A/N: Enjoy. Had to be done. I knew I said I would have other things ready for my regular readers first, but this jumped out at me after I finished the Thrawn novel.

A Maudlin Thing

Eirian Erisdar

It is a maudlin thing, to miss a friend.

Even that word itself, miss – as if a part of you has been taken, and one no longer is whole – that is a product of Galactic Basic, and the culture it once originated from.

Grand Admiral Thrawn stands on the bridge of his flagship, and watches the whorls of hyperspace flicker past the transparisteel as the Chimaera carves a route through space-time to the Yarma system. He is undisturbed; the bridge crew work soundlessly around him, assuming out of long practice that he is calculating their next move.

Always calculating.

To miss someone.

In Sy Bisti, the equivalent translation has other connotations – a sort of unbalanced air, a wrongness that adds onto the sense of incompletion that the word suggests in Basic.

It is strange, yes, to not have someone standing a step to the side and behind him. And not just anyone – a presence that had been there since the moment he was captured in the hangar bay of the Strikefast, and the cadet with an accent different than that of the other assembled Navy had spoken to him.

Navy had offered him a replacement, of course.

Thrawn had refused, politely. Eli Vanto had taught him diplomacy well enough so that he had not offended those who made the suggestion.

And it is precisely why any aide other than Commander Vanto will not do at all.

It is not as though he is in need of one, after all. Aides deliver orders to those their superiors are too busy for; they run errands, and write reports, and organise matters that need to come to their superiors' attention. Thrawn, unlike other officers, possesses a mind quick enough that none of these things are truly necessary. He requires less sleep, and has long since structured his day to include activities which will allow for the optimisation of his mental acuity at all times.

So if it is strange to other Navy officers that he walks the corridors of the Chimaera alone, without a faithful shadow by his side – it is strange to him for another reason entirely.

While Commander Vanto had taught Thrawn diplomacy, and Basic (though that one perhaps only to quicken his learning, and not necessarily an augmentation of his ability to learn individually), Thrawn had taught him to observe, and think, and manipulate situations to their mutual benefit.

In a manner of speaking, Commander Vanto had been a mirror. A protégé, yes, and a comrade – but there, over Thrawn's shoulder, had always stood a man who would understand his logic, and not only repeat it back to him – but add on to it, in that Wild Space burr that had sounded so incongruous on the bridge of an Imperial Star Destroyer.

Commander Vanto.

Eli.

Thrawn searches his memory for any instance he had called his friend by that name.

And then he searches for any instance he had called him a friend, at all.

He knows, of course, that he will find nothing.

Except perhaps…that journal. It is written in Basic, in the unfeeling block-letters of Aurebesh; printed exactly in his well-trained hand. No doubt Eli will read it, and think upon it, and reread it on his journey to the Ascendancy; but Eli will not be able to turn to the communications console on his small transport, and speak to him face-to-face, or even at all.

Yes. Perhaps that is what is strange – to feel the urge to open his mouth, and speak, and hear a response from over his shoulder – but there is nobody there.

That last entry.

The most maudlin of all.

But he had used the word friend in that entry. Is it worth regretting? Perhaps not. Regret is useless in the face of command; it is always eclipsed by the ability to salvage a situation, and the ability of salvage in turn eclipsed by the possibility of victory, nearly always present in some form.

To miss a friend.

Four words, in Basic.

In the language of this Chiss, it is only one. Difficult to translate to Sy Bisti, untranslatable to Basic.

There is a word that describes the distance between friends in the language of the Chiss; it means, literally, the cleaving of a mind.

The heart of friendship is maudlin.

The mind can be coerced not to be.

Thrawn turns from the muted streaks of hyperspace, and as he begins to walk, a memory occurs to him.

The snarl on newly-ranked Ensign Vanto's face, as he looked up from reading the orders given to him on the day of their graduation from the academy. Orders assigning him as aide to Lieutenant Thrawn.

There had been words.

Thrawn had offered to counter the orders.

And then Eli – Ensign Vanto – had said, "The navy doesn't change orders just because junior officers don't like them. When you're an admiral, we'll see what we can do."

"I understand," Thrawn had said, quietly. "Very well. I shall strive to attain that rank as quickly as possible."

He had.

And then Thrawn had fulfilled his promise.

It had been necessary.

For the first time in a good long while, Thrawn becomes aware that what he would like and what is necessary are mutually exclusive.

Maudlin.

Thrawn allows himself a moment. It is more than any indulgence he has ever given himself.

And then his comlink chirps, and he answers, and there is the Empire, the Rebels, and nothing else.

Thank you for reading. Do leave a review if you like! Eli, I think, served very much as a foil, in a strange sort of way. I wonder what he would have said about Thrawn's methods given what we've seen of him in Rebels... I've cross-posted this to my tumblr (url eirianerisdar) so go have a look if you like! I post much fanfic there, as well.