Yoda's small form sat on a fallen tree. His cloak surrounded his body and he watched something on the ground in front of him. He watched with an apparently vacant expression, the only thing which would have shown he had any interest was the way his sharp eyes were focused.
What he was looking at with such interest was his only companion on the planet, Anakin Skywalker.
At this precise moment, Anakin was sitting cross-legged on the ground, folding and breaking a dead leaf he had absently picked up amongst the many that surrounded him.
For the past hour, Anakin and Yoda had been having a long, heart-opening conversation. It had also been completely one-sided to Anakin.
After spending what seemed to be an entire year on the planet, it had in actual fact, been a few weeks, Yoda decided that Anakin and he needed to have a talk.
A proper talk where they could discuss some private, conflicting issues in Anakin's life. The conflicting issues that had led to Anakin's descent to the dark side.
Yoda was wise, however, and knew that this talk would only be effective if Anakin felt completely comfortable with Yoda and if he completely trusted him.
At first, Anakin hadn't. At night, when they sat around the campfire eating their "tasty" dinner, there was uncomfortable silence. They couldn't think of what to say to the other. Their conversations consisted of about two lines.
"Would you like some more, young Skywalker?"
A pause.
"No, thank-you."
Yet, they were not uncomfortable with each other so completely as to have been unwilling and unable to stand to be in the other's presence.
And surprisingly, after that first unpromising night, they began to slowly communicate with each other. The long, uncomfortable silences eventually became long, quite comfortable silences before becoming short, quiet silences in between a few lines of conversation.
Yoda had put off the idea of the talk in the beginning in favour of Anakin exploring Dagobah, so as to get used to his surroundings.
Dagobah was not entirely a planet filled with good however, and Yoda warned him away from a large, black, gnarled tree which Yoda believed held the power of the dark force.
As the days passed and Anakin began to lose track of time, he and Yoda began to talk more and more. Anakin discovered that Yoda was not a boring, overbearing Jedi Master that he had once believed him to be, but a clever, interesting Jedi with many opinions if you took the time to converse with him.
Anakin, in the beginning, was in no mood for talking to anyone and for a good long while, he gave short one word answers to Yoda's polite inquiries. He didn't do it in a mean, rude way or at least he tried not to. He did his best to say them in a gentle way but it was as though he really couldn't think of anything else to say.
He couldn't.
Eventually, that phase passed and Anakin began to respond. At first they were only tentative sentences but as Anakin got more into the routine of living on Dagobah, he opened up more and more.
His trust and respect also grew for Yoda as time passed. Instead of controlling and trying to leash Anakin up, Yoda completely let go of him. He permitted him to go anywhere in the woods he wanted except for the dark tree.
Anakin was surprised. He thought he had come to Yoda as a prisoner and when he saw that wasn't the case, he began to think maybe Yoda was going to teach him to be a Jedi again. He would learn under the teachings of Yoda.
Neither scenario happened. Anakin was free to practically do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. The strangest thing of all was that Anakin found it unsettling.
In the beginning, he had yearned for this kind of freedom. To do whatever he pleased. The novelty began to wear off quickly. All too soon, Anakin found out that Dagobah had nothing on it. You really couldn't do anything.
For the first few days, Anakin trekked and walked and looked and tried to find something interesting about the planet. He couldn't find a thing.
Then it occurred to Anakin that maybe Yoda did interesting things with his time on Dagobah. Maybe he miraculously spent his time finding something better to do than Anakin had been doing. So he decided that the next thing to do would be to hang around with Yoda and see what he got up to.
Yoda also trekked through the wilderness, but he looked and found things of interest. He picked up oddly shaped leaves and an interesting bark pattern on a tree etc, etc.
As Yoda did this, Anakin began to learn to as well. Anakin began to look and listen and feel the objects around him more. Maybe he didn't realise how deep this connection went, but he was becoming more in touch with the force as well as nature.
Yoda's tactic had been an interesting one, but it had eventually paid off. By letting Anakin roam on his own accord it brought him back to Yoda of his own free will.
Yoda hadn't forced Anakin in any way. He hadn't told him what to do or how he was going to spend his day or where exactly he was allowed to go (apart from the tree). And perhaps one of the most key points to Yoda's success in becoming close to Anakin was the way he didn't show anger.
Perhaps he should have done. Perhaps he should have been so angry he couldn't stand to look at Anakin. But Yoda knew better than this.
Anger leads to the dark side. Therefore Yoda knew the dangers in this emotion. Of course he felt grief, shock and disappointment for what had happened with Anakin. Yoda didn't deny that he felt a lot of pain over the Temple massacre and the turning that Anakin had undertaken.
But he couldn't change what had happened. Acceptance begins to make its way into people's hearts after the first initial feelings and emotions are stirred after a shock event.
Nothing could be changed. Nothing he could do or say now would make any difference to the past. It could only make a difference to the future.
And the future was what Yoda looked forward to and he hoped that Anakin did as well. But to move on and free yourself from the clutches of the past, you have to move on and learn from your mistakes. Confront them head-on and get over the hurdles that are faced during this progress.
"Young Skywalker," Yoda said one night.
Anakin raised his head to look at the Jedi Master.
"A talk we need to have."
Anakin stared blankly at Yoda for a few seconds before the realisation dawned upon him on what kind of talk he wanted to have.
As soon as he realised, he nodded in agreement and muttered a few words under his breath.
"Yes, I suppose we do," he replied with the hint of a worried smile.
Very soon after this brief reminder, Anakin asked to be excused for a few minutes. Respect was one thing Anakin had learned.
At the mention of this conversation, all of his memories were flooding back. The bad ones.
Yoda agreed without hesitation and Anakin stood up. With a smile and assent to Yoda he walked away from the little camp fire into the chilly, dark forest.
As he stumbled from the tangled roots along the ground he found that he cared not for walking and began to run. Run from the things haunting him in his heart and mind. No matter how hard he tried, he could not escape them.
After around ten minutes of running, sometimes falling over too, he came into a little clearing. The ground was made of brown, hard mud and a few scattered leaves lay. A slight mist surrounded the place and one lone tree stump stood in the middle.
Anakin without thinking, strode over and sat on it.
His heart was thumping loudly in his chest and his breath was uneven. This was in part from his run and in part from his despair.
Yes. Anakin Skywalker felt despair. He felt despair from the thoughts that were ever present in his mind.
Escaping from them was impossible. Whenever he was just forgetting about them, they jumped into his mind. They wouldn't leave him alone.
The faces of those he had killed. Pleads for mercy filled his mind. Cries for help and the screaming of youngsters clouded his vision.
He covered his ears tightly but they would not go away.
The screams just got louder.
He clutched his head tightly and moaned softly. His fingers were going white from the pressure he was exerting on them.
He could nearly smell the blood.
Anakin's body began to shake.
"No. No, leave me alone."
The voices all merged together into one cry of pain, suffering and helplessness in his mind. They began to become louder and louder with each cry and soon they seemed to be taking over him. They were all he could see, hear, smell. They were everywhere.
"I'M SORRY!"
Anakin's voice rang through the air.
All was still.
Anakin looked up, panting.
The screaming had gone and he was alone once more, thankfully.
Anakin's hands went instinctively through his hair and he looked round as though to make sure he was alone. He was sure Yoda wouldn't have heard him as he had gone quite far into the forest.
He knew one thing. They would never go away. They would forever torment him. Those faces and voices.
At least, they would until Anakin faced his guilt and took responsibility for his actions.
Which he would be facing tomorrow with Yoda. There was also another thing he'd have to face tomorrow.
The way he had treated those closest to him. That guilt gnawed at his core even more than anything else, if that seems possible after that outburst.
Whenever he could, he thought of Padmé and the twins. His loved ones. His family. He tried to think of their better times, but somehow the happy memories always transformed into the horrible ones.
He could see Padmé's laughing, shining face looking at him. Smiling, with a flower in her hair and a floaty dress with skirts that the winds billowed.
He could see her with their babies. Her face was filled with love as she gently handed him their children and after giving him a kiss she fell asleep exhausted after that difficult labour she had had to go through.
But soon her peaceful, sleeping face became one that was wide-awake and filled with horror. He could feel her stare piercing into his soul and the way she spoke with fear in her voice.
And he remembered the way she ran away into the safety of Obi-Wan's ship. Safe from her monster of a husband. She took the twins away too, so they weren't in danger from their father.
It always turned out the same way. No matter how hard he tried to stop the thoughts before they became worse, they just went on playing in his mind like some sort of recorded video.
After thoughts like that, he often felt as though he knew what it would be like to have your heart punctured. Painful and slow.
Anakin suddenly shook himself free of all those memories and looked round. He got up slowly and found that he felt stiff. He looked up and saw that the Dagobah sky looked more dark that usual. It seemed that Anakin had spent longer than he realised sitting on the tree stump.
Dwelling on the past.
He made his way back to camp slowly. He felt no need to rush. He just began to wonder the same thing over and over again.
Would he ever get over his actions?
In Anakin's mind, he was working the conversation up to be something it really wasn't. He was beginning to imagine it as some kind of judgement on his crimes. He was also beginning to go over in his mind what he should say, just as people who are about to take a stand in a court would do, or leaders trying to learn a speech.
There was no need for any of this panicking and worrying.
Yoda had no intentions of it being anything like the sorts of things Anakin's mind was beginning to conjure up.
Yoda just wanted to understand.
After all, Yoda didn't have a clue about the lead-up to Anakin's turn to the dark side. All he had seen was the security holos and the remains of the Jedi in the Temple.
And then, only a few hours after that, Obi-Wan turned up on Dagobah with Anakin again, telling him of his return to Good. Yoda had had to make a quick judgement on whether he thought Anakin had really returned and luckily, Yoda had agreed that he had.
But Obi-Wan had only given the vaguest of explanations on how Anakin had returned to Good and Yoda wasn't even sure if Obi-Wan knew why Anakin had turned to the Dark side in the first place.
You can't decide what to do with someone like Anakin if you don't even know the reasons for his descent.
And Yoda reached the decision that he would have to find out on his own.
And so began the hour long conversation.
It started gently and finished gently. It wasn't done forcefully and after the first few questions were asked, Anakin in his own way began to explain (not quite as bluntly as he had done with Obi-Wan) his own, personal reasons and justifications for his choices.
Let me remind you that this wasn't some sort of criminal, serious, strict interrogation. Of course, Yoda's eyebrows were raised at some of the things Anakin admitted he had done (like his marriage and the birth of his children). He did not interrupt at these points, although at some intervals, if you listened very carefully you could hear Yoda emit a small "hmmmmm".
Anakin explained about Padmé, the twins, Sidious and his manipulations, Anakin's fears, his visions and dreams, his growing mistrust of the Jedi, Obi-Wan's arrival and convincing him of old times, his realisations of Sidious' real intentions and his own realisations about how he had been tricked.
Anakin had intended for all of this explaining to have come out in some kind of organised, patterned order but instead, each thing was said as the thoughts and memories hit him.
When Anakin had finished, he was breathless from all he had said and as we have seen at the start, was uncomfortable when he realised he had been talking for an hour and so began to fiddle with a leaf he had found moving past him, fluttering along the ground.
Yoda gave a small smile and got up from the fallen tree trunk he had been sitting on.
"Understand more, I do. I can see everything more clearly now."
It was a short abrupt sentence but one that Yoda felt was enough.
Yoda said no more and hobbled away. Anakin watched him, dejectedly. Had this helped him or had it made everything worse?
As Yoda walked through the trees, his quick mind was already beginning to think. Married with children he was. Murdered Jedi he did.
Yet he had been under a very dangerous illusion and he admitted what he had done. He was prepared to speak the truth and not gloss over the truth with white lies and petty untruths. Anakin Skywalker had matured.
And it put Yoda in more of a dilemma than before. It was as though turning to dark side and going against the Jedi code and then returning back to it had made Anakin a better Jedi than he had been before.
Was that even possible?
Yoda stopped walking and tapped his stick in the ground suddenly. Obi-Wan must have known all that Anakin had said.
Of course Yoda had thought Obi-Wan hadn't been telling him something but all of that? That's quite a lot of information he forgot to share.
So Yoda decided on another task he had to do.
Speak to Obi-Wan.
Hello!
Thank-you very much to everyone who reviewed on the last chapter! I really appreciate it!
This chapter is kinda dark what with all the voices in Anakin's head! It's kinda weird I suppose, so sorry 'bout that!
Please keep on reviewing! Thank-you so much! xoxoxo