Another day had passed since the troops made it back to the outpost. It was sometime around mid-afternoon when Anakin emerged from Obi-Wan's room like a corpse, shrinking away from the lights and balancing unsteadily with his full weight against the wall. He was collected from the floor soon thereafter by several members of the outpost-stationed medical staff, who notified both Cody and Rex while carting him to the nearest examination room. Cody, however, had departed from the tower that morning. Meaning to spend the first half of the day getting everyone else in line with the newly established order of things, he left with the section of 501st that was designated to resupply the group further north. In his stead, Rex gathered up Ahsoka and the two arrived at the indicated room merely minutes later. Anakin was swaddled there in a trauma blanket, mumbling and unsure of himself, sitting alone in the small room on a hospital cot. He did not acknowledge their entrance. Paying respect to the sacred relationship between a Jedi and his Padawan, Rex deliberately paused to allow Ahsoka to approach the situation first.

"Master, are you okay?" she asked quietly, closing in on Anakin from the side. His Force signature was muddled and dim.

"Ahsoka," he interrupted himself, although his gaze did not shift from its rigid trajectory toward the ground. "Have you ever just… Stared into the suns?"

Ahsoka looked back at Rex for advice. But Rex could find nothing to give.

"Uh… I guess so…?" she replied warily. "Are you feeling–"

"That's what he's like," Anakin went on. "Force it's just…" He finally turned in her direction. "There was just so. Much. Light. I- I can't even describe it to you. I used like- Well okay so I took away everything I had that felt more like Obi-Wan than me, and then I used that to try and… I don't know, rebuild? But it wasn't in the right place. It wouldn't work where I was in the Force, and it was too far to do it where he's supposed to be, so I just… Ahsoka. It was like we were the same thing," he implored upon her, "And it was SO kriffing bright."

Rex was practically melting in his effort not to laugh. It wasn't so much the nonsense being babbled by his pale and incoherent General, but the look of consternation pasting over Ahsoka's face as she tried to keep up.

"That's um… Well, did it work? Is Master Obi-Wan okay? You didn't… Hurt yourself, did you?" she attempted.

Anakin shook his head with eyes wide and returned his interest to the floor. "I have no idea what I did. I just kept throwing stuff into our bond and I was pulling stuff back and– I think I can speak Imzigian now. I don't even know what an Imzig is."

Ahsoka fiddled mindlessly with the Padawan charm behind her right montral. She'd heard of the Jedi being capable of sharing certain memories, but to her recollection the technique was both delicate and extremely advanced. "Throwing and pulling stuff" just didn't seem to fit the description. As she continued to twiddle in silence, Rex took the fidgety behavior as his signal to intervene.

"I… Think you should make this less complicated, Commander. Try asking one question at a time. Minimum words only." He was glad to see that Anakin didn't take offense to the suggestion, if at all it was heard.

"Oh, right. Okay," she accepted immediately, turning back to her Master. "Master Anakin, are you okay?"

Rex thought she could've made do with just one word, but he knew he'd have his turn later if this trial flopped as well. All the same, Anakin responded with a rushed (and probably insincere) string of, "Yeah I'm fine I'll be all right."

"Do you… Know where we are?" Ahsoka investigated next. She supposed a test might prove more convincing than his hurried tone.

"What? Yes I know where we are," he began with a twinge of insult, before glancing about the room for hints and eventually breaking down in resignation. "…It's… Corellia…?"

"We're still on Florrum," she corrected with a huff. "But it's not important. What about Master Obi-Wan?"

"He's definitely here." Adding to his confidence, Anakin removed an arm from his spacious blanket to point at the vacant corner of the room. Ahsoka and Rex could only assume that Obi-Wan might be seen in that direction if the walls were torn down. They genuinely hoped this was the case, anyhow.

"No, that's not what I meant," she struggled in growing frustration, "I meant– just– Is Obi-Wan okay?"

At this, Anakin appeared to falter. His brow once again took on the furrow it had adopted earlier when he had tried to explain his excursion with the Force. "…I think so," he reported with ambivalence. "I don't know if I did anything right, but I left when the Force was too bright to do anything with. And that wasn't me. I remember pulling whenever I caught on to anything that felt like Obi-Wan, and at some point it started to feel like he was pulling back. So… Improvement?" he shrugged.

"Now, I'm not gonna say I know bantha spit about the Force," Rex interjected with caution, "But judging by the fact General Skywalker's even here, I think it's safe to assume General Kenobi's on the mend."

Ahsoka considered this. "I guess that makes sense. And now that they're separated, I can go look for myself." She moved to stand up in front of Anakin. "I'm gonna go check on Master Obi-Wan. Is there… Anything I can get for you? Or do you just want to, I don't know, go to sleep?" A week's worth of self-determination was beginning to ebb at her desire to be in charge. But lamentably for her, Anakin was in no condition to lead.

"…Can you just, make sure that Obi-Wan is here, once he's back up? I'm kind of fuzzy on the mission details, so I'm gonna sit tight for a minute to clear my head. But after that he can purge reports at me for as long as he wants." It hung indeterminate whether or not Anakin was aware that a hundred others on site were prepared to fulfill the role he'd requested. But having made his orders known, he then morphed his way onto the pillow that came supplied with the cot. The remaining two conscious beings in the room sent each other a quizzical look, and turned the lights down on their way into the hall.

The visit with Obi-Wan was less enlightening. No amount of provocation would rouse him, but after a longish period of meditation that edged on the limits of Rex's patience, Ahsoka was pleased to declare that she'd uncovered some vestiges of his old self. Fragments only, of course, but comparing this to the mutilated, vacuous crater he was before, she couldn't help but crack a smile. It was also curious to note that not a sliver of the intense light recounted by Anakin would appear to her senses. The most Ahsoka found were more akin to tiny sparks, like specs of coal drifting here or there with the hope of igniting something more flammable. She was tempted to try and stoke them through the fledgling bond they weren't supposed to have, but as with any fire, the prospect of snuffing it out with an overabundance of fuel was just too much of a risk for her to take. The excess daylight was thus spent collecting information from Liiqua and Majum at the behest of Rex, who insisted that doing so ahead of time would greatly reduce the workload he expected they'd all receive on Cody's return.

It was in the night that followed, just after 300 hours Standard, when the door to Obi-Wan's room was sent flying with a crash into the opposite wall.

"…Oh. Oh my. Well that isn't what I intended to do at all," came the apologetic voice from within as Obi-Wan stepped out meekly to examine his work. The motion-activated lights overhead were triggered just then, in precisely the same time it took for him to turn his head up and become liberally drenched by the door-injured sprinkler system. The rest of the hallway's ceiling spouts, to his resentment, were quick to follow suit. The security clones who reported to the scene were confounded by the amount of chaos that one Jedi could produce in fewer than thirty seconds. Upon their arrival, Obi-Wan was attempting to lift the damaged door with the Force, now being careful to apply a level of effort well below that which he was acclimatized to using.

"Ah– hello there. Terribly sorry about all this; it seems I've reverted into a youngling overnight. Would anyone mind finding the off switch for the fire protection system?" he asked politely through the rain.

While one clone ran to locate the breaker, those remaining helped stabilize the panel against the wall where Obi-Wan directed it to lay. Their labors aside, by the time the sprinklers had ceased, everyone was thoroughly soaked.

A guard among the squad pulled off his helmet and shook the water away at his side. "It's good to see you awake, sir, but just for future reference, there is a call button in every room," he complained.

"Yes, well," Obi-Wan taunted back, "I suppose it's just as good to keep the men on their toes." He brushed at his wet hair and squeezed a stream of water from the hem of his gown. "Now tell me, do you know where I might find Commander Cody? Commander Tano, if he is indisposed." Something in the Force made it blaringly obvious that Anakin was alive, though very much tired.

The unshielded clone lifted a chastising eyebrow his way. "Begging your pardon, but do you know what time it is?" The hands on his hips and the disgruntled tilt to Obi-Wan's head indicated his answer plainly. "It's three hours past midnight, sir."

"…I see," he contemplated in response. As he thought on this, it occurred to him just how poorly this entire re-entrance was planned. "And could you tell me what day it is?" he continued on, "Moreover… Where are we?"

The clones informed him that it had been four days since the troops came up from the south to the outpost on Florrum. They listed out what scant details they heard, to which Obi-Wan was absolutely horrified on learning how long he was kept from his duty. Try as they did, even going so far as to cite the mandate for his condition, the clones could not convince him to go back to sleep. In the end, the group met a compromise: Obi-Wan was supplied with a datapad and escorted to the unoccupied mess hall. It was there where he sat for the next couple of hours, binge-ing on reports instead of the food he was provided, trying in desperation to convince himself that Cody had taken care of everything in his absence.