Blurred Sides (COMPLETE)

7.13.1

Master Yoda was the first to wake the next day. He woke well before the sun rose, as he did after nights like last night. He needed to be ready for whatever effects the actions taken the previous day might bring, so he sat up in his small bed and focused his mind of the Force as he always did. After the death of the Chancellor, he was needed to be mentally prepared.

He had barely sunk into mediation when he felt something different. Drastically different, as different as night was to day. Indeed, although the sun had not risen on Coruscant, Yoda felt as if he was seeing clearly for the first time in...he didn't even know. He didn't know how long it had been since the Force had been so at peace, so calm, so reassuring, so bright. He didn't even focus on the Light at first but simply rested in it, allowing himself to be surrounded and engulfed in a Light long lost, although to what Yoda did not know yet. It was a blessing that he felt he and the rest of the Jedi Order had been denied for not only months but years, decades, maybe.

With the Light of the new day brightening his mind, he then began to focus on it. What was the source of this? He centered in on where he felt the Light coming from, but it seemed to come from the Temple, just as it always did. There was no new source of the Light Side of the Force. So why did the galaxy seem so...full, so blissful?

If there was no addition of Light, then there must have been a removal of Darkness. It was true, Kenobi had said that Skywalker had killed the Inquisitor before he had returned to the Temple, but Yoda had felt her presence in the Chancellor's office and although she was Dark, he knew that her death was not the answer he was looking for. There was something else that had been removed overnight. Some Dark influence that was no longer there.

Yoda sank deeper into the Force. He delved his mind into the thickest and most powerful layers of the Force, and he dived into where he felt the most Darkness coming from. He entered into a brief vision, but a powerful one all the same.

He was standing in the office of the Chancellor, but not as he knew it. The entire room was covered in mold, Dark, filthy mold. Yoda was standing in the only spot that wasn't contaminated by the sickly poison.

Then he heard the faint hum of a lightsaber. It was not his own, so he turned to see where the source was. All he saw, though, was a red floating blade, with no handle and no wielder. It swung and sliced the Chancellor's chair in half, and the effect was immediate. The mold began to die and break apart, starting from the chair and spreading from it to the rest of the room. The chair had been the source. How?

The mold didn't just die in the office. Yoda left the room, and his mind's eye lifted so it could see the whole of Coruscant. All over the planet, the mold had spread, and all over the planet, it was dying, from the Senate Building out. He rose further, and he could see even other systems. There, too, the mold which once covered the planets was now withering and disappearing.

Yoda returned to Coruscant's surface and went to the Temple. As impossible as it seemed, the Darkness had spread here, too. Not only was the mold breaking apart the building from the inside out, but a Dark fog engulfed the Temple, shielding it from view.

No, Yoda realized. Shielding the mold from us, it was. Blinded us, it has.

But the fog was lifting now. The mold disappeared, and the Temple shone with a Light that had been hidden for years beyond memory. The Temple was still damaged, but it was not broken. It could heal with time, and with care.

One question remained, though. Why had the mold spread from the Chancellor's office? What was hiding there? Who was hiding there?

Yoda retreated from the vision and opened his eyes. A memory snaked around his mind. Two simple words, the last words the Sister had said before her dramatic exit: