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"Ventress was right?" Whie said, shocked out of his anger.
"No! Wrong she is! As wrong as she can be!" Yoda snorted. "Grief in the galaxy, is there? Oh, yes. Oceans of it. Worlds. And darkness?" Yoda pointed to the starscape on the projection table. "There you see: darkness, darkness everywhere, and a few stars. A few points of light. If no plan there is, no fate, no destiny, no providence, no Force: then what is left?" He looked at each of them in turn. "Nothing but our choices, hmm?"
"Asajj eats the darkness, and the darkness eats her back. Do that if you wish, Whie. Do that if you wish."
-- Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, Chapter 9
This, Sayaka was sure, was not a witch’s lair. It was too...real, too alive. But it certainly wasn’t where she’d been a few moments before. Instead of the glass and metal towers of the city, great trees stretched up to the sky, their foliage blocking out any view of the sky. Thick fog and steam rose up from the marshes around her, and in the dim light, she could not tell if it was night or day.
She advanced slowly, sword held out in front of her, ready to strike if whatever lived here made itself known.
But she only heard the croaking of frogs and the chattering of insects.
The lack of danger was maddening. What was Sayaka if there was nothing to fight, nothing to destroy, no witches to hunt?
There was no other point to her cursed existence, after all. She had to keep going until she couldn’t anymore. If she slowed down even for a moment, then she would have to think about all her regrets. The foolish wish and the cruel words she couldn’t take back. Her own powerlessness, and her walking corpse.
“A visitor I have, hmm?”
Sayaka whirled towards the voice, her sword point coming to rest in front of an odd, wrinkled stump of a creature, which recoiled from the sudden threat but did not flee.
“I mean you no harm!” the creature insisted.
Sayaka did not lower her sword.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Did you bring me here?”
“Bring you here, I did not,” he said, remarkably calm despite the sword that was still pointed at his face, “but here, you are. Mysterious, it is.” He chuckled. “Many visitors, I do not have.”
Sayaka didn’t see the same amusement in the situation, but before she could make that clear, the creature seemed to remember he hadn’t introduced himself yet.
“Yoda, I am,” he said. “And know you, I do not.”
“Sayaka,” she returned, still without moving her sword.
Yoda hummed, something in his face shifting from playful to somber as he considered her.
“Much darkness, I sense in you, Sayaka. Much anger. Much pain.”
“What does it matter to you?” she asked, more exhausted than angry. She didn’t really like the sound of him “sensing” anything about her, but bafflingly, his concern seemed genuine. Which would only make it worse, if it was.
“Suffering, you are. A teacher, Yoda is, and a counselor. Helped those who suffer, I have. Help you, perhaps I can as well?”
Sayaka lowered her sword to her side.
“You can’t help me,” she said softly.
“So quick to despair, are you?” Yoda asked, then sighed and shook his head. “Failed before, I have, yes. Many times, with terrible consequences. But failed always? No! Serve me, despair does not! Serve no one but the darkness, it does. So help you, I will.”
Sayaka shook her head, eyes closed against the tears she could feel pricking at them. She didn’t want concern, even from a stranger. She didn’t deserve it.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m already dead. I can’t be helped, and I refuse to be selfish enough to pretend otherwise.”
“There is no death, there is the Force,” Yoda murmured.
Sayaka opened her eyes, unsure what to make of that strange statement. Yoda gazed steadily back at her.
“Exists in all things, the Force does. In the living. In the dead. The difference matters not. Part of the Force, we all are.”
That didn’t clear anything up, in Sayaka’s opinion.
“Maybe that’s how it works for you,” she said. “But it’s different for magical girls.” She slumped down against a large rock, listlessly casting her eyes to the canopy above. “I’m starting to think Kyōko was right. That all the good we do is pointless, because an equal amount of misery will be brought into the world to match it.”
Yoda made an unimpressed noise, and Sayaka dragged her gaze back to him.
“Think that, do you?” he said. “See the shadows cast under candlelight, do you, and blame the candle for that darkness? Yet without the candle, in darkness, the shadowed places still would be, hmm?”
He continued, softer: “A shortage of darkness, there is not. Misery, grief, cruelty, anger, hate – rise up to equal things that are good and kind and compassionate, they did not. Always there, they were, always trying to grow, with or without the light to oppose it. To give up the light will not stop the darkness.”
“I…” Sayaka said, choking on her words. “Isn’t it just as hopeless, either way? Whether any good action is balanced out by equal bad, or if there’s just so much bad that it will fill in any gap left in the good, isn’t it hopeless?”
“No!” Yoda said. “Always hope, there is. Always a candle to light the way. Always, the choice to be that candle, there is.”
She wanted so much for that to be true, to be able to be that bright, selfless hero she had imagined becoming, now a distant, half-forgotten dream.
“How can I?” she asked, less a refutation and more a plea, as she brought out her Soul Gem, holding it out to show him. “When I’m reduced to this? When it grants me power at the price of my own misery?”
Yoda approached slowly, leaning on his cane as he did, and solemnly examined the darkened Soul Gem with his keen eyes.
“Violated, you were, I think,” he said, voice softer and sadder than she’d heard it so far. “Cruelly violated. Your fault, it was not. Define you, it does not.”
Sayaka shook her head. Pretty words, and he may have meant them, but it didn’t change her situation. It didn’t change that she’d been the one to foolishly accept the contract. “It’s what I am, now. It’s too late to change that.”
“Hmm, live with it, you must, yes. This burden, carry it, you will. But consume you, it need not.”
Yoda looked back up at her.
“Even if bound, you are, by this cruel bargain – even if cause you misery, your power will – need power, do you?”
“I...yes. I can’t fight the witches without it. I can barely fight them with it,” Sayaka said, bitterly.
“The only good you can do, is that?”
Yoda, Sayaka realized, probably – no, definitely – had no idea what witches were, in Sayaka’s world. She spilled out an explanation, what witches were, what they did to people, why Sayaka had to fight them. The wish she had made, the price she had paid.
He listened attentively, and gently took her hands in his own, and Sayaka found it a relief to speak of her pain. How long had it been since she’d let herself cry into Madoka’s arms? It couldn’t have been so long ago, but it felt like a lifetime since she’d allowed herself any kind of comfort.
“Deceived, you were. Misled. Know something of that I do,” he said, his eyes downcast. “Know the terrible consequences, the regrets, I do. Lived far away from here, I did once. Numbered in the thousands, my family did. Protectors, we were, defenders of the people, of countless worlds – a sea of candles in the darkness. Tricked, we were. Betrayed. Now, hunted, the few survivors are. Hide, we must. Help as we did before, we cannot. Gather with one another, with others, we cannot.”
“I’m sorry,” Sayaka murmured.
“But give into despair, I will not. Help out there, I cannot, but help here, I can. The birds that fall from their nests, the rodents that flee from the snakes, the nests crushed by a fallen tree, the flooded burrows – all these, help them, I can. No less noble, is that. Matter, it does, to those creatures I helped. Better, it is, to bring a candle where I can, than to burn it out in the search of something greater.”
“I think I see what you’re saying,” Sayaka said. And she did. She still had to fight witches – there was no avoiding that. But even if that cursed her with misery, helping others without magic would not. When had she forgotten that she could do that? When had she forgotten the difference that a simple kindness could make?
Even if things would never be the same, even if she would never be truly alive again...maybe there was still more she could offer to the world than she had thought. If even this strange creature, who had lost everyone like Kyōko had, but had chosen to remain compassionate and hopeful, could find meaning in those everyday acts of kindness – then Sayaka could too.
And as she glanced down, she thought that maybe her Soul Gem was a little bit less dark now.
Like a candle had been lit.