Ah this took me ages sorry. Unlike last chapter, I have had too much plot happening. Happy long weekend to everyone celebrating :)

Chapter 65: Succession

The dreams on Dagobah came every night. Ariarne had never dreamed like this before. She used to see the future – some semblance of the future, perhaps – with all the haziness entailed in glimpsing something so tenuous. She used to see different faces every night, the sprawl of suffering across the galaxy. Now she saw the same narrow street in the same sprawling city and heard the same voices every night. She never quite glimpsed the faces for which she had so desperately searched.

"Your daughter is strong in the Force."

Some nights it was a man's voice, other nights a woman's. She seemed to stand in their shoes. She was faced sometimes with a shocked silence, other times the high-pitched wail of a newborn infant. But always standing outside the same apartment. Always with the same boots and winter coats before her. Why could she never see their faces?

They could only have been her parents. She was so close, so desperately close to knowing them, and yet-

The dream ended one of two ways. Some nights, the child was pressed to her chest and she left, calm and quiet. Other nights, there was only the crying of the infant and the wailing of its parents and it all rose into a dizzying crescendo until Ariarne could not stand it anymore and she cried out for silence, and started awake.

Both dreams, somehow, left her grieving. The swamp gave her no answers.

Anakin had never meant to live so much of his life on Tatooine. When Qui Gon Jinn and Padme Amidala had appeared in their ship of gleaming chrome it had been the promise of a life away from this place that had drawn him from his mother's home. He hadn't really known what a Jedi did and he hadn't cared to know. He had just wanted to leave, to feel cool air on his skin, to taste freedom. He certainly had never dreamed he would raise his children here.

He walked now in the heat of the twin suns in fabric long ago bleached of its colour. His children had grown here in relative safety and had left now to chase dreams of their own. And yet he stayed. He stayed because his mother always had. Because she always would. He stayed because here he was surrounded by her people, who were his people, also, and who deserved the freedom that the Skywalker family had so sorely paid for. The time had long come for him to bring them that freedom.

Anakin could raid a slave ship every lunar cycle until the end of time and still slaves would be ferried across the galaxy and worked until they died. Jabba had to fall.

The provisional plan, of course, for the raid on Jabba's Palace in the coming weeks was to rescue Han without too much undue destruction. Already, Lando Calrissian had been accepted into the Palace in his soldier's disguise and would hopefully make the extraction a smooth one. Just as Korkie was awaiting the fall of the Empire before rebuilding upon Mandalore, it was logical to delay the complete upheaval of society on Tatooine. There would be less resistance to the construction of Tatooine's first ever non-criminal government in the wake of the Empire's fall. It would be messy. It would be the mess of the millennium. Anakin figured it might be easier to build something from that mess, from that enormous power vacuum, than in an era in which the Hutts still received the tacit backing of the Empire.

He wasn't the person to lead such a change but he would do it if there was no other way. He would do the best he could. After all of his journeys and all of his suffering, it was still his home.

According to Lando, Boba Fett seemed to have taken up something of a temporary residence in Jabba's Palace since the delivery of his prize. This interested Anakin. It seemed unusual that the famously no-nonsense bounty hunter would enjoy the hedonistic lavishness of Jabba the Hutt's favour. There must have been some reason he was sticking around. Anakin supposed that the clone son of Jango Fett did not have a home of his own either. Anakin knew enough from Korkie's struggles that there wasn't much awaiting the Clan Fett on Concord Dawn.

He couldn't help but wonder whether he and the galaxy's greatest bounty hunter, unnatural conceptions aside, had a few things in common.

It was the same dream, every night.

"Your daughter is strong in the Force. The Jedi will train her to be a warrior of peace and compassion for this galaxy, should you wish it."

The feet shuffled in the doorway, the voices tentative.

"Our daughter… She is our daughter-"

"She will lose her family."

The reply was calm and warm. Practised. Expert.

"She will gain another. The Jedi Order cares for its younglings. She will grow content. And she will live a good and meaningful life."

The silence of the grey city all around them. A baby in her arms.

"Come on. We're going to Zastiga."

Luke brought his head from his fighter's engine bay, where he'd been examining – and revising – the work of his overenthusiastic mechanics. Commander Tano was approaching with a spring in her step.

"Zastiga?" he asked.

The planet was a well-known trading outpost, so strategically positioned that it had become almost one big shipping warehouse. It was populated by more droids than sentients and had little in the way of actual society. Despite this, Ahsoka seemed enthusiastic.

"Boring, I know. But it's a special occasion."

Luke straightened up, set down his tools.

"Yeah?"

She waved him along to walk with her in the direction of the stock cupboards.

"Big reunion. Mothma, Ackbar, Syndulla, all the Faulties, you and I. All in the same place, finally."

Luke's stomach lifted; it would be the closest they had come to the strength of the Alliance before the attacks on Hoth and Mako-Ta.

"We're planning something important, then."

"Very important," Ahsoka confirmed. "The Bothan spynet's confirmed the location of the new Death Star. Nice boots, by the way."

Luke shrugged uncomfortably with the praise as he watched her lift canisters of fuel and water for the journey.

"I got sick of everyone calling me farm-boy," he admitted.

He had chosen black. Black boots, black pants, black tunic. No one in their right mind would ever wear black on Tatooine and it was as far as he could get from the wide-eyed son of a moisture farmer he'd been when he'd joined the Rebellion.

"You look like a man of the galaxy now," Ahsoka observed. "Those mechanics-"

"Don't start me."

He'd been hoping for less comments on his attire when he'd made the change, not more. He took a canister from her arms and joined her in loading the supplies into her fighter.

"I haven't seen such a nice pair of boots since Obi Wan," Ahsoka prattled on. "He used to be neurotic about polishing them. I think he'd like your style."

Luke raised a suspicious brow.

"Is that a compliment?"

"Sure it is!"

"It just sounds a little like you're teasing me."

She was certainly teasing him. His father had cheerfully warned him to expect nothing less.

"I'm not!" Ahsoka insisted. "You look very handsome. You could be an Alderaanian prince."

Luke scowled. Korkie must have been gossiping about him and his woes in love.

"Alright, now you're definitely talking bantha-shit," he reprimanded her.

Ahsoka smiled sweetly.

"Obi Wan married his princess."

"Satine was a Duchess and they were never married," Luke corrected her.

He would win the argument on a technicality and ignore the rest of it. They were, after all, supposed to be going to an important meeting.

Korkie had decided against travelling to Zastiga; Keldabe was too much a kriffing mess and Erian was still trying to catch him up on everything he'd missed during the Bespin catastrophe. He sat with his Alor'ade around the projection of Mon Mothma, as elegant as always but older now, thinner, with a new edge of desperation to her voice. She was ready, Korkie sensed, to bring this war to its end.

"The Bothan spynet has confirmed the existence of a second Death Star under construction over the moon Endor in the remote Outer Rim," Mothma prefaced. "The station appears to be incomplete but it is impossible to estimate the time until operational. Preparations for its destruction must begin without delay and will utilise all of the available strength within the Rebel Alliance."

"The nearest feasible safe-point for the mustering of the Alliance Fleet is over Sullust," Admiral Ackbar outlined. "The fleet will gather in staggered phases. We cannot risk another incident like that over Mako-Ta."

"Operation Yellow Moon is the provisional plan for distracting the Empire while we mobilise the fleet," Ahsoka contributed. "For approval by the Council today, we hope, to get underway as soon as possible. The proposed mission will involve a small mobile force in the Corva sector, centred around the gas giant Galaan. As far from Endor as we can get."

At the periphery of the Alliance Council's round table, Luke was watching Ahsoka with keen interest.

"We plan to place hyper-transceivers emitting a message calling for recruits to the Alliance to Restore the Republic. We'll use a code that we know the Empire has broken as though we consider it still to be safe."

Hera Syndulla eyed Ahsoka with caution.

"This will draw in recruits who will be placed in danger, Commander Tano."

Ahsoka grimaced.

"Yes. We'll do what we can to protect them. Send out a counter-message in still unbroken code to hopefully warn others away. But whatever damage is done…"

She sighed, face set with stoic determination.

"It will be justified. Destroying the Death Star is the single most important task we have. If the Death Star is built successfully, the Empire will not hesitate to destroy Mon Cala, Chandrila, Mandalore…"

Korkie nodded heavily. Bo-Katan's jaw clenched beside him. It was undeniable now that the fight for Mandalore and the fight for the Alliance were one and the same. They had pulled back their troops in the years since Yavin but the time had come to return to war. As Mothma had said, the time had come now for to fight with all the strength available to the Alliance. No troops would be spared.

"Operation Yellow Moon requires only a small strike team," Ahsoka went on. "I propose to lead it myself alongside Knight Kestis and his Padawan learner. Luke will bring the flying expertise. That's all we need."

Luke. Korkie felt the old drag of reluctance that reared up every time he remembered that the baby he had once settled to sleep in the cool desert night was a soldier now. But if he had to fight, he could travel nowhere safer than at Ahsoka's side.

"The mission has my endorsement," Korkie offered.

"And mine."

"And mine."

Cautious affirmation echoed around the members of the Alliance Council. It was the sort of mission they would have debated at length, five years ago. Whether the risk to sentient life could be justified. Whether there was a safer way. But they had long ago run out of time for debates now.

"Keep us updated on your progress," Korkie instructed instead. "We on Mandalore will ensure that our troops are ready to participate in the assault on the Death Star when the time comes. I can commit soldiers but no ships, I'm afraid. We must be prepared to evacuate our planet in the case of failure."

There might have been a ripple of discontent around the Council table but it was swiftly silenced by Mon Mothma's endorsement.

"Your soldiers are more than enough, Mand'alor. Thank you."

The meeting concluded shortly afterwards; there was little to debate and much to be done. Korkie beheld his gathered captains, each of them with expectant gaze upon him. He had brought them to Yavin and Scarif and to Krownest. He had brought them on a wild hunt chasing Tiber Saxon through remote space. But he was bringing them now to the most dangerous battle they had ever fought and asking them to save their planet. He had brought them home, and now he was bringing them to war again.

"If we succeed," he promised, with a grim attempt at a smile, "this will be the last battle we fight for the Rebellion."

Ursa's lip quirked in dark humour.

"Might be the last battle we fight either way."

Beside her, Bo-Katan's jaw was still set tight, a muscle twitching and jumping dangerously.

"I agree that we must fight," she conceded. "But whether you must fight, Korkie-"

Korkie sighed.

"I'm not sure there's much use in me surviving if we fail to destroy the Death Star."

Bo-Katan shook her head.

"That's not true. Even if they destroy Mandalore, so long as we have you, our civilisation can continue."

Korkie felt a surge of exasperated fondness for his Ba'vodu, who pretended to be his greatest critic but at her core had always thought far too highly of him.

"It's not just Mandalore," he countered. "If we cannot destroy the Death Star, they will destroy every planet in the system. It will be the end of rebellion in the galaxy."

Fenn blanched.

"You're in a cheery mood today, Mand'alor."

Korkie gave a hapless shrug; there seemed to be no other way to look at the matter.

"In every monarchy," Bo-Katan persisted, "there must be some plan for succession."

"Succession?"

Korkie resisted the urge to laugh aloud.

"I barely have a plan for next week, Ba'vodu. Besides, we're technically not a monarchy anymore. I'm the Mand'alor, not the Duke."

He rubbed at his forehead. There was no autocracy in history, surely, that was such a mess as his own.

"We don't even have a constitution," he rambled on. "And you really should be well aware that I won't be fathering any children…"

Despite it all, Bo-Katan snickered. Fenn was looking distractedly at the ceiling as though contemplating a route of escape.

"Yeah. I'm aware, ad'ik. You can adopt a foundling."

"In this cheerful galaxy?" Korkie spluttered. "Please, Ba'vodu. This is a conversation for after the Empire."

"We need a plan of succession," Bo-Katan repeated. "I'm not letting you go to Endor and get yourself killed without a plan."

"I'm not going to die on Endor."

"No one ever plans to die in battle, Korkie."

Korkie groaned and summoned a stack of flimsi with the Force.

"You of so little faith, Ba'vodu. But that's fine. Fine. Alright. Let me…"

He dated and titled the top of the page.

"First in line is you, obviously, Ba'vodu. You needn't come to Endor."

"I'm coming to Endor."

"Right. Well, if you and I both have the misfortune to die there – which we won't – the next in line is Fenn, then Ursa, then Sabine and Tristan I suppose, seeing as you're the only one of us who's had any children, Ursa…"

He scrawled the list of names and paused a moment before adding the last.

"Then Sewlen," he decreed. "The rest of you can do as you like but Sewlen is forbidden from coming to Endor. She'd be a better leader than any of us, really. Are we happy?"

Bo-Katan beheld the flimsi with grim countenance but did not seem to have much to offer in the way of argument.

"Fenn Rau before the Clan Wren?" Ursa enquired mildly.

Fenn blanched at the attention.

"I really don't have any ambitions to lead anything more than Concord Dawn."

"I don't have ambitions either," Ursa protested. "But on principle, Mand'alor, my Clan and I defected from Saxon before he did."

"I'm not sure it favours the Clan Wren to look back too far into historical loyalty," Korkie mused. "But no matter. The two of you can work it out if we get there. I just thought you'd be very good, Fenn."

He ignored Bo-Katan's noise of scepticism and annotated the adjustment upon the flimsi.

"There you are. You're on equal standing. Don't start a civil war, please."

Fenn rubbed at his forehead.

"There won't be any civil war. Ursa can have it. If you die, Korkie…"

A slip from his ever-proper etiquette, his forehead creased with worry.

"Alright, this is too macabre," Korkie decreed, rising to stand with flimsi in hand. "I hope you're happy, Ba'vodu. I'll give this to Erian for safekeeping. In the meantime, no more talk of death, please. Or adoption."

Bo-Katan wore the rebuke with an elegant shrug.

"You like children."

"We can talk about it after we all survive Endor," Korkie repeated. "We have a rather important battle to prepare for, no?"

It was a dangerous impossibility, to think of the life he might like to live after the Empire. The feeling of an infant in his arms again. A child he might finally get to keep, to know as his own. That sort of dreaming invited all sorts of disaster. Korkie wasn't much of a Jedi but it seemed an apt time to focus upon the present moment. They were upon the cusp of a great precipice in galactic history.

Ariarne tossed and sweated in restless sleep.

"Your daughter is strong in the Force. She is required by the Empire."

A step back, retreating into the comforting glow of the apartment. Arms tightening on the child.

"The Empire cannot have her. She is our own. And only just born-"

The reply was cold and detached.

"You have given up a daughter before. You know that it is not difficult."

The crying of the infant. The rising terror in the voices of her parents.

"This is not the same. You mean to hurt her. To use her for your own gain-"

A black boot striking over the threshold, a path forced into the home. That voice, somehow familiar.

"It is no different from the Jedi Order. The Empire, at least, will raise her to be strong."

"At this rate, I'm not even sure we're making it to Ord Mantell alive."

Chewie gave Leia a low rumble of reassurance at the controls beside her.

"I know what I'm doing."

"I know you do," Leia conceded. "But this karking ship…"

There was the persistent smell of burning rubber despite the fire extinguisher that had taken up permanent residence at Chewie's right hand.

"I can see why Boushh stole the Falcon," she concluded.

They'd tracked the bounty hunter and their beloved ship first through the Entralla Route and then along the Celanon Spur, narrowly missing him each time they drew close. They had, at least, caught a glimpse of the Millennium Falcon, still in one piece and still flying fast – hence their lack of success so far. But Leia had a feeling that on Ord Mantell they would succeed. The way their ship was holding up, on Ord Mantell they had to succeed. As best they could tell, Boushh seemed to be in some sort of trouble with the Black Sun syndicate, and if Leia and Chewie couldn't get near Boushh in this shit-box of a ship, perhaps the Black Sun enforcers could, and slow him down for them.

"Hold on," Chewie warned.

They dipped into their descent and the increasing availability of atmospheric oxygen in the poorly-pressurised cabin did something for Leia's headache but did more for their indolent fire beneath the control panel, which burst back into flames. Leia grabbed the extinguisher herself, Chewie preoccupied with the ship's teetering balance.

"Kriff's sakes!"

She engulfed them both in a cloud of foam and smoke haze.

"I swear to the gods, Chewie-" she managed, between coughs, "-if we don't get the Falcon back today-"

Another spray of the extinguisher, even as the ship lurched in its bumpy landing.

"I don't think we're making it off Ord Mantell in this thing," Leia croaked in conclusion.

Chewie roared his vehement agreement as he rose from the pilot's seat. Leia abandoned the fire extinguisher and set to work sorting her array of blasters and detonators, fastening them on belts across her hips and torso. She was turning into a karking bounty hunter herself. Han would have liked the irony of it, she thought.

"Alright Chewie," Leia resolved, straightening up with the familiar weight of her weapons upon her. "Today's the day."

They advanced down the ramp and into the bright sunlight, Chewie groaning his disapproval of the weather. It was hot but not Tatooine hot. The sand here was a deep red, the marketplace bustling with the sort of clamour that was universal. Familiar territory, or close enough to it, at least. The perfect place to finally catch her prey. Her eyes scanned a depot of arrivals but the Millennium Falcon was not amongst them. The bounty hunter, under the pursuit of the Black Sun syndicate, would have parked the ship somewhere more covert.

"This way?"

Chewbacca nodded his approval. He and Han knew the planet well from their own smuggling days. Leia requisitioned an unattended speeder.

"I'm not making you walk all this way in the heat. Aw, don't worry, Chewie, we'll give it back! It's a piece of shit anyway. We're doing the owner a favour."

With the Wookiee's half-hearted groan of protest - "You sound like Han!" - they zipped and weaved through traffic, out of the low-lying marketplace and into the built-up industrial zone.

"Ha! See that? Black Sun."

Leia nodded indicatively at a familiar vessel; she'd come to know the giveaways of a Black Sun-modified ship. She urged their wheezing speeder forward. If the Black Sun was close by, Boushh would be aiming to make an escape, and Leia wasn't losing the Falcon again today.

"Which way, Chewie?"

The Wookiee hung a long arm out to their left and Leia leaned into the turn. They hurtled through light-shadow-light-shadow-light as they flew in and out of overhead cover, Leia's vision almost overwhelmed by the sudden changes. But even half-blind, she couldn't miss the Falcon. Chewie gave a roar of elation in the moment she noticed it, tucked away in the back of crammed warehouse.

"What did I say? Today's the da-"

But Leia's victory proclamation was cut short as the speeder tumbled suddenly beneath them; they had been struck on the side of the vessel by a blaster bolt. She yelped and tucked her limbs protectively as she rolled, her momentum halted with a clang as she struck a stack of spare panels. She sprung to her feet and drew her blaster to cover Chewbacca, who with his greater mass had brought a cascade of junk down upon himself, but no further blaster fire came their way. The Falleen across the warehouse was instead levelling his double-barrelled blaster at a target somewhere above them; they'd been struck by accident in the Black Sun assassin's pursuit of another.

"That's our kriffing ship-thief!" Leia gasped, effortfully pulling Chewie to his feet. "Come on!"

"Stay out of it," Chewie urged. "They'll take care of each other."

"No karking way."

Leia stumbled forward over the detritus. Boushh was running for the Millennium Falcon and the blaster fire was getting ever-closer. If some good-for-nothing Black Sun employee took collateral damage out of the Falcon in the moment they'd finally found her…

"Oi!" she hollered, waving her own blaster. "Mind the kriffing ship!"

The assassin looked at her in a brief moment of infuriated bewilderment before returning his focus to his fleeing target. The next shot met Boushh solidly in his back and the cloaked bounty hunter dropped and was still. They closed in on the Falcon in synchrony, the assassin to confirm his kill and Leia to claim her ship.

"This is ours, you hear me?" she called, as they drew close. "Our ship. Was never his. Don't even think about claiming it."

The assassin looked from Leia and Chewbacca to the Millennium Falcon, amused.

"Wasn't planning on it."

Leia did not berate him his rudeness. The relief was soaking into her adrenaline-charged muscles.

"Look, Chewie! All ours again!"

Chewie loped over, grin cautious.

"Might need some fixing up."

"We'll get her in better condition than before Bespin," Leia vowed.

Meanwhile, the Black Sun assassin had confirmed his kill, Boushh's crumpled mask in hand.

"He stole from you too?"

"Uh huh."

Leia looked down at the sprawled body, wrinkled her nose in distaste.

"We weren't going to kill him, though," she remarked. "You saw how that went down, Chewie? I want it on the record for my dad that I didn't kill him."

"Sounds like I should be charging you a fee," the assassin mused.

"No chance," Leia declared. "We're spending our credits fixing our ship back up. Thanks for not shooting her, at least."

The assassin shook his head in exasperated disbelief, shouldered his blaster and turned on his heel, tossing the mask over his shoulder.

"You can tell this story to anyone else who thinks about crossing the Black Sun."

Leia picked the mask up from the floor, pondered the soft leather in her hand. She didn't think she'd be telling the story to anyone at all, actually.

"This, Chewie," she mused, "might be a good disguise."

The dreams did not abate as Ariarne had perhaps naively hoped they might, no matter how many hours she spent in Master Yoda's serene presence, no matter how many of his mantras she repeated to herself. And yet he said nothing about them. He must have known. He seemed to know everything that happened on this strange planet. But he said nothing of her failures, no encouragement nor reproach. He seemed tired. Ariarne came to sense, eventually, that if she wanted to talk of her dreams, she would have to broach the subject herself.

"I have been dreaming of my past, Master Yoda."

They were sitting together after a bout of moving meditation. Ariarne's sweat was cooling on her skin. Master Yoda had not exerted himself; she had carried him upon her back. The ancient Jedi gave a slow shake of his head. His voice was a low croak.

"Let go of the past, we must. Allow these dreams to leave you. No bearing on the present, they have."

Ariarne grimaced.

"I think they're important, Master."

"Important? No."

He was dismissive when he might once have been amused.

"The Force is bringing these visions to me," Ariarne pressed. "You say that I must listen-"

"Of the Force, these dreams are not," Yoda interrupted. "Of your longing, these dreams were born. A creeping darkness, I sense, in these visions of yours."

And it was harsh but Ariarne could not entirely disagree. She had seen a thousand visions in her life but never before had she dreamed like this. The strange, repetitive insistence of them. She had the feeling of being haunted.

"I think they're important, Master," she rephrased, "because… because the Emperor's apprentice..."

How could she say it? The story was becoming slowly clearer in her mind but it was too bizarre. She had surely had some sort of mistake. Master Yoda did not have the patience for her indecision.

"Hurt you and your family, the Emperor's apprentice has," he concluded. "Forgive her, you must. Abandon those feelings, you must."

Ariarne wondered if he was misunderstanding her deliberately.

"That's not what I meant, Master Yoda."

She steeled herself, spat out the words that she'd never given space in the daylight.

"The Emperor's apprentice never interrogated me, Master, when I was captured from the Tantive IV. She left it to Tarkin."

There was a faint droop in Yoda's ears at this.

"It doesn't make any sense," Ariarne pressed. "I was completely untrained. I refused to tell Tarkin the location of the rebel base but she could have found it. She could have learned anything she wanted from me but she wouldn't come near me. And now I think I see her in my visions and there's something that I don't understand…"

You have given up a daughter before.

"Do not follow this path," Yoda sighed. "Please, do not. To pain, to grief, to suffering, it leads."

He was pleading with her. He who had only ever given her instruction.

"I have already known these feelings, Master."

He reached his small hand to meet her own.

"And let them go now, Padawan, you must. Before somewhere dark, you are lead."

Ariarne looked at him a long moment in silence. He worried for her. He who preached non-attachment, and the letting go of fear.

"Do you know, Master?" she asked.

Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

"Do you know what I do not?"

There was a great, great pain on Yoda's face. Ariarne saw him in that moment for the centuries he had lived, the weariness of his corporal form. He was weary now, even, in spirit. His head dropped.

"Ask me this, please, do not."

"You do."

There were tears sparking at Ariarne's eyes for reasons she did not quite understand. Was she angry? Was she afraid?

"You knew her, before the Empire."

Master Yoda sighed.

"Knew her, perhaps I did. Likely a Padawan of the Jedi Order, she once was. Know the creature she is now, I cannot."

Ariarne thought of the child she had seen curled on the floor in the cave of darkness.

"At her core, Master, she must still be the same."

Yoda watched her with mingled admiration and dismay.

"Sense Light in her, you do?"

"Hurt, Master. I sense hurt in her."

The tears fell and Ariarne knew that she was grieving.

"It sounds crazy, Master, I know, but I… the visions that I've seen, I…"

She pressed the tears from her eyes and spoke the words she had never even managed to whisper in solitude.

"I think she is my sister."

Yoda said nothing for a long while. When he spoke, his voice was gentler than Ariarne had ever heard it.

"Forgive her, you must. Forgive her, and let go."

But Ariarne needed more from him; she needed the truth.

"She is, isn't she?"

"Know this, I do not," Master Yoda sighed. "Know this, I cannot."

He gave a hapless shrug.

"A resemblance, there is, perhaps, between you and a Padawan I have known long ago."

And Ariarne knew as she said it that he had sensed it from the day he first saw her.

"You've known all this time."

Yoda shook his head.

"Not known."

But suspected. He must have suspected it.

"Who was she, Master?"

"Trilla Suduri was the Padawan of Cere Junda," he murmured, eyes downcast. "Know what became of her after the fall of the Order, I do not."

There was a horrible sinking feeling in Ariarne's gut. The warrior she had seen slain aboard the Death Star…

"Darth Gelid killed her."

Her voice shook with emotion. The Master had faced her fallen apprentice and had been met with brutal violence. It must have been her. The rage had been deep and personal.

"Master Yoda-"

But she did not know what she wanted to say to him. The revelation was crushing. Yoda closed his eyes, bowed forward, tried to bring her into his calm.

"Forgive her," he repeated, "you must."

He had warned her of this on the first day they had met. Live in stillness, one does, who listens to the Force. Lives with acceptance. And perhaps Ariarne could forgive but she could not accept. Not like this. Not with their stories still so fractured and fragmented.

"I must leave, Master."

His hand tightened on her wrist.

"Strong enough to face her, Padawan, you are not."

But he perhaps realised that an insensible fear had taken hold of him, that he cared for her too much. He relinquished her from his grasp and closed his eyes, gave a long and steady sigh. The lines in his face were so deep.

"Know peace, you must," he breathed. "Before that wound, you open."

But Luke updated her every day and she knew that the end of the Empire – or the end of the Rebellion – was drawing very near now. Ariarne did not have time to know peace. Master Yoda had lived centuries and still did not seem to truly know it yet.

"I feel that the wound is open already," she professed. "I'm sorry, Master."

For she had surely hurt him. He was shrunken before her. Wilting like a plant without rain.

"I am tired," he professed. "Every day, weaker. Your fault, Padawan, this is not. The turning of the galaxy, this is."

Ariarne wanted to cry all over again. She had so much to learn and she would lose him.

"I don't have to leave just yet."

There was time, while Luke larked around the Corva sector, to be with him a little longer. To absorb just a little more of his wisdom. Eyes closed still, Yoda gave the faintest trace of a smile.

"Thank you, Padawan."

17 you are so right - Ariarne needs a hug. I'm working on it.

Couldn't resist throwing in Luke's ROTJ fashion glow-up. The Chanel boots deserve recognition.

Next chapter, a battle awaits us on Tatooine.

xx - S.