Anakin stared at the tip of his boot, shining dully in the meager hospital light. So far, he had resisted the urge to tap his foot against the tile. He was a Jedi, and as such, demonstrations of impatience were severely frowned upon.

Especially by Obi-Wan Kenobi. But little did the esteemed members of the Temple know that the cool, dignified Master, when in the privacy of his own quarters, shook one leg incessantly while sitting in his armchair.

But, although the apprentice continued to struggle in a state of anxiety, he would not allow it to be noticed by anyone.

Which was why the inside of his mouth was raw from chewing.

After more than two days, this room still housed conscious Padawan and unconscious Master. Anakin's eyes were held by Obi-Wan's face, waiting for that twitch of approaching cognizance, for the stir that would, at last, bring lucidity to the man.

But that movement had yet to be made.

Bant came and went, suggesting Anakin make use of the cot when the sun began to fade, urging him to take food when he knew his cold stomach would revolt.

She had not peeked in the room for three hours. He was glad to know she understood his need to stay. Because, in all honesty, he was too tired to argue.

Sighing, Anakin dropped his gaze to the boot again.

"…when…."

The young man immediately leaned forward, calling his Master's name softly.

Obi-Wan's eyes pulsed from beneath the lids. He pursed his lips. "W-When?"

His voice was cracking, and Anakin stroked the strangely shorn hair, trying to calm him. "It's alright, Master. I'm here." With a note of tired hope, "Wake up now."

A breathy sigh, and then Obi-Wan's forehead crinkled. "An…Anakin?"

Anakin smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, it's me."

"When?"

Anakin rubbed his hand. "When what?" His heart thundered in his ears.

"When…see…"

The Padawan mustered an encouraging smile, although he was alarmed by Obi-Wan's fogginess. After all this time, the days of watching his sole family deteriorate, feeling the warmth drain--

He just wanted it to be over. He wanted Obi-Wan's eyes to be clear, his voice strong..

"It's okay, Master." Anakin whispered.

…He wanted their roles to settle into normalcy. He had longed for independence, but now he knew it wasn't worth it.

He would rather his Master be powerful, and he still a student, than endure another reversal like this.

Obi-Wan blinked. His eyes, bleary slits, moved just beyond Anakin, then flared with recognition. "H-Healers?"

Anakin nodded. "Yeah."

Obi-Wan swallowed. It never came as a complete surprise when any Jedi found themselves under the close care of the Temple medical staff, but every instance was jarring. "How…How long?"

"About three days." Anakin smoothed the damp bristles of hair. His lips began to tremble, and his resolve collapsed at the same moment he dropped his head beside Obi-Wan's, and drew his Master into a tight, shaky embrace. But it's been so much longer. He buried his face in the warm skin of his teacher's neck, where his tears slid down.

Obi-Wan wordlessly accepted the embrace, sending a few tendrils of comfort through his Force. "What happened?" He asked, once the boy seemed composed.

Anakin drew back. His hands were clammy, wiping across his eyes, as he summoned the courage needed to speak the next words. "Do…um, do you remember anything?"

Obi-Wan looked up at him. Troubled clouds passed over the landscape of his face. He reached out and lightly trained his fingers down the Padawan braid. He stopped when he touched on a yellow ceramic bead. "When did you get this?"

Anakin's heart sank. Bant was right. "Uh," He cleared his throat, "Four months ago." His answer was hoarse. A part of him had held to the idea that the odds would bend over backward, would suddenly swerve to their favor. Grant a single peace to them.

But their luck, had they any in the first place, was vanquished.

Jedi don't believe in luck.

And I should be grateful for what I have.

Shallowly consoled, he continued. "On the, um, the mission to Tri'bla IV?"

"Four months ago?" Obi-Wan struggled to sit up. "But--four months ago we weren't on a mission. We've never even been to…" He shook his head in weak exasperation.

"Yes we have, Master. You just…You just can't remember it." His teeth bit down again--harder--on the inner wall of his mouth. "Or anything that's happened in the past year."

Obi-Wan didn't move, but his eyes bore into Anakin's, twin pools of murky disbelief. "What are you talking about?"

Anakin held his hand firmly. "About a year ago, something happened--something happened to your brain. There was no way of knowing for a long time. It was so gradual, and there weren't any physical indications." He looked away from Obi-Wan, and remembered words he had rehearsed during his silent vigil. But how do you explain something like this? "He coughed. "The oxygen was being deprived from your brain, so it started to affect your thought process."

"My thought process?"

Anakin suppressed a wince. There was a pale shaft of dread over his Master's visage, leaving his voice fragile and the fingers he gripped cold. "You were withdrawing from…me. You would go far-away, you looked distant, so often, and it was dangerous for you t-to even spar. You weren't sleeping.

"But when I asked you if you were okay, you told me you were fine. I believed you." Anakin sighed. "For a long time, I believed you. It wasn't until, " Fragments of the shattered mug, the drips of blood, surfaced sharply in his mind, "I woke up in the middle of the night and found you…" He pressed his hand to his forehead. "Holding a broken cup, with pieces all over the floor….and blood on you. You were completely dazed and you didn't seem to register what was going on. Then all of a sudden you snapped out of it. And you thought I was being irrational."

Obi-Wan flinched. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright." Anakin murmured. "It wasn't your fault. It was just that--nobody understood why you were acting that way. It was like someone had taken over your body. But it was still you, and that made it worse…Especially when you started to say those things…'

"What things?"

I have to tell him. I have to tell him at least this much. "You were convinced that…um…you were convinced that Master Qui-Gon was alive."

Obi-Wan's eyes closed as an ache, to which he was well-accustomed, filled his heart. Oh gods.

Anakin pressed a hand to his shoulder. "You thought the Jedi were hiding him from you. You didn't trust anyone. Not Bant. Not me. And then," He gingerly touched Obi-Wan's head, "You thought that maybe he would recognize you if you cut your hair."

Obi-Wan clutched at the jagged tufts, a radical difference from the shoulder-length strands he remembered. "Like a Padawan?"

Anakin nodded. "By that time, you didn't have any control. I tried to help you…but it didn't work that way. We fought each other…feet and fists…until Bant stopped us. You were in the healers for awhile, but then you broke out. You thought Master Qui-Gon would be in the Fountains and when I found you…" I can't just tell him this…How can I sit here and tell him that he tried to hurt me--again? "You collapsed. That was when they brought in the specialist, and he determined what was wrong with you. After the surgery, you were sleeping for a few days. And Bant told me you wouldn't remember." Anakin took a breath. "You don't remember at all, do you?"

"No, Ani." Obi-Wan replied.

That's how it should be. "You look tired." Anakin pulled the blankets up to his chest. "I shouldn't have told you so much all at once."

Obi-Wan's head rested on the pillow. Against his will, his eyelids were drooping. It had passed slowly, with his apprentice's compassionate narration, but as he detached from himself, it became more of a blur. I had no control…What did I do?

Anakin moved to leave, but Obi-Wan feebly grabbed his hand. "Don't go."

The boy looked surprised. He sat back down, blinking back the gathering tears. "I won't. "

"The journey can be beautiful, my apprentice. If you allow the beat, one day you'll hear its music. The beat isn't in your hands."

Obi-Wan shot up. The room was dark, and a strip of moonlight cast a yellow haze over his face. He blinked, swallowing gulps of air, his lips pressing down hard as he did so.

Once he realized where he was, his strict, almost frenzied, posture eased. He glanced beside the bed, where Anakin was sleeping, his head leaning back against the chair.

A touch of a smile whisked across his mouth. In darkness, it was relieving to awake to something other than loneliness. Even if he couldn't speak to his slumbering student, it was enough to see him, to feel his presence radiating like the warm, coruscating echoes of light that wreathed the suns, the glow surrounding the moon.

Obi-Wan looked down at his wrists. The tubes had been removed; tiny translucent bandages were smoothed over the wounds. A draft stirred above him, and the memory of his cropped hair was refreshed.

"I thought he was alive." He whispered, running his fingers through the uneven spikes.. It was outlandish, ridiculous--a crazy notion desirable enough to believe, if the mind was willing.

Surely his heart had been ready to accept it.

Obi-Wan curled his fingers around the hospital blanket. I must've been a mess. He gazed again at Anakin. And he witnessed it all. We fought--I HURT him--and he'll always remember. I searched for a.. dead man, a man he loved too…

His chest was bound up with the agony. He sealed his eyes and shook his head.

Gods what have I done?

The night, and the absence of memory, provided him no answers. Only the phantom of fear , at his ear, at his shoulder. Taunting him with all the ambiguity. He didn't know the bad he had committed, he missed countless moments of teaching his apprentice, weaving the new bead into the braid, applauding when a difficult saber technique was mastered. It was a gray cloud above him, neither dark nor pure, without rain--without light.

And worse, it seemed he was not yet cured of his hallucinations. Never in his life had he heard his Master utter words of a beautiful journey, but now they were resounding in his head, marked by the dignified accent Qui-Gon Jinn once possessed.

"You're gone, my Master. And I tried to make myself, and Anakin, believe you weren't." Naboo's dust had been unsettled, and there was no doubt in Obi-Wan that grains were stinging his apprentice's eyes.

"I'm sorry, Ani." It wasn't often he called the boy by his nickname. Though they were more familiar with each other than anyone else in the Universe, it had always sounded awkward when he spoke it. Shmi had called him that, he could assume, for so had Qui-Gon, the Queen…Everyone Anakin had loved. Everyone the child had lost. There were other endearments he used, but hardly ever 'Ani'.

Obi-Wan was the intruder, the stranger who never stepped foot into the Skywalker home or spoke to the boy without professional warrant. A hasty replacement for the man who had cared for 'Ani' with ease.

He understood now, quite suddenly, that maybe his hesitance had cost Anakin. "I'm sorry for anything that hurt you."

"Master?"

Obi-Wan's face flushed. Anakin sat up, blinking in the dark, attempting to focus his eyes. "Master, are you alright? Should I go get Bant--"

"I'm fine, Ani."

"Oh." The Padawan apparently did not fully agree; he stayed close to the bed, Obi-Wan under his worried appraisal.

Obi-Wan smiled. "I said I'm fine. Just a case of insomnia." He paused. "I've been thinking.

"And I need to tell you something."

Anakin was admittedly curious; it had been a long time since he had a conversation with his lucid, healthy Master. He longed for the interaction. But the shadows under Obi-Wan's eyes redirected his interests. "Couldn't it wait until morning? You must be tired."

"I think you've had to wait long enough." Obi-Wan whispered knowingly. He gathered a breath. "I don't know all that happened while I was ill, but from what you've told me, I caused harm to you. The fact that it was involuntary does not erase the pain caused." The Knight was forced to pause and pull from his limited reserve of energy in order to continue. He inhaled again. "I wasn't just touching on a…delicate subject, I was throwing it in your face."

In the set of blue-gray eyes, Anakin saw the wash of sorrow, an agony of shame, not unlike what he had witnessed on the crumbling ledge. "Master--"

"I know this was no one's fault. But I still feel the need to apologize. You were on your own for far too long, and were made to deal with the effects of my disease solitarily. I wasn't able to fulfill my duties as a Master, and you suffered because of that."

"You suffered too." Anakin added.

"From what I've been told." Obi-Wan's smile was bittersweet. "But you'll remember it in a way I never will. " He laid his palm over Anakin's hand, and with his free fingers touched a bruise that purpled the top of the Padawan's cheekbone. When he tried to speak, he was almost silenced by a sob that lumped in his throat. "I'll do whatever I can to make up for it. Not just for…the wrong that was done, but the good times, too. "

Obi-Wan gripped Anakin's hand and forced himself to look the boy in the eye, when he would much rather have shut his own. "We can take a sabbatical, go to the Reserve, o-or go to those races you're always talking about…"

"Master," Anakin gingerly pushed him back against the pillows. "It's alright. It's enough that you're here." He smiled, but with restraint, afraid his strength would collapse--and the weak walls around his emotions would shatter. "It's…It's enough that I didn't lose you."

Obi-Wan's voice was fainter. "If there's anything more you want to tell me, anything else you want me to know…"

The moment stretched out, like a gleaming thread, reflecting the past few days against its surface. Anakin felt as though his hands were at the edges, and his next words would mean the difference between a break in the fibers--or the eternal binding of himself, and his Master, to the nightmare.

His fists were tight around the ends. "After you collapsed, you retreated somewhere in your mind. A place where the specialist, and not even Bant, could reach." Anakin grit his teeth, and looked at his Master, who was waiting for him to continue, anticipating the next weight on his burdened conscience. The youth's chest welled with a love that shoved away his desire for honesty… while planting remnants of resentment deep beneath the surface. He smiled. "But I found you. You were very sick by then, and you didn't want to come back with me, but in the end, you did. "

Obi-Wan's eyes looked fever-bright in the moonlight. "What did you do?" He whispered.

"I told you how much I cared about you. And you told me." Anakin rested his hand on the warm cheek. "That's all.

"Now go back to sleep. Or I will get Bant, and you'll be in here about a week longer than you need to be."

Obi-Wan chuckled. "I believe it."

It wasn't long before he drifted off, and Anakin sat back, the string severed.

But it wasn't gone.

Three days passed with Obi-Wan slowly regaining his body's usual power. When he wasn't resting,

Anakin described various missions and training sessions that occurred in the lost year.

On the fourth morning, Obi-Wan woke in unison with the sun His dreams were always foggy and without focus, but he could always remember the same niggling words when he rose: "The journey can be beautiful, my apprentice. If you allow the beat, one day you'll hear its music. The beat isn't in your hands."

And suddenly, he understood what he needed to do. He swung his legs over the side of the cot and slipped on a thin, white hospital robe.

Anakin was roused by the rustling and frowned, lifting his chin from his fist. "Master, do you need some help?"

Obi-Wan had yet to stand, and a rush went through his head. He blinked. "Come with me, Padawan."

Anakin walked over quickly. He wove their arms, to keep the Knight steady. "Where?"

"Don't question your sickly Master." Obi-Wan admonished with a dry smile. "Just come on."

The Gardens were quiet around daybreak, and their steps softly echoed. A mixture of sweet fragrances perfumed the air.

Anakin glanced at Obi-Wan. "Do you want to sit down? There a bench over--"

"No. We'll only be here a moment."

Anakin was led down the cobblestone path at a gradual pace, until they came to a flourish of white blooms.

Obi-Wan crouched to pluck one. His face was bereft of its previous humor. Anakin helped him stand, and supported him lightly as they made their way out again.

Anakin stood at the doorway. "I'll wait here if you want me to, Master. I know…you've never been here before."

Obi-Wan stepped inside the Room of Memorial, and held out his hand. "Neither have you. Perhaps it's time we change that."

Anakin looked down at the flower, clutched in his Master's shaking fingers.

"I wanted you to believe he was still here." Obi-Wan murmured. Tears ran unheeded from his eyes. "But if that were so, he would have brought me this." He ran his thumb along the verdant stem.

"He was worried for you, Master. Just as much as I was. He--He talked to us both."

"Then I…" The older Jedi swallowed. "I should thank him. We should thank him."

After a few seconds, Anakin accepted the hand, and together, they bent at the tomb of their shared Master.

What is done

Has been done for the best

Though the mist in my eyes might suggest

Just a little confusion

About what I'd lose

But if I started over

I know I would choose

The same joy

The same sadness

Each step of the way

That fought me and taught me

That friends never say

Goodbye. -- Hans Zimmer/Gavin Greenaway

The End.