Spoilers right up to the end of the game. I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you enjoy reading it!
Stalemate

It could hardly be more perfect.

They face each other, at opposite ends of the circle, just staring. Their hands are wrapped tightly around the hilts of their swords; each studies the other, waiting, daring his opponent to make the first move.

There are no observers in this fight. There is no backup, no help from the sidelines, no skill or arte save what each himself knows. The battle, and the victory, will be known only by the participants. Only one of them is going to pass through that door; the other will remain behind, defeated.

They might as well be facing mirrors. Where one holds his sword in a way that shows his left hand is dominant, the other uses his right. Where one wears his hair long down his back, the other has his cut short, shorn away on the edge of a knife. One wears white, and the other black.

One of them carries the burden of experience. It weighs heavily on his shoulders, a match for the heavy cloak he wears, for the weight of the sword in his hands. He bears the knowledge of the ragged, most brutal edges of the world. They're inside him.

One of them shoulders the weight of ignorance. The burden of not knowing, of being used and strung along and, eventually, blamed, is harder to see in his bearing and expression. He has seen the kind of person that can spring from a life of absolute trust in one's mentors, without questioning their actions. It's inside him.

Outwardly, they share the same – the exact same – look of grim determination. Inwardly, they find common ground in their mutual but diverted goal to put an end to that villainous plan. It has reached the point where neither will let the other pass without a victory. They do share one other trait, however.

Neither of them is innocent anymore.

They run at each other, blades raised. Two perfect mirror images, exactly alike and exactly opposite.

It could hardly be more wrong.

---

I'm fighting…myself.

It's hard to believe it got this far. Wait, no. It's not. You always wanted a fight, didn't you? That's what you've wanted from the very beginning. You want – you need – to prove to yourself that you really are the better person.

That shouldn't be so hard for you. You're the one who really is a person.

I know you wish I never existed. I took everything from you – your family, your world, your life. I didn't know it at the time…but it still happened. I've been destroying things, lives, from the start.

And sometimes I wish I didn't exist, too.

I can't ever make up for the things I've done. That's really hard to accept. No matter what I do, or say, or become, the things I have done in my past can't be undone. I can't un-destroy Akzeriuth. I can't change the fact that I killed so many people, just because I was too stupid to think things through for myself.

I can't give you your family back, either, can I? Despite how I've tried…it just isn't going to work. Even though they still love you, too. As long as there are two of us, you will never be able to accept that there are two of us.

Well, you won't have to wait much longer. Soon, there will only be one of us. Not too long from now I won't exist anyway. You can have it all, everything I've been taking for granted all this time. You can have life back.

But this fight isn't all about that, either. This is about us. This is about how you seem to think you can't accept me. I think I have to disagree with you there. We disagree about almost everything else, anyway. I don't think you have to accept me. I don't care either way, because that isn't what's important.

First, you have to accept yourself.

I know you don't. I know you think you'll never be able to come to terms with the horrible things you've done with your life since I was created. You gave yourself a different name, even, to distance yourself from that person you no longer found it acceptable to be.

You'll never admit this, but I can see it. Either that, or I'm just stupid and really not worth the effort. It's possible. You probably think so, anyway. Or that's what you tell yourself, to keep your mind from all the thoughts you don't want to have.

You're just like me.

---

I can't believe this.

I can't believe I have to prove to this…this fake, this replica of myself, that I'm the better choice! This fight is pointless. It can only end in my victory.

All that talk about how I was the person, the real person, and I should be the one to go on? I saw right through that. You would never have let me go without a fight. You're my shadow, aren't you, replica? You wanted a fight just as much as I did.

You think you've done something. You somehow managed to stay in the company of a group of powerful, intelligent people. You were hardly worth their time, but for whatever foolish reason they stuck with you. Maybe it was pity.

And then you had to go and try to be the hero! I heard that Van said something like that to you – didn't you learn the first time that such heroism only leads to disaster? Better to stand only for yourself, and decide only for yourself, than to risk the fragile trust of others. You must really be stupid, to not have learned that yet.

Do you even know what we're fighting for? Do you even know what you did to me, replica?

You stole it. Everything. You stole my family, my name, and my life from me. And now there's no way I'll ever get it back again! I saw you once, you know. With them – with my parents. They didn't even know I was gone!

What do you think it would have looked like, if I just walked in and told them that I was their precious, kidnapped son, and you were a fake? Who do you think they would have believed? Honestly, now I know where you got your naïve tendencies from. It's embarrassing, that my parents were so easily fooled.

It won't matter soon anyway. You can have them; I won't be around anymore to be a threat to your claim on my life. It's all yours.

I won't exist anymore.

But first we need to settle this. Only the master's true student can have the right to surpass him, to kill him and claim the victory. And we'll only know who that is – not that it isn't obvious – by finishing this fight.

I can never accept you otherwise, replica. There's no way you can win, you and your noble goals and your feigned innocence and your impossible ideals. You may be my replica, and you may be my shadow, but that's all you are: inferior.

You're nothing like me.

---

Luke raised his sword, hardly flinching as the blades met and rang out a discordant note.

"Asch, this is stupid," he said again, ducking under the next swing and slashing horizontally. Asch jumped back, avoiding the strike. "Just let me open the door and you can go." This conversation had been going on for quite some time.

"I told you before, replica, I don't buy it." Asch retreated to the edge of the circle, scowling. Luke took a breath, glad for but wary of a break in their frenzied battle. He had the time to run the back of his hand across his forehead before he noticed the glow of a fonic arte glyph.

"You're such a pain," Luke muttered to himself as he shifted his grip on the sword again. He adjusted his footing, too. He'd fought enough arte users by now to know how this worked.

"O frigid blades, pour forth!" Asch glared at him, cold and stubborn as he released his arte. "Icicle Rain!"

Luke took off, charging at Asch while he was still recovering from the cast. A blast of cold caught him in the back as the arte hit the floor where he had been standing. He stabbed his sword forward in a lunging thrust, hoping to catch Asch off guard.

Asch had recovered far more quickly than Luke had anticipated, however, and stepped to the side, bringing his own blade around. Luke's thrust sliced a shallow cut through his clothing and into his side; Asch swipe scored a line of red across Luke's back.

Neither of them paid any attention to such small injuries, however. They spun to face each other again, Asch breaking into a run and Luke obliging by raising his sword and charging, as well. Identical styles met with metallic clangs, a frantic combination of strike and parry.

"Raging Blast!"

"Rending Thrust!"

Both of them were thrown backwards by the force of the colliding strike artes. Asch turned the momentum into a neat, if heavy, landing; Luke struck the floor hard on his back and skidded backward, dazed.

"That was foolish," Asch sneered as he advanced on his stunned counterpart, sword raised. As the blade descended, Luke dropped his own sword and rolled out of the way, kicking out at Asch's legs in the process. The former God-General overbalanced, staggering forward. Luke rolled the rest of the way up and picked up his sword again.

"Yeah, well, foolish hasn't failed me yet." Luke grinned a bit. This only made Asch's glare more unrelenting. He charged again, practically growling with the intensity of his anger. Luke held his ground, sword raised defensively.

He blocked the first three strikes, jumping back out of the way of a fourth. He moved in and began his own attack combination, but Asch's blocks were just as effective as his had been.

They drew back their swords at the same instant, thrusting forward simultaneously. Each realized at the same time what was happening, and tried to back out of the way as the attack finished, but they had drawn too close. The tip of Asch's sword stabbed into Luke's left shoulder; Luke's stabbed into Asch's right.

Both withdrew instantly, each with only the loosest of holds on their blades. Luke was fighting not to drop his altogether when Asch raised his again in a sweeping arc. It was blocked, but only barely, and at the end of the swing both blades went flying from their owners' hands.

It became a race to see who would reach his weapon first. It was Luke, this time, and Asch barely managed to get to his in time to parry a hard vertical slash. He retaliated quickly, and the two of them were caught in the rush of attacking and defending once again.

Neither of them could have stated what really happened next. It was as though there was a slight shift of some kind, perhaps, or one of them reached too far or stepped in too close. But they were falling, swinging wildly with blades and fists. Asch landed a punch to Luke's jaw.

Luke shook his head in an attempt to rid his vision of stars. He was shoved backward, landing on his back again, crying out when the impact jarred his injury from before. Asch staggered back to his feet, leaning heavily on his sword.

He watched Luke struggle to stand up again, the replica just as worn out as he was. He didn't know why he wasn't moving to attack now, while that copy of his had his guard down.

But it was too late now. Luke had his determined look back, though it was, as always, tinged with something else. Reluctance, perhaps. Asch's look was back, too, but the only emotion that existed with his determination was anger.

They charged each other again, the strain of the situation and of the fight evident in their movements and their expression. It was hard to lift the sword, now, much harder than it had ever seemed before. They were tiring. This, they knew, would decide it.

Luke stopped just short of the charge, blocking Asch's powerful attack. He kicked again at the former God-General's feet; Asch once again overbalanced, but he turned it into a roll punctuated with a swipe at Luke's legs. Luke yelped again as the sword bit into his right leg, but Asch had overestimated the roll. His arms twisted in an entirely wrong direction, and the sword fell from his hands.

Luke took a step toward him, bringing his weapon around in front of him again. Asch was on his back on the ground, staring up the long blade of Luke's sword.

"Now can we just get this over with?" Luke asked after an uncomfortable silence. "I can't believe I got you with that one twice."

"You won, replica," Asch replied in a low growl.

"I'm telling you, you're the one who should go!"

"You beat Van's true student." Luke blinked. He'd never heard that tone from Asch before. "That means only you would be able to beat Van. Idiot."

It ended. Luke, the victor, would escape the trap, rejoin the others and head through Eldrant to stop Van. Asch would remain behind, to deal with the newest threat. Because the Oracle Knights were coming to stop both of them before they ever got that far.

Luke left.

Asch stayed.

---

In the end, he did it. He proved that he had every right to be who he was.

I hope you liked it! I'd love to know what you thought! -Vil