A/N: If you've read to this point from the beginning of Reprise I, congratulations, you've successfully read over half a million words. That's about 50% of the entire Harry Potter series, or about 20k words longer than the entirety of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (albeit astronomically lower in quality).

He was sweating so much that his robes seemed to cling to every inch of his body. His arm itched madly beneath its sling, and he desperately needed a drink of water. Anakin had never faced the Jedi High Council alone, and he'd never realized how intimidating it would be, standing there in the center of a twelve-way crosshair of judgement. He'd spoken to the Council about missions in the past, of course, but always at Ben's side, always with Ben's quick wit and ready explanations to protect him.

They'd only just now gotten past the point of the story where Anakin realized the mountain was disguised by kyber. He'd absorbed a torrent of questions for that bit, as apparently "I just knew" was not a logical step the Council was prepared to follow. Now, they were back at that same sticking point as Anakin described how he'd opened the door to the mountain and infiltrated the kyber network, used the mountain itself to detect where his friends were and where they needed to go.

"I really don't know, masters," he floundered, unsure of how to convince them that he was telling the truth. "I really don't. I just… I told it what to do, and it did it. I'm not… I'm not trying to be obtuse." He glanced at Master Rancisis, who'd accused him of such in a flare of frustration a few moments prior. "It's not that I can't remember, I just… I don't have words to describe what you're asking for. I didn't use any technique or trick, I just… I just did it. I'm sorry." Anakin looked helplessly at Master Yoda, who alone out of the twelve had kept his questions brief. At Yoda's side, Mace Windu was rubbing his forehead. They had been here for some time, and the sun had set at least an hour ago. Anakin was hoping they might let him go, that nighttime might compel the masters to table the interrogation for later, but no one had budged.

"Perhaps we should move on," the Master of the Order sounded tired. They were all tired. "I understand that at some point, as things devolved, you became separated from your master as well as Knight Kenobi, correct?"

"Yes," Anakin replied.

"And what happened after that?"

Anakin shifted his weight and tried to remember, not sure which details were pertinent and which were not. The color of the floor? The model of ships he'd seen in the hangar? The number of klaxons he'd heard?

The planet-sized power you held in your fist just by asking for it? The thought made his gut seize with trepidation. The look on the face of the Sith you should have killed when you had the chance?

"W-well," Anakin began. The sweat on his back and chest had begun to congeal into something like ice, making him shiver where he stood. "It's a little bit fuzzy," fuzzy, yes, because you were so fully immersed in kyber you could've stayed there forever, could have drank up all that power until it tore you and the mountain to pieces. "But I can tell you what I remember."

So he did. He looked at the floor and told them of everything that had happened, even the scary parts, the parts that he didn't understand. He told them about being in control of the kyber, and how he'd felt himself slipping, and how the Sith had found him and destroyed RB-1. He told them how he crushed the kyber on accident in an attempt to protect himself and his friends.

"On accident?" Ki-Adi Mundi stated. "All of it?" Adi Gallia shushed him with a raised hand. Anakin was zoning them all out, desperate to forget where he was. He closed his eyes and continued talking, pretending he was not in front of the Council, but in front of Ben. Ben would understand. Ben would know what to do. He told them of how he'd chosen not to kill the Sith but to take his saber instead, how he'd found R2-D2, and how he'd followed the droid to find Obi-Wan.

At last he reached the part of his tale where he'd fought the Sith, he faltered and opened his eyes. He could no longer use Ben as a helpful abstraction. Even Ben was not privy to all that had transpired in that darkened chamber. Not even Obi-Wan knew about it, and he had been there.

"Yes, Padawan?" Yoda prompted. Anakin realized he must've stopped talking mid-sentence. He caught Yoda's gaze and backtracked.

"Apologies, master, I… it's a lot to remember," he said, gulping. "When I arrived, she… the Sith stabbed Obi-Wan, and then came for me. She spoke to me, while we fought."

"What did she say?" asked Depa Billaba, leaning forward in her seat with a frown.

"Umm," Anakin licked sweat off his lip. He was beginning to feel lightheaded. The not-actually-breakfast food he'd had at the Halls had not been filling. His arm ached. He smelled of bacta and sweat. He was still shivering in bursts of unnatural cold. "She wanted me to go with her. I told her no. She told me that the Jedi could not hope to train me, because I was too powerful. She claimed to know me, but… but that's impossible. I told her so." You are him, the boy from Tatooine. "She asked me what it had felt like, to control the kyber, and I didn't know how to answer." Most powerful Force-sensitive in ten thousand years. "We fought. She… my hand, I…" Anakin involuntarily cradled his strange new prosthetic through the sling. "I saw that Obi-Wan was alive, but she was still coming at me, and I didn't have a weapon, so I used the Force to take mine back, and I…" He couldn't see the ground clearly. Were these tears? "I didn't know what else to do, so…"

Obi-Wan had been so pale. There had been so much blood. The sabers blinded his vision to all else. Blue, then red, then black… He felt dizzy. "I'm sorry, masters," he blurted to the Council, bringing up his one actual hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, to fight off the dizziness as much as to hide the tears in his eyes. The Force coiled around him in confused spirals of fear, confusion, and exhaustion. "After that…" pain. Horror. Seeing Obi-Wan, falling. "I don't… I can't…"

"I think that's enough for tonight," Mace Windu interrupted, voice tired but surprisingly gentle. "Thank you, Padawan Skywalker." Yoda rose from his seat and moved to escort Anakin out of the room.

"Done well, you have, padawan," the grandmaster said quietly, patting Anakin's leg. Anakin's voice had left him, too hoarse and tired to speak any more. He only hummed a thanks and followed the short Jedi out of the room.

Ben was waiting in the antechamber outside, looking worried and in dire need of sleep. When he saw Anakin, he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Interrogate him further, the Council will not," Yoda assured the master. "Been through much, Padawan Skywalker has. Rest he needs." The wizened old master turned his attention to Anakin. "Thank you, Padawan, for your honesty. Saved many lives you did. Sleep well, you should." Anakin didn't think he was going to sleep well for the next month at least, but he only nodded and let Yoda say his goodnights. Apparently, it was close to three in the morning.

Anakin wanted to go back to his rooms and stay there until the memories of the whole mission faded away, but Ben explained he was to spend the night in the Halls again, to remain under observation until they could have the synth skin installed over his hand the following day.

"Master?" Anakin asked, too tired to tease or object while Ben coaxed him into bed as though he were a child.

"Hmm?"

"Is it… odd, what I did?" He'd told Ben the truncated version of what he'd told the Council. "With the kyber, I mean. The mountain." The question seemed to have taken Ben off guard. The master quietly arranged Anakin's bedding before saying.

"It was unusual, yes. But not bad, Padawan, if that's what you're asking."

"But the way the Council reacted, all their questions—"

"They always ask too many questions, Anakin, it's part of their job."

"You didn't see how they looked at me," his unease was starting to show. "I might as well have told them I'd learned to teleport myself across the galaxy. It's not just unusual, it's…" He didn't know what it was. His words seemed so small today, too small to describe what he was feeling. "Master," he said in a quiet voice, not knowing where to look, not knowing if what he was about to say would sound as conceited as it did when he said it in his head, "Am I… I mean, am I really that powerful? Unusually powerful? More than most Jedi, I mean."

Spoken in any other context for any other reason, from Anakin or from anyone else, the words would reek of vanity. However, as Ben watched his apprentice's self-image crack and crumble before his very eyes, he felt nothing but pity. He found himself grasping Anakin's hand. He closed his eyes, and remembered the boy Qui-Gon had found on Tatooine a lifetime away, the baby he'd held just a few short years ago.

"Yes," Ben told him, voice strained and hesitant despite himself. "You always have been." New layers of confusion and doubt erupted on Anakin's face, accentuating the dark circles under his eyes. "But," Ben added, and gripped his hand harder, "you must not be afraid of that, Anakin, you must never be afraid of yourself, or that which the Force has given you."

"But they are," Anakin protested, thinking of the faces of the Councilors. "They don't say it, but I scared them with what I said, what I did. The Council is scared of me," Anakin said miserably, voice cracking. Ben gripped his hand hard enough to hurt.

"I'm not." And for just that moment, Ben's voice was the most solid thing in Anakin's world. He wilted into his bed, holding tight onto his master's hand. "Go to sleep, padawan," Ben pleaded with him. "We will speak of it more tomorrow, once we've both had some rest." Anakin fell back into his bed obediently and, despite himself, fell asleep before Ben had left the room.

Ben did not expect anyone to be lingering outside the Halls at this hour of the morning, and was startled to find Master Yoda walking in the middle of the broad corridor, alone in the ever-present glow filtering in from the outside world.

"It's late, Master." Ben followed the shorter Jedi, voice quiet but jarring in the silence.

"Late? No. Early, the hour is," Yoda insisted, not looking back at Ben as the longer-legged master caught up with him. "If late, anything is," he grunted, "late you are, Obi-Wan." Ben couldn't help it when he darted his eyes this way and that, to see if anyone had heard the old troll call him by the wrong name.

"I don't know what you mean, master."

"The Chosen One, he is. Burden Mace with such knowledge, you did. Burden me, Mace has. Know this about himself, does Padawan Skywalker?"

"Well, no," Ben said, feeling defensive. "No, we decided it would be too dangerous if he were to be made aware too early. I feared it would… put pressure on him, subject him to wild expectations, be they my own, his, or those of the Council."

The pair walked together, ambling toward the residential wing of the Temple. Years ago, he'd had to have Vokara give him directions down this very hallway because he could not remember the way. It was easy to forget how many years had passed.

"Dangerous it may have been," Yoda said after a while. "But now, more dangerous it is to not tell him. Feel it, he does. Scare him, it does." Yoda looked up at Ben for the first time. "Down the path of fear, you would lead him, hmm? His master you are, Obi-Wan. Knew the day of instruction would come, you did. Teach him you must."

When they arrived at the junction of the residential wing and the main hall, Ben paused. Yoda walked a few steps ahead toward the lift and turned, watching Ben with expectation.

Every bone in his body was heavy like lead, and his face seemed to be sagging from exhaustion. And yet he found his boots pointed away from the lifts, away from bed and rest and home, and toward the never-sleeping halls that led to the archives.

"Excuse me, master Yoda," he said, and strode off toward his new destination. Yoda nodded approvingly and went on his way. Ben Kenobi would have to go without sleep for one more night.

The following morning, Anakin finally got to eat a true breakfast (two full helpings, he could've kissed Biala for such foresight) before they brought in the custom-built synth skin for Anakin's cybernetic hand. The operation itself was astonishingly quick, and Anakin was shocked at how simple it was to remove and reapply the skin itself over the cybernetics.

"It's really only for weatherproofing," Biala confided in him as she used something that looked like a soldering gun to seal up the gaps in the skin. "The hand itself should work just fine without the skin, but it won't do well to get water or sand in it." Anakin flexed the hand experimentally. The skin wasn't a perfect match to his complexion, just a shade paler than his tanned, freckled arm. It will be so easy to cut it open and solder it back on again, he couldn't help but think of all the modifications he wanted to make.

"Good to know," he said.

Afterwards, Anakin had expected that Ben might pick him up, but when the master failed to arrive before Luna signed his release papers, Anakin wandered out of the Halls alone and began to head to their shared apartments.

He's just tired, Anakin told himself, trying not to acknowledge the pit of anxiety that writhed in his gut like an eel. He's tired and it's still mid-morning, and he is probably sleeping. Notwithstanding that Ben Kenobi had never once slept in in Anakin's entire life, this is what he told himself as he tried to catalog all the reasons Ben had left him to his own devices in the Halls. Yet despite his self-assurances, that horrible corner of his brain kept needling him with a lingering doubt: he's afraid, after all.

He arrived at their apartment and was struck immediately by three things: one, Ben was there, awake and dressed. Two, he'd just finished pouring two cups of piping hot tea. Three, the master looked more exhausted than Anakin had ever seen him.

"Padawan," Ben looked up at him and gave a wan smile. "I'm so sorry for not being there this morning, I've been…" the master glanced down and around at the table, which was, Anakin realized, strewn with all manner of holobooks and a few stacks of handwritten notes on flimsi. "Well," Ben said, "perhaps you should have a seat. I've made sapir."

The mention of sapir set off alarm bells in Anakin's mind. Ben had always prized the delicate white varietal, but he only ever brought it out in their most serious of discussions. Anakin approached the table with some trepidation.

"Have I…" he looked across the collection of documents and wondered what they were. "Have I done something wrong, master?" he asked, absently fiddling with his new left hand. Ben seemed taken by surprise.

"Wrong? No, Anakin, Force, no," he insisted. "In fact… if anyone here has done something wrong, it's me. I should have spoken to you about this ages ago, I just…" The master seemed to shrink as he leaned into his chair for support. "I suppose I didn't want to burden you. I fear you'll be angry with me."

"What?" Anakin asked, utterly nonplussed. "Why…" he let the question trail away. Ben ran a weary hand over his face and gestured to a seat.

"Please sit down," he asked—not ordered, asked. "There's a story I need to tell you. A few stories, really. They're about you." Anakin did not know how to respond to that, so he did not. He sat, took his cup of sapir, and listened.

Later on, when asked, Anakin would never be able to recount what he'd felt as Ben led him through the story of his own life, and the prophecies about it. There would never be any word in the lexicons of any language he knew that could provide an adequate portrait of his feelings. He didn't say a word as Ben told him about how Ben himself had found Anakin shortly after he was born to an enslaved teenage girl on Tatooine. He didn't say a word as Ben told him about the premonitions he'd had about Anakin's future before he'd come to the Jedi. Even when Ben brought out an ancient holocron of a prophecy and told him that his existence had been predicted over a thousand years ago, Anakin sat silently across the table, horrified and fascinated and angry and sad, and somehow, somewhere deep, deep within himself, relieved.

Anakin remembered the day he'd realized that Ben was supposed to be his master. He'd barely been ten years old at the time, but he'd known beyond the shadow of any doubt that it would be he and Ben, together in the galaxy. Like it's always been that way. That's what he'd told Ben. Eight years on, and he'd still not found better words to describe the feeling, but found the words again on the tip of his tongue.

It's always been this way, the realization flowed through his mind like a whisper and threat, soft and profound. It felt like the Force itself, Light and Dark speaking as one. His chest tightened. It's always been this way, dear heart. There were tears on his cheeks, but he didn't even notice until he looked up when Ben said,

"Padawan?"

Force, when had Ben gotten so old? There were bags under his eyes, now so purple and puffy they looked like bruises. He had wrinkles and age spots, and his hair was beginning to recede, now over half grey. Ben had always teased Anakin that the grey hairs were his fault, but now Anakin now wondered how many more of them were the fault of his knowledge. Eighteen years, he'd carried the burden of this prophecy, apparently nearly alone in his convictions.

The master continued to look plaintively, almost guiltily at his ward, and Anakin could not find a way to respond. The profundity of revelation and his own instincts began to ebb, and he thought instead of all the days he'd spent as a child, terrified of himself. He thought of all the crechemates and agemates he'd hurt, all the hours he'd spent meditating alone for accidental damages. He remembered all the times he'd been barred from sparring practice for the sheer hazard he represented. He thought of his bullies, and the power they'd held over him by ostracizing that which they had not understood. Would it have changed anything to have known, then? Would his classmates have treated him differently if they had known they were antagonizing the Chosen One? It was an impossible question to answer, he was old enough to see that. Still, Anakin felt himself burn hot with anger and despair at the possibilities, at the what ifs, at all the childhood he'd lost to a secret he was only just now learning. When at last he spoke up, his voice cracked.

"Why," he said, tasting salt from the tears that had congregated by his mouth, "did you never tell me?" The words choked off in a whisper. Across from him, Ben made himself hold eye contact.

"Because I didn't want you to ever feel alone," he said. "Because this is an isolated path for any person to walk, and I never wanted that burden to weigh you down. Because I never wanted you to feel afraid of your own power," Anakin thought of the mountain, the kyber, the faces of the High Council. I'm not, Ben had assured him. He'd believed it with every fiber in his being. "Because I—" Ben choked. Anakin had never seen his mentor so vulnerable before, and despite his confusion and anger, a lump formed in his throat. "Because I care for you more than anyone in the galaxy," Ben said, voice sounding strange and strangled with emotion. "And I could not place that burden on a child."

Anakin's resolve snapped. His face crumpled and he held it with both hands, lungs sucking in a breath that his body had no idea what to do with. Did he cry? Did he yell? Did he ask questions? Nothing in him could decide, so he curled in on himself and began to shiver. After a moment, he heard a chair scrape against the floor, and then Ben was there, arms around his shoulders like buttresses.

"She knew," Anakin heard himself panicking, shocked that he could pick out a coherent thought amid the storm inside his head, "she knew I was from Tatooine. They know, Master, they know about me, about Tatooine, about the prophecy—"

"They know of the prophecy, but they do not know you," Ben's arms tightened. "But I know you. You know you. There is nothing the Sith know that is more powerful than that."

Anakin was not sure that it was a good enough reason to hope, but he chose to believe it anyway. It's always been this way, the Force echoed inside his head as grasped one of Ben's arms with a hand. He was not sure if he was falling apart or being put back together, but he felt somehow that the processes were one and the same. It's always been this way.

Obi-Wan slept for seventeen full hours before waking up again. After that, life took on a new and bizarre rhythm. He would sleep for several hours, wake up, eat, take walks around the Halls and into the attached gardens, perform easy exercises under the careful watch of Luna, and then go back to sleep. The wound to his side was nearly closed up, thanks to endless supplies of bacta bandages, but the internal damage was still knitting itself back together. He no longer needed the assistance of healers to walk, though he was deeply miffed to find that he did need a cane.

"I can't let the troll see me like this," he'd confided in a junior apprentice on his second morning in the Halls as the young boy helped him out of bed and handed him his cane. "I'd never hear the end of it." He gave the youngling an appraising look. "I don't suppose I could get away with knocking apprentices upside the head with this, could I?" He hoisted the stick, and the apprentice laughed. The sound made Obi-Wan smile in return.

Despite his distaste for anything adjacent to hospitals, Obi-Wan found himself relaxing into the tranquility of the Halls. It was an easy thing to do, though he'd never tell Luna or Vokara that. Still, there were times where everything about his recuperation felt like a dream. He could not help but think of Mace, and the Council's tireless efforts to put off the Chancellor's office as long as possible while the Jedi gathered all the intelligence they could on the Sith hideaways uncovered on Alderaan and Naboo. The Nubian base had been discovered just earlier that morning—utterly abandoned, by the sound of it, but abandoned in a hurry. Mace had been right in thinking Palpatine knew that they were coming. All that was left, of course, was to break the news to the Chancellor and the Senate at the same time, so they could leverage the Senate's outrage to press Palpatine into action against his own army.

Obi-Wan dreamed that he'd been sent into the fray against the Sith alongside Anakin, and that among the angry fallen faces, Komari Vosa had come back to life to take her revenge. He jerked awake and found himself breathing heavily in the dark of his small room in the Halls. There was no chrono here, but he felt somehow that it was the middle of the night. The Temple was quiet.

Heart beating and sheets now too sweaty to stand, he hauled himself out of bed (he was grateful that he could do so unassisted, now) took up his cane, and walked towards the gardens, desperate for cool air and calm.

Even in the sea of calm that encapsulated the great Ziggurat of Coruscant, the Jedi Temple gardens were a particular oasis of peace. Obi-Wan did not know which ancient architects had had the foresight to build the Halls of Healing next to the sprawling indoor wilderness, but he was grateful for their consideration. There was no one here, and much of the gardens themselves remained darkened at night, with just enough light and dots of bioluminescence to light the toe paths. He passed copses of foliage and wondered if any of the plants had begun life in pots in Ben's apartment. Eventually, he sat down on a mossy boulder overlooking a bubbling artificial stream and breathed in the cool, moist air.

"You know," Obi-Wan said quietly, "I'm not sure why I was so desperate to leave this place." There was no one here to speak to but the plants, but he spoke to them anyway. He'd teased Qui-Gon mercilessly for the practice since his early teens, and hoped the older man never found out he'd picked up the habit. "I think I convinced myself that Coruscant was more stifling than the rest of the galaxy. It was a silly thing to do."

Movement stirred Obi-Wan's attention and he looked up to see another figure roaming the dark garden paths not too far away. They were headed this way, but didn't seem to have seen him yet. The gardens were a place for solitude and meditation, and Obi-Wan had no wish to interrupt another's experience, even if unwittingly. He cleared his throat to draw attention to himself.

"Oh," said the other—a human man, by the looks of it. His stark white hospital clothes stood out as brightly in the dark as Obi-Wan's did. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize anyone would be here this time of night." The man sounded apologetic as he approached, but Obi-Wan hadn't processed a word he'd said.

That voice. Oh, Force, his voice. Obi-Wan watched the figure approach, jaw going slack. His cane fell from his grasp and he openly stared. The other man stopped just metres shy of Obi-Wan himself and looked similarly startled.

His hair was long and turned white in patches, his face gaunt with lines that hadn't been there in years past. But beneath this strange veneer, there was a face Obi-Wan would never forget in all his days.

"Garen?"

"Obi?"

They stared for a heartbeat longer, speechless. Then all at once they'd closed the distance simultaneously and crushed each other in a hug so tight that they fell to the mossy ground together, hands clinging to the other as if he'd dissolve upon letting go.

"You're alive, Force, you're alive, you're really alive," Obi-Wan heard himself chanting, crying—was he actually crying?

"Force, Obi, what are you doing here?" Garen said, also crying. He pulled away first, and though his eyes shone and his face was torn with grief, a smile crept through. "You kept your hair short," he said, reaching up to brush the soft spikes of Obi-Wan's ginger crown. "I thought for sure you'd grow it out again. Why the hell do you have a cane?" Obi-Wan laughed and cried simultaneously and shook his head, unable to explain himself. They were still sitting awkwardly on the ground, no doubt staining their hospital robes with green from the moss. One of Obi-Wan's feet had landed in the stream and was uncomfortably wet, but he could not care.

"You were dead," he said. Even after Ben and Vokara had assured him that Garen was alive, he could not have prepared to see the man in the flesh. "I was at your funeral. Force, Gar, I'm so sorry, I'm so—I should've looked for you, we all should have looked for you, I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry,"

"No," Garen interrupted firmly, gripping Obi-Wan's arms where his hands still rested from their hug, "no, you shouldn't have. They would have gotten a hold of you, and that would have been too much to stand. I never would have made it out if I knew they'd had you, too."

"But you were here, you were in the Core, on Alderaan. Force, I've been wasting all these years in Hutt Space, in Wild Space, and all this time, you were right here, right under our noses,I should've known, Gar, I should've thought to—"

"Stop it, Obi-Wan," Garen insisted, giving his arm a slap. "You didn't know, and I thank the Force for it."

Obi-Wan did not know what to say to that, so he hid the fact that he was still crying by pulling Garen into another hug. Garen reciprocated with equal strength. They stayed like that for what could have been one minute or fifty. Then, they settled into more comfortable seats against the moss.

They spoke first of Obi-Wan's injury, and the necessity of the cane. Then, they spoke of Garen's stay in the Halls. He'd made much progress under Vokara Che's careful guidance, he said. His old master, Clee Rhara, had been instrumental in bringing him out of the daze left over him by the Sith's imprisonment. Venturing out of the Mild Healers' wing was a recent development, and he was grateful for the fresh air it allowed him.

"It still doesn't feel real," Garen told his old friend, dark hair spilling over his shoulders in a silhouette that would've never been allowed past starfighter grooming regulations. "It feels like a dream, all of this. I wake up each day and am not sure if the Temple is a figment of my imagination, or the Sith. Sometimes both. I…" his voice faded, and he did not look at Obi-Wan as he said, "I have… not amnesia, exactly. I remember most things, it's just I can't… my mind isn't quite…" his expression was pained. "I can't remember the way to my old rooms. I forgot Master Che's name three days in a row, and had to be reintroduced each time. Master Rhara had to tell me how many days exist in a week. I couldn't even remember what creche clan we were raised in until she told me," he said, heaving a sigh. "But I remember you, and Coruscant, and the view from Master Rhara's apartment. I just…" he hesitated. "It's mostly there, still, just… not quite."

"It will be," Obi-Wan assured him.

"I don't think so," Garen said, no panic in his voice. "I think maybe it's just gone." He fiddled with his hands. They were quiet for a long moment. An artificial breeze whipped across the gardens, stirring the leaves of the trees and fluttering Garen's hair. "They told me that Ben was the one who found me," Garen said.

"He was. I nearly fainted when he told me." This made Garen smile, a microscopic expression.

"I didn't know it was him, at the time. I thought it was you," Garen told him. "I thought you'd just grown old, somehow." Obi-Wan felt himself fall utterly still.

"Yes," he said. "Ben told me that, too."

"You know, it's really ridiculous," Garen continued. "Maybe it's the same as forgetting days of the week and not knowing how to use a lift, but… but it really was like you were there," Garen said, squinting at Obi-Wan with a confused, curious expression. "And even now, with you here, it feels the same. You and Ben, you feel the same. In the Force, I mean. He was here a few days ago, to see his apprentice, Master Che said. But I swear to Force, Obi, for a second I thought there were two of you." He laughed and scratched at his neck, a nervous tick he'd had since childhood.

Obi-Wan swallowed and licked his lips. It may be best if we were to tell him, Ben had said. He watched Garen's expression keenly. The man was confused, and tired, and not at all the same man that had left here for Geonosis eight years ago. Yet, he was still Garen, and Obi-Wan knew he would trust him to the furthest reaches of the galaxy.

"It's not ridiculous," Obi-Wan told him. Garen probably thought he was being facetious. He reached out and took his friend's hand. "I know you've been through more than I could imagine," he said, knowing there was no turning back after this. "But there's a few things I think I ought to tell you."

"What?" Garen asked. Obi-Wan squeezed his hand and reached for his cane.

"Help me up, we can talk while we walk."

And so, they did.

When Vokara Che awoke early that morning, it was to the sounds of an alarmed apprentice reporting that Garen Muln had disappeared overnight. Vokara had thrown on her robes and joined the search straightaway. Not long after, a senior apprentice had located the missing patient right under their noses: he was asleep in the room of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"Should we move them?" asked the apprentice. Vokara hovered by the door, stoic heart going out to the long-lost friends asleep in front of her. The bed was far too small for two fully grown men, and they were slumped against each other in half-recumbent positions that would hardly be comfortable once they awoke, but she had not the heart to intervene. She looked down to where Obi-Wan's hand still rested on Garen's arm, gripping his sleeve tightly even in sleep. She had no idea how the two must've run into each other, but was secretly glad for it.

"No," she told the apprentice. "I think it will do them both good."

Days later, Obi-Wan was released back to his apartments, while Garen stayed in the Halls. When Obi-Wan later told Ben about the encounter and relayed all that he'd told Garen about… well, everything, Ben was shocked but relieved.

"He wants to speak with you," Obi-Wan told him. "He has a lot of questions."

"I can only imagine he does," Ben had replied, still too dumbfounded to know where to begin.

"Most of them aren't about you or I," Obi-Wan had said, sensing the master's mood. "They're about the Sith, and how we plan on stopping them." This had heartened Ben substantially, but their reunion with Garen would have to wait until after the Council had spoken with him. In the meantime, Obi-Wan had other matters to attend to.

Yan Dooku's apartment had changed very little since last Obi-Wan had seen it; it was still simple and clean, finely decorated and immaculately arranged. The chessboard was in the same spot as always, ever in the middle of a match. Obi-Wan was not sure who Dooku's current opponent was, but because he knew the grandmaster always played the white pieces, he took it upon himself to play for black, shifting a rook across the board to threaten one of the bishops while Dooku prepared caf.

"Asajj will not be happy if she realizes you've played for her," Dooku said, coming in from the kitchen with the tray of hot drinks, age rendering him slower but no less graceful than he'd been in Obi-Wan's youth. "It goes without saying that you've done her a favor. You really ought to come by more often, Obi-Wan, I've missed your stratagems, as damnable as they may be."

Obi-Wan gave a half smile and took a seat across from the elder man. He'd not come by to play chess. They shared the smell and first long sips of rich Mandalorian caf in companionable silence until at last Obi-Wan found the courage to breach the subject he'd come here to discuss:

"Master, the Sith I faced on Alderaan," he knew Dooku must've heard the basic story a dozen times by now, from all the gossip flying around the Temple, "she said that she knew you." Obi-Wan knew he shouldn't have been surprised when Dooku betrayed no reaction whatsoever. Yan Dooku was a Jedi of broad connections and unseen talents; if he had somehow accessed the Council's unredacted report in the last week, it would not have surprised Obi-Wan in the slightest.

"Did she," Dooku said. He took a long sip from his caf and set the cup down. He looked out the window, face unreadable as he watched the lines of skycars travel in never-ending lines of traffic, curving along the lines of the atmosphere. "I don't suppose she gave you her name?" he said, and Obi-Wan suspected he'd already guessed the answer.

"Komari Vosa." Dooku betrayed no reaction. Obi-Wan waited in uncomfortable silence, eventually looking away from the man and down at his own caf. He sipped at the drink quietly, not knowing what to do in the wake of his grandmaster's non-reaction.

"You know," Dooku said, "The day she left, I wondered if I'd made a mistake. She could not be a Jedi Knight, that much I knew. It was one of the few times the Council and I agreed on something of such magnitude. And yet…" His eyebrows came down in a more uncertain angle than Obi-Wan was used to seeing on his taciturn face. "The moment she walked away, I felt I would regret it. Had I known she would end up in the hands of the Sith…" There was nothing he could have done, of course. He looked back down at his caf, but let the drink sit on the squat table between them while he folded his hands neatly in his lap. "You did what you had to do."

"I'm sorry, master," Obi-Wan said. After a while, Dooku picked up his caf and continued drinking. The two finished their first cups in silence. Obi-Wan wasn't sure what else he could possibly say to the man, even as he began to serve the caf again.

"Have you ever considered what we ask of our younglings?" Dooku broke the silence at length, watching the long spout of the caf pot carefully as he poured. "They come to our order as infants, often orphans, turned over by their own families, and we train them to be scholars, warriors, guardians. Do they have a choice in the matter?"

"Well," Obi-Wan was not sure where this divergence in conversation would take them, but he was accustomed enough to Dooku's ways to go along with it. "Those are hardly the only paths for a Jedi. There are of course the Agricorps, the Medical Corps, the Starfighter Corps," he said.

"And what else?" Dooku interrupted. "What other life? What other promises, except that which the Jedi Order itself may fulfill?" He finished pouring Obi-Wan's second cup and set the caf pot aside. It clanked onto the table with unusual noise, a testament to Dooku's frustration. "We indoctrinate infants and expect them to stay because more often than not, they know of no family to take them back. But if they grow up and choose to leave, what then? Can the Jedi truly only look after our own so long as they remain bound to the Code we teach them before they can talk?" Silence took over the room for a moment. Obi-Wan did not move, and scarcely attempted to breathe. Dooku's anger was a palpable mass between them, but at length it waned and he sighed. He took up his cup of caff and blew over it gently.

"Every Jedi is a child whose parents decided they could live without," Dooku said after taking a sip. "And every Jedi who is banished from the Order is a child whose masters decided is not worth the trouble. I should know." He took up his glass and took a deep drink. "Perhaps that is why this Sith army exists," he said. "Because the Jedi Order fed it into existence—runaways, reject knights, disillusioned initiates with an education and little else to their names. Were they all Force sensitives, the prisoners?" Obi-Wan had no idea.

"They were all kept in thanatosine," Obi-Wan said. "If they were sensitive, they would have been prisoners to the Sith's whims."

"So they take up the leftovers of our doctrine and torture them into submission," Dooku summarized. "I should not be surprised." The elder man leaned back into his chair and crossed his legs, slender long boots worn and tired, not unlike the man himself.

"This Order is in need of reform, Master Kenobi," he said.

"I shan't disagree with you, grandmaster," Obi-Wan said. Dooku eyed him keenly.

"Those of us who see it are growing too old to do anything about it."

"Surely the Sith must come first, master."

"Certainly," Dooku said, "but we mustn't allow ourselves to lose sight of our own darkness for the deeper darkness we must face tomorrow." The silence returned after that and remained until they'd drained the last dregs of the caf. "When do you begin hunting him?" Dooku asked.

"The senate decides tomorrow," Obi-Wan told him.

"They will let you do it, of course," Dooku told him. "Despite everything, Palpatine will let it happen. But you know, of course," the master fixed his young friend with a diamond-sharp stare, "that his acquiesce means he thinks he is three steps ahead of you."

"He doesn't know what we know," Obi-Wan insisted.

"Yet," Dooku interjected. He continued watching his grandpadawan with the same steely gaze that had seen him through six decades of service. "The match is drawing to a close, padawan. The truth will out, and he will be the first to know. It is high time you and Ben start deciding how it's going to happen. If you do not confront him on your own terms, Ben's entire purpose here, his entire life here, is forfeit. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, Master." Still, Obi-Wan had never heard it spoken out loud before. His mouth was dry.

"You have one last chance to catch your breath," Dooku said, "This may be a long hunt, but it must be the last. Droids and fallen Jedi are not the same. I dare not imagine what he will conjure up next." Obi-Wan knew he was right. He swallowed.

"Force willing," he said, "he'll fall." Obi-Wan surprised himself by the surety in his own voice. "And all his armies with him."

After that fateful afternoon speaking of prophecies and Tatooine and the Chosen One, Ben and Anakin had spoken for hours. Anakin had yelled and cried, and Ben had apologized without actually apologizing, because underneath the tension, they both knew why Ben had never told him. Anakin was frustrated, and Ben was hesitant, but eventually, they fell into some place of agreement and Anakin had started asking questions. Then, he asked more questions. Master and apprentice spent their evenings together with tea, or sometimes with Anakin's tinkering projects, and reviewed Jedi prophecy. Ben had told him he ought to speak with Qui-Gon, who was better versed in the mystic tradition than he, but first Anakin knew he had to speak with someone even more important.

"No, mom, really, I'm fine," Anakin said, sitting at his desk that was, for once, notcovered in droid parts or computer bits. He leaned an elbow against one of the many archival tomes Ben had given him. He'd called his mother with the intention of asking her about his own birth. He had not taken into account the fact that Shmi was still on her honeymoon and might've only just received word about the drama unfolding back home—and of her son's dire injury—hours before.

"Seriously, mom—no, no it's not… no, it's as good as new. Yes, really, I'm not just saying that… Mom, mom, stop, you couldn't have saved it anymore than—what? Of course Ben was there. Well, I mean, he wasn't there there, Obi-Wan was, sort of, but—no, don't say that, you can't just—please don't call him mom, he feels bad enough as it is, it's not his fault, you shouldn't…" Anakin sighed and ran a hand over his face. He'd begun to realize that they were never going to talk about his childhood, not at this rate. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Yes, really. Yes, mom. No, don't worry about it. You're still on holiday—go enjoy it, seriously! And tell Tam I said hi. Call me when you're back on Alderaan, yeah?" Anakin smiled despite himself. Even in her worry, Shmi's voice alone was a balm over much of his own anxieties. "Yeah, of course. Alright, I will. Bye."

He huffed a sigh and set the comlink aside. He stared at the holobooks, wondering if there was any information he'd missed.

"Anakin," Ben called from the other room, "it's nearly two hours past noon, don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Oh, chssk," Anakin bolted from his desk so quickly the chair nearly fell over. He grabbed the pieces of his half-disassembled lightsaber and hurtled out the door.

Ever since the encounter with the Sith on Alderaan, Anakin's lightsaber hadn't worked, not even the smallest spark. It was fairly obvious that the issue lay with the machine itself. The crystal remained undamaged, but the wiring and casing was burned and scarred, the wiring completely melted in some places. Ben had helped him make the arrangements to meet Professor Huyang to see about repairing the blade.

"It's very odd," Ben had said, when Anakin let him examine the saber, "I've never seen a weapon damaged quite like this. Do you have any idea what you did to it?" Blue, then red, then black, then pure white. After all he'd learned, after all Ben had told him, Anakin still hadn't told anyone about those moments before he'd killed the Sith.

"No," he'd lied, and Ben had believed him.

Now, he handed over the broken blade to the Jedi's resident expert. Though Huyang was a droid, he was old enough now that he seemed to have taken on the life of a sentient. Some, Anakin had heard, suspected that Huyang was older than Master Yoda, and had helped the grandmaster himself construct his first lightsaber when he was still a youngling.

"Now, let's see what we've got here," said the droid, taking the pieces of Anakin's saber in expert hands. He turned it over and saw the damage, tut-tutting his way through the weapon's scorched anatomy with something like judgement in his tone.

"Will I have to rebuild it completely?" Anakin asked.

"I daresay you will," Huyang grumbled in his tinny brogue, "whatever did you do to the poor thing? All of this is for naught, save for the crystal, it looks like."

"Will I be able to reuse it?" Anakin asked, suddenly anxious. "The crystal, I mean." Blue, red, black, white. Anakin may not have told anyone, but the kyber would remember.

"I think so, yes," Huyang said, and plucked the crystal from its setting. The droid froze, and let the saber parts rattle to the table. Slowly, the droid turned the crystal in his hand before looking up at Anakin. The padawan's heart was beating fast. Oh Force, he thought, he's a droid. How could he know? Can he tell?

"Did you… inherit this crystal from anyone?" He asked. "A master, perhaps? A mentor of a mentor, someone from generations past?"

"No," Anakin said, confused by the question. "I harvested it on Ilum myself." Huyang did not seem to know what to do with this information. He was quiet for a long moment, optical sensors scanning the kyber with special investment.

"How curious," he said after a while, and turned the crystal in his hand once more before waving Anakin further into his stockroom. "All kyber is ancient, but it's been a while since I've seen one that looks as ancient as this. Come. It deserves a better case than that poor mess."

After two days of consulting with Huyang and himself in meditation, Anakin had a new saber. When he ignited the blade and it shone green, he nearly collapsed from relief. He took it to a solitary dojo on the senior padawans' level where he could practice with his new companion in solitude.

"Alright," he said to the blade and the crystal at its heart that knew his secrets. "It's time to learn what we can do."

A/N: Three things:

First, if you recognize that one line from Dooku, it's because I have borrowed it from the Star Wars extended universe. The full quote is spoken by Dooku in the 2004 Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart, and reads as follows: "Every Jedi is a child his parents decided they could live without. I wonder, sometimes, if that is what drives us, that first abandonment. We have a lot to prove." I have not actually read the book, but this quote has made its rounds across the internet, and has always resonated with me.

Second, I want to warn everyone that it may be another long wait before I can update again. We've entered into the part of the story where my pre-written outline is weakest, and I need to take a moment to map out the remaining chapters, because after five years we really are in the home stretch, and I don't really know what I'm doing.

Third and finally, this is just a warning because I think last time it caught a few people unpleasantly off guard, there will be a bit of a time skip next chapter.