Palpatine looked from Yoda to me, his face a mast of compassionate concern. "Who would have thought that fighting a war could have such a terrible effect on a Jedi? Even when we win," murmered. "Who would have thought such a thing?" "Yes," I could only agree. "Who would have thought it indeed?" "Wonder one must," Yoda said slowly, "if that might be the most important question of all..." There followed a long, uncomfortable silence, which Palpatine finally broke. "Ah, sadly, questions of philosophy must wait for peacetime. We must focus on winning this war." "That's what Deapa did," I said. "And look what it did to her." "Ah, but such a thing could never happen to -- say, for example -- you." Palpatine said warmly. His lips wore an enigmatic smile. "Could it?" I didn't tell him that it could. That it nearly had. I think about that a lot, these days. I think about Depa. About everything she said to me. And did to me. I think about the jungle. She was right about so many things. She was right about her Jedi of the Future. To win this war against the Separatists, we must abandon the very thing that makes us Jedi. Yes, we won on Haruun Kal -- because our enemy broke under the club of Kar Vastor's monstrous ruthlessness. Jedi are keepers of the peace. We are not soldiers. If we become soldiers, we are Jedi no more. Yet I do not despair. She was wrong about some things too. You see, she lost fighting someone else's war. She was fighting the wrong enemy. The Separatists are not the true enemies of the Jedi. They are the enemies of the Republic. It is the Republic which will stand or fall in the battles of the Clone War. Even the reborn Sith are not our enemy. Not really. Our enemy is power mistaken for justice. Our enemy is the desperation that justifies atrocity. The Jedi's true enemy is the jungle. Our enemy is the darkness itself: the strangling cloud of fear and despair and anguish that this war brings with it. That is poisoning our galaxy. This is why my dreams of Geonosis are different now. In my dreams, I still do everything right. But I do in my dreams exactly what I did in that arena. If the prophecies are true -- if Anakin Skywalker truly is the Chosen One, who will bring balance to the Force -- then he is hte most important being alive today. And he is alive today because my Jedi instincts were working just fine. Because my mistake on Geonosis wasn't a mistake at all. If I had done as Depa said I should have -- if I had won the Clone War with a baradium bomb on Geonosis -- I would have lost the real war. The Jedi's war. Anakin Skywalker may be the shatterpoint of our war against the jungle. And if he is -- if Anakin is the being born to win that war -- it does not matter if every Jedi in the galaxy dies. As long as Anakin lives, we have hope. No matter how dark it gets, or how lost our cause may seem. He is our new hope for a Jedi future. May the Force be with us all.
