Chapter Text
Eli raised his staff and blocked the strike aimed at his face. Ar’alani was definitely not going easy on him this time. She was a much more powerful opponent than him, so she often cut back for his benefit. But this time Eli had asked her to fight him like she would with the other warriors trained to her level. He was now starting to regret that.
Eli’s staff rattled with Ar’alani’s force. His arms trembled from the shock of it, and he felt sweat gather at his temples. He managed to block another strike, this time aimed at his stomach, but just barely. At this point, he wasn’t even getting any hits in. It was all defense. Ar’alani was coming for him.
To his surprise though, Eli was able to keep up a lot longer than he thought he would be able to. After a few more strikes, Ar’alani crouched low and used her staff to knock Eli off his feet before he could stop her. He crashed to the floor on his back, the wind knocked out of him, but despite that, he was still able to block her strike to his throat, at the very last second. Not that she would have crushed his windpipe. Probably not.
“You’re out, Commander,” Ar’alani said, a grin on her face. She wasn’t even breathing heavily. She looked like she had just walked to the kitchens for a caf and returned. Meanwhile, Eli was a panting, sweaty mess on the floor.
A sudden memory of Thrawn telling him how good he looked wrecked underneath him came to his mind unbidden and Eli had to squeeze his eyes shut to block it out.
He didn’t want to think about that.
Or the Chiss who had abandoned him.
He opened his eyes to see Ar’alani’s hand stretched out in front of him. He grabbed it and she helped him up.
“Good match,” he said, still gasping for air.
Ar’alani snorted. “If you could even call it that.” She examined her nails. “When will you give me an actual fight?”
Eli rolled his eyes as he walked over to the table to grab one of the towels laid out on top. “I wasn’t that bad. I lasted way longer than I thought I would.”
He rubbed the towel over his face, collecting all the sweat he had accrued in just under five minutes of sparring with Ar’alani. Eli’s heart was still pounding, and he briefly wondered if he was about to have a heart attack. He hoped not. His reputation would really suffer if people found out he had collapsed from a single sparring session with Admiral Ar’alani. He would never recover from the shame of it.
He turned back to Ar’alani after wiping his face and noticed her softened expression. She almost looked...proud?
“You did,” she conceded. “You’re improving quite well, Ivant.”
Eli felt his face flush and nodded.
“He will be very proud of you once he sees you again.”
Eli didn’t have to ask who she meant. He knew.
He shook his head. “I don’t care.” He tried to keep his voice neutral but succeeded very poorly at it. From the grimace on Ar’alani’s face, he could tell his dismissal didn’t convince her either.
“I take it you won’t be coming to his pardoning tomorrow, then?” she asked.
Thrawn had returned from the Empire two months ago. In that time, no one had been allowed to see him as the Syndicure and the highest officials of the CDF, including Supreme General Ba’kif, questioned and interrogated him on his mission. There was also the matter of his exile, which, from what Eli had heard, had taken up most of that time to negotiate. Ba’kif and Senator Thalias had worked night and day to convince the Syndicure to reconsider Thrawn’s exile.
Not that Eli had followed any of it.
In any case, the Syndicure had agreed to reneging on Thrawn’s exile sentence. They had also decided to reinstate him into the Expansionary Defense Fleet. As such, his pardon would be tomorrow. Then, a few days after that, his new role in the CDF would be announced. No one yet knew what Thrawn’s new role would be. Apparently, not even Thrawn himself knew.
Eli shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Eli had thought about it a lot. Had imagined 101 ways of how he would confront Thrawn when he returned, but none of them appealed to him. The thing was, Eli was too hurt to even want to think about Thrawn, let alone see him. He had spent the past two years trying to forget him, trying to move on. He hadn’t been that successful, but he’d be damned if he let Thrawn ruin yet another one of his life plans.
No, Eli would not be going to his pardoning tomorrow. A part of him was glad that Thrawn was back and that he wasn’t being exiled again. But Eli tried his best to squash that happiness. He didn’t need to get caught up in any false hopes again.
Ar’alani sighed. “You two are both idiots.”
Eli’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she countered. Eli shrank a little. He always somehow forgot how intimidating she was when she wanted to be. Which was most of the time.
“He’s the idiot,” Eli shot back. “Not me.”
“Perhaps tomorrow would be a good time to actually talk to him. To tell him how you’ve been feeling.”
Eli shook his head in frustration. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me, Admiral. I doubt he’ll even notice my absence.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he cleared his throat.
Ar’alani’s face softened again. “You know that’s not true,” she reasoned, her voice quiet.
But Eli shook his head again and crossed his arms over his chest. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m not going.”
Eli couldn’t stand the look of pity on her face right then. A part of him knew she was right. That the lack of communication since the night Thrawn had kissed him goodbye three years ago was responsible for their drifting apart. But the thing was, Eli had tried to contact Thrawn, multiple times. But even when the signals were good, Thrawn had never answered. Ar’alani had told him that this was normal. That Thrawn would only answer if he could, if it was safe for him to do so. But after a year of no answers, Eli had started to suspect that maybe Thrawn just didn’t want to answer him. And then they had been reunited aboard the Chimaera...
Whatever , he thought. The past was the past. And Eli was tired of waiting.
Bidding Ar’alani goodbye, he left the dojo for his quarters. He planned to take a hot shower and then crawl into bed with a good book. He wouldn’t think about Thrawn.
He wouldn’t.