Prince Charming...?

[Hal Terrano]

His blonde eyebrows furrowed, clearly emotionally constipated by the way that Avalore didn't just bounce back into her usual cheery chatterbox self. His socially stunted brain couldn't come up with any further words that might have attempted to soothe her. He did, at the very least to try refrain from frowning at her. Yes, that would do.

“Yes,” he agreed, “the database might hold answers.”

He stood up immediately after making that statement, and made his way over to the door. “We will go now.” With the uncertainty of Avalore's injury there was absolutely no chance that Hal Terrano was going to sit around like a twenty-something avoiding making a doctor's appointment. “I will meet you at the Temple entrance.”

The door opened, and just like that, he was gone. Although not without stopping five paces from the room and wondering if he should have asked her if she needed any help. He frowned, considering walking back into the room before he shook his head and made his way to their meeting point.

[member="Avalore Eden"]

 

[Avalore Eden]

Ossus - Jedi Temple - Archives

The flight to Ossus had been painfully slow, but Avalore did manage to hold herself together. With Hal there it was difficult to really fall apart, so stoic and steadfast was he. It was this fact alone that Avalore found herself appreciating the man all the more and realizing just how much he'd really come to mean in her life and journey as a Jedi. Without him, this all would have crumbled long ago...

They arrived at quarter past two in the morning, which left the Temple halls spookily empty of life. Avalore was glad for it, thankful she wouldn't have to speak to anyone on their way to the archives or risk having to reveal and explain her injuries or Hal's. After wending their way through the dimly lit halls they found themselves at the Archives and soon settled into a research hub.

"There's no guarantee that the records will tell us where any of the Healers went to after the Circle disbanded," she said over a faint grimace, "but I'll give you the names I remember and ...maybe..."

Hal would be doing the typing, of course, considering Avalore couldn't even button up her own outer robes without his help. She kept her hands hidden within the large sleeves of the blue traveling cloak, still waiting for the pain killers to kick in. They hadn't and they should have by now.

[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

With the help of one keen little pilot droid Hal was able to stay with [member="Avalore Eden"] for the entire duration of their journey. Even for being an insensitive block of a man there was no chance that he would let his friend sit there by herself worrying about the dark affliction that now plagued her hands. No, he wouldn't allow her to be by herself, not in a position where she would find doubt in herself, or bring herself into a world of panic.

Sitting in comfortable silence, or making difficult small-talk, Hal Terrano was there.

Eventually they made it to the Ossus Temple, and once into the temple's archives it was down to business. Naturally, Hal being one to delve through the realms of Jedi history he was at home at the archive computers. He liked the archives of any temple, the man considered it to be his down time, his hobby. Learning, research, more often than not history. He could rattle off the names of obscure Jedi until the sun came back up again.

He sat there, face grim and stony. Fingers at the ready for typing, a curt nod and he was good to go.

“Just tell me what I am looking for, Avalore. We will fix this.”

 

[Avalore Eden]

Avalore, despite her rather ugly grimace, slowly began listing off the names of the Healers she'd known or come to know of during her tenure as a learning Padawan Healerette.

Five out of five held no information. Or, at the very least, no information pertinent to their needs. Nothing that could point them towards where to find the wayward members of the former Circle of Healers. Nothing until...

"Master [member="Ilias Nytrau"]," Avalore was hunched over by now, eyes closed against the pain, doing her very best not to seem too pathetic.

The man's highly respectable list of skills appeared beneath a short bio and a picture, listing a handful of his former residences within the Jedi Order and various noteworthy achievements. At the bottom, a gleaming ray of hope: a forwarding address, or as close to one as they would get.

He'd gone to the Levantine Sanctum and he kept a home on the Capital planet.

"Force..." Avalore uttered over a whine, "that's half a galaxy away."

[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

It was an increasingly frustrating search, as his fingers rattled away, key after key, name after name trying to find someone, something and each time unearthing nothing. Who knew that healers were prone to hiding? What help were they living in shadows when the galaxy needed them, now more than ever.

After the third name came up with nothing his teeth found themselves gritted, back and shoulders somehow stiffer than usual. Search has no results. No. There has to be. Search has no results. He said he they would fix this. If Hal Terrano clenched any tighter he would have shattered.

Master [member="Ilias Nytrau"].

He exhaled, letting his body visibly relax, shoulders hunching softly.

“Better than a whole galaxy away,” he replied, tones stony still. Was that a joke? Was Hal making quips? It wasn't easy to tell when the words left his mouth so bluntly,

“We go now.”

He stood up, looking to [member="Avalore Eden"]'s bent form with a pained frown. The healer was suffering, and as much as she tried to hide it Hal could see it. There was an urge to play the stalwart, offer to pick her up off of her feet and carry her back to their ship, but the blonde Knight didn't think that she would appreciate that. So he took for the hangar, at the very least walking at a slower pace for her sad wounded benefit.

 

[Avalore Eden]

It has now been a year and a half since I began my journey down the path of a Jedi.

The notion of this is still somewhat unbelievable.

They were flying now, tucked safely inside their ship, sailing smoothly now in hyperspace along the Parlemian Trade Route. While the trip itself wasn't set to be nearly so long as Avalore made it out to be, it would indeed take time to pass through not just one territory, but two. The Silver Jedi lay between them and the Levantine Sanctum and politics demanded that while they may all be Jedi fighting for peace, there was still policy and holo-flimsy-work to go through. Their pilot would handle that. Hal had sent Avalore to the sleeping chamber to try and rest while he set up their flight schedule and input the necessary Jedi Council data for identification purposes.

Avalore couldn't sleep.

He'd told me of the inherent risks I would face. Told me I would someday meet the wrath of the Sith, that the galaxy wasn't always as welcoming to Jedi as we liked to think, and that my new responsibilities dictated I put others before myself. I suppose I was ready for the last part and willing to accept the middle, but I'd never met a Sith in my life before that day. How was I to know just what level of danger they presented?

For some reason I can't stop thinking about my first trip to Coruscant and that madwoman.

Avalore finally fell asleep, expression tight with pain, blackened hands curled at her front.

Dreamless at first, but slowly shapes came to be around her. Familiar shapes of Coruscant, of the Jedi Temple before it was destroyed the first time. Shifting shadows, looming swathes of black that stood as the halls and walls of that long-gone time and place. She drifted through it listlessly, unwilling to take it in, to relive those memories.

But something else within her had awoken after a long, uninterrupted slumber. Fed by the pain of the corruption now overtaking her hands, it grew its hold on her mind again.

Darth Sidian's gift of Force Fear.

A flame erupted along a distant edge of her subconcious.

What do you fear the most Avalore Eden?


FIRE.

[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

Once Avalore was sent away for much needed rest he took a moment to breathe, well, really it was more of a sigh. He was tired, they were both tired. The situation that they had placed themselves in wasn't one that afforded much rest. This is a pretty obvious statement but hands were pretty vital for humans, but more than that they were symbolic for healers. It was automatic association, like the lighsaber to the guardian, the Force to the consular or the Jedi Code to Hal Terrano.

For a healer to have her hands made useless, marred with darkness and rendered useless must have stung Avalore in ways that Hal could only scratch the surface in understanding.

Slinging his robes over the back of a chair, the stoic blonde got down onto the unfeeling gunmetal grey floor and began to do sit ups. Call it stress relief, after all Hal wasn't the type to lock himself into a room and scream the distress away. He would sweat it away and call upon discipline to aid him in a time of adversity.

One, two....

Pale brows furrowed as he thought of [member="Avalore Eden"] back on Ossus, all huddled and woeful, there was pain there that he couldn't vanquish.

...seventeen, eighteen...

Was it his fault? It was his own murky black wound that had been the catalyst for their problems. If only he had kept it from her, they wouldn't be in this situation now.

...forty-two, fourty-three...

Letting his own thoughts and doubts take control, the stiffened intensity of Hal's sit ups became so great it was likely that he was harming his body more than helping it. The Knight stopped, taking a moment of pause upon the floor a shade of blush appearing in his cheeks from the mild exertion.

He found refuge in the chair, scowl in full swing as the rumble of engines below his feet pulled him into a drowsy state. When did they last have a real moment of rest? His eyelids slid down, becoming hooded and tired. How long ago was it since Cato Neimoidia and everything was relatively normal? Felt like months. The sooner that they reached the Levantine Sanctum the better. Eyes closed now. Just for a moment. Then he'd go and check on Avalore.

A dream.

A temple.

A FIRE.

The air was already hot and suffocating, high ceilings becoming obscured by a haze of black smoke. Immediately he was brought into a state of alarm, flames like these came accompanied by the loss of life and Hal Terrano wasn't just a defender against the Sith.

With the sleeve of his robe over his nose and mouth, Hal charged forth towards the source of the flames.

 

[Avalore Eden]

This isn't real.

At the rising sense of danger ticking along the hairs of her arms and the back of her neck, Avalore proceeded further into the complex. Her memory did not serve her well here, being lost amongst the terror of the Sith attack over a year ago. She hadn't served within the Jedi Temple on Coruscant before then, and everything more or less had been guided by the hands of her then-Master, Mark Starkiller. Knowing this, remembering this, the young Healer shivered with a frown.

She moved to tug her robes tighter around her shoulders onto to find that her hands were fully inoperable. Petrified. Utterly overcome by Darkside corruption. Blackened and shriveled, they felt nothing but the sting of constant pain.

Grimacing, she pressed on, following the shadowed halls, fleeing the sense of heat growing at her back. Eventually she came to an open chamber marked by rows of tall, chiseled pillars. The temple entrance ... but how did she get here? The black surroundings loomed foreboding and ominous as ghostly shadows flitted around here here to there. Moments of muffled sounds reached her subconscious - perhaps the noise of the ship engines as they shifted speeds - but registered to her as the sounds of the battle that had taken place. Avalore paused off to the side and slowly turned to watch the geists.

She remembered now.

How the walls cracked and crumbled under the strength of the flora called forth by a Jedi Master. How two Knights had chased a Sith through the foyer. How the ceiling had ruptured and caved in. She remembered standing at Mark's back a he shielded her from the advance of twi-lek Sith who had jeered at their failures.

Then, in the moments before escape, that same Sith had turned on Avalore.

Fire flared inwards from the shadows of a side passage and quickly consumed the walls, overtaking the crumbling wreckage of this shadowland Temple. They advanced with great ferocity, singing her senses. At last that tangible fear hit Avalore so hard she thought her chest might shatter. She backpedaled until her back hit a wall where before there had been another hall.

Surrounded, Avalore began to scream.

[member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

As it turned out, the source of the flames were a lot harder to find than initially thought.

The hallways seemed endless and looping, he'd run down one only to be presented with three more branching paths that always ended up exactly the same. In his calm logic he tried to find any identifying marks, decoractions, something distinctive that set apart one hallway from another but there was none. Not a single marking of difference.

Only change was that oppressive billowing black smoke that still poured in and filled in those high ceilings.

No choice but to move forward.

Then came the scream. Immediately, miraculously he knew it as [member="Avalore Eden"]'s scream. Seemingly echoing from every direction it gave no indication of direction at all. That didn't stop his run from becoming a sprint however, as he was plunged into a realm of panic that he had never known before.

"Avalore!"

Nothing.

No Avalore.

No flames.

Just hallways, and smoke.

Still, far be it from Hal Terrano to give up and stop. No longer covering his mouth with his sleeve as he rushed through the halls. Footfalls fell loud and fast alongside hampered breathing, his knee was aching, back prickling from a source of heat that wasn't even there.

Moving faster did nothing to help either. The hallways remained the same. Did he have to turn back? Did he take a wrong turn somewhere? Even now as he ran full tilt nothing inhibited the spread of the smoke, lower and lower it loomed over his head, threatening to overwhelm him at any moment but that was far from his mind.

"AVALORE!!"