LL2 38 The Morning After

The black sky began to lighten outside the barracks window and Luke sighed with slow relief that the night was finally over.

Clods of mud littered the drink table from his boots. Two lightsaber hilts lay side by side near his feet. He lounged in the center of his couch, his legs crossed out in front of him, forearms thrown over his head, and fingers blindly fidgeting a datapad behind his own skull so he wouldn't have to look at it anymore.

What not to do while training a (female) Jedi Apprentice.

It didn't take long to read the whole thing over again,

Entry #1: Don't burst into her room without first verifying she's wearing pajamas.

So he read it over again,

Entry #2: Don't offer to dress her yourself.

And over again,

Entry #21: Don't let her build a lightsaber until she's ready to use it.

And again,

Entry #91: Don't assign her to your military squadron.

Again,

Don't allow her to flirt.

He searched every word in every entry trying to figure out where he went wrong.

Don't tell her...

Only now, with peppermint eyes staring at the morning sky,

Don't confuse...

and his chest sapped of confidence,

Don't touch...

did he realize the pattern,

Don't feel...

that was there all along.

Don't...

Luke rubbed his chapped lips together and sniffed once.

Where he went wrong wasn't in there. Because what wasn't in there was where he went wrong.

He hated Anakin all over again for all those crimes that hurt so many people. He hated Obi-Wan all over again for all those facts he should have told Luke from the start. He hated being a Group Commander. He hated this training. And he hated that he was too practiced and too tired to hate anything anymore.

Luke swallowed hard and brought his arms down from his head, dropping his hands and the datapad to his lap. His shoulders slumped. He angled his head to thumb beyond the last entry, considering what to write next...

What to write last.

He still couldn't tell her the whole truth on the slim chance she'd come back. For all intents and purposes, he still had to be a Jedi Master. He knew what he had to do. He had to do what Yoda would have done, what Obi-Wan would have done, even though it felt like he was slicing off the rest of his arm and just handing it to her.

Do it.

Luke sucked in a quivering breath and touched on his peace before he let the air back out.

Feel it.

His jaw tensed into solid stone as he fought himself on it.

Let it.

But he wasn't willing to cut off his apprentice without giving her some kind of solid proof that there was more to the months of grueling training...

Say it.

...than training.

Just say it.

Luke poked one index finger on the rounded keys to hunt-n-peck it.

Don't fall in love with her.

He stared at the letters, dumbfounded for a long minute—

With a huff, he dropped his head back on the couch and tossed the datapad roughly away. It slid across the table and clanked. Luke glanced up to see what it hit.

The little machine bumped his standing lightsaber hilt so hard that it toppled over and knocked hers over too.

Kess' eyes opened to the darkness at exactly oh five hundred, but she lay there in a huddled ball under the woolen blanket with no intentions of getting out of bed. She stared wide-eyed out the window where dawn glowed pale blue and rich orange into the night sky. A fresh tear dribbled down her temple and dissolved into the wet pillow.

Last night, she stormed into the barracks calling him every name in the book. The girlies gathered with concern and tried to get her to talk about it, and Kess really wanted to, but something inside wouldn't let her reveal a secret that wasn't hers to tell. Instead, she locked herself in her room and cried herself to sleep.

She swore it was time to get her own life back. She would sleep in every morning and race in late for it would be Gold Group Muster. Just the thought of a few minutes in that managers' office to clean out her desk made her blood boil. If he didn't approve a transfer, she would take the matter all the way to the Chief Commander if she had to. She would sign back up for Lokey's fencing class and she would ask Wedge out on a date just to piss him off!

"Good mo—

Kess made a quick gesture in the direction of the alarm and the sweet voice went silent. Then she looked at her index finger in the darkness, scolding it for its subconscious behavior.

She blew up at her bangs and finally admitted that last night's hopes of switching back to her old life were just a bunch of bantha fodder. Luke would be banging down her door in short order to get her to find her peace and meditate. She would most certainly be summonsed to Minister Organa Solo, Daughter-of-Vader's office, to get yelled at. She didn't even want to think about what the Wubak of GNN was going to do with this. As soon as word got out that Big-Man Skywalker's first apprentice had walked out on him, the press would smear it across the NewsNets as bad as they did the Hutt Trials.

Now, facing her father about her training was completely out of the question. Her only hope was to shed all the Jedi-ness from her personality and go home pretending nothing happened. She could change her hair and say that the lady he saw on the vid was some other chick that just looked like her. Kess rolled on her back and groaned at the pathetic idea. There was no way around it: her father was going lose his lid over this.

At least he wouldn't cut her hand off.

Kess swallowed hard. She knew she had to face Luke about this. She would have to explain valid reasons for canceling her training without throwing a temper tantrum in the process.

And if he wasn't going to let her quit, the only way she would get out of the constant brow beating would be to resign her commission and leave the Alliance, and all it's rebellious glory, behind her.