Elias ran his fingers over the tops of the Jedi Council chairs. The fabric was surprisingly rough against his fingertips, but he wasn’t sure he could trust his sense of touch - like so many other things as of late, his physical senses were still unreliable.
Phantom pains from attacks that happened weeks ago still jolted through his body, battering Elias’ nerves as if they were still happening. The sting of a whip on his flesh, the ache of bruises, and the weight of a mind besieged by dark thoughts and rewritten memories. Elias could feel them all. There were precious moments, such as now, when the sensations subsided. They woke him from already troubled sleep, then left him awake and afraid. At first, Elias simply paced his quarters at the temple, but that quickly lost its effectiveness. Now, with the permission of Briana Sal-Soren , he was permitted to walk the temple grounds when sleep eluded him.
Tonight, the Council chambers was where he felt led to visit.
“What is wrong with me?” he asked no one in particular. Maybe he was talking to Ashla. Maybe his mother? Maybe… what was her name? He could see her face. It was blurred, distorted. Olive skin, dark hair, eyes that looked like citrine.
She seemed more like a ghost than a memory. Wrapping his mind like a blanket full of holes, worn by moths, too shear to feel warmth but weighted enough to know it was there. The doctors told him there would be many memories like this. Shredded fragments like wisps of air, fleeting and incomplete. They urged him not to fixate on them. It would drive him mad to chase something that could never be caught.
Elias stepped toward the Council seat that was offered to him. Him, of all people.
He feared he didn’t deserve it.
How could he? He was weak. Brash. Disillusioned. He tried to help the Shirayans and failed miserably. He was captured, tortured… had his memories stolen, to be used by the New Way like wartime intelligence. Yet despite all of this, he was asked to not only join the Order, but to serve as a Master on its Council - in the same capacity as the very man who sacrificed his life to save him.
Guardian of Peace.
“I am a guardian of nothing,” Elias said bitterly.
“I cannot even guard myself.”
