Happy Wednesday night, y'all :D Fun fact: this was the the third fanfic I ever wrote. Another fun fact: if you leave a (nice ;P) comment I will literally be happy about it for days. Last fun fact: almonds work to relieve headaches. This is not a joke - you're welcome ;) Pretty sure it's obvious from the summary, but this is NOT slash.

Anyways, enough fun facts, enjoy the story :)

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An alarm blared warningly in a chamber of the Healing Halls of the Jedi Temple, and an apprentice physician seemed to appear at the side of the bed. A fourteen-year-old Padawan writhed in the flood of white sheets, shivering violently despite the fact that his temperature was dangerously high. The beads of sweat that tracked down his face mingled with the teardrops that trickled from closed eyes as his illness subjected him to the cruelest of nightmares. Though it was shaking slightly from anxiety and fatigue, a warm, steady hand gently brushed away the tears and a strong, unwavering presence calmed the sick Padawan. The young healer turned to the Jedi who hadn't left his Padawan's side since the night he'd fallen ill, four days ago.

"Master Jinn," the young healer began in a tone that Qui-Gon distinctly disliked from the start. She laid a hand tentatively on the apprentice's forehead, but immediately drew it back as if scalded. "His fever keeps spiking; it's dangerously high, but completely inconsistent, and although we've checked our records thoroughly, we can find no archived illness that matches your Padawan's symptoms. So, besides keeping him as cool as we can, and seeing that he stays hydrated, I'm afraid there's not much we can do for Obi-Wan."

Absently, the Jedi Master marveled at the teenager's ability to remain politely unattached. How a sixteen-year-old girl could watch a young Padawan suffer like his was, and simply report in the calmest of tones that she could do nothing to help him was completely beyond him. He was positive that should their roles be reversed, he would be nearing shamefully close to tears. In fact, even in his current position, he felt rather too emotionally unbalanced for his liking.

"You just want a fourteen-year-old to simply tough out a hundred five-degree fever that is causing him to get sick every three hours and giving him nightmares so bad they scare me?" The healer seemed to have missed the note of incredulity in the Master's tone.

"Uh huh!" She nodded brightly, appearing incredibly relieved that Qui-Gon understood. "He should be better in at least a few days." Her voice was low, as not to disturb Obi-Wan, who had admitted he had a nasty headache, but there was still a sense of chirping in her tone as she scampered away. They should assign her Council duty, Qui-Gon reflected darkly as he watched her skip into the medical supplies room. A second idea caused a wry smile to twist itself onto his face, despite himself. Or, better yet, maybe cleaning out Mace Windu's quarters for a month? I can guarantee there'll be no chirpiness left by then!

A moan from his Padawan dragged Qui-Gon out of his brilliant brainstorming as he squeezed strength and love and reassurance into Obi-Wan's hand as the teenage Jedi began to dream again, his feverish heart revealing his deepest fears and desires, and his connection to the Force fluctuating, uncontrolled as it spilled out the past and the future.

A ragged voice reached out, hoarse with unbearable pain, "Train him… He is the Chosen One…" it begged. The last breaths of ancient wisdom, never to be wasted on trivial matters, "There… is… another… Sky…walker," it rasped. Lava, red and hot, as two nearly identical blue lightsabers clashed as enemies. "I HATE YOU!" a purely evil voice raged, sounding more venomous than a deadly serpent. A clipped, Coruscanti accent, lower, older, sadder, but sounding so much like his own. "Anakin's the father, isn't he?" he asked, as if that would signify the end of the known galaxy. A black shape so dark it was its own shadow that it cast on the universe, forever tainting the galaxy to its tragic, unknown fate. "Your powers are weak old man," a hiss blew in his hear through an angular oxygen mask, playing into a Jedi Master's secret fear. "You are weak… you are weak… you are weak…"

"… you are weak… you are weak…" He began to envision his greatest fear. A rugged Jedi's boots were planted firmly on one side of a canyon, his rebelliously long, grey-streaked hair blowing in the ominous wind as he drew his dazzling green lightsaber. A tiny, terrified Padawan cowered on the other edge, teetering, unbalanced, the braid that, to him, symbolized his whole existence, his entire purpose in life, tugging and dancing tauntingly, like it might fly away at any second. In the older Jedi, there was only calm. Strength. Detachment. Wisdom. Obedience… everything that the young one aspired to. In the Padawan… insecurity. Emotion. Love. Curiosity. Independence… everything that the code he strove to live up to forbade. He was drowning in guilt, in shame, in despair. The rift between the once inseparable was increasing rapidly, and the Padawan grew desperate. "I am sorry, Master!" he cried, stubbornly refusing the tears that had drawn him here in the first place. "I am sorry! Please! I am sorry, Master!" The older Jedi, in perfect conformance to the Order to which he was loyal to, allowed no reaction. No softening. No love. "You have failed me, Padawan. You are weak… you have failed me… you are weak."

"No!" Obi-Wan shrieked, gasping for breath against the vise his fever had wrapped around his chest and startling awake with such intensity that the IV wire slipped out of its place and caused the master healer to rush into the room. Tears tracked down the Padawan's face, and he clung to Qui-Gon's arm like it was his only chance of survival. Confused and concerned, the Togruta healer ran a skilled and gentle hand through the patient's hair, tenderly coaxing him to fall back onto his bed, with more compassion and personal kindness than the apprentice seemed to have mastered. Using the other hand, she typed a code into the computer screen by Obi-Wan's bedside and accessed his medical information and the monitoring of his current illness.

"I'm Healer Viala," the woman nodded. "His heart rate is considerably higher," she informed the boy's master, a fact Qui-Gon had already gathered on his own. "Did anything excite him? Or did his fever spike again?" Her tone had a calming effect, convincing anyone who heard her that she knew what she was doing, and she really, truly cared, and Qui-Gon felt his own racing heart begin to slow down.

"Nightmares." Qui-Gon spat out the word like one might the name of a truly incompetent yet unshakeable opponent or one's lifelong enemy. One look at his Padawan, however, twisting in agony beside him, and Qui-Gon's anger had evaporated, leaving only heartbreak and desperation in its wake. "Can't you do anything to help him recover?" He took a deep breath and asked the question that had been weighing down his heart for the last three days, as his Padawan's fever grew worse and worse, that glued him to Obi's bedside and distracted him from every other duty. "… will he… recover?"

The healer hesitated, an uneasy expression on her face, and Qui-Gon felt his heart stop. "I… cannot be sure. We could put him in a very powerful healing trance, that, if effective, will immediately cure his fever."

There was a catch. There had to be, or else they'd have done it long ago. Right? "But…" Qui-Gon prompted, sensing that this was going to be the ugly part.

"But… there is a chance he will never come out of it." She paused to let the Jedi Master absorb the shock, and went on. "I'm afraid… with a fever as high as his… the chances are… very high." It wasn't the first time she'd had to deliver an incurable diagnosis, or face a Master with a death-or-danger option, but it never grew any easier.

Qui-Gon wanted to snatch his Padawan to his chest and yell that no one could touch him, ever again. He wanted to coax the fever into his body instead, to give Obi-Wan even one less day of suffering. He wanted to sink to the floor and sob like a Crecheling, until he ran out of tears or the Temple was flooded. But he was a Jedi, and breaking down was not one of the options. Tentatively, he ran his hand down his beard and braced himself for the answer. "Will he die if you don't?"

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Stayed tuned for chapter two :)