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And yes, 17, that was a typo - fixed now. Thank you for picking it up!

Chapter 48: Lineage

There was no reason for Trilla to follow the Imperial troops to Yavin 4. The rebels were long gone and they had left behind nothing of value. The soldiers did not need her direction in the search. It was a simple mission that even they could get right. But Trilla came, nonetheless. Stalked the halls of the abandoned base. She had an important search of her own to undertake.

She'd had the idea, somewhere between Alderaanian space – which would have to be renamed, she supposed – and her return to the Emperor, that there might be something left of Cere Junda on Yavin 4. That there might be some kind of explanation as to how she could talk to her still. The path through which to free herself of this ghost. Trilla knew, of course, in her rational mind, that the pursuit was absurd; whatever witchcraft this was would not be so easily disrupted. But it would be, perhaps, a place to begin to understand. The Light Side of the Force had never promised this sort of power.

And there was something, she felt, waiting for her here. Some humming presence, just out of reach. Trilla strode through the hallways of the temple turned military base. The fleeing rebels had not gathered up all of their trinkets; some sort of lucky token made from a bit of punched-out ship metal dangled from one doorknob, another bunkroom distinguished by an old pair of pilot's goggles, pinned up against the door. The door that Trilla eventually paused before was unadorned. There could be no doubt she had found it. The Force was almost screaming at her to stop, to listen, to follow it inside.

Cere Junda had shared this room with three others. Kestis, perhaps. Trilla did not know the other signatures, those faint impressions left in the Force. Four plain pallets, stripped of their linens. Junda's roommates had gathered her possessions, it seemed, when she had failed to return from the Death Star. Nothing left. An empty set of shelves, constructed of discordant sheets of plastic and sheet metal. And yet, the hum in the Force was reaching dizzying, heightened pitch.

Trilla knelt before a pallet and knew without visible sign that she ran her fingers over the place where her former master had rested her head at night. Where she had slept, soundly, despite all she had done to her. Then, a moment of horrible realisation. She followed the pull of the Force beneath the thin mattress and found a crystal of glowing kyber.

The Force fell into abrupt silence as she clasped it in her palm. Trilla could hear only the sound of her riotous heartbeat in her ears. There was a bursting pain in her chest. It was so terribly wrong, to hold this crystal again. Junda had conceded her superiority as a duellist and was trying to kill her instead with a karking heart attack.

She had never asked what had happened to it. She had been dispossessed of her lightsaber in her capture and been taken to Ilum to choose another after her turning. She had never allowed herself to ask what might have become of the crystal she had poured her soul into, in the years that her soul had been a stranger's. The matter had been irrelevant. She did not know what she was supposed to do with this knowledge now.

"Damn you, Junda!"

She clenched the crystal so tightly that it would have drawn blood from her palm, if not for the thick leather of her gloves. It flared red and lost its colour again. Her arm began to shake. She could not do this again. Not here. Not now. Not while she could sense the presence of her hells-damned former master so near beside her.

"I took it when I escaped from Nur."

A real voice. A real blasted voice in this kriffing room she never should have entered.

"When I gave into Darkness and killed everyone in that room. I summoned it from the belt of the soldier who had captured you and taken your 'saber as a prize."

Trilla trained her gaze firmly upon her own feet and hoped to the stars she was hallucinating the faint glimmer of blue light in the periphery of her gaze. She had vowed never to speak to her, had told her Master that she did not listen to this strange voice from beyond the grave, but she spoke to her now, voice low and determined.

"Get away from me."

The presence remained.

"I should have taken you, Trilla."

And that was voice so gentle, heavy with shame. Trilla gritted her teeth and did not turn.

"You didn't take me," she reminded her. "You left me behind."

Her voice was trembling, blast it.

"You cannot ask me to forgive you. It is too late."

"I am not here to ask your forgiveness."

Another flare of red in the crystal, as Trilla's anger surged.

"You are here for nothing!" she snarled. "Except to hurt me again."

She wanted to turn to face the ghost. To scream in her face. But she was not strong enough and growled her frustration at the floor instead.

"At this rate, Junda, Sidious will kill me for my failures and you'll have haunted me in vain."

"You are not a failure, Trilla."

Kriff's sakes. There was no blasted point speaking to her. The ghost was as foolish – madder, still – than the corporal Junda had been before her.

"Leave me," she commanded. "Or will you watch me bleed this crystal?"

The room fell silent in the wake of the threat. Trilla stood, alone, breath heaving. The kyber still the faintest blue in her hand. And the distant sound of her officers, surveying the last of the rebel base, wondering where she had gone.

"So what next for you?"

Korkie sidled over during a lunch break as Anakin, for the first time in a long time, drank his fill of water. They had nearly completed the housing complex Sabine and Hera had recruited their assistance with and the rebels across the galaxy, in the wake of the destruction of the abandoned base on Yavin 4, had begun to cautiously move and operate again. Hoth was by all reports miserable, but the best of their options. Construction for a new rebel base would begin imminently.

"I don't suppose you want to come to Mandalore?" Korkie prodded.

"And have my kids follow me?" Anakin asked. "Better not."

They were lucky enough to have survived the Death Star; Mandalore would be worse. Anakin felt a stir of guilt but could not follow him into that battle. Korkie shrugged, non-plussed.

"That's alright. Plenty of other work to be done in the galaxy. You could even depose the Emperor for me while I'm away, if you were feeling very generous."

The teasing suggestion had a vein of sincerity in it. Anakin glared at his vod'ika, who raised his hands in surrender.

"Sorry, sorry. Joke in poor taste. Ahsoka banned me from asking you to do that."

And Anakin didn't exactly sit comfortably with how Ahsoka seemed more teacher than apprentice these days, somehow older and wiser and stronger than him, but he was grateful for her. She was right; he couldn't face Sidious. Did not want to be so much as on the same planet as him ever again.

"I've got other plans, anyway. I'm going back to Tatooine."

Korkie's brows shot up.

"Back to Tatooine? After we finally gave you an excuse to leave?"

Anakin sighed. Yes, he hated it. He hated the windswept, burning desert as much as Korkie did. But it was his home and his people lived there.

"You won't remember this, Korkie," Anakin muttered, "but when you were first presented to the Mandalorian public, on the day that your mother adopted you as her foundling, you were wearing a crown. On your little baby head."

He chuckled a little with the memory of it. Korkie had grown every bit as regal as his mother, stood tall as though wearing a crown always. But it had seemed so bizarre, that day, upon that tiny infant. Anakin had been transfixed by his royal vod'ika, while Siri Tachi and Garen Muln had shrieked with laughter and teased Obi Wan about the resemblance.

"Not a proper crown. This leather strap studded with precious stones and the feathers of the ve'vut'galaar. Wrapped in the silks of the Clan Kryze."

Korkie gave a faint smile.

"I've seen the footage."

"You were named for a great Mandalorian warrior and told that you would rule them all, one day. But when I was a baby, Korkie, born into slavery on Tatooine, my mum named me Anakin."

Korkie nodded thoughtfully.

"I never asked what your name meant."

"It comes from folklore too. A slave story. A bringer of freedom."

Anakin studied his metallic hands. He was not the same person that he had been. So much had been lost. But he was Anakin, still. There was enough time, he thought, to become the Anakin he had been meant to be.

"She told me, Korkie, from as early as I can remember, that the desert had given me life and that I was born to free the slaves. Long before I was the Chosen One, Korkie, I was born to free the slaves."

"I didn't know that."

An apology, proffered in the Force. Anakin waved a hand, dismissed it.

"How could you have known? I ignored it myself. I ignored it for many years, living amidst the Jedi."

He heaved a sigh.

"I told myself I would return to Tatooine after my training, after Ahsoka, after the war…"

The after that had never come.

"But I've been thinking about it, Korkie," he pressed on. "More than ever since mum died, I've been thinking…"

He looked at Korkie and tried to make him understand.

"There were slaves on Tatooine in the greatest years of the Republic and there are slaves on Tatooine under the Emperor. It's a separate fight, Korkie. And it's the most important fight to me."

"That's…"

And Korkie looked so much like his kriffing father, when he was thoughtful like that. Hand grazing his chin. Gave Anakin the strangest urge to reach for him, embrace him, like a crazy person. To feel at home again.

"That's completely fair and sensible," he decided, eventually.

Anakin blinked, surprised.

"Thank you. You've outgrown your brattiness."

Korkie snickered.

"Long ago."

He cocked his head, thoughtful.

"So what are you doing then? On Tatooine?"

Anakin shrugged.

"I've been helping slaves escape on a small scale for many years now. But the Hutts need to go. Everything about that place needs to change. The whole economy…"

He sighed.

"I wish I had Padme with me."

Korkie reached out a hand in sympathy, suffused some warmth through his touch upon his shoulder. After all these years, it still near broke Anakin to say her name. How many times had he gathered the courage to speak of her, in all the years she had been gone? Not enough. It might have been less than the metallic fingers on his prosthetic hands.

But it was true. The grief had steadied into something survivable but he missed her now more than ever. In a galaxy that was finally beginning to change. Padme had known about change and how to steer it. She had not been afraid of it, as he was. She would have known what to do now.

"She could have fixed it all," Korkie agreed, finding a faint smile. "The mighty Queen of Tatooine, huh?"

With her hair in braids, as on the day he had first met her. No crown upon her head. Only her own radiance.

"She could be tough when she wanted to," Korkie mused. "Would have given those slavers the boot."

Anakin managed a dry laugh.

"I wouldn't wish that upon her."

"No," Korkie agreed, sobering.

Anakin took a steadying breath.

"The slavers will have to contend with me instead."

"To their detriment," Korkie observed, with a wry smile.

Anakin shrugged. He did not feel so fearsome anymore as he once had been. They plodded out of the construction site and into open air, where Luke, Leia and Ariarne were engaged in combat lessons under Sabine's stern tutelage. Anakin might have advised against giving his children lengths of metal pipe as makeshift 'sabers, but he would let Sabine learn that lesson for herself.

"The trouble is, of course," he mused. "I know there's no chance in all the hells that I'll convince them to come back with me."

Ahsoka, getting up from where she had been sitting with Hera and Jacen, eating lunch, came to join them.

"What's going on?"

"Anakin's going back to Tatooine," Korkie summarised. "Trying to figure out what to do with the kids."

"You'll look after them, right, Snips? Repay me the favour?"

Ahsoka blinked, taken aback.

"Repay the favour? Are you asking me to train them?"

"I…"

Anakin sighed.

"I don't know."

He had never wanted them trained. But they had broken out into the enormous galaxy now and there would be no bringing them back.

"I can't train them," Ahsoka pointed out. "I never graduated."

"Bantha-shit," Anakin retorted. "You're a better Jedi than I am."

"We should send them to Tanalorr," Ahsoka proposed. "Barriss will train them."

"Barriss?" Anakin repeated. "Speaking of Jedi who didn't finish their training, Ahsoka, and for a far more questionable reason-"

"Barriss came good," she told him.

"And where in the stars is Tanalorr?"

Ahsoka shared an uncertain glance with Korkie.

"Tanalorr is…"

"Tanalorr is our most valuable secret," Korkie explained, voice low. "Hidden planet. Not like Yavin 4 or Hoth. Proper hidden. You tell no one about it, obviously. It was the end-point of our refugee runs, back in the days of the Inquisitors. The new Jedi Order is growing there."

Anakin blinked. Sure, he'd spent a few years on the farm not answering many comm calls, but how could he have missed-

"You're making a new Jedi Order?"

"It was Mace's idea first, and then Cere took the lead," Korkie recounted. "Now it's Barriss who does most of the teaching. Cal Kestis helps out, between missions. Jaro Tapal's former Padawan. Cere finished training both of them. They're better qualified than Ahsoka or I."

Anakin pondered this. He didn't really believe anyone was a better Jedi than Ahsoka. But that wasn't the point.

"I guess that's a good place for them," he admitted. "Hidden, safe."

"On the other hand," Korkie mused. "What about Yoda? Is he still in that blasted swamp?"

"On Dagobah?" Ahsoka asked. "I guess so."

"And has anyone bothered to visit him?"

Ahsoka shrugged.

"I didn't get the impression he really wanted visitors."

"I'm sure he doesn't," Korkie agreed. "But I think once he met Luke and Leia, he'd change his mind, you know?"

Anakin rolled his eyes.

"He thought I was too old at nine-standard."

"And you proved him wrong."

"That's very kind of you to say. But I don't think I did."

"He'll be bored," Korkie insisted. "He's spent nearly two decades recuperating. The rest of us have moved on with our lives, haven't we, since the Order fell?"

"You're terribly unsympathetic sometimes," Ahsoka reproached him.

Korkie ignored the reprimand.

"I think that's a better idea," he decided. "That gives us a way to start bringing Yoda out of exile. Maybe he'd take some part in the Rebellion, one day."

Anakin suppressed a laugh.

"You think Luke and Leia are going to help him rediscover his love of teaching?"

"Why wouldn't they?"

Anakin glanced pointedly at the open-air dojo where Luke was wailing about unsportsmanlike conduct; Leia had struck him across the shins.

"Yoda will pull them into line," Korkie assured him. "I'm sure he's seen worse in his however-many-hundred-years."

Anakin shook his head with a wry smile.

"Fine. You'll have to make the flight to Dagobah, then. I'm leaving it to you to convince him it's a good idea."

"They're planning to ship us off somewhere," Leia announced. "For training."

Luke nearly choked on his water.

"Training?"

Leia absently twirled her metal staff.

"Not the Mandalorian kind."

Luke's eyes widened with realisation.

"Oh. Woah. Cool."

"Is that really a surprise?" Leia reproached. "Weren't you listening at all?"

"Listening to a conversation that's not meant for our ears happening about fifty metres away?" Luke grumbled. "No, Leia. I wasn't. You know I don't do that."

"Can't do that."

Luke rolled his eyes. Ever since the gambling venture, when Leia's abilities in the field of mind-reading had become properly apparent, she had been insufferably high and mighty about it all.

"It's not a talent, Leia. It's rude."

"It's a skill!" Leia protested. "A very useful one."

"Whatever," Luke grumbled. "Who do they say is going to train us, then?"

"I didn't get that bit, exactly," Leia admitted. "I think it's someone we don't know."

Luke's shoulders slumped in disappointed.

"I hoped it was going to be Ahsoka. Korkie says she's an even better duellist than he is."

Leia wrinkled her nose, scuffed at the ground with her makeshift weapon.

"I don't think I'm really interested in all that old-fashioned knight stuff," she reasoned. "A blaster works fine. And I can already do all the things with the Force that I want to. I'd rather keep working on the rebellion than go away somewhere for more training."

His sister was crazy. Proper crazy. Luke couldn't think of anything better than finally being trained to be the Jedi Knight he knew he could be. The hero his dad had tried to shelter him from becoming all these years.

"Are you just saying that because you're no good at this?"

He levitated her pipe segment, twirled it in the air, and placed it in its pile. Leia glared at him.

"That's a party trick, Luke. Listening and talking like I can is actually useful."

"Learning to be a Jedi Knight isn't a party trick," Luke countered. "We've got to kill the Emperor if we want to end all this."

"Then you'll build your own Empire, will you?" Leia challenged. "With what brains?"

Ariarne was sitting on a stack of recycled bricks, watching the back and forth with the faint amusement of someone watching a sports match, eating her ration bar.

"Fine," Luke conceded. "Whatever. But you remember what Korkie says about blasters."

Leia rolled her eyes.

"Korkie's a snob. I am uncivilised. And so are you. Tatooine born and raised, remember?"

"I guess that's true."

Luke turned to Ariarne.

"You're the one who should be training as a Jedi Knight, then, with your royal heritage."

Ariarne looked up at him.

"I don't have any royal heritage," she pointed out.

"Sure, you do. Royal upbringing, at least."

Why was he so karking clumsy with his words? He'd gone and reminded her of her two sets of lost parents again.

"What I meant is that Korkie would say you're far too dignified for a blaster," he clarified.

Leia shot Luke a glance. There was a teasing question in the Force.

Are you trying to give a compliment?

Luke glared in return.

"My parents never wanted me trained," Ariarne told them. "I don't think even Korkie wanted me to be trained. He only taught me to shield."

"Our dad did the same," Luke sighed. "But times are changing, I guess. For everyone."

"What do you want?" Leia asked. "What do you want to do?"

Ariarne looked surprised to be asked. It was a question she perhaps had never been taught to consider. She had been raised to be the Queen of Alderaan. And now Alderaan was gone and had taken all of her future with it.

"I want to understand the Force when it speaks to me," she decided, eventually. "So that I can make the right decisions. And protect everyone."

Leia gave a gentle smile.

"Sounds like you want to be trained, then."

"And with a lightsaber too, surely?" Luke pressed. "Tell me you want to learn with me and not be all stuffy and boring like Leia."

Leia scowled.

"You know you don't have to insult me to get your point across."

Ariarne looked to Luke with a tentative smile.

"Yeah. Fine. Sure. I guess we could learn together."

Nothing made one feel so old as freighting three teenagers across the galaxy. They ate with the ravenous appetites of the still-growing, made jokes Korkie did not entirely understand and seemed entirely impervious to the need for sleep until finally giving in late at night and sleeping through the morning like champions.

"We're nearly at the point where we could jump out to Hoth," Korkie mused, consulting the navi-comp. "Are you sure you don't want to stay on until Dagobah?"

Leia looked at him, unimpressed.

"Totally sure. I've got better things to do than meditate in the swamp."

She stretched her legs from where she had been curled up, data-pad in her lap.

"Besides," she went on. "Three Padawans is far too many for a millennia-old cave hermit to handle. You'd give him a heart attack, Korkie, if you brought us all there at once."

Luke, who had been fruitlessly inspecting the ship's pantry for perhaps the third time since dinner, cast his sister an irritated look.

"We're doing more than just meditating, Leia. Besides, what are you going to do on Hoth? Argue with Han all day long?"

Leia looked up from the data-pad, expression deliberately bland.

"Actually, I was planning on a mission to Cyrkon. Alliance spies have fled there from Taanab and need some support getting out. Then there's the matter of displaced Alderaanians who were off-planet at the time of its destruction. And then I get the feeling that Mon Mothma might appreciate some help getting her Alliance Council back into line after the schism over Scarif and I think I've got a decent chance at persuading-"

"I still think you're just going to see Han," Luke grumbled.

Leia raised an arched brow.

"Well, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to convince you otherwise if you're not listening to a word I say. Besides, I don't know why you're being so hateful. Han did save your life."

"He saved Korkie's life," Luke corrected. "That fighter was nowhere near me. I think he's only sticking with the Rebellion because he's realised it's safer than doing jobs for Jabba."

Leia shrugged.

"Probably. But who cares what Han's here for? Han's got nothing to do with anything."

"Uh huh," Luke drawled. "Han's got nothing to do with anything, except that-"

"Alright, alright, ad'ika," Korkie interrupted.

It was the sort of argument that could go in circles for infinity.

"You've convinced me, Leia," he announced, sitting down at the ship's controls. "We're jumping to Hoth and I'm leaving you there and then Luke's going to behave himself and we're all going to have some peace and quiet."

It had taken years. And the years were so much longer now than they once had been. But on Dagobah, there was peace. On Dagobah, there was balance. Darkness, yes. But Light, also, in perfectly weighted proportion. There was enough in this ancient place to need nothing in the galaxy beyond. It could be forgotten, almost, that there was a galaxy beyond this microcosm at all. Until a battered freighter crashed into the swamp in the year that they would one day could 0 ABY: Year Zero, After the Battle of Yavin.

"Even Anakin's less of a recluse than you are, these days."

The man that strode elegantly down the ramp and made an easy leap over the bubbling mud onto solid ground was a crooked-nosed and filled-out iteration of the blonde-haired boy who had once walked with the same confidence all the way through the Jedi Temple and into the Halls of Healing to visit his father without a visitor's pass in the peak of the Civil War. He knelt before Yoda and wrinkled his nose only in faint disgust as his armoured knee sank a little into the mud.

"Forgive my imposition, Master Yoda. I come with two younglings I'd like you to meet."

Yoda watched the far less elegant progress of two teenagers as they tried to find their way from the ship's ramp to the bank upon which he stood.

"Sinking, your ship is, young Korkaran."

Korkie cast a disinterested gaze over his shoulder, gave an almost imperceptible wave of his hand. The ship lifted and came to settle upon the muddy bank, the teenagers clutching at each other in their efforts not to fall.

"Younglings, these are not," Yoda observed.

Korkie shrugged.

"No. But both kind of my babies."

The visitors arrived, somewhat jelly-legged, beside them. A young man, bright like a star in the Force, and a young woman, cautiously guarded. Both seemed rather unhappy with their companion's assessment.

"We're not babies!" the girl protested.

"And we're not related," the other grumbled.

Korkie gave an indulgent smile and turned back to Yoda.

"Luke Skywalker, of obvious parentage. And Ariarne Organa."

"Of unknown parentage," Ariarne supplied.

"Leia Skywalker sends her regards," Korkie went on. "She's declined training at this stage. A budding rebel occupying herself with a mission to Cyrkon, I believe."

Training. The young Mandalorian was a boy no longer but he was still presumptuous, impetuous. Still far more a prince than a Jedi.

"Brought them here, you have, for training?" Yoda repeated.

Had he not made it abundantly clear, in his choice of new home, that he lived only in communion with the Force now? He had failed as the Grand Master of the Jedi and he understood now that he never should have claimed that role to begin with. This was no galaxy for Knights and peacekeepers. This was a galaxy of darkness. To try to assert any sort of control, to pretend at any sort of knowledge, was foolish. It was better, he knew now, to accept one's insignificance in the galaxy and to live as one small cell in the enormous Force, rather than consider oneself its agent.

"They're a little old, I know," Korkie admitted. "But it simply wasn't feasible until now."

Yoda glared at him.

"Feasible now, it is not."

"You can sense their power," Korkie insisted.

"Force-blind, I am not."

Certainly, yes, he could sense their power. The Skywalker boy was radiant with unbridled light and the orphan beside him spelled greater trouble still; Yoda could feel her, already, in communion with the intricacies of the Force around them. Power. The so-called younglings were what the Jedi Order would have deemed powerful, yes. But now, in this galaxy… power was an illusion, and that illusion caused pain and suffering.

"Such power would be dangerous, would it not, left untrained?" Korkie prompted.

Yoda shook his head.

"A little training, far more dangerous, it is, than none at all."

Korkie rolled his eyes.

"I'll trust you to train them properly, Grand Master."

"Too old, they are."

"You'd do a better job of it than I would, I'm sure."

Yoda narrowed his gaze at the young Mandalorian, probing him in the Force. It was a bluff.

"Intend to train them yourself, you do not."

"Not now," Korkie admitted. "I've got Mandalore to reclaim. But afterwards, sure, I could teach them. I'll teach them in all my specialties: falling in love at first sight and fighting in anger and nightmares every night-"

Yoda whacked the impudent soldier in his armoured shins.

"Deliberately belligerent, you are being."

Korkie smiled with the apparent compliment.

"Well, I am a Mandalorian."

Yoda turned his gaze from the lost cause before him and looked instead to the two supposed younglings brought to him for teaching. They didn't have Korkie's overconfidence nor stubbornness and could perhaps be persuaded to leave Dagobah of their own accord.

"Jedi Knights, you wish to be?" he asked. "A Jedi Knight, this fool is not."

He whacked Korkie again, this time unawares. He gave an indignant yelp as he lost his balance and touched his princely hand to the mud.

"I don't go around calling myself Jedi," he grumbled. "They know I'm not."

"No longer any place in this galaxy for Jedi Knights, there is," Yoda decreed, ignoring him, walking to approach the two young ones instead. "Asked us, the Force never did, to fight a war."

"That's not what you said twenty years ago when Kamino offered up-"

"Learned, I have, since the Clone Wars," Yoda snapped. "Learned, Korkaran, perhaps you have not."

Korkie scowled.

"I've learned plenty."

"And yet still a fool, you are."

The teenagers shared an uncomfortable glance. The younger of the two dropped to her knees.

"Forgive us, Master Yoda. It was not our intention to disturb you."

"Of little importance, intention is."

"I have not come to see you out of desire to fight in any war," she pressed on. "Only because the Force speaks to me, Master Yoda. And I wish to learn to listen."

The ancient Jedi stared into her bright eyes and felt it all; the fear, the regret, the what-if-I-had and the next-time-I-will-

"Tell you, the Force does not, to save those who are dear to you," Yoda counselled. "To listen to the Force, young one, is not as you believe it to be. Live in stillness, one does, who listens to the Force. Lives with acceptance."

Korkie, who had been occupied scratching mud from his palm, looked down at them in disapproval.

"The Jedi Code teaches compassion, Master Yoda. There is no compassion in eternal swamp meditation."

Compassion. It had been a flaw from the start. For how to delineate compassion from attachment? From one's own selfishness, seeking the approval and fulfilment only altruism could bring?

"I know the Code didn't get everything right, but I think you're throwing out the wrong parts."

"Care for your opinion, young Korkaran, I do not."

The young man spluttered; he had grown accustomed to being heard. Yoda focused his gaze upon the teenager kneeling before him.

"An ability to glimpse the future, you have."

Ariarne grimaced.

"It is never clear enough. I cannot really see it. I hope to train so that I may-"

"No."

Yoda turned and walked away from her, waving his gimer stick in disapproval.

"You are no Jedi, Korkaran Kryze. But know, you should, that great danger, such a pursuit holds. Told your child this, you should have."

Korkie blinked his surprise.

"In the first instance, Master Yoda, I didn't really know. And anyhow, I should think it better to teach Ariarne to listen with clarity and to place her visions in context than to be left with the confusion and anxiety of not knowing-"

"Nearly lost to the Dark Side, Anakin Skywalker was," Yoda declared, "for fear of the future."

The three travellers shared slack-jawed gaze.

"Saved only by the sacrifice of Obi Wan Kenobi, he was," he summarised, in their shocked silence.

"My dad tried to kill the Emperor," Luke protested.

Yoda hummed his disagreement and he shuffled over to inspect the large backpack that Luke had placed upon the ground.

"Not so simple, Anakin's visit to the Chancellor's office was. A false move, Darth Sidious made, when he destroyed Obi Wan Kenobi. Lost Anakin, he did. But had he-"

"I didn't think Jedi were supposed to indulge in hypotheticals," Korkie snapped. "Forget it, Luke. It was a terrible karking night and the Emperor had everyone caught in his games. He had fooled Yoda as much as he had our fathers."

Yoda's ears drooped in acquiescence.

"Only mean to urge caution, I do."

"Again, Master Yoda," Korkie sighed. "You'd be far better able to teach caution if you agreed to train them."

Yoda harrumphed his displeasure. The path was not so clear to him as it was in Korkaran Kryze's young mind. Yes, he could train them. As he had trained Dooku, and Dooku had trained Jinn, and Jinn had trained Kenobi, and Kenobi had trained Skywalker and both had borne their own children and the lineage with the addition of Tano had turned into an utter mess and it was preposterous, was it not, to suggest that the way to fix it all might be…

"Master Yoda, those are our rations!" Ariarne cried. "We've travelled very lightly, please don't-"

He tossed the dried meat over his shoulder and inspected a piece of what might have been some sort of reconstituted starch.

"Grown so tall, you have, despite terrible food…"

"Fine! Fine. That's enough. We're going."

Korkie reached down and pulled the lunchbox from Yoda's grasp.

"Never mind, ad'ika. I'll take you to Barriss and Cal. They'll be far better teachers than-"

"Offee?" Yoda asked. "Kestis?"

Korkie ignored him, zipping the lunchbox back into the rucksack and lifting it onto Luke's shoulders.

"Trained Jedi for eight-hundred years, I have! What know Offee and Kestis of teaching?"

"They're willing teachers, for starters," Korkie advised him. "They're open-minded. Creating a new path for the Jedi Order. Permitting life-partners."

"Life-partners?" Yoda spluttered.

"Cal's basically married," Korkie answered pertly, before turning to the youngest of their crew. "Come on, Ariarne, let's go. This was one of my not-so-excellent ideas. At least we tried."

"I just-"

Ariarne turned, gazed at the misty swamp around them.

"I feel so much, here."

She was reaching when she should have been still, looking when she should have simply been breathing. She had so much to learn.

"Allow these younglings to be trained by Padawans, you will?"

Korkie shrugged.

"Cal and Barriss completed their training with Cere Junda. You're two decades behind, Master."

"Realise you, the immense power of your foundling?"

Ariarne blinked in confusion. Korkie rubbed his forehead with long-suffering patience.

"For the last time, Master Yoda, that is why I brought them to you."

They stood in tenuous silence. The swamp hissed and bubbled. The insects clicked and chattered.

"Follow me," Yoda sighed. "Make you all some proper food, I will."

Anakin missing Padme makes me so sad. But I'm proud of him fighting for what matters. Anakin being named to free slaves is a concept inspired by Fialleril via Leraiv Snape's Revenge Derailed - a beautiful beautiful story.

LordAries, I hope you enjoyed our swamp gremlin. Dagobah-era Yoda is an icon.

I ran out of space in this chapter - we have more of those promised re-surfacing forgotten characters next chapter, as we finally turn our attention back to Mandalore.

xx - S.