M A T H I A S:
(There’s the difference between them. Woman shunning the mission because of the corruption in her veins. She’s smarter than him. Because man went anyway. Decided to chase light with his padawan by his side, grasp it in his fingers and watch it let go, unable to be held in his hands. He won’t be remembered by the universe, doesn’t matter to it now. He’ll do with that what he will. But the Crystal in his hand forces him to reconsider, whether he’s ready to or not.) He stands beside now a woman he once would have ran from. Both take money for their work, but he’s also the one being hunted, by the wanted posters she would have to answer to. Odd, should we say, them becoming like this? (Survived by how well they held a knife. By how well it sunk into the skin and he kept on walking when he met people like her.)
“Maybe some regular swords too, those are much more fun,” and personal. Who are they to keep the fight so far away? “Unless you have a preference, speak now or forever hold your peace,” cocked brow that falls after it rises. We can’t compare her attachment with her saber with his own. Stolen off a body. A thing no more at his side, the pike held so long in his hand, broken pieces pulled back together over and over again. “What does that matter?” He gives, not thinking too deeply about her words, that they may mean more, not yet. “Still might want two, or something new.” meaning, there, if you listen. “Or a spare, if our friends come back around,” the Inquisitors they both have faced, from the shadows or in the eye. “I’m not talking about fixing what isn’t broken.”
“Fun is not the word.” She wants to ask him what in the galaxies they could accomplish with regular swords, but then she remembers that any small thing is an advantage when you have the element of surprise, when cowardice keeps you feet away from the opponent. Her hands brush softly against the cool hilt of her lightsaber, a pretty thing, warm yellow and double-bladed; Luha had always been more of a defensive fighter, comfortable with keeping her opponent at a distance. It’s almost as if she knew from the very beginning that she’d be a coward, always keeping others at arms length. A defense mechanism gone faulty and having evolved into weakness. Luha has a preference, of course she does, for years she kept herself miles away from the opponent, for years she hid behind the scope of a rifle. As she watches him from the corner of her eye, she wonders what she would have done had he been on the receiving end of a rifle, and as well as she knows how to breathe she knows that she would have let them extinguish him too.
Face contorts into something and then it’s almost as if she’s going to form words, but Luha halts any slip of the tongue and shakes her head ‘no’, “there’s no preference there, I guess I’m just sentimental.” The saber is like an anchor, holding her steady and keeping her from spilling her guts at the sight of every Jedi; she’ll touch her fingers to the cool metal and remember that padawan with so much potential. What could have been. Luha doesn’t answer his question but it matters, matters way more than she could describe. It holds the weight of the world even. And then she laughs, and it’s almost real, “I hate to say that you might have a point, what if my saber gets knocked out of my hands and I’m left fumbling over an empty belt, no spares in sight? ” The words are biting but there’s truth there; she knows he’s right, but there’s cynicism clogging her every artery. There are times when a spare isn’t enough. “Then what are you talking about?”