"If only you asked it just of me."
The month was accepted with a nod, and no question. A Jedi and a soldier, two of the most difficult traits to balance correctly and stay calm of heart, so many over the centuries had not managed to do so. Duty was what stablized that balance. You might think he was getting off extremely lightly, even being offered a promotion which he'd be a fool to refuse. It was a difficult thing to ask a soldier to apologize for following his sense of duty, trying to protect the galaxy from further harm, even if it all went to hell on the ground.
He could easily do it, if it was just him this affected. The burial details still going on, the letters to the dead barely even sent out... To protect the billions of lives of the treaty, to pay recompense for the deaths of those under his command, and the city itself, he would accept anything that effected him, anything at all, they could have muted his connection to the force and he would have walked out without a word. They were not asking for his sacrifice here, they were asking he sacrificed the memory of his men, and what they died for. Death fighting a tyrant who would level a city happily, just to hit thirty men and fighter wings, that could barely even seemingly touch its juggernaut of a shield. Death fighting a Sith murderer who had slaughtered Jedi just a few days ago, gloating in his sale of their items to all and sundry, and death in the recovery of dangerous Sith relics to stop further harm.
"To protect the treaty and the billions of lives it keeps safe, I will go to the Black Sun's justice. I cannot apologize for what they died for, because you do not ask it of me, you ask it of men and women who cannot speak for themselves."
He fully realised what he was saying when he stated that he'd give himself over to that particular organisation. That was what he was feeling for this place he was beginning to call home, and their struggle to hold the line but not cross it. He was beginning to understand it.
Kei would fall on his own sword long before insulting the memories of those that died by his side, and was almost certain that he'd thrown away his knighthood, or worse. That was the man, sacrificing for those he cared about. A balancing of Jedi and Solider within him, found in duty, but it made him who he was.
