fandomtownies | Park [late afternoon]

Jolee was out for a walk in the park. He liked to do that when nobody was watching. Unfortunately somebody was here tonight.

He could tell this was going to go great.

"Anakin," he greeted.

"Bindo," he replied. "I think I'm beginning to figure out why I've never heard of you."

"I'll bite," Jolee said. "Why is that?"

"You didn't become a Dark Jedi," he said thoughtfully, "because the Masters made sure I knew all of those names. You just went enough off the grid that it was easier that the Temple pretend you never existed. Force-forbid Padawans get the idea that there are other ways to use the Force than how they're being taught."

He stopped his pacing. "How close am I?"

"You have a couple points right," Jolee said. "I am not and never have been a Dark Jedi. Or a Sith, just in case you were thinking about that. And when the Order left me, I did manage to fall off the radar well enough that nobody came looking for me on Kashyyyk for twenty years. But after that, I think I raised enough of a stink with Revan to make it hard to actively pretend that I didn't exist. I'm guessing it was more that the old man who returned from exile to help topple the Sith and still refused to rejoin the Order isn't a good enough story to remember."

Anakin's jaw dropped. "You knew Revan?!"

That name he knew.

And not entirely from Jedi training.

"I didn't mention that before?" Jolee asked. "Hmm. It must be because it wasn't any of your damn business. But since you caught me in such a good mood, yes, I knew him quite well. I fought alongside him during the so-called Jedi Civil War."

"..."

"You fought with Revan?" Anakin was getting a little screechy.

"I'm going to guess that you only know part of Revan's story," Jolee said. "What do you know of the Jedi Civil War?"

Depends on which perspective, he thought to himself.

Around a Jedi. Brilliant, Anakin.

"Darth Revan,"--he hit that title hard enough to bruise, "and Darth Malak nearly conquered the Republic."

He then proceeded to give an accounting completely free of gray areas. Someone--a couple of someones--had carefully scrubbed the nuance from the tale for Anakin.

"I didn't know he'd come back from the Dark Side," he concluded.

"Well, that means you're in for a story. A small Jedi strike force infiltrated Revan's ship about a year before the war ended. Revan's Sith Empire was big on survival of the fittest. The apprentice was always looking for a chance to kill his master and become the new Dark Lord. If he succeeded, he was worthy. If he failed, he would be stronger the next time he tried. With the Jedi attack, Malak saw his opportunity and very nearly killed Revan. Everyone thought he was dead except for the sole survivor from the strike force, a charming-" there was some good-natured sarcasm on that word, "- Padawan named Bastila Shan. She decided to save Revan for reasons I'll never understand. Then again, she's a better person than I am."

"Anyway, he came out of the experience with a strong bond to Bastila and no memories. The Jedi Order decided that they could write a new personality on the blank slate that was his mind and use his latent knowledge to seek out the evil superweapon that was letting the Sith take over the galaxy. It worked for a while. He did what they wanted without knowing why. That's when I met him."

Anakin bit back a comment about a Sith apprentice getting a second chance to kill the master.

"Seems like the Jedi, to use someone like that without giving an explanation," Anakin commented a little bitterly.

"There's a reason why I didn't return to the Order when it was offered," Jolee said.

"Revan's - or whoever the Jedi told him he was - journey brought him to Kashyyyk. He needed information from a computer hidden deep in the Shadowlands and I just so happened to know where it was. I could sense what he was immediately. I didn't know the specifics since I didn't exactly get much news on the bottom of the forest, but I got the story soon enough. Revan, the Jedi who saved the Republic from the Mandalorians before trying to take it for himself. It was obvious that he knew none of it."

"But then Malak captured our merry band of adventurers and was all too happy to fill him in on the hidden story. At that point, Revan had a choice. He knew who he was and had regained most of his abilities. If he wanted, he could have easily rebelled against the Jedi who had deceived him and turned him into a tool, killed everyone, and destroyed the Republic. Nobody would have been able to stop him, not at that point. Or he could have put his rage behind him, continued the fight against the Sith, and embraced the light side again."

"I have to admit, I wasn't sure which way he was going to go. He had a great destiny, though. I was convinced that no matter whatever path he chose, he would have been successful."

"This is hardly the most reassuring tale I've ever heard," Anakin said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Since you're alive, I'll guess he chose the light, possibly cried?"

"He didn't cry, no," Jolee said. "But the story does get a bit better. Bastila was having a tough time of it. She was a stuck up, snotty, severely proper young woman who bought into the Order completely. So her tie to Revan was disturbing to her. She felt the darkness within him and let it creep into her. She even grew to love him, and the feeling was mutual. Of course, this went against the teachings of the time, so she was extremely confused. The main reason we escaped from Malak is because she sacrificed herself for the mission. While Revan was trying to decide what to do, she made the choice for him and took Malak on herself to buy us time. She never had a chance. But Malak didn't kill her. He defeated her, disarmed her, and tortured her until she fought back with all of the hatred she'd been suppressing. When she reached into the Dark Side, her confusion cleared and she decided that maybe this power thing wasn't so bad, so she took her place as Malak's apprentice."

"I just wanted to get that out there so you know that as bad as the Jedi could be in my time, the Sith were still more twisted."

"Anyway, Bastila eventually confronted us and tried to give Revan the hard sell. 'Oooh, you used to be so much stronger. Come back to the Dark Side and you'll rule again. You're stronger than Malak. I'll do naughty things to you that the old man shouldn't be hearing about because I love you.' Despite hearing all of this from the woman he loved, he still chose the light. Which is a good thing for me, because if he had gone with her, they would've killed me for trying to take them down then and there."

"Anyway, Revan said no, she ran back to her master, and then the rest of us had to fight through more Dark Jedi and Sith soldiers and droids than I care to remember. Revan eventually fought Malak and killed him, but not before offering him the same opportunity that was given to him. The opportunity to be brought back. I'm not sad to say that he refused the offer and accepted his death."

"So, you're right. Revan came back to the light. In the year since then, he'd done a decent job of staying there from what I saw. So, yes, I fought alongside Revan, former Dark Lord of the Sith. And in the end, I'm proud that I was able to call him a friend. I'm even more proud that he got it through his thick head that I wasn't there to teach him anything. The boy had dealt with enough teachers. He didn't need another one."

"Anyway, that's the story of the second redeemed Dark Lord that I knew. But enough about him. I believe you're mad at me?"

Anakin was beginning to get an idea of why Obi-Wan might not have wanted him to get the full picture, and definitely why Palpatine hadn't wanted him to know there was life outside of the Sith.

He took a solid hold on his temper, at least for the time being.

"Which Dark Lord taught you the Force-lightning?" he gritted out.

Okay, so maybe hold on his temper wasn't so solid.

Jolee stared at Anakin for a moment. Then he started to laugh. "HA HA HEH. You think a Sith taught me? I don't know what's worse, the fact that you haven't picked up on the fact that while I'm no fan of the Jedi, I can't stand the Sith even more, or the fact that you honestly believe a Sith would tolerate me long enough to teach me a damn thing. How much have I gotten on your nerves the past few months? Now imagine that if you were the kind of person to kill annoying people on a whim."

"Maybe one of them let loose with it on you and you figured it out from there," Anakin retorted, skipping the part where he absolutely had been the kind of person to kill annoying people on a whim.

"I don't see things in black and white, or light and dark," Jolee said. "I focus on the shades of gray. I started down my path when I was still a Jedi and have refined it over forty years of self-imposed exile. During that time I finally figured out how to let my emotions be what they are while controlling my passions. Because passion is what will get you in trouble, not emotions."

"If you can control your passions, you can see the Force as a whole, not divided by light and dark. If you can come at it from a place of balance, you can teach yourself techniques from either of the supposed sides of the Force and you can use them without losing yourself. So, no, I didn't learn it from a Sith. Not through teaching or first-hand experience. I learned it from the Force itself."

Anakin gave him a look that couldn't have said "poodoo" any clearer if he'd been holding up a sign. "I've heard this before," he snarled. "Ways to prolong life, maybe? Hold back death? You keep this kind of thinking away from the other Jedi. There might not be light and dark to the Force, but there sure as hell is inside each of us. Most don't have the luxury of 40 years of exile to examine our boundaries."

"Anakin, the only things that have prolonged my life to this point are being good with medicine, the dumb luck that the Force sometimes provides, and the fact that the Wookiees liked me enough not to rip off limbs," Jolee said. "I'm not nearly proud enough to think that messing around with selfishly cheating death is a good idea. And I'm not stupid enough to suggest that using lightning on someone because you want to hurt them is smart. But against a guy who I know can take it? If I can find a balance, I'll use it."

"As for what kind of thinking the others should be exposed to, I'm not going to hide anything from them because you feel like acting like a one-man Order," he said. "If they ask and haven't annoyed me enough to make me refuse to answer out of spite, I'll give them their answers and warnings about how they'd be idiots to try it if they can't check their passions."

"There's no balance to Force lightning," Anakin insisted stubbornly, stepping well into Jolee's personal space, "and I don't care if they offer you cookies and to clean the damn bar. You aren't teaching my son and granddaughter about using that. I'll be as imperious and obnoxious as anyone who's ever sat on the Council has been, and I've seen them at some of their low points."

"If they brought me cookies and cleaned the bar, the only thing they'd get is a paycheck. I won't be teaching them a damn thing, but not because of you," Jolee said, standing his ground. "I won't be teaching them because I'm no teacher. I don't know how many times I have to say it before people get the picture. But if they're smart enough to ask questions, I'm not going to deny them answers just so they can figure out for themselves just how dangerous the Force can be if you're not prepared."

"Misplaced curiosity has killed more Jedi than the Sith," he spat. "Every Jedi is a teacher. It's a better description than 'pompous windbag,' which also fits you. The way they've been taught isn't the way we were taught. They didn't learn with safety nets."

And no, he wouldn't explain how that had happened.

"Considering how mad you are, it's funny how much we agree. The reason I'll answer them is so they have information instead of rampant misplaced curiosity. All Jedi are teachers, but once again I'm not a Jedi. And I am nothing if not a pompous windbag, but I'm also right," Jolee said. "But what you're talking about is forcing safety nets upon them. You're talking about regression, making them blindly follow the path you want them to take when they've already started to work out their own paths."

"If you really try to impose that on them at their age it'll probably be worse than giving them the name and address of the most dangerous Sith you know and something to take notes on."

Anakin just about choked on that last sentence. "They are both experts on the Sith," he muttered, then spoke up again, "and that's where the problem lies. They think that because they know about the Dark Side, that they understand it. And they can't. Combining teenage hormones with phenomenal cosmic powers? Teaching them a trick that requires them to also control their passions is like hanging a 'please electrify me' sign on some of the more irritating members of their classes." He shrugged. "Which wouldn't bother me if it weren't for the terrifying precedent it sets."

"Anakin, I can promise you that I will never teach them how to use those powers. Or any powers. And if you try to get me to say that in more ways than I already have, I may say screw it, embrace the Dark Side, and hit you with a plague just to slow you down enough to kick you really hard in the face. I won't be proud of it, but I will resort to it."

"But I will tell them that as far as I'm concerned, you need to embrace your emotions while controlling your passions. After all, the Code of the Sith - and don't you dare draw any conclusions from the fact that I know it - specifically mentions passion. If they can actually achieve that in the time that they know me when it took me ten years of soul searching to really achieve it, then I'll stop calling them idiots if they even think about trying anything they see me do."

Anakin pressed his lips together as he listened. "I know that Code, too," he admitted stiffly.

His eyes shone with a little bit of pride. "And Luke could probably manage it," he said. "He's only been training for two years and was able to stand up to a Sith Lord virtually unassisted."

"I know it because Revan's travels took us to Korriban and into the Sith Academy there," Jolee said. "He needed to relearn it in order for us to achieve what we needed. How do you know it?"

Anakin treaded carefully. "My master's master was killed by the first Sith Lord to be seen in generations. He made it a point to learn as much as possible about them."

Excellent spin, Anakin.

There was more to this story than Anakin was sharing, that much was clear. "And do you fault him for making sure that he was as well informed as he could be?"

"I fault him for many, many things," Anakin said. "That's not one of them."

"Then I'm going to suggest that you remember that as it applies to Luke and Jaina," Jolee said. "It's up to you what you try to do about their desire for information, but consider your feelings about your own master on that point."

Anakin raised an eyebrow. "You're not a teacher, huh?" he said sardonically.

"Nope. I'm just an old man who doesn't know how to shut up," Jolee said. "I also enjoy giving unsolicited advice at times."

"You excel on that point," Anakin replied, almost smiling.

"It's a gift of age," Jolee said. "You poke your nose in where it doesn't belong even more than you did when you were young."

"Something to look forward to," Anakin said, definitely smiling now.

"So, the anger's been cleared up?" Jolee asked. "We can go back to just being two stubborn men who merely annoy each other on a regular basis now?"

"For the time being," Anakin said, nodding.

"Excellent. Because I need a nap after that friendly discussion," Jolee said. "Have a good night, Anakin."

Park [late afternoon]

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