Summary: His hope is small and beginning to fade, but it still lives.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: Yoda's hard to write; cut me some slack here.
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.
The Dark Side clouds everything, even amongst the untouched wilderness of Dagobah. Yoda sits in meditation, constantly (there is nothing more that he can do, nothing else to do, except try to makes sense of it all, and maybe reach out and try to feel for some hope.
If there is any hope left at all.
Always hope, there is. These are the words he spoke to so many of those Younglings who stared down at him, no matter how young or old they were, with trust and reverence in their eyes.
There was no hope, Yoda knows, for the Jedi, young and old alike by the standards of their people, who were cut down by stormtroopers and by the sanguine lightsaber of Darth Vader. There was no hope for all of the Force-Sensitives who were killed just on the virtue of the high midichlorian count they had been born with. They were totally ignorant of the Jedi ways, but were still cut down like sacrifices to the altar of an old, vengeful god, their blood spilling on the stone as an offering.
There was no hope in Padmé Amidala's eyes as she died on a cold, hard operating table on desolate Polis Massa. Though she proclaimed to still believe in her fallen husband, Yoda saw no hope in those brown eyes as they faded and closed.
And there was no hope in Obi-Wan's eyes, as he took Luke to live with his aunt and uncle on Tatooine.
Oh, Yoda is not blind. He knows how much Obi-Wan would have preferred to have Luke for himself, to have something, anything of Anakin's to hold on to, in defiance of his vow against attachments. Anything to salve his wounds and get him through the long dark nights.
There was nothing resembling hope for all those who died, and for those who still die and experience the long descent that is not death but might as well be.
But Yoda still has hope.
His hope is but a small one. It lies in a man who will now be old by the standards of his people but whom Yoda can still remember as an infant in his arms in the crèche. And it lies in the son that Anakin made, before falling to the Dark Side, an untried boy.
Yes, Yoda still has hope.
.
The curtain of night is falling over Dagobah again, blackness and midnight blue, but there is a bright light shining, just beside Yoda.
"Hello, again, Master Yoda."
Yoda's hope has dwindled, from two sets of shoulders to one.
But somehow, he is still able to smile.
"Gladdens me, it does, to hear your voice again Obi-Wan. However, wish I do that better were the circumstances of our meeting."