Iden Versio turned around, her gaze cold as ice as she faced the final remnant from her old life. The remnant of her past that had refused to let her go.
From a certain point of view, however, she was the remnant who needed to be destroyed. For Gideon Hask had been dreaming of this day for years. Today, he would do it. He would bring his lifelong tormentor to justice, and prove that he was in the right all along.
They faced each other, with nowhere left to run, and no intention to back down. It was quite likely that they'd have nothing left to return to, even if they did survive.
"I'm doing you a favor, Versio." Hask said, his tone calm and composed, and utterly false. He really should've known better than to attempt, so pitifully, to fool his former commanding officer.
"Look at you, talking like a Jedi all of a sudden. What happened to embracing the dark side, Gideon? Where's your anger? Surely you'd love for me to see it!" Iden said, with a scornful smile.
"I'll show you my anger through my actions. You've long lost the right to my honest words." Gideon said and picked up the lightsaber. It wasn't his ideal weapon of choice, of course. He hadn't been trained in it the way a Sith might've been. But that didn't matter, for his opponent was no Sith or even a Jedi.
Her lightsaber was drawn as well. Like Gideon, she too was not its true wielder.
The two pawns approached each other, slowly, their battle completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. They had always been mere followers, and though they had played their roles the best they could, that didn't change the fact that they were always mere stepping stones for bigger heroes and villains to stand on. The only difference between them, the difference that rendered them mortal enemies, was that Iden had used her free will to reject the Empire she'd been raised to follow, while Gideon had used his will not to.
"In the end, you were never any different from them, were you? All along you were just another ravenous dog just aching to ravage his next meal." Iden said, the disgust in her tone evident.
Anger driving him, Gideon rushed forward to cut her in two. She blocked him with ease.
"It seems your anger hasn't done much to help you focus," Iden said, coolly. "I could tell where the saber was going to land the moment you swung it."
"I won't fail twice!" Gideon said, his false composure completely lost, to show the burning rage and fury he felt. Another swing. Another one blocked.
"Face it, Gideon. We're both facing our ends here, but I'm the only one doing so with any dignity!"
"Shut up!" he kicked forward but Iden did too. He slashed at empty air.
"Has your body finally started to feel the effects of age? Or were you always so weak-willed that you'd forget your training so easily?" Iden said, scornfully.
"I won't let you...I won't let you take everything away from me!" Gideon rushed again, and this time, he struck her.
He struck her?
The shock made him pull back. But why? Isn't that what he intended?
Wasn't killing her his duty? No, not just duty, his purpose, his mission!
"Me? Take everything away from you?" Iden said, not moving. She wasn't moving, so why, why couldn't he just-
"Then what do you suppose you did to me, Gideon?" now her voice had the anger. The rage. "When you stood by the Empire as they ravaged my homeworld? When you killed Del Meeko with your own hands? When you did the same to our-"
Remorse? No, no he couldn't feel remorse, he'd done nothing wrong! They were traitors! Fair game! The sniveling bastards deserved everything he delivered unto them! They defied the Emperor! They defied the Emperor, and so Del Meeko, Iden and their...their...
He did not regret killing that spawn. Spawn of treachery does not deserve to exist! That's why...why...
"This will be a test for you, as Han Solo was for me." The Commander had said to him. Yes. Nothing could come in the way of fulfilling the Emperor's wishes. That's why he passed the test. That's why he did it. And in return, he would find the final remnant from his past and...
and...
"Oh. So that was what you really wanted, wasn't it?" Iden said. Her voice, for the first time in so long, had lost all its hostility. She understood, didn't she? She understood that what Gideon truly wanted was...
...
"NO!" Gideon backed away, but his movements were clumsy. He stumbled and fell on his back, lying pitifully prone next to the defector.
"I finally understand now, just what would've happened to me if I hadn't seen the light." Iden was saying, her form slightly hunched over but otherwise showing no signs of injury. "So this is what I would've become."
Gideon couldn't slow his breathing. He needed air. He needed more air, something anything, to purge the taint, purge the doubt, purge purge purge PURGE!
"GYAAAH!" he rushed at Iden, this time striking to kill. This time he wouldn't miss, and once he-
He was blocked again. He struck at the air again. But next time. Next time, next time, next time, next time!
"If only you'd realized this sooner," Iden said. Her swings were as fierce as ever. Her voice was as steely as ever. But there was no anger, no loathing, no resentment in her words. There was simply pity. "If only you could've seen what would become of you!"
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" he cried. They were lies! All lies! He didn't regret a thing! He came to destroy her, bring her to justice! Not so he could...
...die by her hand...
"I'LL KILL YOU!" he yelled. He knew this one would strike. He knew this one would end her!
But why was he being proven wrong? Just why was he still...
"DAMMIT, PURGE!" he rushed at her again.
"You realized it that moment, didn't you? The moment you found the child of the very defectors you so resented and slaughtered her in the Empire's name?" Iden was saying.
HE NEEDED HER TO STOP!
"GYAAAAH!" another swing, this one grazed her. But she simply retreated and continued.
"You knew there would never be any peace! That there was never any chance of it, to begin with! You knew that you'd lost your soul to the darkness forever!" anguish rang in her words, but it wasn't the anguish directed at a despicable man she needed to kill to avenge her family. It was anguish directed at a fallen friend she needed to liberate from his own madness.
"SHUT UP AND DIE ALREADY! Kill her and it'll all be over! Kill her and you'll return a hero!" Gideon murmured between his desperate attempts to just kill her already!
His swings were ferocious and fast as lightning. He'd have put many a Sith apprentice to shame with how well he'd mastered a lightsaber on his first try. This should've been enough to kill any old soldier in an instant! But why wasn't it enough to kill her?!
Why did his heart keep aching? Why was he in so much pain? Why couldn't he be proud of his duty to eliminate the traitors who'd turned their backs on him and left him all alone?
Alone. Why did he have to be alone? Why did he have to suffer for being the only one to believe that his actions serving the Empire weren't meaningless?
He couldn't just turn his back all the sacrifices he'd made! Why couldn't they ever see that?! Why weren't they ashamed?!
Why did he still long for her? Why did he still wish that they could go back to the way things were? Why did he...
...believe he was the one who deserved to be punished?
Tears clouded his vision as he continued to swing and slash. His words had, somewhere down the line, turned to screams, and now those screams had turned to wails. He was fighting to kill the woman in front of him, even as he'd been reduced to a weeping, blubbering child. But his attacks did not cease. His movements did not slow. After all, the madness driving him hadn't slowed down in the slightest. On the contrary, it was just now starting to show its true colors.
Beneath his bravado, beneath his devotion, beneath his ruthlessness, this is who Gideon Hask really was.
And even with the greatest effort imaginable, a hurting child can never match an enlightened adult. And so it was, that Iden's blade sank into Hask before he knew it.
So abruptly was he pulled out of his daze that he didn't even notice how he'd slipped on his own blood, how his body had lurched forward, and his saber had impaled Iden just seconds later.
"No!" he yelled upon feeling his weapon tear through Iden's body. That was strange. He hadn't felt so horrified when he'd been stabbed.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he did want to die by her hand.
No, he'd always valued her life over his own from the very beginning.
Even on that day, when she defied him at Vardos and left him forever, he wouldn't have hurt her. Even with his rifle pointed at her, he wouldn't have taken the shot. But she did. He insisted on believing in the Empire no matter what, and because of that, she considered him a lost cause. So at the Battle of Jakku, he told himself that he would get back at her. That he wouldn't hesitate. And yet he still ended up losing to her.
As his body collapsed and he felt his limbs go numb from paralysis, he couldn't help but laugh. Was that what this was all about? Was that why he joined the First Order, why he hunted down Del Meeko, why he stubbornly refused every offer of surrender that was ever extended to him? Of course, it was. He did all that because he needed to believe, and he needed her to believe too. Anything that got in the way of that had to be destroyed.
Because he'd always known that she was just like him. That she understood every aspect of him. That's why he'd vowed to protect her. She was his mirror, a reflection of all he strived to be, and all he strived to preserve. Even when her later actions shattered that illusion, he couldn't accept it. He couldn't accept just losing someone so utterly precious to him, so he convinced himself that she would come back. He had to. That was the only way he could continue to believe.
He never had any choice but to believe, after all. His beautiful mother and his doting father always told him they loved him more than anything else in the world. And they believed. Whenever he was scared, whenever he felt alone, they were always there to protect him, because they drew strength from their belief.
But then they were taken from him. In just an instant, he was unable to ever see them again. But then who would protect him when he was scared? When he was lonely? When he didn't know what to do?
Of course, he would just believe what his parents believed in. He would continue to believe until the very end. If he did that, they would never leave him. They would always be by his side because he never stopped believing.
That's why it never even occurred to him to betray the Empire. He had to believe because his mother and father had believed. He thought Iden was the same. That she too would never stop believing. He could never comprehend why she lost her faith.
He understood now, though. No, he'd understood the moment he'd killed her child.
There was never anything worth believing in, to begin with.
Was it jealousy that drove him to deliver the blow? Or was it fear? It didn't matter. The moment he'd done the deed, he could no longer reconcile the Empire with his loving parents. He could no longer understand how such an Empire would ever allow loving parents to raise their children.
He had to accept that nothing he did had mattered at all.
His eyes were still wet with tears, and his vision was blurry. He saw a figure walk towards him.
"Leave me." he wanted to say, but his mouth wouldn't move. "Let me rest here."
A few seconds later, the figure moved past him, and he was alone again.
Who was that? Was it Iden? Did she make it out alive?
It would be nice if she did. Somehow, she'd understood what he couldn't. Somehow, she'd found the answers that he would never know. It was a just punishment, he supposed, for what he'd done to her.
He wondered how he'd been able to hide his own madness from himself for so long. How his mind hadn't broken at the sight of the young girl he'd killed. Come to think of it, it had, though, hadn't it?
Wasn't it at that point that he felt a murderous rage towards Iden? That he wanted to kill her once and for all? He'd never felt such a fierce bloodlust towards her before this, had he?
Yes, he'd intended to destroy himself all along. He wanted to die an honorable death at her hands, or failing that, just numb his mind to everything by destroying the person who he'd loved the most his entire life. All things considered, he was happy things had turned out this way.
His consciousness began to fade, and having found all the answers he cared to know, Gideon Hask made no further effort to keep it anchored, allowing himself to fade away into the Force.
Author's Note: Okay, so this was my take on what an epilogue to the Inferno Squad story arc might be like. I've done my best to stay true to the plot points already established in the Battlefront II video game, though I'm sure this conclusion is probably too dark to be the canonical one (especially with the whole Gideon killed a child angle). In any case, I hope it was a fun read, fellas.