Title: In Love and War

Author: CosmicalMadison

Rating: T

Disclaimer/Summary: See Chapter One

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Chapter Six - Destiny

Mel felt her body abruptly thrown into the air with the force of the explosion. She tumbled, cartwheeling a few times before finally heading for the ground again. She held out her arms in an effort to catch herself, but failed. Suddenly her head solidly smacked the ground and the world faded into blackness.

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When she regained consciousness a minute or so later, Melalaiya's first thought was This is bad. It had been a horrible explosion, but the containment of the box and small hospital building would have magnified the effect. Many patients and staff would have been severely wounded and, though she hated to think it, several deaths would also be inevitable. The hospital would have been terribly damaged; they would have to set up all over again somewhere else...

Mel let her mind return to the present moment as her nurse's instincts almost unconsciously told her hand to feel the back of her head, where she had hit the ground. Thankfully, she wasn't critically wounded; she had only a large bump to show for her unwanted mid-air acrobatics. She was a little dizzy, but knew that that would wear off soon enough. After a few more moments of searching, she discovered that that was the extent of her injuries.

Raising her head for the first time, she noticed that she had landed in the northwest corner of the room, between two thankfully empty beds. She didn't want to see what had happened to any of the helplessly unprepared patients. Looking across the room, she could see that a gaping hole had been torn in the east side of the building. Mel also noticed the desk that the package had been sitting on; all that remained of it was a pile of charred rubble.

But not just a pile of rubble. A chill passed over the young nurse's heart when she saw the small object protruding from the bottom of the pile. It was a human hand. Kyra. In that moment, Mel knew that she could assume the worst and it would be true: the young woman that she had just began to be become friends with was gone forever. She feared that this was not the only person important to her that she would lose in this catastrophe.

Looking around, she noticed with a sinking feeling that no one else appeared to be moving either, but she pushed away the almost impossible conclusion. She couldn't be the only one left alive out of all the people here. Frantically searching the room with her eyes, she failed to hear the heavy footfalls of someone approaching.

"How do you like my handiwork?" a young, male voice said suddenly from beside her.

Mel whipped her head around - and there, facing her from across the bed to her right was a clone trooper that she was very familiar with. "Mark!" He looked different than when she had last seen him: his armor was much more worn, there were many small painful-looking scars on his face, and his dark hair was cropped even shorter than before. He stood there, leaning on the bed, measuring her with cool gray eyes. Even though they had only been separated for little more than a week, Mel would have expected a totally different reaction from him upon seeing her again.

"Ah, Melalaiya," he said finally. "I'm surprised to see you again...alive. That bomb was designed to destroy this whole facility, and take every staff member and patient with it. Obviously, it has failed in however small a way."

And suddenly, for Mel, it all fell into place. It wasn't just the clones on the planet Esther that had turned. It had been all of them, everywhere, including Mark and the other troopers on Kakashna. Someone from Mark's regiment, or Mark himself, must have delivered the package containing the bomb in order to destroy the hospital to keep it from helping the Republic in the war. And now he was here to finish off any survivors. He probably had the rest of his troop on backup just outside the clearing, only a commlink call away if there was any trouble. Mel didn't know what had been done to her love, but she hoped that whatever was controlling him could be broken through somehow. Somehow...

"Mark, how can you do this. You have just taken away the lives of dozens of innocent people, most of them patients here! How could you be so cold-hearted?"

He snorted in reply. "Mellie, Mellie, Mellie, you just can't see the big picture can you? I came here to destroy the hospital, as my master commanded. You see, if just one more facility like this stands, it means just one more group of people to aid the Republic. We can't have that. Don't you realize? If the Republic is allowed to triumph over the Confederacy in this war, they will become just the thing you seek to destroy: a totalitarian government that will rule the galaxy with an iron first, just like what you think you will prevent by winning this war."

The coldness in his voice frightened her. "You really think it will aid your cause that much to come here and kill a bunch of innocent patients who were already suffering and the nurses and doctors that were helping them and then murder the survivors?" She shook her head against the tears welling up in her eyes. "You loved me once, Mark. And I loved you. I still do, in fact. So if you can just give up this evil tyranny and come back over to the light, I can help you." She glanced across the room, once again searching for survivors and finding none. "And we can help everyone here who needs it. There will be many. Anyone not killed in that blast will have critical injuries." She looked back at him and pleaded, "Please, Mark."

But he was already shaking his head. "You just don't get it." Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, he drew his blaster rifle and leveled it at her. "So, now you have a choice. You can either die right here, right now with your precious comrades and patients, or you can come away with me and join the Confederacy. We could use a nice pretty nursie like you." He leered at her.

Mel sucked in a breath. Now this was serious. Mark was here, his blaster trained on her head, finger ready on the trigger. If she said even one thing wrong, she was done for. Gone. Obliterated. Nothing could save her now, except herself, and even that, she admitted, wasn't likely.

Of course, she couldn't join the Confederacy. It would go against everything she believed in. But even then, she wasn't sure she was completely prepared to die for her cause. Half of Mel's mind told her that she could go with Mark and then find some way to escape later, but the logical part of her brain told her that this was equally unlikely to escaping right this very moment.

She closed her eyes for a moment. Oh, skies... She still couldn't believe that it was really Mark who had come to threaten her life like this . Mark, the Mark, the one she named. The one she had loved. It was a surprising and deadly irony.

When she opened her eyes, she looked up at him and said pleadingly, "Oh, Mark..."

But a familiar voice interrupted hers. "Over here you creep!"

Mel turned at the same time Mark did, searching for the source of the voice. A flicker of motion caught her eye, and she spotted him. Joaquin Briggand was on his stomach under a partially collapsed desk, in a perfect sniper position with his blaster aimed squarely at the clone. In her mind, Mel winced. Why had Joaquin given away his unknown position like that? But she already knew the answer: he was trying to distract Mark, to keep him from harming her. Apparently, it was working for the moment.

The nurse looked up at the trooper, who still hadn't pinpointed the doctor's position. But, still, the thoughts were racing through her mind. Why had Joaquin given away his position? And, more importantly, if he wanted to fire, why hadn't he? As she thought this, Mel realized that what she had told Mark was the truth. She did still love him. She didn't want him killed, but a stun bolt would be good to get out of this situation. Mel was still holding out hope that Mark could be turned back, turned back into the young man she had once loved instead of the monster he had become. She hoped Joaquin knew this.

Suddenly, the buzz-zap of a single blaster bolt being fired pierced the air around her. Mark had spotted Joaquin. She looked up just in time to see the bolt glance off the desk leg to the doctor's right. But Mark was already advancing, stepping out from between the beds to get a better shot. Joaquin got off three quick shots, live blasts, not the stun bolts Mel had hoped for; two missed entirely, but one grazed the clone trooper's leg. Mark didn't even flinch.

As the clone advanced still farther, Joaquin struggling to get out from under the desk, to get behind it where he would have more protection. But it was too late. As if in slow motion, Mel saw Mark stop a dozen steps before Joaquin, wondered again why he wasn't firing, saw the doctor frantically trying to wriggle away with no success.

And suddenly Mel knew the horrible truth. Joaquin Briggand was going to die. She was going to lose yet another friend to this man, this horrible monster whom she had told she loved on numerous occasions. She was beginning to doubt that testament. It only took one shot. Mark's finger slowly tightened on the trigger, as if he were relishing the moment. And then a single bright red laser bolt snapped out of the gun, burning into Joaquin's chest. With a yelp, the young doctor's body slumped to the ground.

Mel was so overcome she couldn't even cry out. She'd only known Joaquin since she'd come to Kakashna eight months ago, but they had been close friends just the same. Now every one of their friendly conversations came back to her, the things they had talked about, the dreams they had shared. Joaquin had told her that he wanted to be a famous surgeon someday, and that, like her, he wanted to have a family, wife and kids and live on a planet called Kora that supposedly had some of the best medical training in the galaxy. And now all of that had boiled down to nothing. Just like that, with one twitch of a finger, the young man's life was extinguished. Here he was, gone at age twenty-three, his life taken away just as it was beginning. Mel just couldn't fathom how anyone, let alone Mark, changed or not, could do something that evil.

As she looked up again, the clone came back to stand between the beds in front of her, barring any escape route that she might have had. Mel stared up at him from where she still sat on the floor. "Why did you do that?" she demanded softly, tears welling up in her eyes. "Why? He was my friend, you knew that. He was only twenty-three years old. And Kyra was younger than that even; she was only nineteen. How can you do all these evil things? These are innocent people. None of them ever did anything to you. In fact, if it weren't for us you most likely wouldn't even be here right now!"

Mark just shrugged as he casually brought his rifle into line with her once again. "They served their purpose. And you will either serve yours or be destroyed. So, what is your decision?"

Mel's heart was beating so loudly that she was sure it could be heard all the way to Coruscant. She knew that the decision she made right now would mean life or death for her. Of course she didn't want to die, but neither did she want to join the Separatists. No, she couldn't just turn her back on everything she had fought for for all these years. Besides, she knew, she wouldn't be the first to die a martyr for the Republic.

Shaking all over, but trying to put as much confidence into her words as possible, she said quietly, "I have made my decision."

The gun was still pointed at her. Mark asked in a harsh voice, "Well what is it? I haven't got all day."

She stared into his eyes. "I will never join you."

"So be it!" Mark exclaimed. "If it is your destiny to die here, Melalaiya Nova, so be it!" He took careful aim with the blaster, and was about to pull the trigger, when a strange look came over his face. Suddenly, the hard mask seem to drop away, the eyes dark with malice lightened into the blue she had come to love. The blaster shook in his hand as it dropped away from her, now pointed at the floor. This was the Mark she knew.

She was about to say something, anything, when the harsh new face returned just as quickly as the original had replaced it. Mel gulped as the blaster regained its aim on her. After flipping the selector switch on the grip of the gun, Mark's finger began to move toward the trigger.

Mel squeezed her eyes shut, wondering when the blow would hit her. Would it hurt badly? It wasn't like she'd ever been shot before. She wondered if she would suffer, or if her death would be quick and relatively painless.

But, more importantly, she wondered what would happen to her after she was dead. Mel had never been very religious, but now she wondered. She knew she wouldn't become one with the Force as Jedi supposedly did. She had heard some of her colleagues who were of a religion called Christianity talk about places called heaven and hell. Some said there was no afterlife, only blackness and silence. Still others spoke of a place called purgatory where time was paid for bad things done over the course of one's lifetime. Mel didn't know where she would end up, if anywhere, but she hoped that if there was life after death it was in a relatively nice place.

She was so preoccupied with these thoughts that she never even heard the shot. Suddenly, something hard and red-hot smacking her in the side of the head, and in the darkness she was whiling toward the ground. Then there was nothing.

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