Disclaimer: Star Wars is the property of George Lucas--I am merely playing in the playground he built :-). Special thanks also to Barbara Hambly for creating the character of Callista, and for writing the heart-wrenching final scene in Planet of Twilight which inspired this short fic...
Farewell
The only way out of the gun station was over the walls. Callista's heart was a battering ram pounding against her chest as she climbed over, a physical reaction she could neither control nor completely understand. But when she reached the ground and walked towards Umolly Darm's freighter and felt that all-too familiar sensation, that was at once comforting and heartbreaking all at the same time, she stopped. It was something she had not felt in over nine months, and yet something she recognized in an instant. Slowly she turned around and pushed aside the gray veils.
There he stood. Beautiful as he was when she last saw him, in the jungles of Yavin when she had made that choice from which she knew she could not turn back.
They looked at each other in silence for a long while, though they never needed any words between them. Here they were, she thought, he at the beginning of his journey, and she at the threshold of hers. Once she had thought their roads would lead them back to each other, but she knew now that could not be.
Leia. I hope Leia told him, and I hope he understands.
She wondered how he would remember her. If he would think of her in years to come, when he would look out into the Massassi Temples at dusk--if he would remember the nights they spent there telling each other of their hopes, their dreams, their memories. Ones they each thought they had dreamed alone until they discovered the other had dreamed them too.
Still a part of her could not turn away. Deep inside she wanted nothing more than for him to cross the open ground and take her in his arms, and assure her that somehow the wounds would heal in time.
Time is long, he had told her once.
She watched him hold up his hand to her, and then came the brilliant smile that had once greeted her and brought her back to life.
Farewell.
Farewell, my love.
She felt her shoulders relax, and the tension lift from her, vaporize into the night air.
Through the silence in the Force, she sent him one
last plea. Please understand.
I understand.
She raised her hand to him and smiled.