The cockpit was quiet as everyone but Han, who was working in the main hold, went over the instruments. It was like no one wanted to say anything and break the lull they had managed to find. Lumina wished someone would. She was tired of the suffocating silence, which felt like it was grieving with her for Ben.
Lucas still doesn't know.
Lumina glanced over at him. He needed to know, he needed to know that this world had consequences, consequences that they had never expected. "Lucas," she said quietly. "I need to tell you something."
Lucas glanced over at her. "What is it, Lu?" he asked, furrowing his brow at her serious tone.
"During the Battle of Hoth, Ben's speeder crashed," Lumina said, the words tumbling out as she tried to control her voice.
Lucas' eyes widened in disbelief as he straightened, dusting his hands off on his white pants, part of his soldier's uniform from Hoth. "Ben crashed? What happened?"
"I don't know," Lumina said softly, glancing out the cockpit window. "The monitor showed his speeder crash. There wasn't anything we could do to help. They said...they said he'd be dead."
The meaning must have hit Lucas like a truck, for all the blood drained out of his face. "No."
"I'm going to shut down everything but the emergency power systems," Han announced, striding into the cockpit. Leia and Chewbacca, who had listened to Lumina in silence, looked up as Han flicked his eyes to the console.
"Sir, I'm almost afraid to ask, but does that mean shutting me down too?" C-3PO asked cautiously.
"No," Han told him. "You're gonna talk to the Falcon and find out what's wrong."
Beneath their feet, the Falcon shifted, causing everyone to grab a chair or the console in order to keep their balance, Chewbacca grasping C-3PO's arm to prevent him from falling.
"Sir, it's quite possible this asteroid is not entirely stable," C-3PO informed Han.
"Not entirely stable?" Han spat. "I'm glad you're here to tell us these things. Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive."
Lumina frowned as she listened. Despite her horror and grief over Ben's death, she had managed to notice that some lines of the original dialogue had changed or been omitted, while others, like the current exchange, were textbook accurate. Odd. Does it have anything to do with us, and our goal to change the story?
Chewbacca and the protocol droid left the cockpit, C-3PO complaining, "Oh! Sometimes I can't understand human behavior. After all, I am only trying to do my job in the most –"
The door closed behind them.
Again, the Falcon jerked, throwing Lucas to the floor, Lumina back into her chair, and Han and Leia into the navigator's seat, Han clutching Leia protectively. Then once again, everything was still.
"Let go," Leia demanded quietly.
"Sh," Han said, gazing out the cockpit viewport.
"Space slug," Lucas muttered. "I told you we've landed inside a space slug."
"Sh!" Han insisted.
"Let go, please," Leia commanded, and Han let go of her.
"Don't get excited," he commented.
"Captain, being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited," Leia snapped, as Lucas clambered to his feet and Lumina rose from her chair, the two exchanging raised eyebrows.
"Sorry, sweetheart," Han replied. "We haven't got time for anything else."
With that, Han left the cockpit, and Lucas and Lumina gave each other a slight grin at Leia's infuriated expression. Then Lucas' smile faded, as if he remembered Ben was gone, and Lumina felt her own momentary mirth wither and die.
It was no fun being in the Star Wars universe if Ben couldn't experience it all with them.
****
The emergency survival kit was heavier than Leana had expected, the small crate holding provisions, weapons, and other gear that had been tucked behind her seat in the X-Wing. She set it down beside the two astromech droids and straightened, frowning as she heard a repetitive sound coming from behind the nearby foliage.
It sounded like something hitting dirt, over and over again.
Leana frowned, staring at the foliage as she paused for a moment. What kind of creature could this be? As she watched, she noticed something rising and falling, and then she saw what looked like a garden hoe, of all things.
What the hell?
Snapping her lightsaber off her belt, Leana cautiously stepped forward. She pushed aside the foliage, moving through the thick vines and leaves as she found what looked like a garden, complete with lots of little neat rows but with nothing growing in it. And standing in the middle of the mounds of earth, with his back to her, was Jedi Master Yoda, swinging the hoe up like it was an axe and slamming it down into the dirt, drawing it forward, and repeating the motion.
Leana's mouth dropped.
As his hoe struck the ground, Yoda's ears stiffened, like he sensed her presence, and he turned around. "What do you want?" he demanded.
Leana couldn't say anything. He looked like Yoda, exactly like Yoda, but by lacking the familiar speech pattern, she couldn't be sure. There was also something wrong about the voice – still raspy, but slightly higher in pitch than she had been expected.
"Well?" Yoda demanded, cocking an eyebrow at her as he drew the hoe back toward him and then pushed it away, so the handle fell toward her and the edge was left pointing up.
"I, uh, I want to know what you're doing," Leana improvised, completely flabbergasted.
"I'm raking my garden," Yoda said proudly. "Just finished weeding it." He gestured to a pile of wilted green leaves that looked an awful lot like lettuce.
"You're hoeing your garden," Leana corrected, furrowing her brow.
"No, I'm raking it," Yoda said forcefully. "This is a rake, after all." He snorted derisively. "Some people."
Leana opened her mouth to protest, closed it, and started again. "What are you trying to plant?"
"Lettuce," Yoda stated.
"You just weeded the lettuce out of your garden," Leana told him, still perplexed.
"Oh," Yoda said, his ears deflating. "That sucks."
"Yeah," she agreed, trying to figure out how in the hell she was having this conversation with Master Yoda. Is this a test, of some sort? Like the kind he gave Luke in the movie, to see how Luke would react to him when he didn't know who he was? But I could understand that test – it showed how Luke treated Yoda differently when he knew he was the Jedi Master versus when he didn't. But I don't see how Yoda being a very bad gardener is supposed to test us. "So, uh...why did you weed it out if you were trying to grow lettuce?"
"Well, I thought they were supposed to be orange and long," Yoda said. "These weren't, so they were weeds."
"Yeah, no, those are carrots," Leana said. "The orange...things. Lettuce is leafy."
"Who are you talking to?" Luke asked behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see the Rebel approaching her.
"Luke, this is Jedi Master Yoda," Leana said, gesturing to the small, wrinkled green creature. "Master Yoda, this is Luke Skywalker. And I am Leana Ganner."
"Hello!" Yoda greeted enthusiastically, taking a step toward them. But his foot landed on the hoe blade and the handle came up, smacking Yoda in the head, right between the eyes. Leana and Luke just looked at him as the Jedi Master was quiet, then he stuck out his hand. "Hello there!"
With the hoe handle between his eyes, it wasn't Yoda's best moment.
"I thought he would look a little smarter," Luke muttered.
"Yeah, me, too," Leana agreed.
"This guy trained Old Ben?" Luke said. "If so, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did in his fight against Vader."
Yoda stepped backward and the hoe fell back to the ground. The Jedi Master scooped up his cane from beside the garden rows and looked up at Luke and Leana. "Why have you two come to me? How do you know my name?"
"We're here to learn how to be Jedi," Luke said eagerly. "Obi-Wan Kenobi sent us."
"Obi-Wan?" Yoda repeated, his ears perking up slightly. "I remember him! He was always going on about the rules, an old Hermione Granger, that one."
"Excuse me?" Leana asked, nearly struck speechless. "Is that a Harry Potter reference? Did you just make a Harry Potter reference?"
"Who? Never heard of him," Yoda declared. "Was he one of those Sith Lords from the early wars? I fell asleep when they talked about them in class. It was oh so boring. No, I liked the good stuff, when that one Sith stole all the rocks to throw them at people and kill them. Now that was fun."
Leana had a hard time finding words. "I don't even think that last one is a thing. And if it is, they left that out of the Star Wars chronology."
Utterly confused, Luke just looked at her. "What?"
"It was that guy who liked rocks," Yoda insisted. "Rocks are cool. You can throw rocks at people."
"I'm confused. What?" Luke asked again. "Why are we throwing rocks at people?"
"To knock them out," Yoda told him. "Wow, do you need training. This kid doesn't even know what rocks are used for. Humph."
"But if Sith throw rocks, why are we, as Jedi, throwing rocks?" Leana asked.
Yoda laughed. "That's funny. You think you're Jedi."
"Can you answer my question?" Leana insisted. "Isn't acting as a Sith against the Jedi Code?"
"The Sith use lightsabers," Yoda pointed out. "Does that mean we shouldn't use them?"
"The Jedi used lightsabers first," Leana counted.
Yoda shrugged. "We threw rocks first."
"I give up," Leana muttered.
"Can you teach us or what?" Luke asked.
"Of course I can teach you!" Yoda shouted. "I'm Jedi Master Yoda! Who'd you think I was, Stupid?"
Luke and Leana exchanged a bewildered glance. "I wouldn't be surprised if he was," she muttered. "Not after this conversation."
"I can't believe Ben recommended this guy," Luke said in an undertone. "He sure doesn't look like a trainer of Jedi."
"Maybe being in this place for over twenty years made him nuts," Leana suggested.
"Maybe," Luke agreed.
"I shall not notice the insulting comments," Yoda declared. "Come on."
He walked past them, pushing through the foliage as Leana and Luke fell into step beside him. "Show me the way to go home," Yoda began to sing. "I'm tired and I forgot to make my bed. I stepped on a rake a couple minutes ago and it went smack! right into my head. No matter where I garden, on earth or ice that's hardened, my head will still hurt and my bed is unmade. Show me the way to go home."
When Leana had thought about meeting Master Yoda, she had expected the wise Jedi from the movies, the one that had trained Jedi and imparted such quotable lines as "Do, or do not, there is no try." She had not expected...this.
What have we gotten ourselves into?