A/N: I couldn't leave this the way I did almost half a year ago. The ending of Catalyst was unfulfilling, to me more than anyone. And so here we are.

Doorway

By Marianne Bennet

The emptiness of space, pinpricked with twinkling stars, was mirrored on the insides of Zeke Karis's eyelids. It was hard to believe that he had only left Telos's atmosphere moments before; he already felt as though there were lightyears of distance between Citadel Station and the Ebon Hawk. It was harder still to recall he and Briana's parting of ways. No, that wasn't right either. It was easy to remember that afternoon, the way she had bitten down on her lower lip and said that she did not wish to wait for him. What was hard was thinking on how he had returned to a vacant table, an empty chair.

Maybe that was best for both of them: a clean break, a quick cutting of all ties. Maybe it would easier if she hated him. It wasn't easier for him to think of her hating him but it never was about what was easiest for the Jedi Exile. I can't take anyone I love with me. If that had been hard for Brianna to hear, it had been doubly hard on his ears. Had she not understood that? He tried to push down any resentment surfacing with that thought but it was difficult. But then he had never expected things to be any less than difficult.

Perhaps the full gravity of the fact that he was flying away from Telos with an empty ship had not hit him until this moment. He had not thought the hallways could be so quiet; he was avoiding the cargo hold altogether. It was easier to shut himself away in the cockpit and imagine that that small room was all there was to the galaxy. But the galaxy was his now. All of those stars, the planets that must revolve about them, they were all his. Zeke could go anywhere now, bound only the vaguest outlines of a mission whose objectives he was willing to procrastinate. He needed time to think, about Maria –Revan now, or was it Sarinae? –and about Brianna. He had all the time in the galaxy to think and yet he was already dreading every moment. It was too much like the beginning of his exile. He did not want to turn into a cipher of himself a second time over.

But he had to go somewhere. Only a fool would allow himself to drift the fringes of a planet's atmosphere. Zeke lifted his left hand from his chair's armrest, played his fingers across the controls and pulled up the galaxy map, and then stopped everything he was doing, had planned to do, because when he saw the reflection in the cockpit's large windows, his mind was immediately wiped blank by the sight.

"I feel as though I am always standing in a doorway," said Brianna abruptly, hovering just outside the cockpit's open entryway. "I'm not certain if that is a good thing or not."

"That depends," replied Zeke when he found his voice again.

"On what?" Her blue-gray eyes did not leave the back of his chair; he did not need the Force's aid to sense her fear and her hope.

"On what kind of doorway it is, I suppose." Still, he did not turn around. He shrugged. "There are all kinds."

"Yours?" It wasn't a question so much as it was a plea. Zeke did not say anything. He felt her apprehension as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. "I suppose you want to know what I am doing here," she said, wringing her hands. "I stowed away in the cargo hold. Again." He smiled even though he knew she could not see it. "I've made a habit of it now, I suppose." And then everything seemed to drop away from her all at once and she was laid bare. "Please don't send me back."

"I told you that I couldn't bring anyone with me," he replied, getting to his feet and turning to face her. Seeing him again gave her pause; she hesitated.

"Yes," she acknowledged this truth shortly. "But you don't get to tell me what to do, Zeke. I won't stay behind because you tell me to. If I don't stow away on his ship, I will buy one of my own and follow. Handmaidens are the ones that get left behind to wait. I am not a handmaiden anymore. If I wish to follow you, then I will and you will not stop me."

He did not respond to this; that only made her more frustrated. She took two angry steps forward, crossing the room's threshold. "I have been a fool and I have been frightened and I have been blind. I spent most of the last year running away from you when you would have had me in a moment. I have finally stopped running away and I won't let you run away from me now."

"I'm coming back," Zeke insisted. "I may be leaving now but I will come back."

Her smile was full of sorrow. "You can't know that," she told him gently. "No one can know that. No one can say what will happen in a year, in ten years, or even in a week, to either of us. What if you come back and I am not there? What will happen then?"

He had no words for that; neither did Brianna in truth. Casting her gaze down to her feet, she said, "I have nothing to say other than what I have already said. But do you remember what I told you on Dantooine?" She dragged her eyes back up to meet his. "I have been able to think of nothing else since I left that cantina: 'I want to stand beside you, for all of your days.' Please. If you are going into the darkness, you cannot go into the darkness alone."

She saw him hesitate and smiled to herself at the sight of it. Zeke had never been a man to move without thinking about it first. And she watched him think about it, her eyes never leaving his face. And then, finally, with a sad smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Zeke said: "Who am I to turn you away?"

Brianna sighed with relief, smiling at him weakly, and then, ever practical, walked past him to the still open galaxy map. "Alright," she said, her smile growing wider, "where are we going?"

"Doesn't matter," he replied, now grinning as he looked over her shoulder at the map. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around Brianna and pulled her close to him. "You're here with me and that's enough."

"No," she said softly, closing her eyes as he planted a kiss against the line of her jaw. "You're with me."

And with eyes closed, content with each other's touch and presence, they braced themselves for the future. Whatever destiny had in store for them, Zeke and Brianna would face it together, both finally free.

The End. For real this time.