Chapter Text
Someday soon I’m going to die, I’m going to die and then I’m going to throw the biggest tantrum ever seen by a dead person.
Hell will have nothing on my rage, Satan himself will be so scared he’ll fly right back to daddy and beg for mercy, and do you want to know why?
Because I have a bone to pick with the absolute, unmitigated arsehole that thought It would be funny for me to spend my second life as a jedi, and not just any jedi, a jedi born just before everything went to hell in a handbasket.
Let me give you some context. I died in one world and woke up as an infant in a galaxy very very far away from where I was supposed to be.
Thankfully I was a human infant but still.
I was left on the steps of the jedi temple Dumbledore style with a note and a name and a whole load of unresolved issues.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry exactly. The Jedi temple is actually a pretty sweet deal. I mean I was hella confused and absolutely baffled for a good part of my childhood, it took me a disturbingly long time to work out what had happened (because dead and reincarnated into a fictional world wasn’t in my top 10 list of things that happen to people no matter what anime says) and when I did work it out I was even more consistently baffled.
I mean… Why? Just why?
What possible reason was there? I was normal, a bit above average in intelligence but otherwise unremarkable and happily going about life like the good little human drone.
I was in the middle of my first semester exams for crying out loud!
Needless to say I spend the age of 4-5 having an existential crisis. Fortunately, and worryingly the Jedi temple seemed to be rather full of people all having simultaneous crises of some description and the creche seemed well equipped to handle my existential terror.
No matter how weird or out of the ordinary I got they just put me to bed with some force magic, gave me lots of cuddles and sweets, let me hit (spar) with people and wooden sticks and then let me go away and nap in small tight spaces where no one could hear me cry.
Is jedi child rearing worrying?
Yes absolutely.
Did it help me in particular?
Again the answer was yes.
The absolutely no fucks given way of childrearing seemed to go a long way to calming me down and helping me get my shit together. No-one over reacted or called me a demon, they didn't try to get rid of me or hurt me or find out if something was wrong in my head.
Apparently that was not the Jedi way.
No matter what I did for the most part all I got was some fortune cookie wisdom, a time out and a pat on the back.
The Jedi creche masters were undaunted and unflappable which makes incredible sense when you think about it. Being put in charge of a bunch of alien children that have a connection to what (in my mind) is most likely an eldritch being from beyond the veil and no control would make even the oddest reactions seem normal(ish). In the grand scheme of things my quiet, contained yearlong breakdown probably didn’t even register when Iki was tearing through durasteel chairs when she got angry.
Of course, while this collective delusion of normal child behaviour was helpful, I realise I only slipped through because I was so young. Jedi children younger than 6 in the creche were pretty much expected to be emotional wrecks. Some of us had been abandoned (like me), some had been given away and some of us had been taken away from unfortunate situations, add in an uncontrolled connection to a cosmic entity that gave visions and connects you to the emotions of other people and you’ve got a lot of emotionally fucked up kids.
The movie Jedi made a lot more sense in this context.
Anyway, past the age of 6 you were supposed to start getting a grip on yourself, nap time became meditation, yoga and proper structured sparring was added to the itinerary along with a bunch of other lessons and calmness and peace was emphasised and expected.
It was at about this time I began to shift through what I actually knew about my new world which, as it turned out was not a lot. I'll be honest I'm not a Star Wars nerd or at least not for the mainstream series. The prequels, original trilogy and the sequels just didn't do it for me, I was far too into Harry Potter and LOTR at that time in my life to make room for Star Wars and when I did get into it later my vision had already been coloured by the fandom.
However, what I did fall hard for was the extended universe. The Clone Wars, The Mandalorian, Jedi apprentice and my favourite character Obi Wan Kenobi were all things I knew enough about to be a passable nerd. Unfortunately a lot of my information came from fanfiction so I had a very select mostly fanon, maybe canon insight into my new life, although given how everything got retconned and scrapped maybe I don't actually know anything.
My view of this world was skewed by my fanfiction habits. In my head Mace Windu was secretly a marshmallow under all that hardass, Obi Wan was a hot wonderful man who was self-sacrificing to a fault and utterly incapable of caring for himself, Dooku was a misunderstood man who fell to the darkside because of grief and Qui-Gon Jinn was almost Satan incarnate.
Needless to say none of this was helpful to my current predicament.
Mainly because and here the kicker, only one of those people currently exists at this point in the timeline. Dooku is the only one who was alive, and he had only just become master Yoda’s padawan.
What the fuck.
It did give me a vague timeline though. I remember reading as I browsed through a Wookiepedia entry that Dooku was born about 102BBY. Given how I was 6 and he was about 19 I was before the plot, way before.
Anyway, Count Dooku, Darth Tyranus leader of the separatists, responsible for the clones and all-around bad guy was at this point a snappy scowling 19-year-old grump who didn’t know how to hold a baby.
Again, what the fuck.
I was early, super early and I know when that ball gets rolling it goes downhill quicker than a cheetah on a rocket but fuck me.
Eventually I got fed up of hyperventilating in corners. The crèche masters were starting to notice and people were beginning to look at me funny so I dealt with this knowledge the only way I knew how.
I took a nap and pondered the meaning of life.
This worked surprisingly well.
Nobody called me out on it as long as I wasn’t breaking down or going insane (stupid Jedi order, even I can clear a bar that low), they were content to leave me be again, and I was content to be left. Very content in fact.
Only people over a certain age will understand how wonderful naptime is. When you’re a kid all you want is freedom, when you’re an adult all you want is to find a nice dark corner where you can curl up and ignore your problems. During these times of peace and stillness I came to a conclusion about my life.
It didn’t really matter.
Not like that. I’m not some angst-ridden teenager I know my life would matter and that I could do important things.
I would help people as a Jedi but ultimately in my mind this story had an predetermined ending and I wasn’t even a cog in the machine. At the end of the day everything would turn out okay and I wouldn't need to do anything, I probably couldn’t do anything in fact. By the time we reached anything important I’d probably be dead or too old to do anything.
Right here and now there was no pressure, being a Jedi knight would be cool, but it didn’t mean as much to me as to the other kids and as my lessons continued, I realised that I would be happy anywhere in this galaxy doing almost anything.
Everything was a novelty, droids, space flight, xenobiology hell even plants were suddenly interesting when they could spit poisons and were actual man eaters. Even the foundations of the universe were new and exciting maths, physics and engineering were all different and what others found boring and mundane was to me exciting and different.
It was stunning. I had a whole entire galaxy full of new concepts, of droids and AI’s and aliens with different biology and cultures and I could live however I wanted.
Agricorps, Medicorps, Exploracorps, Educorps I knew that I could go anywhere and still be happy and excited with my life.
It was freeing.
It was exciting and this realisation helped me find my centre.
This newfound peace had a knock-on effect in that I became very peaceful in the force apparently.
People would come to my little nap circle, and I would almost always wake up surrounded by more living things than I went to sleep with. Animals, children, and even other knights seemed bemused by my zen.
With this In mind I decided that for this life I was going to emulate Nara Shikamaru and all the other lazy geniuses from my first life.
Chilled, badass and utterly unbothered by the way the world was going to descend into Sith related madness within the next 90 years or so.
That was my goal.
Of course, I wasn’t a genius but given how interesting everything was I didn’t really need to be to get good scores, I was fully into this life for a good time not a long time and that meant putting effort into the things I wanted.
Within the creche I was well liked, everyone knew that if you wanted a break from screaming wild children you could go find me and my little nap circle. My clan mates found me easy to get along with if not easy to get to know and they appreciated my laid-back attitud.
several of them found solace with me as we grew.
The creche became steadily more competitive as we approached padawan age. While I was content to go with the flow, or as the creche masters called it trusting the will of the force others became stressed and frightened.
It was time to acknowledge that while my time with the Jedi was good they were far from perfect.
My perspective on this world was different and I could find peace in that but the almost caste like system the order had with the other corps was not a healthy one and it practically bred resentment. When you bring children up for one purpose and then strip it away based on their perceived faults it tends to not go over well or created a healthy atmosphere.
At around age 10 bullying became a problem, a big problem.
Now, I was, for the most part fine. The whole Jedi knight thing wasn’t as big for me and I struggled to feel the worry the others felt. If a master wanted me that was great and if they didn’t well they could shove whatever faults they thought I had up their sanctimonious arsehole.
Okay...
Maybe I wasn’t as chill as I wanted to be about this..
The whole thing was brutal and callous in a way that seemed almost premeditated. I didn’t even care that much but I still felt the eyes and the judgements of the interested masters. I still had to watch as my clan became strained and angry vying for positions from people who’d already made up their mind. I had to put up with children ruining my naps and attempting to goad me into an emotional response as they tried to hide their own insecurities.
It wasn’t nice or kind and I did not appreciate it.
Thankfully I was an expert in snark and not a bad hand at lightsaber combat (who wouldn’t be absolutely fascinated by a shiny glowstick that can cut through steel?) and while I never lost my shit outside of a sanctioned spar, I made sure everyone knew that messing with me wasn’t the way to go.
Some still tried of course but I was very good at avoiding others at this point in my life.
Calm, cool, collected, and badass that was my mantra and it worked.
Others were less fortunate, but I always welcomed them to my nap circle where they could escape the bullies and stress for at least a little while.
My general badassery and lack of fucks got noticed eventually and when I turned 11, I got approached by a Jedi. I was lounging by a pond in the room of a thousand fountains staring at the multitude of fish and plants when I felt a presence join me.
Cracking my eyes open I was unsurprised to see the wrinkled face of Yoda. This wasn’t the first time Yoda had joined me while I was napping, he seemed to have an awful lot of time on his hands for someone who ran the order and often spent it messing with the children in the creche. He and master Yaddle taught us lessons, played games with us and sometimes just straight up messed with us by spouting indecipherable wisdom in our general direction.
What was odd was that he was alone and so was I. Normally when he joined my naps he joined when there was a group.
I got a worrying feeling.
I rolled my head to meet his eyes and raised my eyebrow, disrespectful maybe, but I was in the middle of looking at the fish and it was obvious he wanted to talk.
“What doing are you?”
Okay so before anything else I should say that master Yoda’s accent is never not irritating and I’m almost positive it’s deliberate, he is a troll in a literal and figurative sense. Part of me understands that at 800 years old you have to get your kicks where you can but still.
I sighed.
“I am attempting to seek the guidance of the force master.”
This excuse worked for almost every situation where I was caught sleeping where I shouldn’t be. If you can keep a straight face and calm a calm exterior the ‘will of the force’ or ‘seeking the forces guidance’ were two of the most powerful excuses in the temple.
My poker face was impeccable and my ability to bullshit legendary among the creche masters, how other people in the temple don’t call me out on my utter bullshit I will never know.
Master Yoda looked like he might. He had twinkly Dumbledore eyes going on.
“Oh? And what does the force say? Hummm?”
Honestly not a lot. I know I haven’t talked a lot about the supreme cosmic being those lives inside my head all that much but honestly there wasn’t much to mention. I didn’t often have visions and any I did have tended to be amusing over scary, prophecy was never going to be something I put stock in after watching too much TV and movies and I already knew what would happen and it would happen without me interfering.
I got the occasional nudges and my extra instinct told me the best place to catch some uninterrupted sleep but otherwise I was just did what I wanted, what did I need guidance for?
But still I closed my eyes and listened. Despite my lack of need for the force it did often answer me when I searched, not in words just feelings. It was freaky as all get out the first few times but now I’ll admit it was a comfort.
“It tells me you have something important to ask me master.”
It didn't but It didn't take a genius to make an educated guess.
“Indeed, young one. Different you are. Strong you are. My padawan you will be.”
Yodas speech didn’t leave much room for questions but I could tell it was an offer… A declinable offer.
I closed my eyes again. Why? If the force was telling Yoda that was the way to go then I might well be screwed.
Taking a deep breath I reached out into the void and almost instantly I could almost see the many paths before me.
If I said no to Yoda, no other knight would ask me, the knowledge that I had turned down the head of the order would spread like wildfire. I would be ostracised for declining what most jedi and most of my clan mates would consider a dream come true.
I would go on to one of the corps and live my life happily and peacefully saving lives and helping others with my knowledge. I would be happy like I always knew I would be.
The Yoda paths were bumpier. If I said yes to Yoda, my immediate future got quicker? If the learning curve for the other future was a stream this future was a rapid, I would learn much and I would learn fast. It would be amazing.
Past that decision the paths branched again.
I could fade back into the background. Yoda taught many and I could just go back to being one of them, a good knight but an unremarkable face in the sea of remarkable individuals that will dominate the coming years or… I could not do that. As I looked further I saw a path with equal darkness and light a path that twisted in so many different directions a path full of hate, a path full of sorrow, a path full of family and joy even in the darkness.
I think I stopped breathing. That was the path to change the future.
I had always been under the impression that what would be will be, its hard to believe that the future is always in motion when you’ve seen it written down and watched it happen like a slow motion train wreck with a cinema full of people.
The force had never corrected meon this point and I realise now that it was because up until this point nothing had been important, if I said no to Yoda here… If I said no, I truly lost the chance to change anything.
But did I want the chance in the first place?
I had found peace happiness and acceptance in the fact that nothing I did affected the fundamental story of this universe, I could be free.
But now that wasn’t true, but it could be.
If I said no, I could continue on as I had been safe in the knowledge that things will happen as they should and I could be happy.
But could I be happy knowing I let this opportunity slip away? Not the opportunity to change the future (I’m definitely not sold on that) but the opportunity to learn from Grandmaster Yoda, 800-year-old badass.
I wanted to learn about this world and while I could do that on the other path, the Yoda path would be a true space experience. No matter what I chose, I would be brilliant, but the Yoda path could make me amazing.
I opened my eyes back up to look at Yoda, although it felt like I had contemplated my decision for hours it had only been minutes.
I sat up fully.
“Master Yoda it would be an honour.”
Despite the approval of the force it felt like I had just taken one step closer to the woodchipper.