Through the darts of pain that shot through his body without mercy or respite, Anakin shut his eyes.

"End it," he commanded the Force. "I won't look. I won't." For the first time he actually listened to the words coming out of his mouth, and realized that they were hardly more than empty slurs. He was having a hard time moving his jaw. "I wun loak" was a more accurate description of the sounds that he made.

"You're tensing up," said the voice that pretended to be Obi-Wan but wasn't. "It will only hurt worse if you don't relax."

Anakin refused to do so, in some vain attempt to spite the Force and the voice that lied. The sharp, digging pain in his side grew.

"Anakin, please." The urgency was growing in the sound. A hand touched him, tried to move his face from where it lay buried in the pillow, and Anakin wondered how bad it could be. He had seen no image, no remembrance of Obi-Wan in seven years. His old Master was buried in the darkest, most cobwebbed part of his thoughts, along with all the pain that Obi-Wan's death had brought him. Would remembering bring the pain back?

The choice was made almost inadvertently. Something moved against his knee and pain splintered in his leg, hot agony that refused to die, and Anakin's back arched against the bed, his eyes squeezing closed even tighter. But the pain wiped his mind, if only for a split second, and when it arced and began its descent, he forgot why he was keeping his eyes shut again and neglected to keep them that way. So he saw, and he remembered.

Seven years had made it impossible to recall the exact features of Obi-Wan's face, even if Anakin had ever wanted to, which he had not. But here, now, when it was before him, bending over him in concern, Anakin could only think, Yes. This is how it was.

There was the ginger-colored hair; there were the blue eyes that were not dark like Anakin's own, but crystalline blue, as though one were looking through the shallowest part of the sea. There was that one small scar in the middle of his forehead and the little wrinkles around his mouth. Looking at these things, Anakin felt an ache rise up in his chest that he had not felt in a very long time—but it was small, and knew itself to be irrelevant. It faded after only a second.

There, was Anakin's next thought. I have done it.

"Force," said Obi-Wan, a bewildered, trembling smile at his lips. "How long has it been?"

"Years," Anakin answered, the word coming out clearer than he would have thought himself capable of making it. "And years."

A replying word seemed poised on Obi-Wan's tongue, but he changed his mind and said nothing.

Something almost mischievous in Anakin's nature wanted to ask where he was now, why he was lying on a bed of pillows and blankets when he had crashed on craggy and unforgiving rocks—he wanted to see what explanation his confused mind would produce. But he was in a lot of pain, and Anakin could feel his body wearing thin in dealing with all these injuries at once. He chose to stay within the realm of reality.

"How badly am I hurt?" he asked.

"Your injuries are serious," answered Obi-Wan, "but not fatal. Obviously," he added amusedly.

Anakin couldn't help himself. "It really hurts," he said faintly.

Obi-Wan's face softened with compassion, as it had always done.

"I can imagine," he said. "That must have been a terrible fall. You would be in much more pain if it weren't for the bacta."

Anakin had to laugh at that, a thick, strangled sound. "Bacta?" he asked. "And where did I get that from?"

"From me," said Obi-Wan, looking bemused. Anakin wanted to laugh again, but his ribs protested violently. He only gave Obi-Wan a weak grin before falling back against the pillows, but that turned hastily into a hiss of pain.

Obi-Wan's frown deepened for a moment. "Hold on," he said, and stood to leave the room. When he returned, ducking his head briefly under the low doorway, he bore a small medical pouch.

"You need this more than I do," he murmured. It seemed an odd thing for a hallucination to say, but before Anakin could deliberate upon it further, Obi-Wan had taken from the pouch a short syringe. With an obviously practiced hand he filled it with some bright, clear substance, then held it to the underside of Anakin's left arm and inserted it.

Compared to what Anakin was feeling elsewhere, the needle hurt very little. Obi-Wan pulled it out once the clear liquid within had vanished entirely into Anakin's system, and then took it back out of the room from whence it had come.

When he returned, Anakin asked him, "What was that?"

"A pain-killer," Obi-Wan replied, sitting down. "A very strong one. It might knock you out a bit, but the pain will be gone."

Anakin knew it wasn't real, but his pain began subtly to subside all the same, and for that he was grateful. Very dimly, he remembered that he could command the Force, and sent its healing waves into his battered body. Between the two remedies, the rough and pounding agony became just bearable. His breathing attained a peaceable rhythm; he was beginning to feel the soporific effects of the medication.

Obi-Wan watched him with interest from the bedside. "You seem to be taking this very well," he remarked. "I would have thought you'd be a bit more surprised to see me."

Anakin considered that for a moment, his thoughts unabashed and fuzzy. "Maybe I don't miss you as much as I used to," he offered quietly.

"Is that so?" Obi-Wan asked, his eyes slipping from Anakin's face.

"Yes." It was true—but that section of his chest containing Anakin's heart had not lost its tight, painful ache which had nothing to do with his fall.

Obi-Wan sighed. "I've been gone a long time, haven't I?"

"Yes," Anakin said again, "but I got used to it. I had to."

He felt an ease in talking to this Obi-Wan, a fabrication of his fevered mind, that he could never have felt with the real one. Perhaps this was the closure he had always needed, or maybe he simply needed to think that Obi-Wan knew what had come after his own death, and how Anakin had changed himself because of it.

Something like regret was reflected on Obi-Wan's face. "You have to understand," he said, speaking as though to convince himself, "there were reasons I couldn't come back."

"I know," said Anakin, confused.

"I tried—Anakin, I tried—but everything stood in my way. And I always knew, in the back of my mind, that it was useless. Even if I could somehow get back to you, things would never be the same between us." The words sounded distant, as though Obi-Wan were remembering something from a very long time ago. "Our bond was so strong."

Anakin blinked, very slowly. "I thought it was," he said quietly. Obi-Wan looked at him.

"What?"

"I never felt anything from you," Anakin said, surprising himself with his vehemence. "If our bond was so strong, if you were in the Force you should have been able to let me see you, or even just talk to me!"

There was a very strange expression in Obi-Wan's face. "I was not in the Force," he corrected, his voice faint. "Certainly not that…"

"Then why?" Anakin demanded, desperate and plaintive. He could feel the drug closing around his mind, but fought for consciousness for a few minutes more. "Tell me, please, before I wake up and you disappear." He had not realized until now how frantically this very question had plagued him.

Obi-Wan's fingers tightened on his arm. "I am not some figment of your imagination. I am not leaving you."

Anakin gave a very weak laugh. "You're not real," he mumbled. "I'm quite sure of it."

"Not real?" Obi-Wan's grip grew suddenly very tight. Anakin flinched. "I thought you weren't real when I saw you on the plateau, broken within an inch of your life, but here you are, with me."

"I felt you go," Anakin insisted, determined to hold on to that one fact though it killed him. "I talked to Karan Toi. I waited seven years. I changed."

"Anakin, look at me," Obi-Wan commanded, his voice low. "Look very well."

Through bleary eyelids Anakin looked up at the eyes, the hair, the scars. He could see them as they had been before, but now he looked again. For the first time he saw emotions and years in those eyes that had never been there before. He saw white at the corners of the ginger—he saw unfamiliar scars, still pink, newly healed.

Hallucinations, Anakin knew, did not change.

The breath flew from his lungs, and the shock he felt drained every drop of the medication from his body as his mind flew into sudden, blinding focus. He felt everything, all the pain it had taken from him, and it fueled the one emotion that overwhelmed him.

He had not felt anger, pure, vicious anger, in a very long time, but he felt it now.

"You're alive?" he choked out. Obi-Wan looked taken aback at the ferocity in those words.

"I—"

"No! You can't be!" Anakin wanted to stand, to run, but it was all he could do just to pull himself up weakly into a vague sitting position, and his body ached and throbbed when he had finished. Tears of some powerful, unnamed passion stung his eyes. "Not after all this time—how dare you—!"

"Anakin, what are you saying?" Obi-Wan asked, his voice weak and disbelieving. "I thought—"

"You don't realize it at all, do you?" A horrible, bitter laugh erupted from Anakin's throat. "FORCE! You don't know how long I waited for you to come back! You think I got on with my life when you left me?"

"I didn't want to leave y—"

"YOU ABANDONED ME!" Anakin bellowed. He was almost screaming, a caught in a fury so strong that, if he had been able, he would have physically lashed out at his former Master. It was so overpowering, it felt like a parody of anger. He did not know how Obi-Wan was somehow alive when Anakin had felt him die without doubt, and right now nothing could be less relevant. "You left me with nothing, and I almost died! Do you know what I had to do to keep going without you?"

Anger like this had not overtaken him in all of his life, not even on that fateful day seven years ago, but this—this!—was unbearable. Anakin felt quite demented, shouting into the undefending silence; even within his own mind he did not know whether he wanted to embrace Obi-Wan or kill him.

It was then that the physical toll of Anakin's tirade caught up with him. He was left breathless, leaning awkwardly against the wall, every muscle and bone of his body in pain.

Obi-Wan was quiet, which only maddened Anakin further. When he spoke, it was to the ground.

"I was not lying to you when I said that I tried to get back to the Temple. At first there was nothing more than a temporary setback. And then I realized, after a few months—when no rescue attempts came, and I heard nothing—that you must have thought I was dead."

"What else could I believe?" Anakin asked. "You left the Force, I couldn't feel you at all!"

"Anakin, I didn't leave the Force!" Obi-Wan said, raising his head, suddenly vehement. "It was taken from me!"

"Taken—?" Anakin was silent for a moment, absorbing all this. Then he said, "Tell me everything."

Author's Note: I am SORRY that this chapter took so long! But I had to take my time. After all, it's sort of pivotal, don't you think?