O Rose, thou art sick.

The invisible storm

That flies in the night

In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

The Sick Rose by William Blake

Revolve

He laughs.

While I lie there, the stranger laughs, a manic inhuman sound that peals from his gaping mouth. His eyes flash too often with a crazed electric light emanating from deep within. The mocking laughter is drawn from every bit of his huge frame filling the doorway, a deep and yet screeching sound all at the same time. Ravenous. Predatory.

The worst part of it is that I'm laughing as well. It is my laughter and not some alien noise coming from my own throat, but it's every bit as mocking as his, as if I wish to belittle him by laughing, showing I'm made of the same stuff, telling him he's not so intimidating when compared with me. But it is not me that makes this. In reality, I wish to cry, as terrible as this monster is.

And it was all because, in this same dream, someone was killed out in the street while they were minding their own business. The murderer escaped, and the blame was pinned upon me. I am not faultless, I know, but neither am I guilty of that crime. I fled to this room, wanting to escape the accusing fingers, and that's when the man came, his eyes glinting with madness, his mouth working out terrifying nonsense syllables while no sound emerges. And he starts to laugh.

But now he turns, and leaves the doorway.

I should be relieved. I should want to shut the door to prevent it from happening again. But to my abject horror, I call out to him to come back. My voice has a driving desperation, as if something within me needs to feed off of the humiliation of my opponent…if that's what he really is.

There the dream terminates.

I've never had this one before. It comes as a surprise; I thought I had been breaking free.

Perhaps my subconscious wishes to tell me otherwise.

A respite. That's all this is. All it's supposed to be.

Why can I not gain respite from my own palace?

There are meandering voices that penetrate the walls, weaving in and out, penetrating my skull, pestering my consciousness, clamouring for my attention.

"But then who would look after you, Master?"

"Surely you can do better!"

"I am my own, and my own is me…"

"What are you giving yourself to?"

"Young fool!"

"Shhhh. The baby's sleeping."

"…and weave among that star-studded sky!"

Nonsensical. All of it. I shudder at the madness and clamp my hands over my ears, somehow knowing I did this to myself.

These voices could be the forgotten, rising to lay waste to what they can, or worse, the product of my fevered imagination. My inward pleas become tinged with desperation as I press to drive them away, and in the dim awareness of my surroundings I know Harat, perched nearby, is agitated with the smell of my fear.

I hope none of the servants come in. I hope this will all leave soon. I hope…

I grind my teeth. Damn. What do I have left to hope for?

Harat shrills an anxious cry, and I feel the slight impact of her footsteps as she comes up the side of my bed, hooking a claw through my sleeve and giving it a tug.

I let my hands drop, staring down at the wide brassy eye she focuses on my face. I'm going mad, Harat. I'm being plagued with a past I can't even remember. Why was it me? Why did Sidious choose me?

Again, her stare turns reproving, though she doesn't move.

I know, you're right. It's not the why that matters. Not any longer. I have to focus on what must be done, how I can use this position to turn the Empire into something different.

I turn my eyes through the window, to the city in its night. How far do you think I can push it? Will I have to take this battle for peace one Moff at a time? Or can I unveil a single move that will begin the healing process? My fingers automatically reach up to rub where the corners of the mechanical larynx merge with flesh. I'm tired, Harat. If only I had a home left to go to.

She spreads her wings out, extending them fully and slightly upwards, giving one lazy ineffective flap before returning them to their position of rest.

I know I'm supposed to leave. The vision of the nameless youth doesn't have to tell me, not this time. I must go for a visit to one who has broken all ties with the rest of the galaxy. Almost like myself, in that respect.

Harat croons through her beak and settles a bit, her feathers puffing out.

I close my eyes momentarily, feeling the scrubbed air drift into my lungs and back out again. I smell the faint aroma of freshly cleaned bedding; I hear the still silence of the room; I feel the cloth of my nightclothes and bedding against my skin. And above all, I know the Force.

Inadequate name. It's a pity that other words don't get much better, either. So little meaning in sound.

Harat stirs beside me and rasps softly in irritation. I open my eyes and see the quiet blue of a light blinking on the small table at my bedside. A message, at this hour? Hesitantly, I take up the small screen, wondering what the communication might contain, and pull up the message.

It reads: "There is power in freedom but also more to be found. I have discovered one result of an interesting development. How would you like a fresh-minded pupil?"

Curious, I check for a signature; the message gives me no name but instead: "the Wayward", as well as a return number.

The Wayward? Fascinating. Evidently Anakin, I should think, from that sort of signature as well as the fact that he has my private number. My musings reach no alternate conclusion as to the sender's identity. But where would he have discovered someone with enough potential for this sort of recommendation?

Frowning, I start a reply:

"Send the pupil to me in three standard weeks with proof of your connections. I trust I will find latent sensitivity." After a moment of thought, I sign the message as "Kenobi", a name few know. A name that assures my presence.

Self-reassurance, in part. Three weeks. I send the note on its way. Enough for a round trip to a certain Outer Rim planet with some visiting in between.

I return to him crawling.

It's a shocking statement when taken even in a figurative sense as it is here. Emperors of known galaxies do not crawl. Nor do they surrender themselves or anything in their belonging. They do not cringe, they do not apologise, and they certainly do not regret.

But I was never an emperor to begin with.

That conclusive idea is something I can agree with, at least. I never suited nor wished for the post. Well, not me. Still the memories of my twenty-year night-existence refuse to return, skirting the borders of my consciousness mockingly. There are so many secrets contained behind those locked doors… I wish badly to tap into it, and yet somehow I know I may desire just as strongly to drive them away again once they're acquired. There's only one way to find out, really. If only I knew what that way was.

But I'm fairly certain one of the steps entails the journey I now engage myself in. Not so much a journey of the body as of the soul.

I left little information back at that cursed palace as to my activities and whereabouts. I instructed only a few servants that I was leaving for a trip that could possibly extend to a few weeks' time, accompanied only by Harat. Someone will end up asking questions, and the message will spread. It's likely that I'm not as worried about the public reaction as I should be, but I can hardly focus on that.

Perhaps, at the end of this hyperspace jump, I will discover the solace that the Imperial palace refused to afford me.

The strange thing is, I don't know where I'm going. For the better? It's a possibility. I entered the coordinates of my destination in a trance that I'd deliberately induced upon myself. I don't wish to know the name of the planet I'm visiting. That information is irrelevant. All that matters is that one particular inhabitant who dwells upon it. The one I told Winter I would seek out. The only one of his kind that truly remains.

Harat and I watch the riveting, flaring patterns of hyperspace converge into long white scratches of light that in turn dwindle to individual points, hundreds upon thousands upon millions of stars, the eyes that stare to this small shuttle as it enters back into realspace above the hanging sphere of an unfamiliar planet. Isolated somewhere beneath a layer of thick white tropospheric gauze is the presence I've been looking for.

I clutch the arms of the pilot's seat in sudden inexplicable fright. He knows I'm here. He knows.

Harat warbles inquiringly.

I attempt to slow my racing heart. Panicking about it will do nothing for me. I have to think, have to approach this rationally.

Besides, isn't this what I wanted? Didn't I wish to be found?

Smiling ironically, I begin to direct the shuttle toward a suitable landing spot the computer discovered. It's easier to breathe here. The very air feels more open, somehow, even if it still is the same stale canned atmosphere I was breathing from the moment I left Coruscant.

The shuttle slips down through fire, through cloud, and as I keep going I begin to see the spindly tops of trees reaching their black fingers in crooked paths toward the unseen origin of their light. It gives me a passing shiver, for some reason.

I slow the shuttle gradually, relying more on the navicomputer to tell me where to put down than my senses. I suppose that means I'm afraid. Afraid to reach out and find what I've been looking for.

Ridiculous. I can't turn a blind eye, not after all this. Besides, I told Winter I'd see this through. Even that must be worth something. I decide upon that as my accountability, regardless of whether I'll ever meet her again or not.

The shuttle's small enough for me to do a bit of basic manoeuvring through the trees until I find the spot to touch down, an appropriate enough size. I exhale slowly as the landing feet of the shuttle impact gently with the ground, compensating a bit for the uneven terrain; the floor's plane is still a bit tilted, though.

Harat stretches out her wings experimentally, extending her long primary feathers as far as they'd go. I find her fierce profile inspiring, in a way, and slide my hand in front of her feet. She steps upon the proffered perch and folds her wings, gazing up at me with something approaching a beatific expression.

I stare back for a moment, then move her up to my shoulder and start for the shuttle's boarding ramp.

It's time.

The tepid moist air, richly laden with varying smells of rotting vegetation, wreathes us as I step down to the sodden loam. The breaths I take lie heavy in my lungs and already I break into a sweat. The surroundings appear dismal, the dark brown trees and dimly green vegetation looking battered and half-dead, a whitish mist trailing low to the ground around everything.

Nice vacation locale. One could make a killing in the real estate business here.

Harat suddenly launches herself off my shoulder, and soars high with a few powerful pumps of her wings, swooping to land high upon one of the branches.

I pace up to the tree in a little irritation. Harat. Come down here.

She refuses, casting an apprehensive eye about our surroundings.

Harat! Why don't you—

Then I sense it as I open up in curiosity. There's a malignant… something. A twisted point, a spot of darkness that blemishes the flow of the Force.

Harat screeches in defiance.

I decide to go for a vocal tack, thumbing on my mechanical larynx and calling up: "Harat. Come down."

Still she refuses.

I turn my back and begin to walk away, thinking that perhaps she'll become afraid of being alone and come back to me.

But that proves to be just as useless a strategy as trying to cajole her down. By this time somewhat exasperated, I keep heading away from the area. Besides, I want to investigate this dark side bloodstain, and perhaps it'll be easier without an uneasy birdhawk clawing away at my shoulder.

Before long, I come upon a tree, gnarled and seemingly dead. It seems as if the thing couldn't decide how to grow, nor which way was up, and the effect is almost frightening. I reach out with hesitant fingers to brush against the bark. It's somewhat rough but weathered all the same, unyielding as stone.

I venture around the three and past it. There seems to be some sort of cave—

"So certain, are you, that what you seek lies within?"

I freeze at the sound of that gravelly voice, my memory dredging up the one it belongs to with no effort at all. Slowly, slowly I turn.

His eyes are terrible, piercing and uprooting me, exposing all my lies and vices, laying out my past in a suggestion to discard it for the future. All that…and he only looks at me. All that from a simple stare.

I crumple to my knees in the whelming grief. "Master."

"No master have you," he replies sharply. "Past that, hmm? Emperor of the known galaxy. Pretend to have a master, you cannot."

"Master, please," I whisper, unable to look into his eyes.

"Come for penance, have you? Think, do you, that your ways will be forgotten?"

It's unbearable. I shut my eyes, finding I simply cannot face the barrage of the truth of my past, the collection of experiences that grow clearer in my mind with each passing day. Perhaps it was my decision, then. My own fault. Anakin could have been wrong in his idea of the event. Perhaps I made the wrong assumption in thinking I was forced into it?

There is nothing but silence for a long time, long enough that I can begin to feel the moisture of the ground seeping through the fabric covering my knees.

And I find Yoda's presence warmer, probing and inquisitive, gradually enfolding me.

I open my eyes and focus on his face. The austere expression has left for something unreadable.

"Found a place of solace, you have," he says gravely. "Willing am I to help—"

"No!" I cry out, scrambling to my feet and backing away a few steps.

He regards me with a show of moderate surprise, as if he'd thought of this possibility but hadn't regarded it as a likelihood.

"No," I choke. "You can't… couldn't let me! What I've done is—is irredeemable. It would be better to just kill me and be done with it."

"Pfeh," he grunts, shuffling up to me. "Thought this over, you have not, I think. Hmm?"

"Please, kill me," I entreat him with a note of desperation creeping into my voice, and I kneel down again. "I don't have anything left, nor do I deserve to li—"

His gimer stick shoots up with astonishing speed and power, catching me on the chin and shutting my teeth with a loud clack. Momentum carries through and I find myself sprawling on my back, slightly dazed if only for the sheer surprise of it.

"Argue not with Master Yoda," he comments, coming over to my side and peering down into my face with an expression I find most disquieting. "Rewarded, you were, for foolish ideas, yes? Dissuade you further, need I?"

I shake my head numbly.

"Good, good. Now, sit up, and tell Master Yoda why your bird not come down to you."

"She…" I push myself up. "She senses the convergence of the dark side, I think. It's in that cave, isn't it?"

"Yes. Twisted and disturbed the growth of the tree. Other effects it has, also." He waits expectantly, staring at me patiently for the completion of his statement.

I frown. "An effect on nature, overall, then? If it contorted the tree and disturbs Harat…"

"Only non-sapient life, do you think? Guard against it, must we not also?"

Realisation dawns. "It wanted me to believe I wished to die."

"Encouraged the notion, it did. Now see you what Master Yoda knew all along, hmm?" He prods me with the tip of the gimer stick. "Ready for another lesson, are you?"

I rub my jaw ruefully. "What do the outcomes depend upon?"

"Your willingness to listen and open up your memory."

Dark secrets still whisper at my ear. I shiver. "Will that help me, or hurt me?"

"Know your enemy," Master Yoda responds pointedly. "Know you cannot, if you refuse to learn. To learn, need facts you do. Facts on actions, judgements, beliefs. When know your enemy, do you, better will you be able to fight back. Better will you be able to keep what is yours."

It will help me through hurting. I don't particularly take to that sort of thinking, but guessing at any alternatives soon brings me back around. "Then I suppose we had better get on with this lesson."

He leads me over a winding path to his small hut; we travel through marsh, circumnavigate scummy sandbars, climb over rocky outcroppings, and weave through countless leviathan trees that seem to be waning in life.

Yoda's mud dwelling is a thing unto itself, miniature enough to hardly be seen, just barely large enough to suit his needs. What else was I expecting? To my surprise, we find Harat awaiting my arrival, perched atop the hut in anticipation. She waits until I come closer, then launches herself into the air and vigorously dives at my shoulder.

And then, like cobwebs, it comes. Time stops and starts again, flowing erratically, motion blurring together into something drawn out yet simultaneous all the same, repeating itself over and over and over…

It takes a veritable eternity for Yoda to turn and look up at me.

His warped voice filters in gradually past the gentle dulcet tones of nothing, flowing at a rate unattached to the movements of his mouth, but things piece themselves together bit by bit and as time smoothes out what ripples it had, I hear: "…feeling, are you?"

I stand there for a moment, staring ahead to the veiled depths of the forest, shrouded in the cold mystery that threatens to seep its way back into me. "Master. Have you ever… have you ever seen an old man?"

"Many, have I seen," he responds gruffly.

"I mean in a vision. An old man, a woman, and a child…" My voice trails off. What am I saying? It means nothing. He doesn't need to know about it; like as not it's mere nonsense.

Yoda stares at me for a second longer, then beckons me inside, looping a claw about in a circle before shuffling into his makeshift dwelling.

I crouch down to follow. There's a warmth within that was lacking outside, provided solely by the one fire blazing away in its designated alcove. It's small but crackles sharply, casting a rhythmless staccato beat. Master Yoda throws in some more fuel, and the questing fingers of flame wreathe the wood quickly in a passionate grip.

"Describe to me this old man," he says after a moment of emptiness, the air filled only by the sounds of the greedy little fire.

"He looked too old to be living. Frail and worn out. His eyes were clouded and unable to focus on much. Both times I saw him, he mentioned something about 'sidious plots' and bad business." I hesitate. "He was killed by the woman."

Yoda gazes into the fire, emitting a low thoughtful humming noise. "This woman and child. Mother and son, were they?"

"What… yes. How did you know?"

The gimer stick becomes employed in the task of stirring about the wood within the fire. Embers give off small sparks, some of them spiralling upwards to die. There is another long pause. "Many things Yoda sees that he did not before. Many things, there were, that evaded the sight of the Council. Your old man, were they. Dead is the Council. Dead is the structure of the Jedi."

The old man is the old Jedi Order! Why did I not see it?

I've become blind myself, perhaps.

"And the woman," I find myself whispering. "She was his downfall. She struck him on the back of his head and he was dead before he hit the floor." Anger rises. "She told me. She said it herself she was Sith."

"The child," Yoda cuts in abruptly. "Describe the child."

"He was a newborn when I first saw him, and a toddler when the old man was—was killed. He's grown, now." I rub my forehead. "Looks to be perhaps in his early twenties." If visions have such things as years. "He's gaunt; he had a very sunken look about his face a short while back, but he's beginning to fill out somewhat."

Yoda pauses again in thought. "See him often, do you?"

"He's been appearing for guidance," I answer without much thought.

The old master's ear twitches, almost absently, as he gazes outside. I can't begin to guess what he sees. Do his eyes reach a different level of thought, some hidden dimension to the universe only accessible to the enlightened? Does he tap into a source of abstruse power for a way to put the answer into small linguistic packages that might, just might be of an appropriate size to contain enough meaning when he sends them across?

His gnarled old fingers wrap themselves more securely around the head of the gimer stick, and he raises the tip to poke me in the arm. "Want the lesson, do you?"

The question takes me aback in its seeming simplicity. "Of course I—"

"Want it, do you? The entire lesson?"

I hesitate. Obviously there's more to it than the words imply.

"Hmmmm," he mutters. "Given the time, take you back to where your studies ended, I would. No time! Always against the galaxy, is time. Unlearning, there must be for you. Yes, much unlearning." He shoots another javelin stare my way. "But first, realise you must what you have learned. Gaps in your memory. Fill them in, you must."

I have the immediate sensation of a loss of warmth from my face. "What?"

He studies me. "Fear them, do you?"

I clench my jaw. "I have no desire to know what went on in those years unaccounted for."

"Answer my question, you did not."

I'd be a fool to try and hold a contest of wills against the old champion. But of course I'm a fool. I struggle to keep that gaze as I answer, my words taut and strained: "Yes. I'm afraid of what I'll find."

He stares, and nods his hoary head. "Afraid of the unknown. Dark, it is, in those corners of your mind. If jump you should, think do you that Master Yoda will catch you?"

What a guarantee that would be! "I'm under no such illusion, Master."

"Neither should you be." He nods again after another moment's thought. "Tomorrow, we begin. Tomorrow, we find yesterday."