I’m just going to reblog this for a minute, because this is very important to me. This is the only time that Jude Watson uses the word cherish to define the relationship between two characters. And it says a lot about the love between them for Ferus to recognize and narrate that Siri, who was notoriously brusque and stilted with her emotions, cherished him in her own way.
We see Siri exhibit a tenderness with Ferus that she doesn’t with anyone else, with the possible exception of Obi-Wan Kenobi, though her tenderness towards Obi-Wan is distinctly different than towards Ferus.
We see habitually impatient Siri slow down conversations to ask Ferus about his feelings and opinions, we see her take time out of planning to listen to Ferus’s concerns and address them. With everyone else, we see Siri ready to rush in as soon as the plan is settled, seeming mildly annoyed when someone stops to question the plan, and wanting to move now. But with Ferus, she actively stops the conversation to address his feelings. She engages in the conversation with him, drawing out his opinions that he otherwise would not have voiced.
We see Siri, who so casually tells Obi-Wan “well here I am to save your sorry self again” when answering his distress call, get furious when she thinks that Obi-Wan has kept her Padawan’s disappearance from her. We see Siri express genuine concern about Ferus’s wellbeing once they find him, even though he’s physically unharmed, in contrast to a situation when she rescues Obi-Wan and he’s visibly limping, and she lightly teases him.
We see Siri take her role as Ferus’s mentor, teacher, and Master very seriously, and we see just from Ferus’s growth over his life how much time and thought she put into training him. We see how often Ferus thinks about her and her teachings years after he left the Order ( and years after her death ). We see the memory of her teachings get him out of trouble multiple times.
We see her trust him deeply, from very early on in their relationship. And we see him trust her, too, so much that he feels he can ask her anything without judgment, and we see that he trusts her so much that he asks her about not one, but two of the most taboo subjects for Jedi: attachment, and the Dark side.
And we see Siri go immediately from being Adi’s Padawan, to going on an extremely dangerous undercover mission for two years, ( that left her in a very dark place afterwards ) to taking Ferus as her Padawan immediately upon returning from that mission and being Knighted. Teaching Ferus, and Ferus himself, undoubtedly had a significant influence on Siri’s healing from the deep damage that her undercover mission did to her. ( A number of context clues point to Siri having ptsd after that mission, but that’s a different topic. )
Then she let him go. She spent five years teaching a stiff boy ( a born leader who suppressed himself to try to be a perfect follower ) how to think for himself; how to do what he thought, not just what the perfect Jedi would do. And then when he finally made a decision for himself, when he decided to leave, she let him go. To cherish without keeping.
We then see Siri being explicitly noted to have never taken a Padawan after Ferus’s resignation. Now, this is significant, because while there are other Jedi who don’t have a Padawan, or don’t take a Padawan for a while, with those Jedi it isn’t explicitly pointed out in the narration. The only other time that Jude Watson’s writing explicitly comments on a Jedi Master not taking a Padawan is when Qui-Gon Jinn hadn’t taken a Padawan since Xanatos’s betrayal. ( In contrast with Garen Muln, for example, who doesn’t take a Padawan, and who is seen numerous times as a Jedi Knight, with no Padawan, but there is never a comment in the narration about how Garen never took a Padawan. The same goes for Bant Eerin. The importance of Siri not taking a Padawan is of enough significance that it had to be mentioned. ) But we also see that Siri doesn’t have any feelings of resentment towards Ferus; she mentions him shortly before her death, and she speaks fondly of him. She never took another Padawan because she failed her first. Her first Padawan, who was one of the most talented Jedi of his generation, who was second only to Anakin Skywalker in skill level, who she loved. Who she cherished.
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