Chapter Text
Nothing.
That was what hit him as he passed into the Admiral’s office. Not just for the dimmed lights and total absence of holodisplays, but a strange chill and a feeling. A kind of emptiness. That particular empty a dead fire houses, having once burnt full and now a mess of something cold and broken; just like the Admiral’s eyes.
Though they cast their usual glow, blood mist in the dark, they seemed dulled to Eli. Neither in colour nor strength, perhaps, but spirit. Bright, yet distant. And low. Avoiding him, not having noticed him; otherwise not caring.
“Thought you’d still be here,” Eli said a little nervously as he stepped towards the desk.
His voice barely seemed to register, except in a slight straightening of Thrawn’s shoulders. Still staring at the ground, he parted his lips first to silence, then found the form of language from wherever it’d been misplaced: “Commander.”
A single word. Heavy enough to crush his back, the way he spoke it.
“You alright?”
“Yes,” he half-whispered, lifting his head at last, “why do you ask?”
Eli gazed into the red, the blue closer to grey when cast in such shadow, the features barely lit; at the darkness undereye, the exhaustion, the expression that it haunted. Blank. Disconcertingly so. Similar, superficially, to his usual steel or subdued confidence, though sharing little in common with its substructure.
This was no mask to hold anything back or in. It was honest. And Eli didn’t know what it described; couldn’t translate the rise and fall of its planes into a particular thought or feeling. All he could see was that it held defeat.
With Thrawn’s open question still hanging in the air, Eli rounded the desk and hoisted himself onto it. He sat to the Chiss’ side. Leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees, watching him close from the same height.
Glancing back at him side-on, Thrawn asked: “Is something the matter?”
“I don’t believe you.”
The Admiral only shook his head, lowering his eyes with a sigh deep yet almost silent. “I suppose I have been… slightly….”
“Blue?” Eli offered, once realising Thrawn had no more words to spare. His lips broke into a small smile at his own joke, though he couldn’t help the trace of a wince within it.
Thrawn swivelled his chair to face him. He was smiling too, Eli noticed. Thin, weary, but genuine. It faded now to the same threadbare look as before, and the room felt all the colder for it.
Reaching out, Eli cupped the side of his face softly and shuffled in; an invitation closer, if he wished to take it.
He did.
Movements careful, as if working with a delicate sculpture, Thrawn drew towards his aide while he guided him in. Slowly bowed, then, until his head was resting in his lap. Eli ran a hand across his back, and soon felt the Chiss’ arms wrap around him, cradling his waist and smoothing the fabric of his tunic idly. He seemed like less of a ghost now, taking on the weight and pressure of a living thing.
This view of him had been startling, once. Unexpectedly gentle. These days, it stirred only a rising flood in the chest — of what Eli recognised as affection. And, at the moment, sympathy.
“This a new feelin’, or an old one?”
“It will pass,” Thrawn mumbled more to himself than Eli, like he wasn’t there at all.
“Funny.”
Hesitantly, he pulled up from his lap. “What is?”
“How that ain’t what I asked.”
Like splintering glass, that stare could be, when fixed on you alone; but Eli kept it. Stared back, met its intensity, watched in his own wordless accusation. Saw a flicker of something, though he didn’t know quite what — and the first to break away was Thrawn. His usual resolve had failed him.
“Perhaps,” he mused quietly, leaning back into his seat. “Nevertheless, it is the truth. It will pass.”
“Shit, that don’t mean it ain’t worth talkin’ about.” An unintended harshness grazed Eli’s tone. He took a moment; thought to how his mother could coax him into talking when he didn’t want to. Thought of his father’s patience. In all likelihood, Thrawn wasn’t trying to be obtuse. This was clearly some platitude he told himself.
And, it was true — though Eli didn’t suspect that made it any more helpful.
“Look, with enough time, everythin’ passes, sure,” and Eli cringed at how he heard his mother’s voice in his own, the way he often did when attempting to give advice, “and fine, maybe it won’t be there tomorrow. But right now, you’ll excuse my sayin’, you don’t look too happy.”
“There are no words with which to discuss it, Eli.” Thrawn spoke with the plainness of recitation. “It is an old acquaintance that still visits from time to time; this, and nothing more.”
Not even sadness resided there. Not really. A desert, in the way an ice cap can be a desert, with its blend of sky to snow and shifting grounds patterned by freeze-thaw. A flat expanse that looked endless from inside. Eli wondered if the reason why he couldn’t interpret the Chiss’ expression, after years spent studying how, was because it carried nothing to interpret today. A haze he was merely stumbling through, as nonsensical to him as anyone else.
It had seemed that way on the bridge, too. Like all of a sudden, that many-limbed labyrinth of connections that made Thrawn’s perspective so special had gone dark. As though there were no further interest to be found in them, his usual drive of curiosity having collapsed in that frozen wasteland.
Whatever could prompt such a shift in his demeanour, Eli didn’t know. And maybe he didn’t need to know, he reconciled with himself. Maybe even Thrawn didn’t. It was enough to just be there.
“Come on,” Eli nodded at the door.
“Where?”
“Your shift is over, in case you ain’t realised. Been over for two hours.” Indeed, it was when Eli had called at Thrawn’s quarters and found them empty that he realised he might still be here. “You figure a little sleep deprivation is gonna help things along?”
“Hardly.” His vision drifted from his aide to the door, then finished at his own hands on the desk. “You may go, Commander. I will leave later.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” Sliding from the desk, Eli stretched his shoulders and offered Thrawn a hand. “Let’s go.”
“Eli, I will not make good company tonight—"
“Don’t need you to be good, Thrawn. Don’t need you to be anythin’. Just there.” He jostled his open palm closer to him. “We’re gonna get you to your quarters and then you’ll get some sleep. Now, is that acceptable to the Admiral?”
The Chiss gazed up at him, absent of anything but vacant observation.
“Alright, if I say I’d like for you to come with me,” Eli prompted, “would that change anythin’?”
A subtle shift in his brow. “Are you saying that?”
“Yes.”
After a reluctant moment, Thrawn took Eli’s hand and let him steer him up. He brushed off his tunic in his habitual way, straightened his back and performed his usual poise as he braced for the corridors and all their eyes.
With a nod, prepared to lead, he replied: “Then, we shall go.”