Yoda is a little bitch to write, he gives me a headache, and not just because I have to figure out his speech pattern.


"Reach out with your feelings, you must. Centre—"

"I know how to meditate."

Yoda hmphed. "From the dark side, never has one returned. Of such training, no knowledge I have. Therefore, re-teach you I must."

Leia grumbled, "I don't quite follow your logic."

She opened her eyes again in her frustration—her impatience—and caught him watching her, head tilted curiously.

"To let go of the dark, you do not want," he observed sadly. "Unless you do, turn to the light, you cannot."

"Glad to know that not even my teacher believes in me." She ground her teeth and leaned back. The floor of the hangar was dusty and filthy, but the dirt was already all over her trousers; might as well get it all over her back and in her hair as well. "If this letting go of the dark side has never been done before, do you honestly think I can do it, now?"

He looked at her. Pressed his lips together.

"No," he said. "I do not."

Well.

Fine then.

She clenched her teeth and was dismayed to find her vision blurring. She bit her lip.

"Fine."

She got to her feet. Wasted a moment to brush off her back and legs but then she'd summoned her lightsaber to hand from the corner and was marching, the hangar doors hissing open as she approached—

"But if anyone can, I believe," his voice stopped her, "a Skywalker can."

She gritted her teeth again. "I am not my family. I am not— Luke is the one who you want, if anyone can find this peace, this clarity, this... goodness you're talking about then it's him! I'm—"

She froze. Padmé's words, after Leia had been exchanging pleasantries with Saw kriffing Gerrera on the way back from Naboo, rang in her mind.

She said bitterly, "I'm my father's daughter."

She shook her head. "I'm no use to you Jedi at all."

And then Yoda—inexplicably enough—smiled.

"Your mother's daughter too, hmm?"

Leia's shoulders slumped. "Not really," she whispered, "no."

"More so than you realise, I think. Yes." She heard the tap-tap-tap of his cane against the ground as he hobbled towards her. "But if not, no matter, it is. Your father—great, powerful Jedi was he also."

She turned back to him. "My father led the Purges."

He smiled up at her, and tapped her shins with his cane. Her gaze caught on the tape around the centre of it and hysterical laughter bubbled in her throat. "A minor detail, that is."

She laughed again. Tears leaked out from under her lashes.

She bent down. Kneeled in front of him, so they were eye to eye, and then her vision blurred. He blurred, into a swathe of green like the fields of Naboo, and she felt like a foreigner.

She whispered, "I can't do this."

He laid a hand on her knee. "What, can you not do?"

"This." She gestured around—at her lightsaber, her training gear, the crates she'd been levitating in the corner. "Any of this. Luke—"

"With us eventually, will be. Always in motion, the future is, but of that I am sure."

She stared at him. "Rescued?"

"No, I do not think."

His lips twisted, then, and she picked up something she didn't want to think about.

She swallowed. "You don't think he'll be able to resist Palpatine."

"Said, I have: always in motion is the future. And very wrong have I been before."

Breathing deeply, she tried again. "I still can't do it. My father—"

"Leia." How such a grumpy little gremlin managed to be so easy to confide in, she had no idea. But he was. "Your father, you are not. Make his mistakes—for your. . . loved ones. . . and the galaxy—you need not. And return to the light, you must, if you are to help your brother."

She breathed deeply some more. Tried not to draw comparisons to the steady (and steadying) rasp of her father's respirator. "I have to turn to the light."

He nodded.

She repeated, "I have to. To save Luke."

"Yes."

Fresh tears welled up. "It's impossible," she whispered. It was impossible, impossible, and Luke would die or continue to suffer that excruciating pain because she failed— "You said so yourself. We both know it's impossible."

He nodded sadly.

Hummed.

Tilted his head to the side, and tapped his stick on the ground.

"And that, I think," he said, "is why we fail."


Leia left that training session with a lot to think about.

There were always tasks to do on a base, but no one had assigned her one and she didn't go offering—instead, she took herself and her pensive thoughts to the back of base, to sit among old farm fields long since overgrown and. . . try to meditate. Properly, without any teacher or pressure or desire hanging over her head. She closed her eyes and focused.

There was someone nearby.

Someone. . . quiet. In their thoughts, certainly, but also in their footfalls. She could sense them approaching, approaching her, and though their thoughts were quiet they held no menace.

Leia didn't open her eyes again until the newcomer had settled down in front of her, loose grey trousers creasing against the dried out stalks on the ground. The wind tugged at a few strands in her immaculate ponytail and waved them around her face. It was Qi'ra.

She smiled when she caught Leia's eye, then tugged her jacket off to reveal a black, short-sleeved top underneath and folded it in her lap. The wind tugged at that too, but she clasped her hands around it and closed her eyes. Leia followed suit.

"Meditating is a good idea," Qi'ra said finally. Leia could tell by her voice that that faint smile was still on her face. "It's too easy to get too caught up in the stress and urgency of it all."

"You learned meditation?" Leia murmured in reply, though she doubted it was of the Jedi or Sith kind. Qi'ra's mind, while as shielded as any ex-spy from Palpatine's palace would be, seemed to hold an amount of Force-sensitivity that, while being somewhat higher than the average, was nowhere near the point of being worth training.

Qi'ra frowned gracefully; though Leia's eyes were closed, she could hear it in: "One of my old bosses. A wannabe Sith, leading a criminal gang. I was his favoured lieutenant. He wanted to make sure I remained. . . intact during the horrors of my role there."

"You worked for Crimson Dawn?" Leia asked.

Qi'ra chuckled. "They said you were smart. Yes—Maul was. . . not a kind teacher. I got out as soon as Palpatine cracked down on his organisation and Amidala found me. I've worked for her ever since."

"You were one of her spies in the Palace?" Leia guessed.

"No. I was elsewhere on Coruscant, but I think Palpatine got wind of the fact that I'd been a lackey of Maul's and threw me in prison somewhere he could keep an eye on me—oversee my. . ." She swallowed, and her voice lost some of that smooth charm as she spat, ". . .interrogation. Crimson Dawn didn't just collapse with Maul, after all."

"I know," Leia murmured. "We used it to infiltrate the Palace. Or rather, the fact that they still sell slaves to the Empire."

"I heard about that. Clever—your entire plan was. And executed well."

"We didn't save my brother."

Qi'ra deflated. "Yes," she said, "that was a shame."

There was something, something in her voice, that had Leia's eyes flashing open and she snapped, "It is a shame. He's a great fighter, a great asset. He was the one who killed Maul."

"I know, I'm sorry if it sounded like—" She paused, eyebrows gliding up, tilting her head slightly. "He was?"

Leia. . . regretted bringing it up. "Maul's assassination, three years ago. . . That was our first formal mission. Luke struck the killing blow."

"I see." There was something unreadable in Qi'ra's eyes, but Leia couldn't help but read a little viciousness into her tone as well. "Thank you, then." She smirked. "I'm in your debt."

"I'd rather just forget it."

Qi'ra creased her brows slightly. She shivered, though the wind hadn't picked up significantly and the sun still shone, and tugged her jacket back on. She was brushing her hair out from under her collar when she asked, "Why? If I may enquire."

Leia bit out, "I'm supposed to be letting go. Of everything. Turning away from the dark side."

Qi'ra frowned. "But the dark side helped you succeed before." She said the words with the familiarity of one who'd heard a great many lectures about the power and pragmatism of the dark over the years. "Why give it up?"

"Because it's Palpatine's. It serves him, and he expects it of me. We lost before." She closed her eyes and reassumed her meditation position. "I won't lose again."

"I understand." Her tone said otherwise. Leia ignored her; she was set on this path, she couldn't afford to believe it was impossible or wrong, and nothing any ex-acolyte of a failed Sith Lord like Maul could say would convince her otherwise.

Then Qi'ra said, "Have you got a new lightsaber, then?"

Leia stilled, her muscles tense. "What?"

Qi'ra gestured to the lightsaber at her hip, the dark metal it was made of. "If you're leaving everything behind, did you get a new lightsaber? I imagine that might be a symbol—to yourself and everyone else—that you're changing."

Leia frowned. She. . . wasn't wrong.

Her father had given her this lightsaber.

"No," she said finally, "I haven't."

Qi'ra nodded her head. "My apologies for intruding then." Her wrist-mounted comlink beeped and she glanced at it, pushing herself to her feet. She brushed off her trousers and soil fell from the folds to patter on the ground. "I have to go—enjoy your meditation."

Leia nearly scoffed at the platitude, but held herself back. She just nodded in acknowledgement and closed her eyes again.

Reached out with the Force, and sensed it when Qi'ra finally re-entered the base.

Only then did she feel for her lightsaber and bring it to hover at her eye level. A feather-light brush, a touch in the right place, and it disassembled smoothly. Pieces slotted in and out of each other before they all hung before her, orbiting the crystal at the centre in a loose cylinder.

The crystal, glinting an iridescent red even without the sunlight that edged towards dusk, screamed.

It was in agony.

Until Leia reached out and closed her hand tightly around it.

It shattered.

The energy discharge from the destruction of a kyber crystal was massive, compared to its size. Leia knew this. Even her stranglehold on the Force around it couldn't stop to surge of fire and heat. She jerked back and cried out.

She stared at her palm—the charred, angry burn there.

Then she looked back at the crystal.

All that was left of it was a cloud of shimmering dust, like stars in a nebula, falling like rain.


Yoda was deep in his meditation when he sensed Obi-Wan come. His ears twitched. "Late, you are."

"My apologies, Master," Obi-Wan said. He shimmered into existence next to where Yoda was meditating on the hangar's hard floor and took up his own meditation pose, as pointless as feeling the Force might be to someone who, essentially, was the Force. "Coruscant is. . . difficult to manifest on. I was spending most of my energy focused on assisting Luke, and the darkness surrounding him is a veil that is difficult to pierce."

"Close, Sidious holds him," Yoda observed in a neutral voice, his eyes still closed. He felt. . . old, in this moment, in a way that had been steadily creeping up on him from the moment he'd been there to watch the Clone Wars begin. Thinking about a youngling or padawan's suffering without being able to do anything about it was an exhausting exercise. "Difficult to reach, he always would be. Known this, we always have."

"Yes, master, but now he wants to be reached. It is easier—and it will become even easier once he is away from Coruscant, with Tarkin, and I can try to teach him to turn towards the light some more—"

"Hm."

Obi-Wan faltered, tilting his head. His old friend looked old, very old, as well. Even if he'd only spent seven long years on Tatooine before Vader had undone all of their meticulously laid plans, grief and the desert sands had taken their toll. "Master?"

He twitched his ear and grunted. "Travelling with Tarkin, you say he is?"

"Yes, Master."

"Given into the dark side, he has, then? The Empire, he has rejoined?"

"No." Obi-Wan sounded aghast at the idea, and despite the wrinkles on his face, that made him seem young. Even with the Sith having only risen again a mere thirty years earlier, Yoda had seen far, far more of sentient cruelty and vices in his centuries of life than Obi-Wan had in his mere decades. "No—he. . ."

Yoda hummed, and waited. His scrappy, threadbare robes lay heavy around his shoulders like a mantle.

"He's taking an insane risk," Obi-Wan explained, "but he believes wholeheartedly—and I agree with him—that the only way he can escape Palpatine is by letting Palpatine think he's on his side. He's pretended to rejoin the Empire, and reassumed his role as spy until such a time that he can escape, and come here."

"I see."

Obi-Wan leaned forward. "What is it, Master? What do you sense?"

And then Yoda hesitated.

But— "Lost, that boy is."

Obi-Wan nodded vehemently. "Misguided and lost, and he's confused, he needs guidance—"

"Lost. Lost to us, to the darkness. Lost. . ." His lips twitched again. ". . .to his sister."

"Master. . ."

"Sidious's creatures, the Skywalker twins are," Yoda declared, opening his eyes and fixing Obi-Wan with a stare that would have had any gaggle of younglings or masters nodding their heads and chorusing yessir. "With us, young Leia is, so perhaps train her I can, to do what we could not. But with the Sith, her brother is. Good and loyal to us right now, he may be, but sink his claws into him, Sidious will. Fake the darkness, one cannot; feed on him, it will, until he is consumed."

"Master. . ."

"A servant of evil, young Skywalker will become. Him also, she will have to destroy."

Obi-Wan shook his head. "She won't do it."

"Then fail in her duty, she will."

"Master." Obi-Wan's tone was one Yoda had often heard him use on his unorthodox padawan, and Yoda's ears flattened in offence. "Luke is a child. Leia is a child. They are each the only thing the other has, has ever had—"

"Let go of attachments, young Skywalker must, if she is to become a Jedi."

"Luke doesn't deserve this. He has sacrificed himself this far for this cause, suffered so much—"

"Lecture me about suffering, do not, Obi-Wan. And let your feelings of failure over Anakin cloud your judgement, do not."

"I'm not—"

"Failed Anakin, you did. Fail Leia, you must not."

"I won't fail Luke either." Obi-Wan's voice cracked. "He's relying on me."

Yoda shook his head. "Continue to visit him, you must not. Here, you are needed. To his fate, leave him."

Obi-Wan straightened up. "No. I won't do that."

Yoda hmphed. "Qui-Gon's defiance I sense in you."

Obi-Wan said nothing. Just smiled.

"Very well," Yoda conceded with a frown. "Waste your energy on a lost boy, you will. A fool, you are."

"He will not let you down, Master. He will return to the light, and to Leia."

"Leia." Yoda got to his feet and hobbled over with his stick, grunting at the way it flexed and bent after that girl had sliced it in half. "Stay away from my student, you will. Speak to her, pass messages to her, you will not."

Obi-Wan reared back in the face of three feet of angry green troll coming at him with a stick. "What? Master—communicating with Leia, knowing that she's alright, would be the most useful thing for Luke—"

"And the least useful thing for Leia, it would be."

"I beg to differ."

"To let go, she must learn, if to kill her father and the Emperor she must. Too hung up on her brother, she already is."

"He's half of her soul."

"Learn to live without him, she must."

Obi-Wan said, "This is why Padmé refused to let you train her children from birth. Why she insisted they be kept together, rather than apart."

"And kept together they were. Kidnapped together, they were. Both of them, Vader found."

He insisted nonetheless: "Padmé was right. It was what was best for them."

"Hmph." Yoda rapped his stick on the floor. "A fool, Amidala was, and is. That there was light in Vader, she believed? Believes? I think not."

Obi-Wan. . . swallowed and nodded at that.

"Speak to her of young Skywalker's insane plan either, do not," Yoda ordered. "Hope, she will have, and when inevitably disappointed she is, worse, things will be."

"Master. . ."

"Cruel, this is, I know," he said softly, "but necessary, to defeat the Sith and restore the Jedi." Then he added, "And to keep Leia safe."

Obi-Wan pressed his lips together.

"Very well," he conceded the negotiations. "I shall follow your wishes. I will not tell Leia or Padmé of any of this—"

"To Luke also, say nothing of what occurs here, or when he is again Sidious's, so too will the knowledge be."

Obi-Wan deflated. "He needs to know that his sister is alright," he pleaded.

"My decision, I will not change."

He sighed. "Very well then, Master," he said, and there was something like steel and ice in his voice. "I suspect this will be the last time I am able to or need to manifest myself to you like this, so farewell, my old friend." He smiled a little. "I wish you luck with Leia, and promise you: Luke will succeed."

Yoda inclined his head. "Goodbye, Obi-Wan."

He flickered out, like a broken hologram.

Yoda returned to his meditation.


Less than a mile away, within the very confines of that building, Ahsoka Tano stirred.

The first thing she noticed was the faint blue light washing everything in her bunkroom. She must've forgotten to switch a holo off or something—

Then she moved her gaze up and nearly screamed at the man standing over her.

She sat up so fast she smacked her montrals against the top bunk and hissed her pain, but she was also gaping, because—

"Hello, Ahsoka," her old master's master said to her.

She shook her head in disbelief. "What— You—" She worked her mouth. "You're dead."

He spread his arms. He was transparent, she noted, slightly hysterically; he was transparent, and blue, and had apparently got into her room without unlocking the door which meant—

"I am," he said. "My old master, Qui-Gon, taught me a way to live on after death. But that's not important right now."

"Not important—!"

"Ahsoka," he said gravely, making to perch on the edge of her bed. "I need you to listen. Yoda didn't want me to tell anyone this, but someone has to know, so it must be you."

"It concerns Luke."