Light and Dark

In the senate arena, lightning forked from the hands of a Sith, and bent away from the gesture of a Jedi to shock Redrobes into unconsciousness.

Then there were only the two of them.

Their clash transcended the personal; when new lightning blazed, it was not Palpatine burning Yoda with his hate, it was the Lord of all Sith scorching the master of all Jedi into a smoldering huddle of clothing and green flesh.

A thousand years of hidden Sith exulted in their victory.

“Your time is over! The Sith rules the galaxy! Now and forever!”

And it was the whole of the Jedi Order than rocketed from its huddle, making of its own body a weapon to blast the Sith to the ground.

“At an end your rule is, and not short enough it was, I must say.”

There appeared a blade the color of life.

From the shadow of a black wing, a small weapon – a hold-out, an easily concealed backup, a tiny bit of treachery expressing the core of Sith mastery – slid into a withered hand and spat a flame colored blade of its own.

When those blades met, it was more Yoda against Palpatine; more the millennia of Sith against the legions of Jedi; this was the expression of the fundamental conflict of the universe itself.

Light against dark.

Winner take all.

There came a turning point in the clash of the light against the dark.

It did not come from a flash of lightning or slash of energy blade, though there were these in plenty; it did not come from a flying kick or a surgically precise punch, though those were traded, too.

It came as the battle shifted from the holding office to the great chancellor’s podium; it came as the hydraulic lift beneath the podium raised it on its tower of durasteel a hundred meters and more, so that it became a laser-point of battle flaring at the focus of the vast emptiness of the senate arena; it came as the force and the podium’s controls ripped delegation pods free of the curving walls and made of them hammers, battering rams, catapult stones crashing and crushing against each other in a rolling thunder-roar that echoed that senate’s cheers for the galaxy’s new emperor.

It came when the avatar of light resolved into the lineage of the Jedi; when the lineage of the Jedi refined into one single Jedi.

It came when Yoda found himself alone against the dark.

In that lightning-speared tornado of feet and fists and blades and bashing machines, his vision finally pierced the darkness that had clouded the force.

Finally, he saw the truth.

This truth: that he, the avatar of light, supreme master of the Jedi order, the fiercest, most implacable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known …

Just –

Didn’t –

Have it.

He’d never had it. He had lost before he started.

He had lost before he was born.

The Sith had changed. The Sith had grown, had adapted, had invested a thousand years’ intensive study into every aspect of not only the Force but Jedi lore itself, in preparation for exactly this day. The Sith had remade themselves.

They had become new.

While the Jedi –

The Jedi had spent the millennium training to fight the last war.

The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the force. The brighter his light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark, when war itself had become the Dark’s own weapon?

He knew, at that instant, that this insight held the hope of the galaxy. But if he fell here, that hope would die with him.

Hmmm, Yoda thought. A problem this is …

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He spoke softly, but not to himself.

He spoke to the Force.

And the Force answered him. Do not blame yourself, my old friend.

As it sometimes had these past thirteen years, when the Force spoke to him, it spoke in the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn.

“Too oldi was,” Yoda said, “Too rigid. Too arrogant to see that the old way is not the only way. These Jedi, I trained to become the Jedi who had trained me, long centuries ago – but those ancient Jedi, of a different time they were. Changed, has the galaxy. Changed, the Order did not – because let it change, I did not.”

More easily said than done, my friend.

“An infinite mystery is the Force.” Yoda lifted his head and turned his gaze out into the wheel of stars. “Much to learn, there still is.”

And you will have time to learn it.

“Infinite knowledge …” Yoda shook his head. “Infinite time, does that require.”

With my help, you can learn to join with the Force, yet retain consciousness. You can join your Light to it forever. Perhaps, in time, even your physical self.

Yoda did not move. “Eternal life…”

The ultimate goal of the Sith, yet they can never achieve it; It comes only by the release of the self, not the exaltion of the self. It comes through compassion, not greed. Love is the answer to the Darkness.

“Become one with the Force, yet influence still to have …” Yoda mused, “A great power than all, it is.”

It cannot be granted; it can only be taught. It is yours to learn, if you wish it.

Slowly, Yoda nodded. “A very great Jedi Master you have become, Gui-Gon Jinn. A very great Jedi master you always were, but too blind I was to see it.”

He rose, and folded his hands before him, and inclined his head in the Jedi bow of respect.

The bow of the student, in the presence of the Master.

“Your apprentice, I gratefully become.”