Play It, Sam

“Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’”

Her voice cuts across the cantina. Clear and concise, it sounds as out of place here as she looks in her Jedi Robes. The musician in the corner, starts playing a smooth melody, as out of place in this cantina as she is.

Every being in this shallow dive near the borders between the GFFA and the Unknown Regions is staring at her.

Some stare because even in the frumpy, unflattering Jedi robes, she is stunning. Hair the color of finely polished wroshyer wood, eyes the color of Whyrren's Reserve. She is an angel walking among the every day mortals of this backwater world.

Others stare because of what the robes she wears means for them. Be it protection or punishment, depending on who you are and what you are doing, a Jedi can deal out either at any time. She is a Jedi, the guardians of peace and justice for the Alliance.

Every being stares, but one man’s stare is hard and cold.

She sits on a stool at the bar and orders a lomin ale, as she slowly sips it, he walks up and leans against the bar beside her. Pointedly he does not look at her.

“What are you doing here Jaina?”

She looks at him, sees the pain and anger on his face, the scar above his eye, which has now been joined by one on his cheek. She feels that old longing, the one that she always felt back during the war whenever she was near him. The one she feels every night as she dreams of him.

“You made it clear to me last time I saw you that you never wanted to talk to me again, yet here you are, trying to start up a conversation. Of course I would work on your pickup lines.”

She watches as he picked up nut after nut from a dish on the bar, and crushes them between his fingers. The fine dust slowly drifts to the bar, forming a small pile in front of him. “You walked into here Jaina, there must be a dozen cantinas within a klick of the spaceport, and you come in here. Didn’t your vaunted self-righteous Jedi-ness sense me in here?”

Her laughter once more cuts through the sounds of the cantina, attracting the attention of those who worry over the fact that a Jedi is even here. “Believe it or not, not everything revolves around you Jagged.”

“Sithspit.”

“Such language, I know that Baroness Fel raised you better than that.”

The patron on the far side of him jumps as Jag slams his fist on the bar. “I didn’t want to see you again. Yet here you are.”

Jaina feels her heart fall at his statement, at the vehemence at which he says it. “Did you ever consider that maybe I wanted to see you?”

She watches as he takes up his solemn task of crushing the nuts. She touches his hand and softly says “I just wanted you to know that I am sorry. Sorry for what I said right after the Vong War, sorry for what I did during the Swarm War. Most of all, I’m sorry I let us end.”

She wipes away the tears that had gathered in her eyes, and throwing a few coins on the bar gets up and starts to leave. He continues to not look at her; all he does is continue to turn the nuts into a fine dry powder.

She pauses in the doorway, and without looking over her shoulder says “I loved you Jag. I, I still do.”

Then as suddenly as she had come in, she was gone.

Jagged Fel sits for a moment longer, and then gets up and walks out. The bartender walks over and wipes up the mess that Jag had left, a pile of crushed nuts, with the consistency of mud.