A/N: Thanks be to the many many people who reviewed this! JediMan, Uhm, and Quillian; this was intended to be a little confusing about what happened to make it like it is. If there is more confusion than that by all means yell at me about it again, but these chapters going up now will give explanations and extrapolations...

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Part II

Obi-Wan Kenobi was not truly a sentient man at this moment, just as he had not been when he'd fought the general Grievous on Utapau.

He was the Force, the whirlwind, the light, as he leapt, attacking without antagonisms and missing his planned cut, and rolled onto the near-burning shore. He got a second's look at his former Padawan, dark-haired fierce Anakin Skywalker, poised on a tiny relay droid's casing as it hovered over the lava flows that dipped ponderously toward the cataract's lethal edge.

Anakin jumped, a surge of final effort, pain and darkness. Obi-Wan's lightsaber scored a sear down his left side then he fell, ungainly, higher up the shoreline that was beginning to char Obi-Wan's hair. Anakin–Darth Vader, I must know him as the Sith!–crawled a few paces and screamed at the fury of the black sand getting on his hands and against his face. Obi-Wan leveled his lightsaber at the younger man, whose weapon had rolled down the hillside and vanished with a plash of flare into the conflagration.

Obi-Wan the Jedi Master prepared to kill his best friend, the helpless Sith before him. Obi-Wan the man screamed over roaring Mustafar; "You were the chosen one! It was said you would destroy the Sith, not join them! It was you who would bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness! You were my brother, Anakin."

"Obi-Wan..." And the Force felt a spark of hope arise in the dying thoughts of the darkened Jedi. "Help me..."

Obi-Wan surged up the hillside and roughly pulled Anakin up by one arm, in his own act of exasperation or desperation. "You killed them." He could sense walls and buttresses of Anakin's spirit purely falling apart.

"Darth Vader killed them." Something warred within Anakin, fiery as lava, and Obi-Wan the man didn't want to be able to understand what it was. Anakin cried silently, and the tears turned to steam before they hit the ground. "He said I could save her. He made me destroy her! Obi-wan–!"

It was all about Padmé? The Jedi could barely believe it, and had to think, how contrite and proving!

"Come on then." said the Force through him. "You can still save her."

They struggled up each black hill, leaning on each other and on the energy that poured from Obi-Wan to his fallen apprentice, spiraling in like star-stuff to a black hole and disappearing, to all Obi-Wan's perceptions canceled out.

All to late. The Chancellor's shuttle–the Emperor's, Obi-Wan reminded himself bitterly–set down on the same platform that the Jedi neared after their aeons-seeming hike, the same one holding Padmé's ship, and the two companion-like droids. Obi-Wan and Anakin, the Master willful and the Knight shattered enough to do exactly what he was told, crouched behind a great boulder and breathed the cooler, brimstone-scented air.

Palpatine/Sidious took Padmé away in a strange, sophisticated medical vehicle. Clone troopers commandeered the Nubian skiff, but only took the droids to Palpatine's shuttle.

After it took off, Anakin went to the platform and fell to his knees. Obi-Wan thought he was going to die. "No..." He said, and then shouted to the sky, "You took my child from me! Murderer! Padmé!"

Obi-Wan sedated him on the ship, and went to sleep until he got the message from Yoda to meet at a certain medical station on a world called Polis Massa, in a galaxy where only two Jedi Masters remained.

He was immediately relieved to learn that he would not be rehabilitating Anakin on his own.