"I'm sitting down because I want to, not because you told me to."
── ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆. Injury/injured starters
seldom did the grandmaster step beyond the marble breathed sanctity of the temple & into the raw, iron mouthed throat of war. rarer still was the hour that found him beside anakin skywalker, that bright & golden dragon who burned within the ancient halls of the jedi as though the force had woven him from sunlight, longing, a mercy too fierce to wait upon permission. different they were in shape, in temper, in every manner by which the force chose to carve its servants from living clay. where skywalker met violence like a storm greeting its own reflection, fierce, forward, half in love with the thunder of his own momentum, yoda moved as old water moved beneath moonlight; patient, precise, inevitable, wearing no fury upon his face though centuries of battle slept coiled within his bones
yet beneath the shrieking rain of blaster fire, their sabers sang together all the same. emerald & saphire cut brief constellations through the smoke, twin stars whirling against the devouring dark, each bolt turned aside in a wordless sword dance older than the names of the soldiers sent to die beneath it. for a breath, perhaps two, war itself seemed forced to pause & witness them; the ancient master, small as a shadow beneath the guns, & the chosen one, burning too brightly for any sky that dared contain him. but even the finest dance could falter when the music became massacre.
too many rifles. too many angles. too little earth left loyal beneath their feet. a miscalculation, small as a swallowed breath, cruel as fate with its hands clean, & the light found skywalker not as glory, but as pain. the bolt struck, the line broke, & the battlefield lunged hungrily toward the wound it had made. retreat became not cowardice, but wisdom sharpened until it drew blood; through fractured stone, choking ash, & the distant roar of engines hunting overhead. yoda guided them from the ruin, his small shadow moving ahead through fractured stone & choking ash, while rex bore the greater weight beside him; anakin leaned against the captain with all the bitter reluctance of a man who would rather argue with death itself than admit his knees had begun to fail him, far too proud to be carried, far too mortal to know that pride had never yet closed a wound.
the cave received them like the mouth of some sleeping beast, its darkness cool, damp, & mercifully blind to the war gnashing its teeth beyond the stone. there, beneath the slow drip of unseen water & the trembling echo of distant fire, the old master helped him down against the rock. anakin, naturally, surrendered to the act with all the grace of a wounded nexus pretending it had chosen the cage
❝ sit because you want to, then ❞ the old master’s cane tapped softly against the stone, once, twice, a patient little judgement dressed as sound, while ancient eyes lowered toward the wound skywalker seemed determined to insult by ignoring ❝ bleed because you wish to as well, do you ? or perhaps, permission from your pride first must we request ? ❞
