Proof

It was shortly after dawn on Dantooine. I was heading for the last troop transport that would ever leave the planet while it was still whole. I didn't know it then, of course, but that's how it was.

I had taken little with me. Very little. I had a small rucksack with a few personal belongings, a blaster, and a couple of spare power cells. All those things were sentimental. Even the blaster. Despite the time I invested in modifying it, I would never use it. The only things that really mattered—to me and to the army I would soon be joining—were my Jedi robes and my lightsaber.

A few other students, all younger than me, were also waiting for the final boarding call. We were leaving everything that we had called home, everyone that remotely seemed like family, and we were doing it for what we had been told was a lost cause. We were breaking every vow we had ever made. We were to become nothing but a black mark on the face of the Jedi, and somewhere within ourselves, we knew it. We didn't dare to look each other in the eyes.

I closed my eyes and focused on pushing the sounds of a busy docking area out of my mind. It was hard to center myself. Everything around me was calm—the planet had only begun to wake and face the day—but I could find nothing but chaos within myself. As I struggled to find order in all the madness swirling in my mind, I realized something. I had put off my misgivings as long as possible. If I didn't make peace with what I was about to do now, I never would.

Only one thing had forestalled my decision to join the battle against the Mandalorians. Kavar. He was my mentor, my friend, and if there hadn't been so many stipulations about personal relationships among the Jedi, he could have been more.

We had always thought similarly, so when he told me that I would forever regret my decision to join the war, should I make such a choice, I believed him whole-heartedly. But over time, I realized that he was not looking out only for my peace of mind. He simply didn't want me to leave. I didn't want to leave him behind either, but there came a point—that very morning, in fact—when I could no longer ignore my convictions and impatience.

I left a letter for Kavar. He deserved a full explanation.

I know you must be disappointed in me, but I have to do this. If I leave, I will forfeit my life as a Jedi. But if I stay, I will forfeit my humanity. So I'm making a choice. Even though I have my doubts, my heart is in this.

You know I never completely cut myself off from my emotions. Our situation is more than enough to prove that to you.

There was more, I think, but I can't remember all of it clearly. Probably ruminations on our time together, the sentimental sorts of things that the Council would have frowned upon. At the very least, he would know for certain that, even as blaster fire was raining down us, even as we crossed an undetected minefield, some of us safely and some of us not, some part of me missed him. In the beginning of the war, I would often wish for his presence at my side. It had become natural to me, and the fact that he was a galaxy away ripped at me until all the pain I had seen, inflicted and endured numbed my senses.

The ten minute warning sounded. I began to make my way to the boarding section.

I didn't expect that I would have to tell him goodbye personally. The thought was comforting and terrible at the same time. But when I reached the docking area, he was right there waiting for me. I didn't want to see him. I knew it would just make everything more difficult. Even so, I ended up standing next to him on the far side of the port, away from everyone else.

"Are you making the right choice?" He asked me right away. He didn't look at me.

"Yes," I replied quietly. "And…and no. As a Jedi, I know I'm wrong, but as a person," I sighed, "as a person, I am out of patience." I leaned back against the wall, suddenly tired.

"You know the consequences?" He still wouldn't look at me.

Of course I did. He had told me numerous times, him and every other master in the enclave. "I'm not the first to leave, and I probably won't be the last." We were both silent for a moment. I was trying to find something to say. For all my training, I couldn't tell what Kavar was thinking at all. "Are you going to tell the Council when you get back?" I finally asked.

"When you don't report to me tomorrow morning, they will search your quarters," Kavar leaned against the wall next to me and folded his arms. "When they do, they will find the note you left me. With a few minor changes, of course."

A strange expression fell across his face then. A grimace? Or maybe a small smile? I don't remember clearly, but it wasn't something I expected.

We fell into another silence. The final boarding call was announced by a monotonous voice from the control tower.

"Did the Council send you?" I asked.

"No."

Satisfied, I pushed off from the wall. He did the same. "I should go."

"Why are you doing this?" Kavar asked suddenly, even though he had read my note. Even though my reason wasn't different from anyone else's, and he knew it.

I smiled faintly. "A part of you knows, but you've walled it off." On an impulse—the first of many I would indulge in spite of my training—I gave him a quick hug. "May the Force be with you."

I boarded without looking back once. I wanted my last memory of him to be a good one. I didn't want to leave with his "implacable Jedi" expression in my mind. During a few quiet moments in the early stages of the war, I remembered that day. I had known even then that he would never understand why I left. The things that had and hadn't happened between us proved it: he was more a Jedi than a person.

When we stood in front of the transport in a loose embrace, he whispered something, and in that utterance, I finally had that proof I had searched for during all our time together.

"Don't go."

A/N: I was originally going to do a whole story based around this, but no matter what I tried, it just didn't work out. So, here's to what could have been.