AN: Here we go! I'll try to update at least once a week. (And yes, I know how tall the Star Wars time-travel-fic pile already is, and yes, I am adding to it anyway.)

Sand whipped around her, so thick it blotted out the suns and the whole world appeared to be dark. She couldn't tell which direction was which, and every time she tried to take a step forward she stumbled.

She was caught, utterly and helplessly, by the sandstorm.

The wind howled in her ears, and she raised her voice to join it, screaming, yelling, crying out in pain. She continued until her lungs were empty, and then she inhaled, and did it again, and again, and again.

Eventually, her voice grew hoarse, and her screams devolved into choked-off sobs. Her arms wrapped around her middle, and she fell to her knees.

Throughout it all, the sand did not touch her. She made no effort to protect herself, but the Force wrapped around her anyway, keeping away the grains that would do her harm.

That was not what she wanted. She wanted to feel again. She wanted to hurt, she wanted to loose herself, she wanted to join her loved ones in the Force.

But that was, of course, denied to her.

Obi-Wan closed her eyes, sand whirling around her, and wept.

It had been one year since Mustafar and Order 66.

Qui-Gon stared at the two beds.

One contained a child, his padawan, who was in a coma. Physically, she was fine. She could breathe on her own, her heart could beat by itself. Mentally, however... well. Her brain was only active enough to keep her body running. She didn't dream, she didn't think. She didn't even have a Force-presence. It was as if she was a husk, and her consciousness had completely vanished.

According to the Shadows, it had. They said that there could only be one version of a person in a timeline, and until the current timeline diverged far enough away from the other timeline, the Force would keep his padawan's consciousness in some sort of limbo. The Shadows had promised him that once the timelines had diverged far enough, Obi-Wan would be returned, because who her current self was would no longer be the same person as the one who was in the second bed. But they didn't know how long that would take, or how many differences were required for the Force to make that distinction, and the thought of waiting weeks, or months, or even years, to have his child returned to him… it made Qui-Gon feel sick.

Because the person in the second bed may have also been Obi-Wan, but she was not his padawan. She felt different in the Force, was more closed off, had far better shielding, and was obviously a Master, not a padawan. She was Obi-Wan, yes, but she was also a stranger.

Qui-Gon closed his eyes. Force, but he had felt such horror when his padawan had reached out to touch the ancient Jedi artifact. Even though others had held it without incident, he had just known when she moved to pick it up that something bad was going to happen.

And it had.

According to the Shadows assigned to their case, Obi-Wan had experienced the events that were "most likely to occur if the device hadn't been activated."

And now she was in a coma, and an older version of herself was also in a coma, and only the older version of herself was capable of waking up anytime soon.

"Brooding again?" a voice asked from the doorway. He turned. Tahl leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. "You need to eat something, Qui. And you need to sleep. She'll be waking up soon, and something tells me that she'll need the full support of her Master when that happens. Which you won't be able to give if you're half dead."

"When she wakes up, I won't be her Master. Not anymore." He gestured to the older Obi-Wan. "She's a Master in her own right, that much is obvious."

Tahl scowled. "So you're going to be an idiot about this."

Qui-Gon barked out a bitter laugh. "Explain to me how I'm being an idiot, Tahl. What I said was hardly false."

"She appeared dehydrated, malnourished, sun-burnt, and sleep-deprived. It's obvious to anyone who's with her for more than a few seconds that mentally she's been hurt badly; even with her shielding she's bleeding pain into the Force. Also, the shields themselves are indicators that before she collapsed she was somewhere dangerous. No one maintains that level of shielding if they're safe.

"Now take into account that she's going to find herself in the past. She's going to wake up and find herself separated from all of her friends and peers. She's going to miss them, and some of those Force bonds have probably snapped, and some of them have probably weakened, like her one with you.

"She's going to need help, Qui, dealing with both wherever she was to get so hurt, and to adjust to this time period. And to do that," she crossed over to him, navigating gracefully around the bed closest to the door, "she'll reach out to someone familiar. Someone she trusts. Someone, such as a particular father-figure, who was there for all of her padawan years-"

Qui-Gon interrupted her before she could get any further. "That's the problem, Tahl. I wasn't there. Someone who I will be, perhaps, but I don't have those memories. I wasn't there to see her knighted. I wasn't there to see her become a Master. I'm not the one she's going to be looking for."

"No. But you'll get over yourself, and you'll be there for her anyway."

Qui-Gon opened his mouth to say something, noticed the glare Tahl was sending him, and promptly decided to hold his tongue.

"Now is the time when you agree with me," Tahl said. "Unless, of course, you're planning on ignoring her when she wakes up."

Qui-Gon sighed.

Tahl nodded once, satisfied. "Now go get a warm meal and some sleep. I'll stay here in case she wakes up in the meantime."

It had been one year since Mustafar and Order 66 when Obi-Wan went out into a sandstorm to loose herself. It had been one year since she lost it all when she collapsed amidst swirling sand.

When she woke up, it would not be one year after the rise of the Empire. It would be far, far before then.

But she wouldn't know that.