AN: some of these will be AU situations... like this one. ;) (I may write another one-shot for this prompt, cuz I had a few ideas floating around in my head)
Yoda remembers being young once. Though it was a long – very long – time ago, he can still remember being innocent, carefree, impossibly full of joy, and foolishly naïve. He knows that his fellow Jedi respect his wisdom and heed the experienced advice that his years imply, but he also knows that they think him something of a relic, at times. That centuries of living have slowly dissolved his means to understand, to empathize with those far, far younger than him.
Most of them, at least those who don't know him well, do not even entertain the idea that behind the wisdom in his words and the mysterious twinkle in his eyes hides a soul, hides a being that understands more than they ever will and yet is understood by no one.
Yes. He remembers being young once. And his memory is oh so vivid, rife with tantalizing colors and impossible possibilities born from the young mind of one who has just discovered that he can touch the Force for the very first time. Yoda remembers the chill that had settled into his tiny frame then, and he also remembers the sudden jolt of warmth that had followed. He remembers words spoken by a being nobody else remembers.
"What color do you see, young one?"
Yoda had seen many colors and remembers being completely baffled by the question. Until he had looked closer and noticed a distinct thread of soft color winding its way through the entire fabric of the new reality that he had been introduced to. "White?"
He remembers the sound of a warm chuckle. "Gold, Yoda. Like the stars, like a sun newly born. Treasure that pirates on distant worlds seek and never find. Isn't it beautiful?"
It still is. He remembers being young and driven by that new and beautiful purpose: to seek out and learn all that he could about this golden, mysterious, real Force that he could touch and bend and call and use.
Yoda remembers being a century older and realizing that using it was wrong on all accounts and that a true wielder of the Force doesn't seek to wield it at all.
He remembers living only a few decades more and encountering a tainted version of the Force that he had gotten to know so well. Yoda remembers the distinct pull of it. The temptation. The sheer, rumbling, thrumming power that had swelled and vibrated around him.
Around him, but never through him.
Yoda's purpose had transitioned to something beyond learning after that: resist the sickness. For years after that initial encounter, he had hunted and destroyed and resisted.
Then he arrived at the newly constructed Temple and began to teach. Yoda remembers finding joy in passing on what he had learned. He taught hundreds of Jedi. Thousands of days he awoke before the sun just so that he could watch it rise and compare its aging hues with the eternally young white-gold hues of the Force. Thousands of days were spent attempting to show other younger beings, fellow Force-touchers, the nature of the Force. The brilliance that resided there. The power that no one could hope to understand or, for that matter, wield. The hope, the gentleness…
The Light.
Yoda remembers when his purpose had simply been to teach. To be an example and an arrow directing others to the source of life and endurance. He remembers it as if it were only yesterday, because it had been only yesterday.
Now, his purpose has changed once more and morphed into something finer, more specific, and distinctly dangerous (though he has faced the full gamut of dangerous, and this is hardly the worst of it). A Sith Lord stands in front of him, half-mad and cackling, with his hands splayed out as if the entirety of this beautiful universe has suddenly fallen right into his lap.
Groaning, Yoda twitches one pointed ear and pushes himself up, mentally wincing at the grating of his old bones. Far be it from him to actually imply to the Sith that things are going to be easy. He has lived – and survived – for too many years to allow things to fall apart easily. If the situation weren't so grave, he might have chuckled. Slowly, with a patience learned from eons spent in the company of darkness (and a few decades longer spent in the company of starlit, golden light), Yoda shifts his feet and sets himself (only a few breaths are necessary for him to clear his mind, slow his heartbeat, and focus on the moment). The Sith stops smirking and with a flash is right in front of the exit.
But Yoda is there too, having leapt nimbly to the opening and placed himself squarely between Sidious and his escape (he wants to laugh, he wants to mock the fool openly for not realizing that at its core, darkness always runs). It only takes a blink of a thought for him to call his weapon into his clawed hand. Glaring into sick, yellow eyes, he ignites it as he speaks. "If so powerful, you are… why leave?"
The disfigured, lightning-shorn man only gurgles out a few words about his new apprentice becoming more powerful than the both of them – a hopeless delusion, for the power that darkness wields is a mere facsimile of the raw, unadulterated, unsickened warmth that holds the worlds together – and Yoda counters with an accusation of misplaced faith even though he knows it will get him nowhere with the Sith.
Then a red beam, sharpened to a point by a darkened crystal, is reaching towards him. A blink, and they have already exchanged blows and are locked in a sizzling, crackling bind. Yoda glares across the two weapons into sickly golden eyes streaked with madness and rage. It is a terrifying combination and, despite himself (despite convincing himself that he has seen worse), the old Jedi's stomach does a quick little flip.
The Sith's crooked grimace of concentration instantly transforms into a smear of a smile, nasty and slimy and far too confident for Yoda's tastes. "Your move, Jeedaii," he growls.
Green eyes widen in realization, in stunned fear. It has been centuries since he's heard the word 'Jedi' spoken with that specific inflection on it. The truth settles itself into Yoda's mind with blunt force clarity and nearly breaks his hold on the Sith's weapon. Reaching out with the Force, it takes him only half a second to pinpoint a dark, brown-gold undercurrent writhing its way through Sidious' body and weapon, an unwilling yet very powerful tool at his command.
A sharp push on their locked blades snaps his eyes back to those of the Sith. "Very dark, you are," he murmurs, momentary fear fading to be replaced by cold, ancient anger. Something that every living Jedi would frown upon after getting over their initial surprise, for not one of them understands. Not all anger leads to hate, and not all hatred leads to suffering. He learned long ago that there are some things that deserve to be hated, because if they are not hated, then they will eventually be loved and cherished and possessed. Staring into those darkness-infused eyes, Yoda knows for a fact that Sidious never learned to hate the right things. "Very dark," he repeats, tightening his grip on his weapon.
"You were defeated months ago, fool," the Sith spits through his broken grin.
There is a flash of very brief movement, so brief that to call it a 'flash' might be a touch exaggerated, and Yoda calls the Sith's disengaged lightsaber into his other hand. Filaments of white-gold warmth steal into his old joints and lend him strength even as his purpose shifts yet again into something even finer than before. It feels right, as if every decade lived up to this point has led him precisely here. He has never lent much credence to fate, and now the very idea seems preposterous, because right now he is filled with more purpose than he's ever had before.
Perhaps if he ends it now, then young Skywalker can learn to hate the darkness and young Kenobi can learn to love his brother properly. Yoda regrets that he never really took the time to learn to love either of them. Guide, yes. Teach, yes. Protect, yes. Respect, yes. Love? Even ancient sages fall prey to changed Codes and modern ways of thinking. He remembers when things had been… different.
A shame, it is.
Yoda feels the Sith begin to draw on the darkness, building up a well of sheer power that spits and howls and cackles with more depth and madness than this shriveled man is capable of. "FOOL!"
The word blasts over him, blowing him back a few yards, and it is only through disciplined calm that Yoda silently asks the Force to anchor him to the floor. Just once more, he pleads. His feet stop sliding, stuck in place by an invisible hold, and he feels (and begins to see) soft tendrils of light surround him, blanketing him and shielding him from the poisonous fumes of blackness the Sith is thrusting towards him.
"PITIFUL WRETCH!" Jaundiced eyes flash with something eerily sinister, causing Yoda to cringe and brace himself. Sidious is shaking, thrumming, about to explode. Two gnarled hands come up, bent unnaturally and pointed at him in a grim promise of death set aside and pain prolonged. Yoda remembers what dangerous is (he has faced the full gamut), but he isn't sure where this falls in comparison.
Nevertheless, fear briefly sparks within him, but that's it. Sidious doesn't seem to realize who, exactly, he is facing. He doesn't seem to realize what, exactly, is preventing him from harming this particular Jedi. The Sith, for all of his craftiness, patience, and power, doesn't seem to understand his foe.
"At an end, your rule is," Yoda tells him, each word punctuated by a brief pulse of light (it fills him now, and yet it still continues to pour in). He shifts one foot slightly so that he is squared up and set firmly. Had he looked at a window, he might have been surprised to see tiny tendrils of gold seeping into his eyes.
The Sith sees it and grits his teeth. Sidious doesn't understand where it comes from or what it means, but the darkness that he has given his soul to understands perfectly and is afraid. Sidioius snarls incoherently and then pushes. Darkness explodes.
But Yoda is already smiling an odd little half-smile (he cannot bring himself to grin even though a part of him feels unnaturally giddy) and raising a single, weathered palm. "And not short enough, it was," he finishes softly. Sadly. Joyfully.
Yoda closes gold-green eyes, sucks in a final breath, and then lets it out. All of it. Everything he has, he pours into a single stream of sheer, unadulterated, white-gold light that meets Sidious' attack head-on and annihilates it. Darkness shatters, bits and pieces of it scattering and then disappearing as if it had never existed. An ocean of sun-streaked, blazing fire rushes over the Sith and the monster flails his arms, gasping for breath and cursing Yoda's name in the same garbled sentence. Absently, Yoda reflects that he really shouldn't be standing right now. He feels drained, light-headed, empty.
But still he pours it out. This Force that he has served for his entire life is finally asking him for everything he has (or perhaps it's always been asking), and so he willingly gives it.
The Dark's carefully-crafted servant ends in only seconds of battle. In truth, there isn't much of a battle at all. Just an ugly pulse of tainted Force-energy and a single blast of pure starlit light.
Yoda ends too, with a soft sigh and an even softer smile (his Force flits around him and out of him in thick currents of white, glittering gold). The gimer stick that he has carried with him for over six centuries lands beside him, no longer needed. Its wielder is utterly spent.