[rieliteme]

Оу май гуууууднес. Что еще я нашел. Половину первой главы я истерически ржал, половину удивлялся.

He went briefly to his rooms to make sure R2-D2 was alright. The astromech was fine, although very shouty. He apologized again for the length of his meditation, and spent some time cleaning the already perfectly immaculate droid as an apology.

Then he went to the creche.

He really had meant only to observe, but the moment Yoda noticed him, he called a halt. "Younglings, come," he said, clapping his hands. "A visitor we have."

"Yoda, what."

"To test a theory I wish," said Yoda. "Be calm. Hurt them you will not."

"How do you know?"

"Because blind, I am not."

He stared at Yoda, who looked back with the kind of thousand-meter stare that had won Geonosis. "Really?"

Yoda gestured at the younglings with his cane.

"Okay," he said, sitting down and looking at them. He didn't know any of them by name, but he wasn't thinking names anyway, he was thinking faces. No, no, no, no - yes: he knew that one, had last seen it a year older and burnt by blaster fire, all the light gone from xir eyes. The grief hit him a moment later, like a hammer, and he didn't even try to stop the Dark from coming. He just let it in, and let them see.

Half of them tried to hid behind the other half, but the other half were peering at him, not afraid but interested. "Does it hurt?" asked one of them.

"No. It feels, mm - like being lit from inside by a bonfire."

"Um, but," said another, "That's Sith, right? At least, it's what the stories say. Sith have yellow eyes."

"Was. I was Sith, for a long time."

"You can't stop being Sith," objected a third.

"Why not?" he asked.

That seemed to stump all of them, because they stood there watching him eat for a while before one of them, a skinny Bothan boy, said, "Because - because once you start down the Dark path, it's a part of you!"

He nodded. "This is true, but there is a difference between using the Dark and being a Sith. It's just like not everyone who uses the Light is a Jedi."

This, he could see, was a new and confusing idea. He waited some more while they processed.

Then the little wookie who was not dead said, "But isn't it evil?"

"Not inherently." At their confused looks, he asked, "Is a lightsaber evil?"

"No!" came a ragged chorus.

"But it's a weapon. Pretty much the only thing you can do with a lightsaber is - hurt someone. Doesn't that make it evil?"

"No! Because - because, um. We train to learn discipline, to feel the Force. Not to hurt people."

"If you say so," he said, making sure to sound unconvinced. "Well. The Dark side is like that. It's easy to hurt people with it, but that's not the point. The point is a different way of connecting to the Force. Some of the people who don't understand that are Sith. All they want is power."

"And you?" That was Yoda. "Power you did want."

"I wanted to be able to protect the people I love. That - the Dark side can give that, but not the way I was doing it. Of course," he added wryly, "Sidious knew that, and made sure I didn't until it was far too late."

"Ah," said Yoda. "Well, younglings? Wishing to protect people a good thing is, mm?"

"It's attachment, though," said a youngling. "Protecting some people more than others."

"And so? Left the Order, Anakin has. A Jedi he is not. Follow the Code he need not."

"Though I can tell, you're going to grow up to be a great Jedi," he said. He meant it more as encouragement, but the Dark was still with him and abruptly for a moment he could see the Jedi the Zygerrian was going to grow up to be, proud and fearless and peerless as she hunted down the last vestiges of the Zygerrian slaver culture. He blinked, and it vanished.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"I can hear the Force from both sides," he said. She seemed to accept that as an answer, but continued to stare at his eyes.

The staring was at the really desperately awkward stage when one of them said, "Did you really leave the Order?"

"Yes," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I'm not a Jedi. I have never been a Jedi, and every time I said I was I was lying. Most of the time, even to myself."

"Uh. But," objected a different youngling. "How do you know?"

"I fell in love. I asked my love to marry me, and she said yes, and we did. I didn't care that I was breaking the code. That should have been a pretty big hint."

"Oooh," said the assembled younglings.

Another one, a small female zabrak, said, "But then why're you still here? I thought when people leave the Order, they leave."

"This is usually true, but the Council wants me to stay. And I wanted to stay, at least for now."

That answer was sufficient. A different youngling said, "Come play with us!"

He looked over to Yoda, who waved a hand. "Go, go. Energetic all you younglings are; perhaps wear each other out you can."

The wore him out in about twenty minutes, and then some of the more shy ones came and sat down by him while he sat there and, eventually, asked him to read them a story. He ended up spending two hours in the creche in a sort of low-grade hum of joy, and left with a promise to return the next day.

On the way out, he said, "Successful experiment?"

"Very," said Yoda. "Welcome in the creche, you are."

archiveofourown.org/works/6252790/chapters/1432...

@темы: Those Lucas Heirs