Two Sides of the Same Coin

In the end it didn't matter because even after everything they'd been through, he was still sure that he would have to kill her. Absently he wondered if she would continue sending her guards out to him to die in her stead. As he sliced down the last one in this wave he yells up at the crystal face of the building before him, “I have come for her!”

He stalks to the main entry, and plunges his saber into the locking mechanism before him. Holding it pushed in as the durasteel bubbles and melts around his saber. He slowly begins moving the blade in a circular fashion, enlarging the cut, until the entire lock system falls out of the door, and he is able to simply push it open.

He sighs to himself as there is yet another selection of guards before him, firing their ineffectual blasters at him. Almost tiredly he bats them bat at the guards. Always killing, never going for a simple disable response. Once more he is yelling, “How many are you going to send to their deaths?”

He almost misses her reply, her voice so soft, so filled with the pain of his swath of destruction. “Leave this place and never return. There is nothing here for you.”

“There is my daughter! She is mine, and I will have her!”

Anger flashes like lightning in her grey eyes. “You have spent her entire life debasing the memories of her grandparents, ignoring her, and mocking everything I spent my life standing for. You will not have her.”

He laughs at her. “Oh?”

“This is a fact.”

She pulls a rancor’s tooth from her belt and a lightsaber blade shoots forth from it.

She slips towards him, her blade held in a loose grip, her stance ready. She is every inch the warrior queen she was raised to be.

Their blades meet with a crackle of energy, with the soul shattering sound of hopes and dreams being dashed and sundered.

They are fairly well evenly matched. He is stronger, but she more experienced.

They are two sides of the same coin.

Male and female.

Mother and Father.

Light and Dark.

One broken in body, the other broken in spirit.

Once upon a time, they were young and in love, back before the war, before her coronation, before life became so twisted and dark.

Now, they are both bitter and heartbroken. Bitter at the life that fate has given them. Heartbroken at the loss of that love, at the loss of their innocence.

All they have left is the fight, the reward of which is the soul of an innocent five year old girl.

They twist and twirl, their sabers flashing. Neither able to get in that killing blow, ultimately neither entirely certain that they want to.

They part both slightly winded from their exertions. He sadly looks at her. “Why does it have to be this way?”

Her look is even sadder. “You go to a dark place Jacen. One that I cannot allow you to take Allana.”

“I do this to protect her!”

“She does not need protection, she needs love and acceptance. What you offer is merely pain and fear.”

He pulls his saber back into a high guard. “You don’t understand.”

She lifts hers into a matching guard. “What is there to understand?”

“There is no Dark Side!”

“Then why are you trying to kill the mother of your child?”

Once more he rushes into battle, allowing his frustration and anger to power his blows; while she is driven by a calm acceptance, centered in the knowledge that she defends her daughter.

Still their skills are evenly matched; the unstoppable force has met the unmovable object.

And as is so often the case in these scenarios, it is the introduction of a third player which changes the dynamic.

Each is so focused on the other; on winning this battle of ideologies that both fail to notice the arrival of the ultimate trump card.

An innocent five year old little girl. She watches the battle, her red hair pulled back into a simple braid, her brandy eyes wide at the complex chorography of her parent’s duel.

“Mama?”

Her voice cutting through the sounds of lightsabers in combat is enough to distract her mother. The unmovable object just moved.

As Jacen knocks the saber from Tenel Ka’s hand, and places his blade at her throat. A clear gasp is heard. Jacen finally realizes that they have an audience as she says in her clear child voice, “Papa, are you goin’ to hurt Mama?”

Jacen feels a tear escape from his eye as he looks from Tenel Ka up to his daughter. He can see the fear and confusion on her face. He can feel the sheer terror the girl feels at the thought of her mother being hurt.

He turns his attention back to Tenel Ka. “Yes, yes I am.”