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It is in their code to be trained by those that came before them. To be taught the ways of the Jedi and the Force by those with the knowledge and capacity to teach. They could be taught in a way that they would learn. It was in their code to have but one Padawan at a time and that they take on this Padawan when both the Knight and the Youngling were ready. There was always the two. For every Apprentice there was a Master. For every Master there was an Apprentice.
It is in their code to be trained by those that came before them. To learn from their own mistakes and teach the future to be better than them. To ensure that the Jedi would continue to prosper long after they were gone. To ensure those they trained where the best that they could be. The best of Jedi. That the Apprentice could take on the advice and teachings of their Master and teach their Padawans the shared knowledge that had been passed on for generations of Jedi. It was their shared code, a shared suffering, a shared knowledge and it was the part of them that had to be preserved. That was their code. That was why they made sure that it was preserved and that it could be passed on.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was often headstrong, too eager to remind his Master that he was almost ready. His Master knew this too. He had taught his Padawan all that he could teach. There were things he himself was still learning but they were only ideas. It wasn’t a secret he could divulge so he refrained from indulging his Padawan with incomplete tricks.
They were diplomatic. Even when the Padawan was unsure he knew how to raise his concerns in a way that would be heard, in a way that would be listened to. He knew how to speak up and say that he had a fear of what the boy could represent. Of what the boy could be.
Their code says they can have but one Padawan and Obi-Wan was released in favour of this boy. This boy who may be the prophetic Chosen One to bring balance to the Force. This boy of great power and great emotion. All of the council could feel the fear that the boy held in his heart; the intangible fear that came with attachments. Family was a thing too powerful to divide.
The council were still making their decision when the duel came. It was their last together as Apprentice and Master, as it became the Master’s last. Obi-Wan tried to aid his master, tried to meet blow for blow against the attacker but he was too late. He could do nothing but scream as his Master was cut down in front of him with too many barriers dividing them. He could do nothing but avenge his fallen Master, not knowing if he was cutting down the Apprentice or the Master. Qui-Gon Jinn died ready to take on a new Padawan and in his place Obi-Wan would have done nothing less than take on the boy himself, despite his own fears. This was the last act he could do. The last lesson to be learnt from his Master.
Sheev Palpatine was evil. He was corruption in human form and he let those that wanted to spread his corruption find him. Soon he had those that came to him looking for a Master. Darth Sidious, alone since he had killed his own Master in what he referred to as an ironic twist of fate, took on his first Apprentice. Red of skin and blood and heart, he took the hate of Darth Maul and wove it into something more dangerous. He gave him a weapon and a cause. He was impatient to wait for the Republic to fall where Sidious bided his time. This was a part of his long game. This was a step on his path. It had been decided that this would be the way. He had decided it.
He took his Apprentice, lead him to the battle and told him to wipe them out. They both wanted to wipe out the snivelling Jedi with their righteous code. They were on the path to destruction and they must be destroyed. If his first Apprentice would be felled then he would find another. Darth Sidious would corrupt as many as he needed to in order to rid the Republic of the Jedi. He was the Master now, the one in charge.
He corrupted others. He took brave Jedis, great Jedis and lead them to the power of the Sith. Count Dooku was a great Jedi trained by Master Yoda himself. He was powerful and strong yet he was weak.
Master Yoda had many apprentices in his time, took on many Padawan learners over the period of his life. He trained great Jedis, nurtured them to be the best they could. Taught them to trust in the Force. He lost some along the way. They either died or were killed or were stolen by the dark to be reclaimed as Sith.
Count Dooku was one of them. Yoda had trained him in the Jedi ways, had taught him to fight with a lightsaber: the weapon of power and majesty. Taught him how to use the Force with patience and control.
Palpatine taught him how to use those abilities for power. To gain power and hold it over others.
Yoda saw his own failings glinting off of the red saber his old Apprentice now carried. He saw his failings in his inability to save his Apprentice from succumbing to the power of the Dark. He saw his failings in the great Jedi that lay defeated off at the side.
Yoda took his own lightsaber and readied himself to fight against an Apprentice that was no longer his but an Apprentice of the Dark Side.
They were power and majesty, strength and skill. They were older but not wearier for it but wiser and they knew how the control of the Force worked. They knew that this was the way of the Force, for them to fight against each other after time had passed and everything had changed.
While far away, and ultimately too close, as Darth Sidious put his plans in place, Obi-Wan Kenobi took on the mantle left to him. He became the Master of his own Padawan, a young boy too old to be a Youngling. Years behind the Younglings in training and miles ahead in power, he was dangerous and reckless and brave and headstrong. He was the worst of Obi-Wan Kenobi as a youth with his own brand of insolence that could only have come from starting training too young.
They worked well together but there was also a friction there. Anakin was too impatient, wanting to be ready when Obi-Wan wanted to give him time. Anakin wanted to be free of his Master, wanted to be his own man with his own seat on the council. They thought he was too young and too headstrong and Obi-Wan knew that he was. But still he tried.
They went on missions and took lessons from their mistakes. They learnt the ways of each other: knowing when one would run and when the other would sweep in at the last minute in a flashy speeder to pick his Master up as he fell out of the sky. They knew that regardless of what other messages may have been sent subliminally between them or communications with the Council that they could rely on each other to show up and rescue the other. Despite all of the tension there was still a valid attachment. They were okay for now. The darkness was coming but still Obi-Wan was patient in the face of the light, and still trying in quiet desperation to make his Apprentice stay with him instead of running off on his own.
Then they gave him his own. Ahsoka Tano. She became his Apprentice and so the Apprentice became the Master. Master Kenobi had asked when Anakin would be ready for his own Apprentice. The Master was told that a Padawan would only slow his Apprentice down. Kenobi had smiled for he knew his Apprentice. He knew that he was ready.
Master Yoda did too. Ahsoka came not to be trained by Kenobi, but by Skywalker. She ran rampant, confident in her skills and ideas, nimble and swift and a little off-book. She was a mirror of her new Master.
He hadn’t wanted her to begin with, didn’t want the responsibility, didn’t want this Youngling trailing behind him. He didn’t want to get rid of her when they gave him the chance. He’d only been her Master for a few hours and had spent most of that time complaining about it but he was her Master nonetheless and he was finding that he liked having her around. They challenged each other on everything - plans, actions, execution. But it was a challenge they both wanted to meet head on. They were both in it now.
Yes, there was a war and there were tensions and secrets. But there was a young Togruta Padawan who was in need of a Master who could be there for her; who could be exactly the Master she needed to grow into a great Jedi.
They were conned into it but came out of it to their advantage: more learnered, stronger and wise.
Palpatine’s weapon was the corruption of their prophecy.
Palpatine was the snake whispering in Anakin’s ear, feeding on his fears and worries and drawing him into the shadows. He listened where the Jedi would not and lured Anakin into an emotional trap with a few words.
His great plan now had a knight.
Palpatine could turn Anakin with a few timed words and a subtle indication for orders.
He had found his new Apprentice when he made Anakin kill his previous apprentice in front of him. Dooku was unarmed and fell to the deadly power of his persuasion with a command.
After that it was easy to manipulate the young Jedi into someone who performed the actions of his new Master. He gave rise to Darth Vader: a Sith hell-bent on preserving the life of his wife. A man who thought with his emotions was too easy to manipulate into who you needed him to be.
Anakin was weak and easily tempted over to the dark. He listened to fear, kept his rage and let love dictate his actions. The Jedi council didn’t want him so the Sith stole him away.
Darth Vader was born from the neglect of the Jedi to pay attention to a young man and their focus to make him all that they wanted him to be. It was all they had tried to stop in the form of their Chosen one. He was the Chosen One, but not of the Jedi and their council but of the Sith who turned him to enact their final plan.
Luke Skywalker was nineteen when he was presented with a lightsaber for the first time. He had gone looking for a local legend, a man of such mystery that he wasn’t even sure if he existed and found exactly what he had been searching for. The lightsaber was the key, a family heirloom that was now being passed on in ways that a lightsaber never could have been before. It was light in his hand but it was so heavy. It was a weapon but it was also his father’s. It was a connection to all that he’d lost and never had.
He had never had training. He had been sheltered from the Jedi and the ways of the Force on purpose. They decided as a council that Luke should be kept hidden. There were so few Jedi left, so few that had survived the massacre that there was no one left to teach him. One of the only ones left watched over him and protected him, ready for the day that the boy would seek him out. Then he would help him prepare.
When Obi-Wan Kenobi, restored to an old name long forgotten, was struck down by the man he had once called Apprentice the duties fell to Master Yoda. The oldest Jedi left, left sequestering in a swamp in the Outer Rim. Luke became the Apprentice of two old Masters. One had trained many others, watching them rise and fall. The other was in the ghost form that was the final practice of his Master. Together they taught Luke about the ways of the Force. They told him of mistakes made and deep losses. They told him of history and family and the code that they should live by. They trained him in the ways of the old Jedi and watched as he rose in the ways of the new.
Luke Skywalker was at the end of the dying race of Jedi. He had thought that he could train new Younglings. He knew that they were out there. He knew that he could find them. He could train them. It was his responsibility to train them. He was the last of the Jedi but it was not in his nature to let his own people die out. It was not going to be his legacy that he had fought and beat the Empire in order to build a new world without replacing all of the Jedi lost. Without replacing all of the Jedi lost by the actions of the Empire. Replacing the lives lost at the hands of his father. His father had fallen to the Sith but in Anakin’s honour he would rebuild what he could. So he rebuilt.
He found his Younglings. He found them scattered across the stars and in the womb of his sister. The Force had always been strong within his family.
He had tried to teach them well. He had tried to train them right. He told them of the Empire and what had been stolen and what had been lost. He left out the details though. The small personal connections that the Younglings needs not concern himself with.
That was the undoing.
He lost it all. They had tried to protect Ben and instead they had lost him with the darkness came and took a hold of his heart. So he ran. It was his responsibility, and it was his fault.
He had ran to the far reaches of Ahch To. He had fled and left only a treasure trail of breadcrumbs if the time came for him to be found. He did not think he would be found. He did not think that he deserved to be.
He was found anyway. She was young. She was like him when someone first implored him to help with their cause. They would have said that she was told old to be trained at this stage, as they had said to him. Training was for Younglings. This was a woman before him: steely resolve in her eyes behind the layers of emotion. She had travelled far to get here, and not just in distance.
She stood without saying a word for there were no words that she could say yet. She held out a lightsaber long since dissolved into the land of myths. Luke never thought he would see that thing again. It was the lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker. It was his lightsaber, passed down from his would-be Master who had kept it hidden and safe as he had kept Luke hidden and safe. Luke has no longer hidden. He was out in the open being presented with the lightsaber of a man of both light and dark, a man of corruption and redemption. Maybe he was worth redeeming. If she had found him, maybe it was time.
It is their code to be trained by those that came before them. No matter what path they took collectively or as individuals they had this. They had what they were, who they were. They had their code. They had their Masters, and they in turn had their Apprentices.