Chapter Text
19 BBY
It had been a very long life for Yoda.
He’d seen things end, begin again, and now end again. From cradle to grave, his people told stories about the things and people they had outlived to the next generation so that they weren’t forgotten. He’d been raised on these stories, knew millennia of history, knew leagues of things that had been lost as planets warred with each other, more than anyone outside his people before he was halfway through his first century.
It was unspoken tradition, but his people followed a path no matter what they choose to spend their lives doing. A century they learned the stories of their ancestors – those that felt that was their calling learned others, so that even if a line died out, their stories weren’t lost even when entire writing systems died out – then they went where their calling was.
His mother had felt drawn to kyber, to find those that called out to her after they were lost to those they’d bonded, and had spent most of her life trying to find all they crystals that had been scattered in the Sith-Jedi Wars a century before he’d been born.
Inevitably though, there came a point in their lives where the fact they outlived nearly everyone they would ever meet consumed them, and they retreated back to Dagobah to live in solitary existence until they faded back into the Force.
He had stayed on Dagobah for decades, just learning what the Force could teach him in the forgotten temple that was each year swallowed up further by the planet. His people had known of it, but spoke little of it other than that it had been a Sith Temple a millennium ago and that it was best forgotten. One day it hadn’t been enough, there was only so much that could be learned in a temple that had been stripped down to the walls of any teachings, and he’d left.
He’d ended up joining the Jedi after years wandering, going where the Force willed him to be, learning everything he could.
At the Temple on Coruscant, he’d felt at home, soothed by the same presence of generations of Force-users in the Temple as he had on Dagobah, and he’d learned. He’d learned many things, going from Knight to Master to Grand Master.
He’d outlived many by the time he’d stepped down from Grand Master, feeling the call to take a Padawan.
Yan had been a wonderful child, inquisitive and head-strong and not condemning of a teaching just because it was not exactly as the Order would have taught it.
He would have dared say that his unorthodox teachings had served his Padawan better than his peers when he succeeded in most situations, survived more situations, survived Gaulidron against a Mandalorian Jedi-Killer, but then he’d left the Order after Qui-Gon’s death. He’d Fallen, seduced by a Sith, and died before they could reconcile.
To compound it, Qui-Gon had nearly fallen, and had a Padawan Fall, because he’d taken the teachings that Yoda had taught Yan and passed them on.
Then he’d tried to lure him more fully back into the Light with a Padawan, as a child’s innocence often times reminded him of why listening to the whisperings of the Dark was bad.
Incident after incident with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, he’d ignored because it was working. He hadn’t realized the cost to Obi-Wan until later, because just as he’d been about to remove him from Qui-Gon, they’d reached a better place, then Qui-Gon had come back with Anakin and all but denounced Obi-Wan.
For that, it wasn’t about Anakin becoming a Padawan, he’d denied Qui-Gon for Obi-Wan, and if they hadn’t left for Naboo and Qui-Gon hadn’t died there, he liked to think he would have stepped in. Mace had been a breath from regardless, but then Obi-Wan had been nearly screaming into the Force loud enough to be heard on Coruscant with his grief.
It was perhaps too little, too late, but he’d wanted his great-grandpadawan to have time to heal before anything else – he’d learned from his mistake with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan – and he’d tried to deny Obi-Wan the right to take Anakin as his Padawan. Then he’d urged the Council to keep an eye on the two, because he’d failed Obi-Wan with Qui-Gon, and he wouldn’t ruin another Master-Padawan pair by leaving them to their devices.
Only, as the years went, and the Clone Wars had begun, he’d started to realize that he’d done so anyway, but his focus had been on the Wars and it hadn’t been until he’d seen the Temple, seen the bodies, saw the footage of Anakin kneeling to Palpatine and slaughtering Initiates, that he’d realized how bad things had gone.
But then he’d had to suffer the loss of nearly everyone he’d known – nearly the whole Order gone in a single day, and he knew they weren’t all dead, but it was too many for him to bear. Already, he’d suffered the deaths of his Padawan and grand-Padawan, the loss of his great-great-great-grandpadawan from the Order, and the Fall of his great-great-grandpadawan, in too short of a time. He’d taken Yan as a Padawan, and he wasn’t supposed to, but he’d known that he was as good as his son to him – to his people, because some of them didn’t have children but raised another’s as their own – and now his whole line bar Obi-Wan was lost to him.
He hadn’t been able to listen to anything the others had said after Obi-Wan had returned from Mustafar with Senator Amidala dead but her two children alive. He’d learned his lesson too well, and no child could cure how much he just wanted to fade away into the Force, but couldn’t, because he knew one day the children would need training in the Force and it would be up to him to give it.
Instead, he’d returned to Dagobah with the intent of being alone until little Luke or Leia came to him for training, then, finally then, he would fade into the Force where he could beg Yan for forgiveness for failing him.