It's not that Luke wasn't used to not being sure what was going on. He'd had plenty of time to adjust to that being his normal state of consciousness. One day he had been a moisture farmer, not allowed to leave home, certainly not to go off to the Imperial Academy. Turns out that had actually been for the best, Uncle Owen had clearly had his best interests in mind, but he would never be able to tell him so. Owen had clearly not wanted Luke to suffer his father's fate, had tried to keep him safe by keeping him away from the Empire in general and especially from Vader.

And now here he was, trudging through a swamp. This whole world was a swamp, Dagobah was clearly even further away from the bright center of the universe he had joked about than Tatooine ever was. It had been over an hour since they had landed. Well, Vader had landed, Luke had gotten his X-Wing stuck in a swamp. To Vader's credit, the older man had offered to lift the stranded fighter, although he had tried to get Luke to do it first. As if that was ever going to happen. Lifting something as big as an X-Wing might be possible for the recently retired Dark Lord of the Sith, but Luke was barely able to lift his own lightsaber. Except for maybe that one time on Hoth, the bits he could remember besides Ben telling him to go to Dagobah seemed to indicate that he'd successfully pulled his lightsaber to him while hanging in a cave. But his ship was obviously completely out of the question, and he'd told Vader so. There was no way this was going to turn into another of Vader's strange but enlightening, if infrequent, lessons in how to use the Force to achieve his desires.

Then that strange little alien had appeared. Small, green, furry, and crazy. But he'd known the name Yoda before Luke had even mentioned it, and had offered to lead them to him. Well, offered to lead Luke, the funny alien had never even acknowledged Vader. Probably scared, even standing still, the armored man was more than a little intimidating. And leading might have been a little strong of a word, the little green being was perched on Luke's back, directing him on the nearly invisible foot trails through the swamp. Best case scenario, Jedi Master Yoda really was here on Dagobah, maybe these people (if there were others of the species, Luke hadn't actually seen them yet) were sheltering him. Worst case… well, a trap seemed unlikely. Luke himself had gotten pretty good at sensing people's intentions, and nobody ever got one over on Vader. Worst case then… could Yoda be dead? Could the little green guy be leading them to a grave?

Well, not a trap, not a grave, but he hadn't led them to Yoda either. It seemed they had entered the green alien's home, a low structure built into a hill. Just in time, it had been getting dark, and then started raining, but Luke hated the delay. He needed to meet Yoda, find out why Ben had sent him to Dagobah to find the Jedi. The faster he could get this sorted, the faster he and Vader could return to his friends and the Rebellion. At least the alien, whatever his name was (Luke had asked, but the strange being had always avoided the question) had offered them a meal. A good meal too, much better than the rations he had been expecting to eat this evening. And somehow, they had gotten into talking about why Luke wanted to be a Jedi.

"Mostly because of my father, I guess."

Originally, he'd had a half-baked idea about training to become a Jedi Master (which obviously would only take a few months) and then avenging his father by killing Vader. Then Vader had joined the Rebellion, which had left him a bit conflicted. Ben had sat him down, not long before the Death Star, and said that trying to seek revenge wasn't the right thing to do, not morally, and not as a Jedi, and that the story was more complicated than he had initially told it. Luke had tried to get him to explain that, but the old man had put him off. And then died. Vader was probably the only person in the galaxy who could tell him what he wanted to know, but it wasn't the sort of thing Luke could just ask about. But he still wanted to be a Jedi, like his father before him, that much was at least true.

"Ah, your father. Powerful Jedi was he, powerful Jedi, mmm," the little creature muttered before taking another bite of soup.

Now that was just silly, how could this little green alien from the smelly end of nowhere have known his father? Luke was about to open his mouth and ask that very question when Vader spoke up, for the first time since the green being had approached them.

"Not powerful enough. Never as much as he needed for his goal. Trying to gain enough power to make up for his weakness ruined his life." The masked man never looked up from his soup (which he was clearly somehow able to eat through his mask) but his statement seemed to fill the room with tension, talking about Luke's father clearly made him angry. Good to know. But sitting around, eating and chatting with the locals, wasn't getting him anywhere, and he was losing his patience.

"Oh, I don't know what I'm doing here! We're wasting our time," he stated as he rose, ready to go find Yoda on his own if he had too.

That seemed to change everything. The tension of Vader's anger seemed to just slide away, and Luke's impatience was casually ignored as the green man's face took on a serious cast for the first time. "I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience," he snapped.

"Oh no, the galaxy might end if the wise and powerful Master Yoda actually had to take on a difficult student for once," Luke heard Vader mumble. But… that couldn't be right. Then this crazy little green creature was…

That was when things got strange, as a familiar form stepped into the room from… nowhere.

"He will learn patience," Ben, or at least Ben's glowy blue outline, stated it as an absolute fact.

"Hmmm. Much anger in him, like his father," Yoda retorted, and it was clear that Ben's appearance was no surprise to him at least.

Vader let out a snort of what might have been laughter. It was a sound Luke had heard a few times, so it didn't surprise him.

"Oh yes Master Yoda, please regale us with what an expert you are on Anakin Skywalker. You clearly knew him very well, and were an excellent judge of character," Luke had heard the older man's biting sarcasm before, but this sounded almost… petulant? From Vader?

Yoda's gaze dug into Vader, not the armored man's hot rage, but a cool and passionless study. "My decision it was, with the council, that Skywalker not be trained," he stated. Luke felt like a giant hand had clenched his chest, he couldn't have spoken up if he'd been able to think of anything to say to that. 'They didn't want my father to be a Jedi…', but Yoda kept speaking. "Master Qui-Gon Jinn's decision it was, to train Skywalker, and Obi-Wan's decision, to take your training on when his master no longer could, we questioned, but accepted his faith in his master we did. Whether we chose correctly, I know not."

Obi-Wan spoke up again, trying to defuse tensions between the two. "Neither of them, nor Luke, are any more angry or troubling than I was when you taught me in the temple, or when I became Qui-Gon's padawan."

Yoda paced the small room, smaller with two grown men and the ghost of a third filling it, muttering under his breath, before coming to a stop with a sharp exhalation of breath. "He is not ready."

That hurt. Yoda hadn't wanted Luke's father to be a Jedi, and now he didn't want Luke either? "Yoda! I am ready! I can be a Jedi! Ben, Vader, tell him!" He jumped up to try and plead his case, but hit his head on the ceiling.

Vader only looked at him, as if pointing out that Yoda was unlikely to take his word for it, and motioned for him to sit back down. Luke did, and listened as Yoda went off on a diatribe about his hundreds of years spent training Jedi, and knowing best who to train, and how he had been watching Luke for a long time. He wanted to object, but it sounded like Yoda actually knew him pretty well. He'd spent his youth craving excitement and adventure, and if that meant he wasn't fit to be a Jedi… maybe Yoda was right.

"And he is reckless!" the green man finished.

"At which point did recklessness stop being a common trait among the Jedi? I seem to recall every Jedi I've ever met being reckless, including several Masters on the council," Vader pointed out. It was downright strange to hear Vader trying to support Luke's desire to be a Jedi, after all the times the older man had tried to convince him of their foolishness. Except… honestly Vader had only ever complained and called out Yoda, Obi-Wan, and the Jedi council, he had never had much to say about Jedi in general. Maybe he just had problems with authority.

"I was as reckless as he is, if you'll remember. Well into my knighthood, if we're being honest," Obi-Wan's ghostly form pointed out.

Yoda seemed to be running out of arguments, maybe even coming around to the idea, but he stubbornly persisted.

"He is too old. Yes, too old to begin the training."

"Too old to be molded into another cog in the well-oiled temple machine, but I don't really see where that's a problem anymore," Vader muttered, staring… not at Obi-Wan, but at something only he could see, perhaps drifting through an old memory. And definitely not helping, his words only seemed to make the smaller man seem more determined. This was not the time to let whatever problem Vader had with the Jedi get in the way.

"But I've learned so much," Luke wasn't whining, he really wasn't, but he had to try and bring Yoda around.

Yoda had begun pacing again, before coming to a stop in front of Obi-Wan. "Will he finish what he begins?"

"I won't fail you! I'm not afraid," Luke stated, and even stood up as if trying to emphasize his willingness to do whatever it took. No matter how difficult the training Yoda had in mind was, he had learned under Ben to sense blaster bolts with the Force, and gone blade to blade with Vader. Nothing this demented little green troll had could frighten him.

Yoda only stared at him, and as he spoke Vader chimed in with him. "You will be."