Of course, a huge thanks to those that read and reviewed. It means a lot. -LuvEwan

Anakin felt like he was smothering.

Not in the literal sense, of course. Here, at this height of existence, there were no real bodies. Only minds, with their own version of strength and pain and atmosphere.

But, to a metaphorical (and no less terrifying) equivalent, Anakin was grappling for air. The landscape of Obi-Wan's thoughts were murky, filled with plumes of blackening smoke, burnt with dark fervor, billowing out over the bright purity of his Master's Force presence. He couldn't see past the viscous pall. Couldn't reach for the Force, to try and clear the polluted clouds.

But he could hear voices. Far-away, miles apart from him. No coherent words…no…

Anakin galvanized his trembling heart, and sought the power of the Light, weeding through the dripping darkness with determined fingers. There is no fear…

But oh yes there was fear. Layered around his apprehensive mind, choking him as much as the fumes, telling him to go back.

That even if he found his Master, it would be a labor made in vain.

Anakin stared at the bottomless, limitless shadow before him, around him. For a moment, he was overcome with bewilderment. He was unsure where he was, without a single, weak beam of illumination to tell him.

Was he within Obi-Wan's mind?

Or was he a failure, and caught in his own?

There…There is no fear…no fear…

There is love.

He was wrong, but he didn't stop to consider that. His mantra was flawed, according to the Code. There wasn't supposed to be love--passion. Life was a rigid grid of duty, crossed with obligation, intersected again with serenity.

Serenity. There is Obi-Wan. There is serenity.

Another inaccuracy. What had happened to his set of Jedi morals?

They too seemed to have been stifled beneath the charcoal fog. Anakin felt himself detach, drifting toward a stream of gray. He flowed along it, and again was unsure whether it was in his mind or his mentor's.

Thoughts rushed through him, like the river, as he was on it.

There is Obi-Wan. There is the Force. There is Obi-Wan-serenity. There is love yes. There is love and strength and me. There is the Force and me. There is the Force and Obi-Wan and me…

There is love.

This time, he didn't so much as acknowledge his rebellion. Wherever the crumbles of the Code were, they weren't in his thoughts, weren't in Obi-Wan's.

But the Force was here now, breaking through just a patch of dark. Anakin latched on, forgetting in his dizzy hurry his usual need for pride. He was a subject of the Force. He followed where it took him and didn't once question its wisdom.

He was taken through a corridor of cold and tar. The voices returned, and they reverberated off the walls, becoming more distinct as he traveled.

Then, there was a cry--and Anakin knew from whom it was ripped.

Amid the black, the Padawan managed to find his voice. "Master?"

Obi-Wan tightened his hands and his jaw, fingers grasping at the slightly thick column of Qui-Gon's neck. He snarled, and in the savage sound was an echo of countless tears, drained from his eyes down to his throat, harsh and comprehensive of enormous grief.

Grief that clung to him like an incurable tumor.

He increased the pressure of his grip, not caring that he couldn't see the face of the man he had pinned beneath him.

No. Perhaps the remedy was right here all along, thrumming under his skin, pulsing in his fingertips.

And in his screams. There was relief in them, too. " You threw me away, like I didn't matter. Like I didn't matter enough…to even be told beforehand." A burst of a sob, quickly controlled, though the receding moisture was gleaming in his eyes. "I could've been ready. I-I could've hidden away…But I had to hear it, for the first time, in front of the damn COUNCIL!"

No response. He couldn't detect a syllable of explanation in the air, nothing to right what was so irreparably wrong in his heart and in their past.

Because nothing can make it right again nothing can fix this nothing can fix it but maybe I can end it maybe I can end it and feel better…

"In front of the Council, who never thought I was good enough in the first place. They must've snickered in their heads, huh?" A horrible, melancholy smile wrenched his lips to the side. "Snickering at ME, snickering at YOU. An 'I told you so' just burning on their lips, right? 'I told you so, Master Jinn. We told you so, you dumb old fool.' "

And he saw them, the cruel panoramic shot of faces, some alien, some not. The Council. Their eyes all squared and calmly leveled on him. The seemingly starless night behind them.

Obi-Wan never realized he had even seen them, at that moment. He had been so blinded by shock and…anger.

"Even Master Yoda knew." An acrid bitterness bled into his tone, worse than before. "He knew I wasn't good enough, knew I shouldn't train Anakin. Knew that I wasn't worthy of it and I'd never be able to get past my resentment of him. At least he had the decency to tell me to my face, alone…And he wasn't even my Master. "

Again, nothing.

With a jagged cry, Obi-Wan flung Qui-Gon down, his hand flying up at the same time to touch to his own throat, where he felt painfully constricted.

Coughing, he addressed once more the man he couldn't see, but knew to be before him. "But that's just it. He wasn't my Master, was he? YOU were. YOU were my teacher, my friend, my…" He shook his head. "I didn't listen to him, because I was still listening to you.

"But now he's got his chance for 'I told you so', doesn't he? He told me I shouldn't train him. I had my warnings--

"But I also had my obligations. To you. To save you, your legacy and your memory. Redeem myself for the debacle of my apprenticeship." His lips quivered, his eyes narrowed from the wet sting. "To try to erase the embarrassment of your biggest, longest mistake. That's what you wanted to do, I know, with Anakin. You could've taught him, and been known as the Master of the Chosen One, with your name in all the books and monuments and history. Then everyone, the Council, the Temple, everyone, could just forget that you once trained someone who wasn't special, who wasn't a miracle. That stumbled and was s-so full of anger, who couldn't've even respected the Order, who left the Order like a bratty kid in a snit, then came crawling back when it was too dark out." His heart clenched up, for he was quite aware that most of the words were all but quoted from what he had heard on his arrival at the Temple after Melida/Dann. Bits of overheard conversation. Sometimes outright, blunt spite, spat into his face.

He noticed distantly that Qui-Gon still would not react to his admissions, to his rage.

"And now, what do they say, when they see me walk by, with Ani beside me? Trying to emulate me, like Padawans do?

"'Every day, he screws the boy up a bit more, with his grievously undeserving example. The boy's been totally misled all along.'" Obi-Wan blinked against the motionless veil of black. "'All along'."

A few feet away, but concealed in abundant shadow, the boy heard.

Bant felt a cold rile in her stomach as she stared in a near daze at Anakin Skywalker, seated beside his Master in the tense coil of healers. His tanned face was completely smoothed out, projecting a sense of absolute calm in the sweep of gold-dusted lashes and lax parting of his strange lips, that had always seemed to carry a tint of purple.

A passing glance would glean only that he must be at peace, with that natural, fluid stillness of his visage, the comfortably equaled shoulders and curve of his back.

And his hand, resting on a soft forehead, the fingers spaced to reveal slits of the paler skin tone beneath his own. For the patient was so wan and purely white he was bordering on translucence and the pacific statue beside him was bronzed. Their crossed pallor was like a stitching of light and something resembling dark.

Bant crossed her arms, her hands ice flushed bright pink.

But, if one stood long enough, focused keenly enough on the motionless, upright figure, they would interpret the scene far differently.

During meditation, it was quite common for a Jedi to slip into a very deep state of communion with the Force, separating from the outside world, and even, rarely, the internal processes of thought, reaching a place where only the soul, in its unalloyed, untarnished form, existed. The soul that was cradled within the Force, and therefore cleansed by it. Obi-Wan mentioned to her, long ago, that his Master would sink (or lift, it could also be thought) to that level of being, totally in tune with the Force, wonderfully oblivious to his surroundings, anything that wasn't within the soothing core.

Bant knew that certain Jedi could accomplish this, if only for a short while. But her friend had never been eager to accomplish it. And many times, while mourning the lost parts of him intermixed with the cinder, thrust into the Naboo night, she decided that perhaps his hesitance was caused by his fear to not feel responsibility to anything save himself. For as long as she could remember, Obi-Wan took the guilt, like stones ever-piling at his feet, lifting each one, scraping himself with every touch. It hurt, she knew, but he still took them. They assured him he was sullied by imperfection, but that he had a purpose.

Obi-Wan's purpose, to his way of thinking, was to bear their weight, so that others didn't have to.

The small healer seemed to shrink further into her smock, arms huddled against her, as the harsh musings came faster to her.

And the roughest, heaviest boulder was set at his already bleeding toes by the Sith. This rock had yellowed eyes and a smile that told him it was his fault.

Bant wiped at her eye.

She didn't think the Sith needed to remind Obi-Wan of that. From the second Qui-Gon Jinn passed, he accepted that as solid, impenetrable fact. He wasn't quick enough. He wasn't alert enough.

The notion that had taunted her sweet companion since his early initiate days: He wasn't good enough.

It was Obi-Wan's way, and her efforts, or Anakin's, or even Master Yoda's, would do nothing to change it.

Even Master Jinn couldn't change that. She frowned at Obi-Wan, wishing she could hold his limp hand in hers.

But over the course of these few, terrible days, that lifelong mindset was altered. He began to think he was a victim of an elaborate conspiracy, a scandal that placed wrongful guilt on him.

That should've been my warning. He would never--

No, he would never, sanely and rationally, undergo such a radical switch in beliefs.

She glanced up at Anakin again, identical to when she had seen him before. She wondered if Obi-Wan had taught the boy how to attempt to attain that station within the Force, detached from trouble and caressed by its gentle, coruscating light.

But, even if he had, Anakin was not there now. His expressionless face belied the turmoil she sensed within him. He was NOT placid, he was not unified with anything.

There was pain in Anakin Skywalker's signature. The kind of anguish that could halt a person mid-step, and keep them cemented there.

So he was still and quiet and, at the surface, content.

But, inside, and in the Force, he was none of those things.

His heart was contracting, his spirit was screaming, and his happiness was shredded.

Bant wanted to intervene, yet she didn't think Anakin, even in this awful state, would thank her.

He needed to overcome, to rejoin the Force in continuity, before he could so much as function again…to save himself, to save his Master.

Obi-Wan had never experienced the basic joy of that special connection his mentor so often did with the

Force. If he was grappling for it now, with the illusions of his illness secured, he wouldn't give up without a fight.

Bant forced herself to turn away.

What's doing this to you--both?

Gods, what can stop it?