To those who are reading, I thank you ...for those who will keep reading hoping that the never-ending angst ends, I double thank you. It will - but not for a long time. I do regret that, but this story is so much further ahead on another website, and I currently have no plans to do this story a favor and tighten it up. Force knows it could use it.

In response to a comment, chapter lengths vary and there is no "dastardly plot" to shorten each as we go. Some are long, some are short, and maybe, just maybe, some are "just right."

Chapter 21. The Stab of Knowledge

"What a tangled web we hope to unweave," Healer Jorak muttered to himself. What he did was art, not science; it proceeded at its own pace. Force echoes were not coordinates to be plotted, committed to graph or otherwise categorized, yet that was exactly what he was attempting.

Echoes tended to hold onto the essence of a person, tinged by his perception of said person's Force presence. Light and dark, luminescence and saturation, color and hue were as unique as each individual, yet not unchanging. Stress and grief, illness and injury left their marks.

The chair squeaked as the man leaned back. He needed access to young Kenobi, but hesitated. The padawan – knight – whatever his status was now needed rest, not a healer poking around his still healing mind. He showed all the confusion al'Kim had predicted and it manifested itself in silence.

As much as the Council wanted answers, they did not want to risk a setback in either Jedi's healing.

Too bad no one had thought of the risk of injury to young Skywalker or to the healer who examined him. Jorak winced at the memory and rubbed his ankle.

Skywalker had objected – loudly, vocally and physically – when Jorak had sought a follow up examination of his Force presence as he did periodically with Qui-Gon and would with Kenobi. If the kid was anything in hand-to-hand combat as he was in foot-to-shin kicking, he'd be the equal of Cin Drallig – or a terror worse than Master Yoda when he was most displeased.

Something niggled at his mind, something that told him he "saw" something he should not. What that was and within who eluded him. Probably something innocuous, but any anomalies needed to be investigated.

He would find it. He always did. He just didn't know when.

"Ah, Padawan, ready to escort your master to our quarters?" Qui-Gon ruffled the boy's hair as he pulled soft boots on. He was leaving – no more healers' gowns, beeping of machinery, or any of the myriad things that healers' did to make their patients' lives uncomfortable.

For such a grievous wound as he had suffered, his recovery had been remarkably fast. His blood loss had been minimal, veins cauterized by the lightsaber that had pierced his body; internal organs only nicked.

So much Force energy – perhaps even some of Obi-Wan's life energies – had been poured into the wound according to the healers that infection had never developed and the healing, once the shock had been treated and the wound stitched and treated by bacta, responded well to the rest.

The scars he wore like a badge of honor: he had stood against a Sith and survived. It was an accomplishment no Jedi had accomplished in centuries – no Jedi other than he and his former padawan.

And the Force whispered in unease whenever he visited that thought.

One should always pay heed to the whispers of the Force, and so the Force's unease became Qui-Gon's, little by little. Its prickles of warning coalesced into swirls of suspicion.

That Obi-Wan was successful when Qui-Gon was not was something he felt increasingly certain that the Council should cast a suspicious eye on and investigate far more thoroughly, whatever the current state of Obi-Wan's health. Those whispers told him they accepted far too easily his former padawan's brush with the dark and his seeming repudiation of it during his fight with the Zabrak – and had done so on Obi-Wan's word alone.

It seemed only he, other than the Force, suspected his former padawan had still been under the influence of the dark side when he had killed the Sith.

Obi-Wan was not strong enough or skilled enough in actual combat to do what his more accomplished master had not, even allowing for the vagaries of fate and chance. Even Anakin, for all his midichlorians, would not have been capable of such a feat at his age, and Qui-Gon was quite sure that Anakin was at least Obi-Wan's equal in Force strength already.

The "Chosen One," his legacy and his padawan, would prove the salvation of a galaxy falling apart.

Certainly not Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Soft tap, soft tap. Brisk slap, brisk slap. Sharp rap, sharp rap.

Obi-Wan often knew who was in the hallway by the sound of the footsteps. Decisive or indecisive, loud or soft, even hurried or leisurely, each passerby had a distinctive sound. One sense continued to inform him, even if the information meant little.

The footsteps did not pass by, this time, growing louder then receding. They paused just outside his door, as if indecisive.

Surely the healers did not fear his reaction? They thought him incapable of action or reaction to their words or their tests, for nothing was what he gave them – that was all he was capable of giving. It was comfortable that way, but he could not remain entirely unaware of events around him, no matter how much he craved it.

So it was that he knew, deep down, in some part of himself…some things did not have to be said. Some things would never be said, he knew that now as well.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, bracing himself for what was coming, fingering the edges of his blankets with unsteady hands. He really wasn't ready to confirm what he already knew, but truth postponed was only truth postponed. Truth had to be faced, so better now than another time, for the truth would be no different then versus now.

The healer finally entered his room and took a seat by his side, laying a gentle hand on his arm.

"Feeling any better today, Kenobi? Still nauseous?"

An honest question, but it was small talk to fill the silence. Obi-Wan clutched even tighter; then consciously relaxed his fingers.

"He's gone, isn't he?" The hoarse words startled them both. Had it been that long since he'd formed words? Obi-Wan finally opened his eyes and looked first at the healer than away, out the window, the words slow to form. "He's been released to quarters, hasn't he?"

The healer didn't have to ask who. "Yes."

"I thought…I hoped…." He blinked a tear away and his fingers picked once more at his blanket. He pressed his lips together, refusing to say it. That way he would not get an answer. He already knew; he just didn't want to hear it.

He was remembering – too much.

"Just rest, Padawan," the healer murmured, patting his arm and leaving in search of another, a friend and a healer, for that was what his patient was most in need of.

"You hoped Qui-Gon would come to see you first?" Bant's words were soft as she entered and sat by her friend. He had said so little since first wakening; it seemed he had trouble forming words to express his thoughts. That was her hope anyway. The alternative was that his mind was so damaged that he might not even truly comprehend what he had been told.

She lifted his hand in hers and rubbed it as Obi-Wan nodded, his face still turned away from her.

"Obi, look at me, I won't judge you, you know I would never judge you." She put a hand under his chin and turned his head to face her. Obi-Wan had not looked happy when she had last seen him before he left on his last mission, but he had been calm and composed. He had looked well.

Now he didn't.

His face was lined with pain; his eyes shadowed with loss. He ate little since his return, just as he said little. He had lost weight and he seemed to have lost hope. It wasn't depression, but a consequence and a reaction of the damage he had suffered.

She longed to again see the bright sparkle that lighted his eyes from within or to hear the gentle cadence of his voice, but as both a healer and a Jedi, she accepted that until he could discover something within himself to give, he could give no more. Far too much had been taken from him.

For Bant it was enough that Obi-Wan was alive and at least minimally communicative.

She felt a surge of hope when Obi-Wan returned the squeeze of her fingers with a squeeze of his own. He was trying to reach past what had happened to him, to reassure her.

"I knew he wouldn't – though I hoped," he admitted finally.

"Oh, Obi." She hugged him as he suddenly buried his face in her shoulder and held on tightly, not crying, just holding on as if holding on would restore him. Both knew it would not. He could not hold onto something that was already gone.

"Oh, Obi." It was her tears that fell instead.

Yoda's old heart had been greatly gladdened to hear that Obi-Wan was slowly emerging from the quiet bars of his mental imprisonment, to reconnect with those around him.

As hard as it had been to watch the young man lie so passively, Yoda knew it would be far harder to watch the first stages of recovery, when the battle to reestablish himself battered against reality. There would be good days and bad - the good days, when Obi-Wan accepted his life as it now was and might forever be and his friends and colleagues rejoiced in his recovery; the bad days, when Obi-Wan might withdraw into sullen silence and denial and days it would be difficult to remain in his presence.

Such was the cycle of recovery. Yoda had seen it often and knew what to expect. He would be there to help Obi-Wan through it; he knew Mace would, as well. Once, Qui-Gon would have been there for his padawan through thick and thin, good and bad, joy and sorrow. Such was now not to be, never again to be.

Shaking his head at the inexplicable mystery of Qui-Gon's total desertion of his padawan for another, Yoda stood in the doorway, leaning on his gimer stick.

"Obi-Wan?"

The young man just lay, staring out the window, either not hearing or ignoring the soft call, Yoda didn't know which, huddled in the bed, broken and unable yet to reassemble himself. He tried again. "Obi-Wan."

Finally, the young Jedi turned his head to meet the concerned eyes. Misery in every line of his body, he asked haltingly, "Is that who I am?"

"Forget who you are, young one?"

There was silence, then a whispered, "No. I was Obi-Wan Kenobi. I was a Jedi, but now – I don't know who I am. Without the Force, I don't know if I – exist. I think Obi-Wan Kenobi…is dead. Who I am…?" He threw an arm over his eyes, refusing to meet the elder Jedi's eyes, trying to hide the pain so apparent.

Please, just go away, go away…. His unspoken plea was easy to read. A clawed hand gently touched the shaking shoulder, patted it.

"Exist still you do. The padawan who earned his knighthood, Council agrees."

Obi-Wan merely rolled over and buried his face in his arms. "I'm not a Jedi anymore, Master Yoda. No. I don't deserve it. Please, I can't talk about it…please just – leave me."

It didn't take the agitated Force around the young man to tell Yoda how upset Obi-Wan was.

Under other circumstances, he might have admonished him to seek control and Obi-Wan would have obeyed without question, but this was not the Obi-Wan of old. This Obi-Wan had been stripped of the Force, his mind scraped raw as if every nerve end were alive with pain, wounded and exhausted: even if those wounds had been incurred some time past and were slowly healing, they were far from healed as yet.

This Obi-Wan was somebody else, for now.

Stifling a sigh, Yoda nodded to himself. He would give Obi-Wan room to grieve amidst his pain. He had only truly been aware of where he was for a few days; only now with Mace's mind blocks all but removed was he coming to grips with the recent past that he still did not remember with any clarity. Any added emotional stress might only bring on another seizure; perhaps damage more of his brain for damage there was.

"The part of his brain that deals with emotions is – not yet healed," was the delicate way the healers put it. "Not yet" did not automatically mean "would heal." At least it did not mean "would never heal."

If the Force willed it, Obi-Wan would recover. The Force always found a way, just as it had found a way through the young Jedi to heal the master – or a sudden, disquieting thought struck Yoda – what if Obi-Wan had found a way to gather the Force to that end? Just whose will had it been?

Regardless, Qui-Gon had survived and was already released to finish recuperating in his own quarters. The padawan who had tried to save him was still in dire straits.

"My Obi-Wan you always will be, young one. Come back later I will," he said with a final pat on the trembling shoulder and hobbled thoughtfully from the room.

In a now-quiet room, Obi-Wan lay, listening to the receding footsteps, despair washing over him. Yoda had told him, more than once, what he had done and why he was in the healers' care, filling in the blanks in his memory. What he said had to be the truth, for Yoda never spoke anything but the truth, but it was a truth that scored deep each rehearing.

His master, his teacher, and his friend had put him aside without a second thought. A decade of togetherness, of joy and sorrow, of success and failures, of laughter and tears was for naught.

He would never be knighted at his master's hand or stand beside him. Qui-Gon had turned away from him.

Ten years…ten years gone. Had it all been a dream? Now, it was only a nightmare he couldn't escape.

Force, how he wished – how he wished not to be alone with the painful memories once more.

Yoda comforted him as best he could, when he could. He had leant his ear and offered gentle compassion, but once more Yoda had left him alone with his tears when deep within his heart he truly wanted nothing more than someone at his side. Once, Qui-Gon and Qui-Gon alone would have understood his unspoken need and stayed at his side no matter his pleas.

He had always found comfort in his master's caretaking of him when ill or injured, or in the Force. Now he had discovered that both were withdrawn from him.

What truly had he left?