All Star Wars associated stuff belongs to Lucasfilm. I'm not making any money off of this.
Just a oneshot. I imagine it's set between episodes 5 and 6
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Time passes. It goes by and you can never really touch it, never understand what it means to have a vital moment pass until it is an instant too late. People think they can control it. They think their planning, their stripping every second of every possibility, can earn them something. After the seconds pass, they don't have anything more than the rest of us.
Once they showed us holos at school that were from the Museum of Imperial History. One exhibit was a set of ancient chronos. The explanation that went with them told us that those funny things that looked nothing like the panel of silently ticking numbers were even called by a different name: clocks. And the odd points that spun around their circular faces couldn't actually have been intended to be read.
Our teacher had tried to explain something about how scientists thought the circular form was some kind of connection to the primitive people's idea of destiny repeating itself, but then Fixer spoke up and distracted him with questions about how the clocks were supposed to work.
I didn't notice that the chrono on my ship was broken until I landed today. I could have asked someone in my squadron what the correct hour was, but something in me said it didn't matter.
Because I saw that with the troop transports lay another ship, a dangerous and unique. Among the uniform men in white armor was a far more impressive villain in black.
And I knew that soon enough, I'd be standing here. That he'd be standing here.
Tick
Standing here.
Tick
Eye to eye, weapons in hand
Tick
Standing ready to duel.
Tick.
The battle faded into the background, his soldiers leaving me to him and my men keeping clear of our fight. You couldn't call it being frozen in time. Time rushed on; in the slow, sticky seconds it took for his scarlet blade to salute my green one, I felt four of my men have their lives ripped from them.
It seemed as though there had been no break in the flow of hours since out last duel. No difference except some topography surrounding us. An eternal stalemate. He lured me toward the darkness; I urged him toward the light.
I knew he saw me as a younger version of himself, just as I saw him as someone I might someday be. The circle stopped there, though, since he and I both knew that he could never be as he once was, as I was now.
Parry. Thrust. Riposte. Repeat. Occasionally a comment from one of us or the other that went almost unheard through the din of the chaos around us.
"All this is useless," he hissed at one point. "We both know you will fall to the Darkness in time."
But what did he know of Time?
Time is a paradox. He first gave me life. Now I sought to give him death.
Time is a teacher. It gave me my lessons harshly when I rushed from my master to face my destiny. It taught me slowly that the heart of the woman I loved was not mine to win.
Time is a way out.
Tick.
Because as we retreated toward our own battle lines and our eyes met one last time, we knew that it would indeed not be the last time. On his territory or on ours. Alone or amidst battle.
There was no escaping our constant confrontations, the drama of a disagreement between parent and child gone too far.
Again and again we would circle one another, neither catching the other. In the mess and tragedy of this war, our matchless meetings had become a habit.
Again and again.
Never altered.
It was like clockwork.