Obi-Wan took a breath. When the words came out of his mouth, it was obvious that these were not the first time they had been spoken. They had been rehearsed, perhaps hundreds of times, to the empty air and to the wall, explanations that Obi-Wan longed for Anakin to hear.

"I was captured by Karan Toi that night—I assume you'd realized that. His men brought me to their hiding place. I thought they were going to kill me, and I planned to escape before then, but I didn't get the chance. Only a few hours later Toi came in with a Force-collar. They forced me down and put it around my neck."

Obi-Wan swallowed. Evidently this was a painful subject for him, one not often visited even in his thoughts. He looked up at Anakin.

"I felt you, in the split second before I lost everything. I held on to that moment for years afterwards; it was all I had of you."

He didn't seem to expect a reaction, and Anakin gave none. Obi-Wan continued.

"I think they only intended to sell me as a slave, but of course I passed out when the Force left me, and they thought I was dead. I nearly was, too. They left my body in the desert, thinking that they'd murdered a Jedi. You don't know—"

His voice rose and broke. "Anakin, you—you can't imagine what it was like. I thought the galaxy had died, or it had broken, and I was all that was left of it. I felt blind—worse than blind. I wanted to die, truly I did. Those first few days were…" Obi-Wan actually physically shuddered, and for the first time Anakin felt an emotion other than anger. Instead, pity began to swell in him.

"You could have come back," he said. "You could have taught—there are Knights who can barely touch the Force anymore that still have wisdom—or helped Jocasta Nu—or something."

"I did think of it," Obi-Wan admitted, "once I had begun to recover—but could you have seen me sitting idly by, telling others of the adventures they could have and the things they could experience, and having none of it myself? There is no real fate for Jedi who have lost the Force. That was always the Order's failing. And—" He looked almost shamed to continue. "—I did not know if I could face you when we were no longer connected."

"Did you think I would love you less if you couldn't feel the Force?"

"You couldn't have helped it," Obi-Wan replied. "You loved me through our bond, as I loved you."

"But not only through it!" Anakin protested. "You were my father! I would have given anything to see you again, in any way."

Obi-Wan's eyelids flickered warily at this, but Anakin was past that blind fury.

"And—" Anakin had just thought of this "—Force-collars aren't permanent. You could have just taken it off and come back." There was no fate-changing strip of leather around Obi-Wan's neck now.

Obi-Wan laughed a little. "Most aren't," he said, "but they vary. Mine just happened to be the permanent sort." He turned in his chair and moved his head just enough for Anakin to see a small pinpoint of a scar on the left side of Obi-Wan's neck.

"Whatever it is in Force-collars that does the restraining, this one also injects a liquid form of that into its victim. The body doesn't like it, of course—it's unnatural, poison. That's why it leaves a scar, even with a scratch like that. Oh, I took it off easily enough, but other things aren't as easy to remove."

Anakin touched the scar and felt the rough tissue beneath his fingers. Sure enough, there it was—the tiny reason for seven years of separation.

"And after that?" he asked softly.

"After that, all I tried to do was get back to the Temple," Obi-Wan said, turning back. "It was all I could think about. But you have no idea how helpless I felt!" He ran a hand over his face in remembered frustration, and Anakin's heart gave a peculiar leap. After all this time, that had not changed. "I had no ship, no friends, no money—it was all I could do to keep myself alive, day by day. I was so disoriented, but I managed to find my way into a town and, eventually, I found work as an odd-job laborer."

He smiled. "I did see some irony in that," he admitted. "I remember dreading such a thing when I was thirteen, before Qui-Gon was my Master, but after I lost the Force it was my only lifeline."

"And then?" Anakin prompted, for whom anecdotes were little more than a time-waster.

"I was saving as much as I could. No one flies directly to Coruscant from Tatooine, but my plan was to planet-hop until I could get there. After about…" he blew out his breath in thought "…oh, six months, I suppose, I thought I had enough to get somewhere a bit closer to the Core. So I found passage on a freighter to Onderon."

Anakin frowned, not understanding. "At that rate, it couldn't have taken you seven years to get to Coruscant," he said.

"I didn't want to travel too quickly."

"Why not?"

A moment's hesitation. "Because—I wasn't certain of what my body was capable of after losing the Force. Hyperspace can be very hard on humans."

"Ye-es," Anakin said slowly. Something about that answer bothered him, or maybe it was just the medicine gradually taking effect again. "Anyway…"

"Anyway, I spent almost a year on Onderon; I was doing well. I was planning to earn enough for the rest of the way back to Coruscant, and I'd almost done it. And then—did you know there are Mandalorians on Onderon?"

Anakin nodded.

"Well, I didn't. I wish I hadn't learned it. They're a far cry from the honor-bound Mandalorians that used to exist. Now they're nothing but common thugs and slavers."

Anakin couldn't see the connection. "Meaning…?"

Obi-Wan gave him a look, full of fondness and frustration. "You're still sarcastic, I see. Meaning that I got caught in the middle of one of their raids and was captured. They had the same plan as Karan Toi, I suppose, but they actually managed it."

"You were—?"

"—enslaved, yes."

This took Anakin by such surprise that he was at a loss for words for a moment. The idea of Obi-Wan as a slave, or even in captivity, was very strange to him. It went against everything he knew about his old Master.

"How—um—" The words that tumbled out of his mouth were not what he wanted to say and had no purpose. Obi-Wan helped him out, speaking with a carelessness that Anakin knew was practiced. Forceless Obi-Wan might have been, but Jedi pride was not easily forgotten. It could not be easy for him to speak of this, much less to have lived it.

"They sold me to a dealer, who sold me off-planet to a mining corporation on Marbeen. That was—well, I wouldn't have survived if I'd stayed there longer than I did. But fortunately I was sold again when the corporation went bankrupt, to a Iridonian named Kogna. He was a gem cutter, a very skilled one, but he was half blind and twice my age and he wanted to retire. So I did most of his work for him for a good while." Obi-Wan's gaze faded for a second as he looked at something Anakin could not see. "Kogna was a good being. He was kind to me, and very wise, even for one of his species. I was with him when he died." He cleared his throat, and continued.

"Anyway, after that I was free once again, but I was at a loss. I still had no connection to the Force, no money, and no way of getting back to Coruscant. And by that point," Obi-Wan confessed, "my hopes of returning to the Temple were little more than distant dreams. Had I tried—reallytried—perhaps I could have found a way, but after four years in captivity, I had given up all hope. My head told me that you had forgotten me, that you no longer needed me, and I couldn't bear to be a useless spare part in the Temple. As I said, there is no real use for Jedi without the Force."

"So is that where I am?" Anakin asked. "Marbeen?"

"Shax, no," said Obi-Wan with a smile, using an expression Anakin had never heard. "You didn't let me finish."

"So finish."

"Actually, there isn't much more to tell. I set up shop there with Kogna's equipment for another year or so, until the town where I lived no longer needed my services. I'd made enough money to live on for a while, so I found passage here—"

"Here?"

"Dornase Alpha. Stop interrupting. I found passage here. After all that time—" He seemed to be struggling to speak. "I had been on my own for five years, give or take. If I was going to be alone, I wanted to truly be alone. This place—well, you probably didn't see the outside, but it's rather desolate. I arranged for someone from the closest town, three kilometers away, to bring by some food and necessities once a week, and other than that I have been, as I wished, quite alone for the past two years. Other than the weekly delivery droid, I haven't seen another intelligent being in all that time."

Even though Anakin was in pain, it still had to be said. "Are you including the time since you found me in that?" he asked. Obi-Wan laughed aloud, and looked almost surprised that he had done so.

"You can't imagine my surprise when I saw you," he said. "If I didn't believe in the Force, I would have called it a coincidence—but I know that the Force still moves in all things and brings people together for a purpose, though I can't hear its voice any longer. To see you, fallen from the sky, like the answer—" He checked himself, but added quietly, "I did want to see you, just once, though I didn't think it would be possible, before…"

A pause. "Before what?" Anakin asked.

"Before it was too late," Obi-Wan said gently, and that was all he would say. He touched Anakin's forehead, and the Jedi felt sudden languidness wash over him like water. Now that adrenaline no longer pounded through Anakin's body, the painkiller was beginning to take effect again.

Anakin struggled against it; there was still so much he had to know! But Obi-Wan could tell what he was doing and stopped him with a word.

"Your body needs the rest, or you may not recover fully," he said. Anakin protested, his words made feeble by the medication, but Obi-Wan quieted him again. His voice came swimming to Anakin through the encroaching darkness. "I am no hallucination. When you wake up, I will still be here; and I hope to remain here for a very long time—now that I've seen you again."

Anakin fell asleep, allowed himself to succumb to the painkiller's effects. Before he completely lost consciousness, he heard an odd noise from right beside the pillow. Had he been fully awake, he would have realized it meant that Obi-Wan was weeping.

Minutes passed, and when Obi-Wan had recovered himself, he watched the young man sleeping beside him and felt a peace steal over him that was unlike anything he had felt in seven years. Anakin had been right when he'd said their bond did not exist only in the Force, for even when Obi-Wan no longer possessed the Force he still had ached to see his brother again.

The peace was soon interrupted; Obi-Wan's mind, ever rational, was speaking to him in quiet and knowing tones. He hated the words it spoke, because they were simple, and cruel, and true.

But when will you tell him?

"Later," Obi-Wan answered it, silently. "In time."

You have no time.

"He came to me through the will of the Force. The Force would not be so cruel as to—"

He will hate you for the grief you will bring to him. In seven years you have given him nothing but pain and sorrow, and you can do nothing else until your dying day.

"Anakin will forgive me," said Obi-Wan stoutly. "He—he must forgive me. I was never in control of this."

You will give him hope and snatch it away again. You are cruel. It would have been kinder to leave him on the plateau and let him die—

"—No, I have time, I have time!"

He hadn't meant to say that out loud, or with that much volume. Anakin, in his drugged and happy sleep, only stirred vaguely at the sound. Obi-Wan watched him breathing.

Whatever happened, he was thankful for this moment.

When Anakin awoke, he was in no pain at first. Only when he tried to move did he remember that he was badly injured and Obi-Wan was alive.

He started at the thought, looking around wildly though it hurt him. There was the bed and the chair and the doorway and the wall…but Obi-Wan was nowhere to be found.

A small choking noise burst from his throat, like a bubble popping. It was so hard, too hard, to think…

When he heard a voice at the door, he jumped.

"Do you want breakfast?"

The sound left Anakin feeling faint with happiness. He swallowed and looked up.

"I thought—"

"I'm sure you did," said Obi-Wan, sitting down beside him. "But I told you, didn't I? This is real—though I'm having as hard a time believing it as you." He surveyed Anakin's body with an appraising eye, and murmured, "I had forgotten how powerful a healing trance can be. How do you feel?"

Anakin jerked his brain away from the giddy thought of Obi-Wan! and considered this for a minute. "Sore," he said finally. "But I think…everything's a bit better now."

Obi-Wan nodded. "That's what it looks like," he said. "Here, let me." He got down beside the bed and began feeling Anakin's ribs with an obviously practiced hand. It hurt, but not nearly as badly as it had before, when Anakin had felt as though he were being stabbed every time he breathed.

"A few of them are still cracked," he said finally, "but very slightly. You've healed well in just a day. Your leg still looks bad—"

"What's wrong with my leg?"

"I can't be certain, but I'm fairly sure that you've shattered the kneecap, and pretty well, too. A normal human might be disabled for several weeks; with what I've seen so far of you, you'll probably be walking in two weeks or less."

Anakin had an idea in the back of his mind that there was something very important going on that he needed to be walking for, but it didn't immediately present itself. Obi-Wan began to roll up Anakin's sleeve and apply bacta to a burn on his shoulder.

"So you think in two weeks I'll be back to normal?" he asked. Obi-Wan, instead of answering confidently, gave a weak sort of shrug. Anakin found this very worrying.

"Almost," Obi-Wan told him. "But—the Force can't do everything, Anakin. Your hand…"

"What about it?" asked Anakin. For the first time since the crash he looked down at his hands. The right one looked all right, though a bit singed. But when he turned his attention to the left hand, there seemed to be complications. His fingers were bandaged tightly, leaving only his thumb free, so that he could not see them at all.

Obi-Wan was already unwrapping the bandages, and Anakin was beginning to feel nervous. It couldn't be that bad, could it? The last wrapping came off, and Anakin looked down, more bewildered than anything else.

Those were his fingers, all right, but…there were pieces gone. The top half of his little finger was missing, and his ring finger was just…well, it wasn't there anymore at all. Anakin looked at his mutilated hand, dumbfounded.

"You don't know how lucky you were," Obi-Wan said urgently, as though he felt compelled to convince Anakin of this, as though he felt guilty. "With a crash like that, you could have gotten your head off your shoulders. You were fortunate to lose only two fingers."

Anakin nodded, slowly. "I know…" he mumbled, still looking down. Obi-Wan suddenly leaned forward and covered the damaged hand with his own.

"It'll be all right," he assured Anakin, in the teacher-mentor voice that made it sound as though Obi-Wan were totally in control of the situation. "Now, I think it's only fair that you tell me what's happened to you since I've been gone."

That got Anakin to look up, at least. Still leaning back, he thought. "There isn't very much to tell," he admitted. Obi-Wan smiled.

"Try," he urged.

Somehow, what seemed to Anakin to be a dull and quickly-told story turned into an epic lasting at least an hour. Obi-Wan was a captive audience throughout, asking questions at the slightest detail, and it occurred to Anakin only then just how much Obi-Wan had missed him, had hungered for even the slightest news of his former Padawan.

He was nearing the end of the story now—Obi-Wan had just finished murmuring, "A Master…" to himself, unable to believe the truth and oh, so proud—and the painkiller's fog was gently retreating from his thoughts. Then his mouth spoke the word "Naboo," and Anakin's brain jumped to attention, quivering with horror.

"The weapon!" he said hoarsely. He tried to stand; his feeble attempt was quickly and painfully aborted by Obi-Wan, but Anakin kept fighting, for reasons unknown to his Master.

"Anakin!" said Obi-Wan, bewildered. With a strength an invalid couldn't hope to match (even a Jedi invalid), he finally managed to force Anakin back down onto the bed. He sat back, breathing hard, though it couldn't have been so great of an effort.

In Anakin's desperation, the words of explanation came out quickly, jumbled over one another until even he himself didn't know what he was saying. Eventually he calmed down, but not before Obi-Wan had gotten the gist of it.

"You're telling me," said the ex-Jedi, his voice very low, "that Grievous has a weapon capable of destroying an entire planet in a single blast and half of the Jedi Council held hostage on it?"

Anakin nodded. "And I have to go with them, I have to go back—!"

"Look at you!" Obi-Wan thundered suddenly, standing. "You are in no condition to go anywhere!"

"You said I'd be fine!" Anakin shouted back.

"In two weeks! Are you still as reckless as when I left you?"

"You've still got enough caution for the both of us, so I don't see why that matters."

Obi-Wan looked as though he wanted to reply in the same vein, but thought better of it. Instead, he sank back into his chair, breathless. "Oh, Anakin," he groaned, "I don't have enough energy for you."

The break in the shouting match gave Anakin enough time to consider some common sense and to realize that, no matter the urgency, he simply was in no condition to battle. He sighed.

"At least help me find my lightsaber," he petitioned Obi-Wan. After a moment Obi-Wan took his hand from his eyes and nodded.

"It must be in the wreckage somewhere," he said. "Is there any chance your comm is still working?"

"Definitely not the ship's unit," Anakin said, "and mine—" He blinked, then groped suddenly in his pockets. A second later, an expression of supreme disappointment fell across his face. "I don't have mine either," he said.

"Never mind," said Obi-Wan. "We'll find some other way of getting you back to the rest of the universe. I'll go see if I can find your lightsaber."

"I want to come with you," said Anakin.

"No."

"Obi-Wan—"

"No!"

"You told me never to let my lightsaber out of my sight! I need to go find it."

Obi-Wan looked as though he would like nothing better than to clamp Anakin's mouth shut. "What part of 'you can't walk' are you not understanding?"

"I can walk—if you help me," he amended.

After it was made clear that Anakin would not be dissuaded, Obi-Wan reluctantly conceded. A half-hour later, the Jedi struggled out of the house for the first time, borne up by a make-shift crutch fashioned from a two tall pieces of wood and some leftover bits of cloth. He was white-faced with pain, but shook his head when Obi-Wan offered once more to let him stay inside.

The landscape that met him was flat and harsh, unforgiving of anything that dared to jut up and break its surface. The rocks and soil were a dull, grainy red, and above them a small, dark sun hovered uncertainly between the horizon and the zenith of the sky. In the distance Anakin could see a wall-like group of high boulders that stretched as far as the eye could see horizontally, their long shadows scraping across the plain, and beyond that there was a risen plateau.

"That's where I found your ship," said Obi-Wan, pointing to the table of ground. "I truly don't know if you can make it that far, Anakin."

"We'll see," was all Anakin would say. Without another word he set off, face set grimly. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and followed.

It was a good standard hour before they had reached the plateau and climbed up the steep and winding path to the flat top. Immediately Anakin saw the remains of his ship and, ignoring the pain that was now pressing at him from all sides, rushed toward it.

It was bad. The poor thing had been completely demolished in the fall, so that there was hardly a scrap of metal left welded to another, and what remained had been consumed in the fire. Minor flames, Anakin knew, his lightsaber could withstand, but not an inferno.

Desperate, he dropped to his good knee and began groping in the dirt, hoping to see a glint of silver amidst all the burnt black. His hand grazed a broken shard, and blood sprang to his skin.

"Ah!"

Obi-Wan pulled him back. "Don't go looking blindly in there," he said. "You don't know—'

"Wait, there—I see it!" And Anakin was back on the ground again, but this time he had results. Clutched in his free left hand was his dear, familiar lightsaber hilt, charred somewhat on one side, but still perfectly operational. At the touch of a button the blue beam leapt into being, then died back down into its home.

"Do you want to go back now?" Obi-Wan asked him. Anakin looked at him, squinting through the sunlight.

"I'd rather just rest for a while," he admitted. Obi-Wan shrugged in agreement; they moved away from the wreckage and sat in the dust, Anakin's leg sticking awkwardly out to one side underneath him.

They sat together like that for a good long time. Anakin's mind was a swirl of confusion, jumping from one thought to another as fast as his brain would work. But in the hot, bright sunlight, sitting next to the man he thought he had lost forever, he had no desire to pose any of the questions he still had to Obi-Wan. It was enough, just to be here—as long as his old Master understood something.

Anakin spoke three sentences. "You have to know that I'm not the same person I was when you left. Ihad to change myself when I thought you'd died. The only way I could survive was if I didn't care about you anymore."

Obi-Wan spoke one. "I know."

They stayed there like that for another hour, and watched the sun begin its path downward.

Author's Note: I have so much to thank you guys for! Almost every day I get an email telling me that someone else has placed this story on their favorites and/or alert list. Right now, there are 88 people who have marked this as a favorite story, and 120 who are alerted every time it's updated. Also, this is a record number of reviews for me! It really makes me happy to know that people are actually reading what I've been working so hard on. Please don't stop. :-P