For a few blessed moments after he awoke, Anakin simply lay there with his eyes shut, not remembering a thing. He savored these moments without knowing the reason why, for in the back of his mind he knew that something terrible had happened, something so hellish that it was impossible to believe.

With a great effort, he opened his eyes and looked blearily at the wall. He was lying on his side in his bed, which confused Anakin for a moment because he thought he remembered falling asleep on the ground; then he realized it must have been a dream. He thought about getting up, but decided it was too much trouble, and Obi-Wan was dead.

As soon as the memory awakened, Anakin froze. He did not move for a long time, only closed his eyes and felt pain thudding through him.

Dead…dead…dead… The word came with every beat of his heart. He did not cry; the grief he felt was far beyond tears. There were no words in his head, only sorrow. Every muscle in his body cried out for Obi-Wan, and every inch of him was denied.

After a time, Anakin fuzzily felt someone enter the room from behind him. His connection to the Force was no longer painfully, perfectly clear, as it had been the night before. Now it was confused and dull, mirroring the state of his mind.

"Anakin?" he heard Ferus say in a low voice, almost timidly. "Are you all right?" Anakin did not look at him.

"Go away, Ferus," he murmured, in what was almost a whisper. "Please." As abruptly as it had come, Anakin felt Ferus's Force-presence fade blurrily out of the room. A sob hitched in his throat, and he pressed his face into his pillow. Do not think, do not think, do not think, because if he didn't think about it, then it would go away and he could breathe again. But he could no sooner stop the suns above them from setting than he could stop thinking about what he had lost. So instead of ignoring his pain, Anakin immersed himself in it, as though he could force the sickness he felt to peak and then die away. He wallowed in it, drowning himself in its murky depths, and praying that when he emerged, he would feel no more.

Anakin remained alone in the room over the next several days; Ferus attempted to talk to him three more times, and Siri once. Neither got any result, and they were forced to abandon the effort to reach him, as the search for Toi had to continue, if only at night. Ferus would have thought that Anakin's sense of vengeance would compel him to join the hunt for his Master's murderer, but Obi-Wan's death seemed to have drained Anakin of all the will he possessed. On the morning afterward, Ferus had placed a plate with a few fruits on it at Anakin's door—he had relinquished the room, and now slept with Siri—but at least four days passed, and as far as Ferus could tell, the plate had not been touched.

It was on the fifth night after Obi-Wan's death that Ferus finally found a lead that was not already cold, from a beggar on the side of the road. It led him and Siri to a warehouse, ostensibly deserted long ago, and there he and his Master managed to round up Toi's entire gang—with the exception of the leader himself. Somehow, Toi had managed to escape Republic justice once again. Ferus questioned Toi's underlings furiously, but none of them knew what had happened to the lone Jedi that Toi had brought in one night, gagged and bound hand and foot.

Siri contacted the Temple, explained the events of the past week, and requested permission to return to Coruscant immediately, despite the fact that they had not managed to complete the mission as well as had been hoped. The Council agreed—many of their number had felt Obi-Wan's disappearance as well—and Ferus was given the task of telling Anakin it was time to go.

He approached Anakin's door tentatively and knocked thrice. As he did so, Ferus looked down and saw, to his surprise, that the tray was empty. Then the door opened.

Anakin was standing by the window, leaning on the sill, as though he were still waiting to see Obi-Wan walk down the road. Ferus moved to stand behind him and gently placed a hand on his shoulder.

"How are you?" he asked quietly. Anakin did not move for a moment, his eyes on the road, then slowly he turned his head to look at Ferus. A ghost of a smile graced his face.

"I'm fine," he said, but the words hung heavily in the air when he spoke. There was something about him, something that had changed; Ferus could see it in his eyes. A part of him had been taken away, or perhaps something was there that had not been before. Whoever lived inside this body now, it was not the reckless, fun-loving Padawan that Ferus had known all his life, and this terrific realization prompted Ferus's next words.

"Are you sure?"

Anakin gave him a look. "Of course," he said. "I'm all right now. But…" His voice trailed off suddenly, as though he felt he had said too much. Ferus had no idea what he had been about to say, and then abruptly Anakin spoke again, the subject changed. "You and Siri caught them."

Ferus nodded. "We're leaving tomorrow, with the gang members in custody," he said hesitantly. He was walking on eggshells, afraid to say anything that would set Anakin off again. "We—we didn't catch Toi."

He had been worried that this would have adversely affected Anakin somehow, but his friend only gave a short nod. "I know," he said. Even those simple words sounded as though there could be several hidden meanings behind them. Feeling that there was nothing more to say, Ferus left the room.

Siri was waiting for him in the kitchen. Her face was tired and drawn—though she had not felt the loss nearly as keenly as Anakin, Obi-Wan had been one of her dearest friends. Ferus felt almost left out in being able to remember only Obi-Wan as a respected superior.

"How is he doing?" she asked. Ferus swallowed.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "He ate, I think. That's something."

Siri gave a sigh and ran a hand through her tousled hair. "I'm worried about him," she said bluntly. "Force, I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd dropped dead right when Obi-Wan did, the way those two bonded…"

Ferus thought back to Anakin's face, and looking into those blue eyes. Their depth had shocked him; Ferus somehow felt, quite certainly, that if you dared to look into them long enough, they would drag you down and drown you in an eternity of buried despair.

"He'll live," Ferus said slowly, choosing his words carefully. "But I don't think he will ever be the same."

The next day, the three Jedi took what few things they had and left Tatooine, with several gang members locked in the hold of the ship. Rather than isolate himself over the five-day period of travel, Anakin spoke several times to Ferus and Siri and ate meals with them. When he was not with them, however, he could inevitably be found in his quarters, meditating or practicing lightsaber technique until the sweat beaded his forehead. Where before he had enjoyed, on occasion, simply lying back and relaxing, now he found that this left too much time for his mind to wander. Inevitably it wandered back to the same place, so Anakin forced himself to keep busy no matter what. Thus, it was practically inevitable that when Siri brought up the subject of the prisoners only a few hours after taking off, Anakin volunteered to feed them.

For the first two days, this arrangement worked out well enough: armed with enough protein cubes for thirteen hungry thugs, Anakin unlocked the door of the brig and handed the food to the new self-styled leader of the gang. On the second day, Anakin dared to mention Obi-Wan, but he found out nothing more than had Ferus. He left angrily, hating himself for weakening.

Had Anakin considered his circumstances before they had actually happened, he would have said that to sleep would be an escape. Now he knew better; every minute he slept was one minute more in which he had no control over his thoughts. His dreams were fitful and restless, even worse than when he was awake, so Anakin was always the last one to sleep and the first one awake in the morning. Siri, knowing nothing of this, was surprised to find him sitting in the ship's galley in the very early hours of the third day.

"What are you doing here?" she blurted out, tactless as usual. Anakin only looked faintly amused.

"I could ask you the same thing, I suppose," he said, looking down at his glass of water and running a finger around the rim. "By Coruscant Standard Time, it's only five."

"Hyperspace always messes with my body's sense of time," Siri explained, clutching the two sides of her bathrobe tighter as she sat down. "What's your excuse?" The typical response had come automatically, without thinking—Siri could have bitten her tongue off, and almost tried.

"Oh, Anakin, I'm so sorry—" she began miserably, but Anakin shook his head. He dismissed her atrocious mistake with a quiet, "Never mind", and the room sank back into silence. Anakin was obviously not in a mood for conversation, and Siri was too afraid of saying something else stupid.

Then abruptly, Anakin spoke, his eyes on his lap. "What—" He stopped and took a breath. "What did you feel when it happened?"

Siri looked at him sharply, but Anakin kept his gaze firmly downward. She spoke carefully.

"I felt like someone had hit me over the head, stunned me—and then I felt the bond snap." The fingers of her right hand gently touched the side of her head. "It hurt…terribly. I didn't understand what it was, but I thought that if something had happened to him—" no one had dared to speak Obi-Wan's name since the hour of his death "—you would feel it far more powerfully than I could. I ran into your room to see, but you had already fainted, and I knew." Imbued with a sudden courage, she asked a question of her own. "What about you?"

Anakin had evidently not been expecting this. Taken by surprise, his head jerked up, and Siri was stricken with the same impression as Ferus: it was death to look into those eyes for too long. At first, she didn't even think he would answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and quiet.

"There was a jolt—I thought for a moment that the earth had moved under me—and then it was almost as if I was him. I could see people. People that—weren't there, I could see their shapes moving around in front of me, but dimly. And then I heard this voice coming from above me—it was saying something cruel, I knew it was, even though I couldn't make out the words. And then I felt something wrap around my neck, something cold, but it wasn't me that was feeling anything, it was all him—and then it broke."

Anakin's hand on the table was trembling. "You were right," he said after a pause. "It did hurt. It was only for a second, but I—I thought I'd die from the pain. It's like—when it breaks, it breaks right in your face."

That, thought Siri, was a very apt way of putting it.

Anakin had obviously not intended to say so much. Discomfited, he looked around the room, as though searching for a distraction, then stood abruptly.

"I should go," he mumbled. "To the hold…I should give them their food…"

Siri thought it best not to mention her doubts that any of the gang members would even be awake by now. Instead, she only smiled at him as he took the protein cubes and left. Her mind, however, was otherwise occupied.

She had once heard Master Yoda say that grief was a natural part of life; if one did not grieve or show any emotions at all, the pain that one felt, instead of secreting outward, would seep inside and poison a person's soul. If Anakin could behave so calmly, Siri wondered, what had happened to his heart?

The old Anakin would have dawdled a bit, idly tossed the protein cubes from one hand to the other, made a game of his chore. Now, though, the pointlessness of such frivolities seemed to be pressing itself on Anakin's consciousness. After Obi-Wan's death, it felt as though three-quarters of his brain had simply fallen asleep. Everything that served no purpose had simply died away. He had a task, and he would complete it, and that was that.

Anakin punched in the locking code to the hold door slowly, fully aware that it was far too early for this and that probably no one on the opposite side of this door was even awake. But he'd made his excuse, and now he had to live up to it.

As he'd suspected, the various prisoners were now scattered around the large floor, sleeping like children. Anakin turned around to relock the door—just in case—and then from behind, he heard a man's voice call out loudly, "Get him!"

It took a moment before his brain registered the meaning of these words. In that instant, several of the gangsters rushed him, their expressions ugly and purposeful. Taken unawares, two managed to tackle him and bring him crashing to the floor. One was sitting on his shoulders, but before they could pin his arms, Anakin's fist shot up and smashed into the gangster's jaw. The man's eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell backwards, allowing Anakin to scramble to his feet.

There were twelve of them now, surrounding him with obviously dangerous intents, and no sooner had Anakin managed to stand than they all charged him as one. A spark of rage lit itself suddenly in Anakin's mind, battle rage mixed with something more deadly. Suddenly furious, Anakin kicked out at the nearest gangster—he stumbled and fell backward, but it wasn't enough. Anakin wanted him to die, he wanted them all to die, so he fumbled quickly for his lightsaber, and as soon as the deadly blade shot out of its hilt it had swung right through the belly of a third man. Such was the force of the blow that the prisoner was sliced in two.

The gangsters faltered for a moment, seeing the weapon in Anakin's hand, but apparently deciding that there was strength in numbers, they charged again as one. Anakin's blade was everywhere at once, striking down foes as quickly as he could see them. They were like vermin, trying to defeat him with only their hands and feet, but Anakin held the power. They fell, one by one, and Anakin would have laughed at the sight had he not been so angry.

Suddenly it was over. Five gangsters stood backed against the wall, their gazes fixed on the Jedi with the laser sword and the flaming eyes. Anakin was panting for breath, but he had not finished with them yet. With a cry of fury, he shot a burning wave of the Force at the nearest gangster, and saw the man's feet lift off the ground. The prisoner gasped for breath, clawing at his throat. None of the other gang members moved a muscle; the expression on Anakin's face was so terrible to behold that they were frozen in place. The man's body went limp, and then fell to the ground.

As though waking up after a long sleep, Anakin suddenly found that he was trembling uncontrollably. He tried to replace the lightsaber on his belt and missed the loop, tried again and managed it. No matter how he gulped, he couldn't seem to fill his lungs with enough air. Shaken, he left the hold, completely forgetting to relock the door. However, it seemed likely enough that the remaining gangsters would be quite well-behaved after that incident.

Anakin walked swiftly to his room and threw himself facedown on the sleep couch. He should have seen this coming, for that had certainly not been the living Force that he had used to strangle a man. For not the first time in his life, Anakin had felt that insatiable blood-lust sweep over him, dangerous and powerful, and he knew its source. Before, Obi-Wan had always been there to protect him from the ravages of the Dark Side—but now Obi-Wan was gone, and Anakin was left defenseless against the force that had threatened him since the day of his birth. And now the Dark Side had come to claim him.

Anakin Skywalker, his mind reminded him bitterly. The Chosen One, they call you. You are not chosen—you have been cursed.

"The Cursed One," Anakin whispered aloud, trying its sound on his tongue. Somehow, it seemed to fit better than "The Chosen One" ever had.