location data: Jedi training grounds
weather data: downpour
holovideo message id: 1138
You are reckless! You are reckless! You are reckless! You are reckless! You are reckless! You are reckless! You are reckless! You are reckless! You are reckless!
At this point, I cannot determine if the ghost that is Master Yoda is really speaking to me, or if I am no longer able to silence my guilty conscience. And guilt, it's an emotion that should not plague a Jedi. Not in hard times like these. Not when every single word he ever said to me and every single word he may have said to my father has ultimately lead to my doing what he had once done - going into exile. Does he want me to change my decision? Does he think I'm approaching things in black and white, as if I were a Sith? Is this him, at all?
You are reckless!
Why, Yoda? And why Yoda? And out of all wise things he said to me, why does the one that was, ultimately, wrong, stick out? Why everything else seems garbled, twisted around, and spoken in a language I do not even understand. Could it be that no other soul who ever lived, that nobody else out of the three beings who became one with the living Force can reach through to me? Could it be that this place is so strong with the dark side?
Where is old Ben, when I need him most? He guided me through all the decisions I have made during the worst and the darkest of times and now, he is not speaking to me. Whoever had taught him to have the patience he had for a wide-eyed boy from the place where the maker had said goodnight to the world must have been somebody reckless himself, in some way.
Where is my father? The one who sometime comes to visit me in the shape of a young man I never knew, with the face I have never seen, as the one dying in my arms was disfigured and helpless. The one who redeemed himself in the end? The alleged Chosen One?
My thoughts are betraying me and my feelings are failing me. I understand that this place is now the closest to hell as one can be, so many slaughtered, innocent souls lying motionless in the rain. Is somebody trying to make me think something I otherwise would not? Did I underestimate his abilities, just like his father once thought of mine as a delusion, at the worst point possible...right now?
Was training my nephew ultimately a mistake, no worse than master Yoda claimed would have been Ben training my father?
Was I ignoring the signs from the very beginning because he was my nephew? Was this the reason the Jedi of the old Republic used to be so strict?
Why did I not learn anything from the fragments of all those stories about my father? I traced every single thing, every single story, everything that would help Leia and I learn more about who we were and ultimately, it was all stolen from me and reconnected in the form of a sinister cube puzzle that was nowhere like the one the two of us put together?
So many things I cannot find the answers for, but I know the answer to the last one.
It's easy – because nobody ever stopped me or doubted me! That is one of the reasons I wonder why young Ben – whom I will never call by any other name - ended up obsessed with somebody who was always stopped and doubted, regardless of how much love we gave him.
His story was never similar to my father's. Anakin Skywalker - whom I will never call by any other name, as he is ultimately the one he was born as, the one he died as - grew up in poverty. Slavery. In the shadows, on a remote world where shadows were a rare sight to behold, yet everybody was a shadow quietly existing under the rule of a tyrant.
Ben, he had everything he could possibly wish for. He grew up as the son of two heroes of the Galactic Civil War. He was free to do whatever he pleased. He wanted to become a Jedi himself.
Perhaps that was a problem, too?
Sometimes, I hear a woman's voice, but I cannot see her. She is in great pain and she keeps on repeating "I know there's good in him." I cannot fully recognise her face, though it seems like I have always known her. I have an idea of who this might be and whose memory is being shown to me, but it's dangerous, incredibly dangerous, to take things out of context. Therefore, this mere assumption will not be a part of my message.
You are reckless!
Be quiet, my master. I never begged for anything, I never even begged a monster of a man, the emptiest of the empty souls to spare my life; but now I am questioning myself so much, I feel another wrestling session with the dark side coming along and this is not the way of the Jedi. Perhaps you would have said that I should go somewhere strong in the dark side, like you did and feed and clothe my demons, instead of escaping them. Know your enemy. But what if your enemy is...
a chirp of warning in droid binary language
a sigh and a coughing sound
I am sorry for having addressed my former master and not you, all along. From this point on, I am directly addressing you.
Ultimately, the biggest of the mistakes happen when one takes things out of context and takes them to a hyperlane less travelled. And the only thing I can do is preserve this story in its entirety, until the time is right for you to read it.
There are things I am not willing to preserve in their entirety, but by now, you should have figured out what they are and you, you're watching this with me; unless there is no good in the world left and you're sitting by my corpse.
But I have faith in you. And there is nothing else I believe in right now. Just you.
And I am not reckless. Not anymore.
a witty chirp in droid binary language