by Renee Ahdieh
My eyes flick to Luke, now safe in Beru’s arms. “He’s a brave boy.”
“He could have been killed!”
I open my mouth, but no words come.
Breathing heavily, Owens lowers his blaster and turns his back on me. “I will protect him,” he tells me as he walks away. “I will keep him safe.”
I look past Owen’s back. Beru catches my eye and shakes her head sadly. She ushers Luke back to the dome, Owen stalking after them. Luke glances back for a moment, before all three vanish from sight. I’m left alone with the dead, the twin suns beating down on me.
Eyes. Scream. Saber. Pain.
Eyes. Scream. Saber. Pain.
I know why I’m here, why I’m reliving this moment time and time again. This was when I failed Luke, just as I failed his father. I’d always believed—always hoped—that Owen’s anger would cool toward me, that one day I would be allowed to train young Luke in the ways of the Force. The events of this fateful morning meant that Owen never let me near the boy again. He hadn’t just been angry. He’d been scared; scared of the look we’d both seen in his nephew’s eyes. The bravery. The defiance.
We’d seen that look before, in other eyes.
“You should not have come back,” Vader tells me.
My resources are depleted, my body screaming with pain. I have no hope of winning this fight. He lunges at me; slash and counterslash, stab and riposte. The air is thick with plasma discharge, lights dancing on the edge of my vision. I’m forced back, muscles burning, breath ragged. The grip of my lightsaber is slick in my hands, my ears ringing.
Luke is near. I can feel him, and pray that Vader cannot. I have so much to teach the boy. So much to share. Why did I listen to Owen? Why did I wait too long?
Haven’t you people done enough to this family?
Now it’s too late. There’s no way to prepare Luke for what is to come. I’m leaving him with who? A smuggler and a Wookiee? Even if by some miracle they’ve found Leia, what can they do? They’re barely more than children. The Rebellion isn’t prepared for a weapon of this magnitude. No one is. And it’s all my fault.
I have failed Luke again. I can’t hold on. It is over.
Unless…
“Ben?”
Luke’s cry echoes across the landing bay. There he is, watching us fight, the open hatch of the freighter behind him. He knows full well that I cannot win. He is frozen with shock, unsure what to do, but that won’t last long. Soon, the spell will be broken and he will come running. Those brave, defiant eyes will be cut down in a blaze of trooper fire. He needs more than a toy fighter this time. He needs to escape; to save himself, not me.
Go to him.
The voice in my head is louder than it has been for years.
Yes, Master.
I am an old man. Even if I tried, I couldn’t outrun a blaster shot, not anymore. I’ll never make it to Luke’s side in time to save him.
This is where we came in.
I am Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I am dead.
I glance back at Vader and smile. I can’t even begin to imagine what he makes of that. It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is Luke.
I straighten my back, closing my eyes as I raise my saber in front of me. I don’t see the blade sweeping through the air, barely even hear its whine. I imagine Luke, cross-legged in the sand, playing with a wooden corvette.
Eyes. Scream. Saber. Pain.
Eyes. Scream. Saber. Pain.
Eyes. Scream. Saber. Pain.
“Ben! No!”
Luke cries out again, consumed with grief. I see everything at once. The blaster in his hand. Solo taking out stormtroopers. Leia calling his name. The troopers advance, guns raised. If Luke stays, he will die. If he fights, he will die.
I didn’t let that happen before, and I won’t let it happen now. I whisper the words I spoke when he was a child, words I know that only he will hear.
Run, Luke! Run!
And he does. Luke Skywalker runs and doesn’t stop. And I am at his side. From this moment, he will never be alone. He will learn, and he will grow, and I will guide him every step of the way.
We have all the time we need.
Yoda stood at the door of his hut, watching the straight streaks of sunlight tear apart the gathered gray of the sky.
He turned and looked inside.
Then back to the sky.
It was time. Probably past time. The rains had ended more than half an orbit before. Soon the sun would bear down upon Dagobah and the uplands would be too hot for even a small one like himself to bear. He had maybe a few days. Maybe less.
He sighed. Of the two seasons on Dagobah, the dry was the one he preferred. The view from the uplands reminded him of…a time and place from long ago. But by now the lower lands would have drained some, and the trees would have begun to emerge from their watery covering. It would soon be time to plant in the soggy reaches.
Planting was a bother, but even a Jedi Master needs to eat.
He looked back inside his hut again. Age, he thought, has its advantages. More and more want the young, but less and less need the old. He had felt this lessening over the last two centuries. He had sloughed off almost everything now—except those things dearest to him.
His cane, begun as a joke really, to convince the young Padawans that he was only an old and feeble Jedi. He would hobble to the class and they would make way for their limping Master. Then he would cast his cane aside and slice open the air with his lightsaber and they would gasp to see such an old and tired Master ripple with the strength and quickness of the Force. And when his lesson was over, he would take up his cane again and stump away—but they were not sure what to believe. Did he need the cane or not?
Now they would believe it.
And the blanket on his bed, made from his old friend’s cloak. How long had it been since Qui-Gon Jinn had become one with the Force? He went back inside and fingered the hem. Sometimes, one strong in the Force might leave a hint of himself in what he had owned, but now, so many years had gone by. If Yoda had felt the hint once, he felt it no longer.
And on the shelf above the bed, Obi-Wan’s small pot, rounded by his own hands. Yoda reached up and called the pot to him. Its handle was cold.
That was all, really. Once he had treasured his lightsaber, but that was lost in the ruins of the Senate chamber. He regretted that. It would have pleased him to have put the weapon into young Skywalker’s hands. He imagined her feeling its weight, and then suddenly she would be surprised at the beam that leapt out.
But she knew nothing of the Force and its ways. She had had no one to teach her.
That, thought Yoda, was possibly a mistake.
Still, he smiled. If the old needed less and less in this physical world, perhaps it was because they dwelled so much in the world of memory and the world of what might have been. There was little he loved to dwell upon more than the thought of young Skywalker coming into herself, learning of the powers that lay deep within her, and perhaps bringing to the galaxy a new age that she could not even hope to imagine.
But how could she? Who she was, she did not know!
It had been so many orbits since he had been a Master to a Padawan. But sometimes, he wished…
The hut was growing warm. It was time to pack what little there was to pack, and to move downward and away from the sun’s hot breath.
It did not take long. He stuffed what he had into a sack: a pouch of seeds gathered over the years, then the blanket, then the pot on top of that. He picked up his cane and stood at the door a moment, looking one last time at the hut he would not see for eight orbits, and then he closed his eyes and reached out to check for the droids that had once searched so pitilessly for him. He still checked whenever he left the hut, but it had been a long, very long, time since the last droid had swept past. Perhaps the Empire thought he was long dead and had ceased searching. Or, more likely, the Empire did not even care, so unimportant one ancient Jedi Master had become.
He sighed again. Ma
ybe the Empire was right. About how unimportant he had become, that was.
He started down toward the lowlands. Already many of the trees had leafed out, even though some still stood with their feet in the green and thick water. But they wouldn’t be standing in water for long. Yoda could see the water receding under the sun’s glare like something afraid of the light. Soon, the lowlands would all be marshy swamp again, and he would plant last season’s seeds. Then, before the sun began its long journey away, they would sprout. The gray clouds would come back and hold in the planet’s humid air, and the sprouts would grow and flower and yield their fruit before a quarter orbit had passed. And by then the sun would be far enough away that the rains would plunge down again, and the floods begin their inundation, and Yoda would trudge back to the uplands, carting behind him the food for the long season.
He could hear the voices of his Padawans from long ago: “What is it like to live the life of a Jedi Master?” they would ask.
If only they could see him now, he thought.
He brushed his hand across his eyes.
If only they could.
But there are worse things than Dagobah.
For much of the day, he trudged down toward the lowlands, the sand and rock beneath him growing warmer and warmer until he came to the edge of the planetary floods, where the water had barely sunk beneath the surface.
Then, he felt something on the very edge of his reach.
And he was out in the open.
This is what comes of not keeping your mind on where you are and what you are doing!
Thumping along with his cane, he headed toward the shelter of three upended rocks that might survive a blast, maybe two.
Nearly nine hundred years, and still he wanted more time. Foolish, Yoda thought.
But if he had more time, he would wish that he could have trained one more Padawan. If only he’d had the time to train her.
He reached the rocks, and then he stopped.
He felt it again.
It wasn’t a droid. Nor was it one of the Empire’s ships.
He reached out again.
It wasn’t even for him.
And then it shifted, and it was for him. That old and familiar thrum the Force carried on its back, a steady vibration, calm—not the calm of a still night, but the calm of the sea that rose and fell with sureness and ease.
It was Obi-Wan.
Yoda leaned against the stones and smiled. Their exile had been too long and too lonely. But had the two of them remained together, the Empire would surely have found them. And there was the other Skywalker to watch over—impetuous, headstrong, unruly, inattentive. He needed Obi-Wan’s eye on him. Unlike the other, whose strength and will and clarity showed all the markings of a great Jedi.
Still, as the vibration pulsed against him, Yoda felt loneliness grow. It was at least something to feel Obi-Wan’s place in the Force, but how good it would be to sit down and talk together, to walk under the stars, perhaps to spar once again—that would be a delight he almost could not bear thinking about.
And then, another vibration came—and this one, too, was familiar. This one was hard and strong, and it pulsed fiercely. In its rhythm it carried…arrogance. In its rhythm, it carried darkness.
And in its rhythm, it carried—this was the first that Yoda had ever noticed it—a terrible, angry, despairing loneliness.
Loneliness!
It was Anakin…or what had become of him. And he was in pain. And the remedy he used to soothe himself was pain—the pain of both others and himself. Yoda brought his hand to the center of his chest.
Then the two vibrations met, and their pulses fought across the back of the Force.
And that was when the searching droid suddenly came up from the lowlands, hovering over the sand, moving quickly above the flood line.
How could he not have sensed it?
Automatically Yoda’s hand dropped the cane and went to his belt, but no lightsaber had hung there for a very long time. The bulbous eye of the droid was still turned away, but it would not be so for long. Its thermal sensors would pick up even his small body, especially as its heat reflected off the rock. Slowly he let down his sack and rummaged inside. Obi-Wan’s small pot, cool to the touch. He rubbed his hand across its side and sensed his Padawan—one last time. Then he slowly set the pot on the ground.
The thermal sensor of the droid flashed from blue to red. Its bulbous eye began to swivel his way.
Yoda closed his eyes and felt the Force flowing beside him, flowing into the rock, flowing around Obi-Wan’s small pot, and flowing into the sand beneath his feet—the sand, which rose up as Yoda raised his arms, and then flung itself at the droid as if in a fierce wind, and swirled around it in a blinding storm.
And then Yoda raised his right arm even higher. He paused for a moment, then lowered his arm toward the droid, and Obi-Wan’s pot flew through the swirl of sand and into the bulbous eye, shattering it in a rush of sparks.
The explosion that came next was expected. These droids always had a self-destruct mechanism to use once damaged.
The cries from the swamps below were loud and long. Explosions were unusual in the Dagobah system. Even from this far away, Yoda could hear the scurrying of small feet and the fluty flutterings of reptilian wings, and they lasted longer than it took the pieces of the droid, large and small, to fall from the sky.
Yoda picked up his cane and went to what remained. The pot was gone—disintegrated, no doubt.
And it was right at that moment—at that exact moment—that Yoda felt Obi-Wan grow suddenly stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and then move in a quick burst into the netherworld of the Force.
And Yoda felt Anakin fall even more deeply into painful loneliness—a loneliness so terrible that Yoda almost felt pity for him. He almost wished he could speak to him, to tell him that he needn’t be lonely after all. There were…
Yoda looked down at the ground, and there was the handle of the shattered pot; somehow it had survived. But Obi-Wan was gone from this world. Yoda felt himself lower to the ground.
Obi-Wan.
And Anakin. If only what had happened to Anakin had not been shadowed and hidden from them all…No. That was not true. If only he had perceived the paths that Anakin was beginning to follow. It was his own failing. That was why it would have been so important for him to train the young Skywalker. What might she have done to bring her father back?
And to this disappointment, now, Obi-Wan gone from this world. What did this mean for that other Skywalker, whose impatience and anger were terrible weaknesses?
Obi-Wan.
For Yoda, the galaxy was so rapidly becoming emptier and emptier.
Perhaps that was why he did not sense the two new droids until they were almost upon him, drawn by the obliteration of their comrade.
Again he reached automatically for his lightsaber, and almost smiled when his hand touched nothing. For just a moment he felt how good it once was to fight with another Jedi at his back, to feel the Force binding them together, to feel their wills in one accord.
Then, Yoda looked at the two droids rushing upon him, their eyes upon him, their sensors trained toward him, their devices whirring with the robotic pleasure of fulfilling a mission.
He was old.
He raised his hand to…
A shot, and lightning ripped the air over his shoulder, struck the rock behind him, and bounced back into the sack, which burst into immediate flame.
His blanket! Qui-Gon’s cloak!
Yoda reached to the air around the two droids and pulled it closed like a curtain.
The glass of their eyes burst, the old metal bodies crumpled into each other, the droids fell into a smoking heap—and Yoda quickly stamped out the flames and pulled the blanket from the sack.
Singed, but not too badly.
He reached in again. The pouch of seeds was unharmed.
He felt Qui-Gon laughing at him, all the way from the netherworld of the Force.
He would have to keep his mind on where he was—and that is what he did the rest of that day.
He buried the droids. He probably did not need to, but it was best to be safe.
He wrapped the seeds in the blanket and tied the ends tightly together.
He reached out carefully—this time very, very carefully—and felt the atmosphere around the planet. No more droids.
He held back the loneliness. He held back a galaxy without Obi-Wan.
Down, down the hills and into the lowlands he went, the ground becoming wetter and wetter, spongy under his feet—which, he had to admit, felt cool and soothing after all the orbits of sand and rock. He came into the trees, the weeds still draining from their branches, and he heard the voices of all those who had spent the wet season hibernating beneath the waters, now coughing open their lungs to allow air in again, and stretching their wings and flapping them to dry. He would have to be sure to bury his seeds deeply and cover their scent with the springy moss.
He found his lowland house easily. It, too, had survived its hibernation beneath the water, and it looked, for the most part, undamaged. Dripping and green with mold, as always—but, he laughed, so was he. And the walls he could clean. Inside, the floors had drained; they would be dry within a day or two. The bunk was soaked through, of course, but a fire would soon set things right. It would not take long at all to resume life in the lowlands.
And he was right; it did not.
Five days later, the house was dry and tight, a fire burning brightly in its hearth. He had trimmed the blanket; he was getting smaller and smaller anyway. But the shelf where he had always set the pot was empty, and every time he looked at it, he felt a stillness where he had once felt vibration, and he remembered.
And he whispered to himself, “Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Rejoice for those who transform into the Force.”
But he was lonely.
“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”
But he was lonely, and old.
And he had failed.
He had not seen the paths the young Padawan Anakin had begun to take.
He had missed his chance with the young Skywalker.