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It was not true to say that Yaddle had it out for Yoda. That would be… unfair. And largely untrue. And it was all well and good that when she had escaped on her own, thank you very much for absolutely nothing, Jedi Order, and returned to the Temple that she was immediately declared a Master of the Force and offered an open seat on the High Council, and shortly after that, the position of Master of Shadows.
And if the Grandmaster thought that would make her more tractable as the Master of Shadows, he had been very sorely mistaken.
First, her Shadows were necessarily dubious about the entire thing. And that was fair. She didn’t share most of their skillsets, and she needed to be brought up to speed on so many things. But if she could do nothing else, she could sustain herself with the Force, use a staff, and teach every single one of the Knights and Masters under her a thing or two about oneness with the Force.
And the thing she did not like to do was have a Jedi missing in action or only reported dead without confirmation.
If any Jedi with even a passing acquaintance with Force Discernment had tried to find her (a padawan! a junior padawan could have found her!), they would have easily done so in the hundred years of her incarceration down a fucking hole.
And until Plo Koon and Jocasta Nu came to visit her and go over some ancient documents that had not been part of her own abbreviated education, Yoda had hobbled her and her ability to use her Shadows to their fullest extent.
But the Shadows were not part of the KnightCorps, which was the only portion of the Order that the Senate held jurisdiction over. They seemed to be, they were listed as such, though technically they were never rated for the field and so could not be assigned to regular missions. They were part of the ExploriCorps and very nominally answered to the Council of First Knowledge, and that part of their files was sealed.
These were nuances that Yoda had never informed her of, and so kept his control over her actions.
And the day she broke free, she didn’t even need to inform him of the fact.
The day she broke free, oh, the day she broke her chains, was the day she realized that as Master of Shadows, she actually had carte blanche.
It went to her head for a full twenty minutes, but at least she was alone in her apartment at the time, and was able to get her maniacal laughter under control, and meditated to let go of, really, so many things in the privacy of her own home.
And then it began.
As Master of Shadows, she didn’t need the Council’s permission to draft members of the KnightCorps, either, nor to send them on missions wholly unrelated to paltry Senate requests designed to ask for less than was needed and to leave unsaid more than could be reasonably explained away.
She would send no junior padawans anywhere near anything that hinted of danger.
She would send no Jedi unaccompanied by at least one other Knight or Master, and preferably a Jedi pilot as well - far too many had trouble with spacecraft to do anything less.
And she would find, rescue, or confirm dead as many Jedi as she possibly could while simultaneously sorting through Master Kenobi’s long list of ways to undermine the Banite Sith and their troubling legacy.
Yaddle could not change Yoda’s mind on any subject, she already knew that. But she could now work around him.
And she would, for as long as necessary.
“What you wanted, got then, hmm?” Yoda said, looking absolutely every day of his 852 years.
Yaddle tilted her head at him as she stood in the hallway, looking slightly up at him as he sat in his hoverchair. “Know not what you mean, I do,” she replied. Sometimes she used his archaic grammar. Sometimes she didn’t. But now certainly wasn’t a moment to prove just how progressive she was.
And in truth, she once might have wished for a change in leadership in the Order, for Tyvokka, for all his kindness, always agreed to whatever Yoda suggested, and no one successfully argued against him in a meeting. But she hadn’t for some months now, now that she had discovered her own power, and indeed, was finally living fully into her own responsibilities, after having the position for more than a decade.
And so it was in truth that she said it, because he could stay around, stagnating and dragging others down into the swamp with him for all she cared. She could have continued to work around him until the day he dropped dead and rejoined the Force of entirely natural causes, which might be any day now.
Any day now.
At any rate, Yaddle preferred the clear water, even if it was still enough to grow lilies.
And if at the bottom of the clear water was a little muck, a little effluent, a little refuse, well, lilies needed that to root in, and it didn’t disturb the clarity of the water, nor the beauty of the scene.
As metaphors went, it was spot on, she thought, and it gave her a clear conscience and an unbesmirched Force Presence to lie to Yoda’s face and get away with it.
She was the Master of Shadows. She ought to be able to at least do this.
“Harumph,” Yoda said, nodded to her, and hovered off in the direction she had just come from.
Yaddle did not smile, but tucked her hands into her sleeves and continued on her way.
She had things to do, Sith to hunt, people to find, and a galaxy to save. Yoda was hardly enough to put her off her day.