101 Star Wars Variations 81: Yoda's Home

There's a cave Yoda never visits.  Okay, almost never visits.

He's chosen to live alone.  There have been...problems when he's lived with others.  He prefers to avoid such problems these days.  In the place he calls home, he's explored every inch of it, and why not?  It all belongs to him.  There's never been another place that feel more like home.

Except for the cave.  The cave plays tricks with his mind.  The first time he visited it, he was completely unprepared.  He was shown himself leading a completely different life.  A life out among the stars.  Yoda has never left Dagobah.

In this vision, he wasn't alone in his abilities.  There were many like him, and what's more, they all looked to him for guidance.  He realized while it was happening that whatever else the cave did, it played on his ego, which until that point Yoda hadn't realized he had, or certainly not like that.

It scared him a great deal.  He stayed away for as long as he could.  But he couldn't stay away forever.

The next time he visited the cave he was prepared.  He expected to see the same thing, and so braced himself to explore this alternate life.  The narrative, as it were, progressed.  Many years passed, although in the real world only a matter of hours.  The seeds of a great tragedy were sewn.  One day he realized a conspiracy had developed around him, an enemy from the past having sprung a trap.  And he was powerless for the first time.  He found himself in retreat.  He voluntarily came back to Dagobah, something he wouldn't have imagined possible.  Even though he had made himself a home, Yoda hated Dagobah.  He hated feeling powerless.  But one day, someone came to visit him.  Yoda was discouraged by what he saw, thought the experience had become a waste of time and robbed him of the one thing he thought he had found.  He walked away.  He left the cave.

Curiosity brought him back a third time.  He'd stayed away for long enough that he'd forgotten how he'd felt and instead began to...hope again.  Maybe it wasn't as bleak as it'd seemed.  Maybe there was a still a...shot at redemption.

The visitor, too, had returned, in the vision.  This time things were different.  Innocence had been lost.  Change suddenly seemed possible again.  But something horrible happened, anyway.  In his vision, Yoda died.

He got up and left the cave immediately.  He didn't return again for a long time.  There were times he thought he'd never return.  He had begun to associate it with fear.

He's been reconsidering.  It's been a process.  Little by little, he's processing all that he's experienced.  If he goes back and the narrative continues?  He feels okay with that.  If he goes back and has learned, as he hopes, to manipulate the visions for himself?  He feels that if that doesn't happen, he'll be okay with that, too.

He's at the entrance of the cave now.  He'll go in.  He can still turn around.  He'll go.  He's not afraid.  He's been living on his own for so long.  This cave is the only place he doesn't go.  Almost never goes.  He's beginning to think that if he can master this cave...he can even return...to civilization...