How’s this for lesson two? I appreciate feedback here. I could also send the caretaker village stuff but most of that remains the same.
“I’ve shown you that you don’t need the Jedi to use the Force,” Luke said. “So why do you need the Jedi Order?”
Rey peered at him. Surely this was another one of his tests. She had heard the tales of what he’d been able to do with the Force. She’d seen with her own eyes what Kylo had used that potential to accomplish. And she sensed - with a mix of anticipation of fear - what her own growing powers might one day allow.
But he was right that no one could stand alone against an army like that of the First Order. No matter how powerful they may be.
“To fight dark side users,” Rey decided. “They also kept the peace and protected the light in the galaxy for a thousand generations… and I can tell from that look on your face that every word I just said was wrong.”
Luke smiled and studied the mosaic on the floor. She wondered how long ago it had been created, and by whose hands.
“You got ‘a thousand generations’ right,” he admitted. “But even those times had their fair share of needless conflict and suffering.”
Rey didn’t feel like starting a history lesson spanning thousands of years, so she remained silent.
“Lesson Two,” Luke continued. “Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are deified and romanticized. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris.”
“That’s not true!” she protested, staring at him in shock. If he was the last of the Order, the galaxy needed him to be its custodian, its preservationist. The galaxy had no shortage of those who wanted to see the Jedi discredited, buried, and forgotten.
“They served the Republic instead of the will of the Force,” he elaborated. “They failed to uphold peace and justice on worlds outside its borders, and didn’t act on the rest unless granted express permission by politicians. Their incompetence was enough to spawn the Separatist movement, headed by a Sith Lord who had left the Jedi Order for these reasons and more.”
“Yes, but you’re forgetting how-”
“Their war against the Separatists allowed Emperor Palpatine to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out,” Luke added. “They have a habit of creating their worst enemies. It was the Jedi who failed my father and created Darth Vader.”
“And a Jedi who saved him!” Rey finally managed to interject. “Yes, the most hated man in the galaxy - but you saw there was conflict in him. You believed that he wasn’t gone, that he could be turned.”
She didn’t understand. It was troubling enough that Luke had rejected the legacy of the Jedi, but whatever had happened to him had led him to reject his own legacy as well. Not for the first time, she wondered if he had slipped into madness during his years of exile. But the bearded man in the rough-hewn woolens didn’t look insane. Just profoundly sad.
“And I became a legend,” Luke said. “For many years there was balance. The darkness retreated. Until I saw Ben. My nephew with that mighty Skywalker blood. In my hubris, I thought I could train him, I could pass on my strengths.”
His eyes were far away now, interrogating the past. Rey wondered if he relived these memories every day, brooding on the top of the island as when she’d first met him, or if he never did - if it was her arrival that had forced him to confront the events which had caused him to shut himself away from family and friends and vanish.
“Han was… Han about it,” Luke said. “But Leia trusted me with her son. I took him and a dozen students - ripped away from their parents as the Jedi require - and began a training temple. But by the time I realized I was no match for the darkness growing inside him it was too late.”
“What happened?” Rey asked gently.
“He must have thought I was dead,” Luke said. “When I came to, the temple was on fire. He had vanished alongside a handful of my students, and the rest were burned alive. Leia blamed Snoke, but I was the one who broke our family. I failed. Because I was Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. A legend.”
He said that last word as if it was something terrible - a burden and a curse. But Rey held his gaze.
“The galaxy may need a legend. I need someone to look up to. And you didn’t fail Kylo - he failed you. I won’t.”
Luke regarded her quietly, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet.
“I don’t know who’s more dangerous - the pupil who wants to destroy me, or the one who wants to become me.”