Disclaimer: I am not George Lucas or J.K. Rowling.

Enter Luke, on Ossus.

Enter Leia, with two cups of tea.

Luke. Thanks.

Luke takes one of the cups.

Leia. Luke. Do you mind if I talk to you?

Luke. No.

Leia. Luke. You wanted to know who the being in that holograph was. Well, I've got the holobook.

Leia removes Na'al's copy of Javis Tyrr Presents: The Jedi Among Us.

Luke. Where . . . ? How . . . ?

Leia. It was in Voren's sitting room, just lying there. This note was sticking out of the top of it: "Voren. Thanks for your help. Here's a copy of the holobook. I hope you like it. You said everything, even if you don't remember it. Tyrr out." I think it must have arrived while the real Voren was alive. But perhaps he wasn't in any fit state to read it?

Luke. No, he probably wasn't.

Luke looks at the book with savage pleasure.

Leia. You're still angry at me, aren't you?

Luke. No. No, Leia. I know it was an accident. You were trying to get us out of there alive. You were incredible. I'd be dead if you hadn't been there to help me.

Luke opens to the channel with the holograph of Yoda and Plagueis, with the caption: Yoda, shortly after his mother's death, with his friend Hego Plagueis.

Plagueis?

Luke turns to the start of the chapter.

Enter Tyrr, a holographic image of the author.

Tyrr. Now approaching his eighteenth naming day, Yoda left the Jedi Temple in a blaze of glory: Head Boy, prefect, winner of the Star of Alderaan, member of the Legislative Youth Program, one of the many Jedi who served aboard the Chu'unthor. Yoda intended, next, to take a grand tour with Ikrit, the dim-witted but devoted sidekick he had picked up at the Temple. The two young males were staying at Chalmun's Cantina in Mos Eisley, preparing to depart for Korriban the following morning, when a droid arrived bearing news of Yoda's mother's death. Ikrit, who refused to be interviewed for this holobook, has given the public his own sentimental version of what happened next. He represents Ashla's death as a tragic blow, and Yoda's decision to give up his expedition as an act of noble self-sacrifice. Certainly, Yoda returned to Mos Espa at once, supposedly to "care" for his younger brother and sister. But how much care dis he actually give them?

Enter Maris Ferasi, a dark-haired woman around Jorj Car'das's age.

Maris. He was a head case, that Karrde. He ran wild. Of course, I would have felt sorry for him with his mother and father gone, if hadn't kept tossing vornskr dung at my head. I don't think Yoda was fussed about him. I never saw them together, anyway.

Exit Maris.

Tyrr. So what was Yoda doing, if not comforting his wild young brother? The answer, it seems, is ensuring the continued imprisonment of his sister. For, though her first jailer had died, there was no change in the pitiful condition of Ahsoka Tano. Her very existence continued to be known only to those few outsiders who, like Ikrit, could be counted upon to believe in the story of her "ill health." Another such easily satisfied friend of the family was Voren Na'al, the celebrated Jedi historian who has lived in Mos Espa for many years. Ashla, of course, had rebuffed Voren when he first attempted to welcome the family to the spaceport. Several years later, however, the author sent a droid to Yoda at the Jedi Temple, having been favorably impressed by his paper on Dathomiri metamorphosis in Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force. This initial contact led to an acquaintance with the entire Del Gormo family. At the time of Ashla's death, Voren was the only being in Mos Espa who was on speaking terms with Yoda's mother. Unfortunately, the brilliance that Voren exhibited earlier in his life has now dimmed. "He's not firing on all thrusters," as Vandar Tokare put it to me, or in Maris Ferasi's more Corellian phrase, "He's gone spacesick." Nevertheless, a combination of tried-and-tested reporting techniques enabled me to extract enough nuggets of hard fact to string together the whole scandalous story. Like the rest of the Republic, Voren put Ashla's premature death down to a backfiring lightsaber, a story repeated by Yoda and Karrde in later years. Voren also parrots the family line on Ahsoka, calling her "frail" and "delicate." On one subject, however, Voren is well worth the effort I put into procuring hypo, for he, and he alone, knows the full story of the best-kept secret of Yoda's life. Now revealed for the first time, it calls into question everything that his admirers believed of Yoda: his supposed hatred of the dark side, his opposition to the oppression of the mundane, even his devotion to his own family. The very same summer that Yoda went home to Mos Espa, now an orphan and head of the family, Voren Na'al agreed to accept into his home his great-nephew, Hego Plagueis. The name of Plagueis is justly famous: In a list of Most Dangerous Dark Jedi of All Time, he would miss out on the top spot only because the Emperor Sidious arrived, a generation later, to steal his crown. As Plagueis never extended his campaign of terror in the Core, however, the details of his rise to power are not widely known here. Educated at the Shadow Academy, a school famous even then for its unfortunate tolerance of the dark side, Plagueis showed himself quite as precociously brilliant as Yoda. Rather than channel his abilities into the attainment of awards and prizes, however, Hego Plagueis devoted himself to other pursuits. At sixteen years old, even the Shadow Academy felt it could no longer turn a blind eye to the twisted experiments of Darth Plagueis, and he was expelled. Hitherto, all that has been known of Plagueis's next movements is that he "traveled offworld for some months." It can now be revealed that Plagueis chose to visit his great uncle in Mos Espa, and that there, intensely shocking though it will be for many to hear it, he struck up a close friendship with none other than Yoda.

Enter Na'al, a holographic image of the historian.

Na'al. He seemed a charming young Muun to me, whatever he became later. Naturally, I introduced him to poor Yoda, who was missing the company of beings his own age. The kids took to each other at once.

Tyrr. They certainly did. Voren shows me a hololetter, kept by him, that Yoda sent Hego Plagueis in the dead of night.

Na'al. Yes, even after they'd spent all day in discussion, I'd sometimes hear a droid tapping on Hego's bedroom window, delivering a hololetter from Yoda. An idea would have struck him, and he had to let Hego know immediately.

Exit Na'al.

Tyrr. And what ideas they were. Profoundly shocking though Yoda's fans will find it, here are thoughts of their seventeen-year-old hero, as relayed to his new best friend.

Enter Yoda, a holographic image of the Jedi Knight.

Yoda. Hego. Your point about Jedi dominance being for the mundanes' own good . . . this, I think, is the crucial point. Yes, we have been given power, and yes, that power gives us the right to rule. But it also gives us responsibilities over the ruled. We must stress this point. It will be the foundation stone upon which we build. Where we are opposed, as we surely will be, this must be the basis of all our counterarguments. We seize control for the greater good. And from this, it follows that where we meet resistance, we must use only the force that is necessary and no more. This was your mistake at the Shadow Academy. But I do not complain, because if you had not been expelled, we would never have met. Yoda out.

Exit Yoda.

Tyrr. Astonished and appalled though his many admirers will be, this hololetter constitutes proof that Yoda once dreamed of overthrowing the Old Republic and establishing Jedi rule over the mundane. What a blow for those who have always portrayed Yoda as the mundane-borns' greatest champion. How hollow those speeches promoting mundane rights seem in the light of this damning new evidence. How despicable does Yoda appear, busy plotting his rise to power when he should have been mourning his mother and caring for his sister. No doubt those determined to keep Yoda on his crumbling pedestal will bleat that he did not, after all, put his plans into action, that he must have suffered a change of heart, that he came to his senses. However, the truth seems altogether more shocking. Barely two months into their great new friendship, Yoda and Plagueis parted, never to see each other again until they met for their legendary duel. What caused this abrupt rupture? Had Yoda come to his senses? Had he told Plagueis he wanted no more part in his plans? Alas, no.

Enter Na'al, a holographic image of the historian.

Na'al. It was poor little Ahsoka's dying, I think, that did it. It came as an awful shock. Hego was there in the house when it happened. And he came back to my house all of a dither, told me he wanted to go home the next day. Terribly distressed, you know. So I arranged a repulsorlift and that was the last I saw of him. Yoda was beside himself at Ahsoka's death. It was so dreadful for those two brothers. They had lost everybody except each other. No wonder tempers ran a little high. Karrde blamed Yoda, you know, as beings will under these dreadful circumstances. But Karrde always talked a little madly, poor boy. All the same, breaking Yoda's nose at the funeral was not decent. It would have destroyed Ashla to see her sons fighting like that, across her daughter's body. A shame Hego could not have stayed for the funeral. . . . He would have been a comfort to Yoda, at least. . . .

Exit Na'al.

Tyrr. This dreadful coffin-side brawl, known only to those few who attended Ahsoka Tano's funeral, raises several questions. Why exactly did Talon Karrde blame Yoda for his sister's death? Was it, as Na'al pretends, a mere effusion of grief? Or could there have been some more concrete reason for his fury? Plagueis, expelled from the Shadow Academy for his near-fatal attacks upon fellow students, fled the Core hours after the girl's death. And Yoda, out of shame or fear, never saw him again, not until forced to do so by the pleas of the Old Republic. Neither Yoda nor Plagueis ever seems to have referred to this brief boyhood friendship in later life. However, there can be no doubt that Yoda delayed, for some five years of turmoil, fatalities, and disappearances, his attack upon Darth Plagueis. Was it lingering affection for the Sith Lord or fear of exposure as his once best friend that caused Yoda to hesitate? Was it only reluctantly that Yoda set out to capture the dark-sider he was once so delighted he had met? And how did the mysterious Ahsoka die? Was she the inadvertent victim of some Sith rite? Did she stumble across something she ought not to have done, as the two young Jedi sat practicing for their attempt at glory and domination? Is it possible that Ahsoka Tano was the first being to die "for the greater good?"

Exit Tyrr.

Luke looks up, stunned.

Leia. Luke . . .

Luke shakes his head.

Luke. Listen to me. It . . . it doesn't make a very nice reading . . .

Luke. Yeah, you could say that.

Leia. But don't forget, Luke, this is Javis Tyrr's writing . . .

Luke. You did read that hololetter to Plagueis, didn't you?

Leia. Yes, I . . . I did. I think that's the worst bit. I know Voren thought it was just talk, but "For the Greater Good" became Plagueis's slogan, his justification for all the atrocities he committed later. And, from that, it looks like Yoda gave him the idea. They say "For the Greater Good" was even carved over the entrance to Lusankya.

Luke. What's Lusankya?

Leia. The prison Plagueis had built to hold his opponents. He ended up in there himself, once Yoda had caught him. Anyway, it's . . . it's an awful thought that Yoda's ideas helped Plagueis's rise to power. But on the other hand, even Tyrr can't pretend that they knew each other for more than a few months one summer when they were both really young, and . . .

Luke. [angry] I thought you'd say that. I thought you'd say, "He was young." They were the same age as we are now. And here we are, risking our lives to fight the dark side. And there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend, plotting their rise to power over the mundane.

Leia. I'm not trying to defend what Yoda wrote. All that "right to rule" snogwash, it's Human High Culture all over again. But Luke, his mother had just died. He was stuck alone in the house . . .

Luke. Alone? He wasn't alone. He had his brother and sister for company, his Void sister he was keeping locked up . . .

Leia leaps to her feet.

Leia. I don't believe it. Whatever was wrong with that girl, I don't think she was a Void. The Yoda we knew would never have allowed . . .

Luke. The Yoda we thought we knew didn't want to conquer the mundane by force.

Leia. He changed, Luke. He changed. It's as simple as that. Maybe he did believe these things when he was seventeen. But the entire rest of his life was devoted to fighting the dark side. Yoda was the one who stopped Plagueis, the one who always voted for mundane protection and mundane-born rights, who fought the Emperor from the start, and who died trying to bring him down. Luke, I'm sorry, but I think the real reason you're so angry is that Yoda never told you any of this himself.

Luke. [angry] Maybe I am. Look what he asked from me, Leia. "Risk your life, Luke. And again. And again. And don't expect me to explain everything. Just trust me blindly. Trust that I know what I'm doing. Trust me even though I don't trust you." Never the whole choice. Never.

Leia. He loved you. I know he loved you.

Luke. I don't know who he loved, Leia. But it was never me. This isn't love, the mess he's left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Darth Plagueis than he ever shared with me.

Luke picks up Leia's lightsaber.

Thanks for the tea. I'll finish the watch. You get back in the warm.

Exit Leia.