tempted to peak into her mind, to figure out why her name made her so sad, but held himself back. It would set a very bad precedent to invade her mind twice in one night. He allowed her a moment to explain, to open up to him as he sorely wished she would.

"Not fond of your name?" He asked, trying to force a light tone to his voice. He knew it didn't sound sincere, that he sounded almost as defeated as she did, but he had to try. The heaviness of the air around them was almost too much to bear.

"No one calls me Oria anymore, only my mother ever used my full name. She said it was too beautiful to part with a single letter." A small smile pulled at her lips as she spoke, making her seem all the more sad as a single tear slipped down her cheek.

"She was right, it is a beautiful name. Does it have a meaning?" He drew a slow breath as he felt the faint wisps of calm beginning to bleed into the swirling mass of pain and sadness that had been threatening to stifle them both. His heart warmed at the soft laugh that managed to push itself out of her lips, the smile lengthening as her Force Print began to lighten, the deep crimson tone bleeding away.

"Yeah, sort of. It's a town in Italy, a country on my planet, and apparently, it was the town where I was conceived. My mother was a strange individual." She looked over at him, her eyes finally shedding the dull glaze that had made her seem to small and dim. He felt a smile tug at his own face as he watched her blush softly. He had to admit that it was an odd thing to be named for, but it seemed to fit her for some reason.

"There are worse things to be named for." He said, laughing softly. He watched as she seemed to settle back into herself, drawing a deep breath, seemingly cleansing herself of the last of her fear, and he became suddenly aware of the warmth of her skin against his palm, as well as how his thumb seemed to be rubbing small circles into her wrist. She seemed to share his awareness, her hand slipping from his grasp as she closed in on herself.

"Thanks, I think I'll be okay if you wanna get back to sleep." She said, pushing herself up from the floor and moving to collect the forgotten sheet from where it had landed on the floor. Luke did his best to ignore the way her body moved in the scant clothing she was wearing, barely keeping his eyes from trailing over the lines cast on her pale skin by the milky moonlight, reminding himself of what she'd been through within the past week.

"I can stay..." He caught himself before he could finish the sentence, opting instead to simply stand and walk slowly toward the door. He didn't want to leave, didn't want to risk having her fall back into the swirling mass of pain and fear that he'd barely managed to pull her from the first time, but he also understood better than most that you can't force help one someone who doesn't want it. He paused as he reached the door, turning back to look at her as she settled back on the mattress. She looked up at him, flashing a small smile and shaking her head gently, turning her gaze to the large window on the opposite side of the room as her mind slipped away.

Okay, so there you have it, gonna get to work on the next chapter tomorrow, after I've had some sleep, so it should be up in the next few days barring any other catastrophes lol. Thanks in advance for any follows/faves/reviews, I honestly appreciate them so much and I'll see you guys in the next one!