Ignorance was no excuse. He hadn't even *considered* it, and the fact that his Master had not pushed now said more to him than any explanation could have.

Whatever he wanted, Qui-Gon had given him. Love, acceptance, comfort, and then freedom.

And he had repaid it by throwing that love back in the older man's face, choosing instead to dally with women he didn't care for, and to profess his love for someone he could now barely stand to see.

Each circuit of the room took him a few steps closer to his Master's bedroom door.

All of his things were in it, everything he owned that had not been on his person when he died.

Despite urging, Obi-Wan had failed to clear it out and claim the slightly larger room as his own.

When Anakin became his Padawan officially, which could be any time in the next few months, he would have to do that.

But for now it remained, a silent shrine to his failure.

Stopping now before the door itself, he pushed it open with a touch of the Force.

The bed was made, the desk cleared, the wardrobe tidy.

So like his Master.

With a sigh of resignation he walked in and lay down on the bed, scarcely disturbing the wrinkleless spread.

Perhaps if he slept here he wouldn't feel alone tonight.

**************

Qui-Gon used the Force to toss the tray of food across the room. The effort cost him more than he would have liked, but it made a most satisfactory mess.

"I will *not* eat until I can see my...until I can see Obi-Wan. I have told you all that." And keeping his voice calm took even more effort.

Estern's face, as usual, was without expression. "If you do not eat, we will find other ways to feed you."

"I will sabotage them. You know I can." He looked at her and at Aribl.

"What would you have us do? It is not up to us to tell Obi-Wan."

"Talk to the council, then. It was important for them to bring me back from the dead; surely it is important for them to keep me alive."

"Healer, perhaps we should do as Master Jinn says? He is no longer healing."

"I will not permit us to be blackmailed, Nurse, no matter how important the patient *thinks* he is." She cast one more look at the mess on the wall and swept out in a flurry of dark velvet.

Aribl picked up the cleaning device that now remained in Qui-Gon's room and began taking care of the smashed tray. "She is in charge of your case, Master. I can no more go against her wishes than I can go against the council's."

"Do you know where Obi-Wan is?"

"Yes, of course. He's teaching now, until his Padawan is ready for training."

"He's in pain. I can feel it, even without the teaching bond."Qui-Gon found himself clenching his covers ashe said those words.

Aribl's full lips narrowed. He stood still for a moment, his cleaning task done, and then nodded. "He hurts. He's been told one thing by the people he trusts most in the universe and he senses something else. The contradiction is tearing him apart. I shouldn't be telling you this."

"But you are."

He nodded. "Because your lack of knowledge is impeding your healing. Healer Estern is one of the best physicians and surgeons we have, but she doesn't recognize the mind as playing a role." He bit his lips. "The council is wrong. Whatever their plan is regarding you, this is wrong."

Aribl was clearly distressed at saying that. He ran his fingers through his curls and paced. "I don't know what to do, Master. I *can't* go against the Healer or the Council, but if I don't, we'll lose two of you...three of you because no one else will train Anakin. Even Je-Sma can't help me sleep at night. Tell me what to do, Master Jinn."

"Follow your heart, young nurse. What does it tell you?"Qui-Gon knew he wouldn't have to say more to him.

"I...I'm not permitted to leave you, Master. Not unless you eat or accept medication."

"I will accept neither until my former Padawan is here with me."

*Even if it means my death.*

Aribl looked at him at that thought. "Please do not do so with me around, Master Jinn. I will do my best."

Qui-Gon nodded. He had faith in the young man's sense of right and wrong.

"It seems, Master Jinn, that you are causing a small disturbance in the Force." Qui-Gon looked up. Estern, her face something less than impassive, had entered the room. "You have a visitor."

A small figure in Jedi robes followed her in. "A problem you have been, Qui-Gon."

"It is good to see you, Master Yoda."

"Leave now you may, Healer and nurse. Alone to talk we must be."

"I will think about what you said, Master Jinn." Aribl touched his hand before he left, making the pain slightly less. Estern said nothing as she followed him out of the room.

"Aribl is he not? Great loss he was. Great problem you are, Qui-Gon. Why?"

"Why are you lying to my former Padawan? He is grieving for no reason."

"Lied we must. Secret you must be for mission we now plan. Recovered you must be for mission."

Qui-Gon looked at his former master. "What mission? Why must I be a secret even from him?"

"Calm you must be. Anger danger is. This I taught." Qui-Gon fought to recover calm. When he did, Master Yoda continued. "A Sith there is. Killed only one was. We must this other Sith find before he an apprentice takes."

"Of course. How do I fit?"

"Living he does not know you are. Look for you he will not. Him you will find, him you will remove. Recover you must, so eat you must, and take your medications you must."

"Let me talk to Obi-Wan."

"Know Obi-Wan must not. Danger to you and plan would be. On this mission, go Obi-Wan must not."

"Why not?"

"He Padawan has. He responsibilities has. He...not working well is."

"No?"

"Not sleeping is. Not stable is. Not ready to be Jedi was, but Jedi is. Grow he must, alone. Do this you must, alone."

"He isn't stable because he senses me, Master. He knows I'm alive, and believes I am dead."

"Sense you he cannot. Bond broken was. Died you did."

"Master Yoda, there is another bond. Use the Force and look at me." Qui-Gon did his best to lay quietly in the bed, steeling himself for the intrusion. Yoda's mind burned even at the lightest touch.

"Wrong this is! Unauthorized this is! Permission you had not! This broken must be."

"Which one of us will you kill this time, Master Yoda? This bond just happened, which means it's not under my control."

"This...much thought needs. Kill we cannot and will not. Tell Obi-Wan...about it we will think."

"If you want to do your mission..."

"This blackmail is. Counterdeal...this mission you will do, and if survive you do, tell Obi-Wan we will."

"And if he loses his mind before then?"

"Risk we must take to Sith Lord remove."

"No. I'm not willing to risk this. Think, Master Yoda. With this bonding, if I die, he dies. If he goes insane, I go insane."

"Bond weak is. Break it we may."

"And it may not kill Obi if I die now."

"Impasse this is. I to council will talk. Trouble you are, Qui-Gon. Trouble you both are."

With that, he left the room. Qui-Gon barely heard him go. They were willing to risk Obi-Wan's life, Obi-Wan's sanity, even Anakin, for this mission. This was not the Master he loved or the council he served. This was a nightmare, and he was not showing any signs of waking. There was no one left he could trust...except for a nurse torn between him and duty.

Suddenly, it and the pain were all too much for Qui-Gon. He could feel the control he'd been taught so strongly begin to slip. A single tear, one more than he'd shed in a lifetime, rolled down his face. *Obi-Wan, I'm sorry. Nothing is right.*

Aribl returned soon after, to find him lying perfectly still, his eyes staring at the ceiling, his face wet. The nurse touched his cheek for a second but even that didn't ease the pain.

***************

"Kenobi!" The low voice of the children's section headmaster broke through Obi-Wan's Force-induced fugue and he snapped his head up, feeling his face flush and his eyes widen as he looked about his classroom and realized that his students were all gone.

"Master Jer-Dae." Feeling the stiffness of muscles that had held position too long, he stretched carefully, trying to be discrete, and spoke quietly, not letting the panic that threatened take over.

Wisely he said nothing more. A glance at the windows showed long shadows, meaning that he'd been lost inside himself for several hours at least.

The last thing he remembered was setting his class to working a series of equations and that hadn't been long after lunch.

"Your students have left for the day." Jer-Dae approached him. Slowed by age, his features were as sharp as his tongue, which Obi-Wan remembered well from his own early days here.

"I must ask that you be re-assigned, Knight Kenobi. Your continuing distraction is harmful to the children. What are they to learn from a Jedi who cannot control himself? I don't know what the Council was thinking when they assigned you this position, you never had the attention span that a Jedi requires. Too easily bored, you are. An eternal adolescent."

Although he had expected something like this, Obi-Wan was still stung by the words and the lack of compassion that allowed them.

"My master is *dead*," he snarled, rising with a wince as his body protested. "Your petty jealousies aside, I cannot believe you would belittle my loss." It was a tremendous effort to keep his voice even and low; all he wanted to do was scream at the man.

Scream at the world.

At the galaxy.

Or just simply scream.

The desire to scream senselessly at the top of his lungs was new. He catalogued it as dispassionately as he could, still fighting for control, but distracted from his anger.

It was almost as if he could feel another's mind touching his own, urging him to calm, offering him strength. Strength that mind did not have to spare. But the only other mind that had ever touched his had been Qui-Gon Jinn's...

"KENOBI!"

The affronted bellow from Master Jer-Dae brought him back to the present again.

"What?"

He blinked, aware that he had drifted again, but unable to see that it merited the anger and, yes, worry, he saw on the elderly man's face.

A hand closed on his arm, more gently than he'd expected, and gave him a shake.

"I should call the Healers," Jer-Dae said, quieter now. More thoughtful. "You were not prepared for the loss of your Master and I can see that it has affected you deeply."

"How do you prepare to have your heart ripped out?" Snapping the words, Obi-Wan stepped out of that grasp, pulling his cloak tightly around himself.

The cold inside him refused to be banished by layers of cloth and he had no warm thoughts to think.

If starlight was cold, his soul was colder.

"Reassign me. I am not prepared to teach right now." He managed to get the words out without choking on them. "Do not concern yourself. I will go to my quarters and meditate."

It was difficult to walk straight, to stand tall, but he pulled himself together and did it, telling himself that if he didn't Master Jer-Dae would take him to the Healers no matter how he protested; he would lose even this hallucinatory feel of his Master, and he could not bear that.

It didn't matter if it were real. All that mattered was that he felt it.

And he would do everything in his power to continue feeling it.

If this be madness, let me be mad, he thought sluggishly, walking the corridors to his quarters, aware of the glances, curious and concerned both, that he was receiving from the Jedi he passed.

Once inside he felt immeasurably better, and made his way - staggering, stumbling, stripping his outer clothes as he went - to his Master's bed.

Where acceptance failed, denial would serve.

Falling onto it, flat on his face, he tried for a moment to breathe *through* the thick coverlet his nose was mashed into, but had to give in and turn his head to the side.

This turned his eyes toward the window and he half-opened them, uncaring, and stared into the brightness of a Coruscant night, lights that hid the stars.

He stared until he felt that touch again, and his mind reached for it, grasped, and tugged, pulling desperately, needing it to be real.

He needed Qui-Gon, needed to feel him in his head.

Instead the touch conspired with his exhausted, underfed body and he slipped into deep sleep, to be taunted by dream-images of Qui-Gon, who alternately condemned and rejected him.

"I offered you my love, my heart, and you wasted yourself on women like Apina! Your purity, your innocence, those were for me, Padawan. For *me*. How can I love you now that they are gone? You're tainted, fouled by loveless sex and casual relationships.

"You believed what they told you?! You *believed* the Council and ignored what your heart knew?! As long as you believe, I am truly dead!"

With a startled jerk Obi-Wan pulled himself from sleep. The vision of Qui-Gon, looming over him, sneering down at him, held him pinned to the bed for long moments as his chest worked, lungs inflating desperately.

There would be no rest tonight.

Flinging himself upwards, he stumbled and fell when his feet hit the floor. He landed badly, catching himself on his hands and elbows, biting back a gasp at the sharp pain.

A knee cracked sharply against the night table.

Gathering himself, reaching to the Force, which responded sluggishly to his call, he got himself upright and then had the courage to take a step.

It worked, so he took another.

One foot in front of the other...

Thinking nothing at all, knowing that he had to follow this call or die trying, risking losing his very mind if he did not, Obi-Wan left his quarters and began walking through the Temple. Aimlessly, seemingly without purpose.

But his heart, and his mind, followed a call that was too weak, too soft, whispered in his cells, for anyone else to hear.

*****************

"Master Jinn, you must rest." Aribl was pale. His mouth and eyes were clenched in pain as he held his patient's hand. Qui-Gon could feel the pain leave him while strength trickled in. "You must let me give you medication so you can rest."

He shook his head. "I will not, young nurse. My health, my life, are my only bargaining chips. I will see Obi-Wan. I must."

"And if you do not? Will you die because of your stubbornness? Will you let the lie become the truth?" Aribl wrenched his hand away for a moment, and the pain and weakness came rushing back, forcing Qui-Gon to collapse further on his pillows. "This is what you would feel if I let you alone. You would not heal, you would just weaken until you die and allow the Dark Side to win." There was true anger in the young man's voice.

"They will not risk losing me. Need...me." Qui-Gon could not speak above a whisper as he fought against his own body, as he used what he had to call Obi-Wan to him. "Kept me...alive."

Aribl took a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly. Qui-Gon could sense him reaching out to the Force. Then the nurse took his hand again, and he could do more than exist.

"Where do you get your strength, young Aribl?"

"Je-Sma, my lover, is lending me his now. My own...will recover with sleep and food. As would yours, Master Jinn. I cannot be with you at all times. I will find a way to bring Obi-Wan Kenobi to you if you do as you must."

"I will not have you risk your future - or the health of Je-Sma. I will...survive. Let me be, and they will bring my Padawan."

Aribl managed a smile. "I am an empath. This is what I need to do. Je-Sma understands. But he, too, wishes you would have a care for your health." He sat back with a jerk. "He is here. He hears your call. He, also, is in pain." Aribl's face became pure white. "I can feel him twice - both as him and through your bond."

"Bond? Our bond is broken. Aribl, please, let go. You are about to faint." The young man was sweating and breathing heavily.

Instead of letting go, Aribl seemed to reach further inside himself. Qui-Gon realized he was drawing even more from his lover. "Master Jinn, you have a bond. It is new yet and fragile, but it is a true bond, such as Je-Sma and I share. A bond between lovers." He gasped. "He comes. If I see him, I will have to report him. I'm sorry, Master Jinn. I must leave." He released the contact and ran out of the room.

Bond? What was the boy talking about? Qui-Gon steeled himself against the return of his pain. Dimly, he was aware that he would die again soon and that it might be too late to stop it even now, but he pushed that, too, to the back of his mind. Instead, he probed delicately for the new bond Aribl claimed was there, and he found it.

It was barely a thread. He carefully sent a thought across that fragile, silvery bridge and there he found Obi-Wan. The pain in his...bondmate's soul was greater even than that in his own body. He nearly recoiled back into his own mind.

This should not be. It took the will of both to make a lovebond, and he would never forget that cold starry night when he learned that Obi-Wan would never feel as he did. How could he have forced this on him? Did his desperate cries create this travesty? Yet he could not bring himself to break it, even if he had the strength. He did all that he could...he retreated back to his own mind and lost himself in his pain.

***

Hesitating in an intersection, turning once again, indecisively, Obi-Wan cringed when the call in his head suddenly became somehow *stronger*.

For a moment it was powerful, rushing through him, with the unmistakable signature of his Master's presence, and he keened softly, clutching his head with both hands and staggering. Somehow he did not fall.

Then it faded again, only now it was even softer, so faint and far away that he had to strain to touch it.

Obi-Wan was afraid. Had it all been a dream? A sense-memory of his Master, fueled by loss and guilt and anger?

Or had the older man been trying to contact him from beyond the Force, and finally given up when his Padawan did not respond strongly enough?

"Oh please...." He whispered to the air, pleading with no one and anyone. "Please. I must find him."

After a few more moments he could breathe again, but he did so tentatively, afraid that the very sound would distract him from the faintest flickering of the call that he now felt. He would follow it, to the shores of the Coruscant Sea if he had to.

There was no way to tell what he would find at the end of it, but he had to answer that call - whether it seemed to want him to or not.

He moved through the gathering shadows; the lights here only half-lit, many burned out altogether. This was not a section of the Temple used frequently.

If he was going to find his Master - he clung to the belief that his Master was calling to him, from his deathbed or the grave - he would go anywhere, and do anything.

Unaware of the passage of time, he realized, belatedly, that he was being led *out* of the bowels of the Temple. Climbing yet one more set of wide stone steps, at this level slightly moistened with damp, he surfaced in a hall he recognized, the quiet sounds of the Healers and the hospital momentarily distracting him from the connection. Startled, he snatched at it desperately, and wondered when it seemed to pull away again.

So many things I wanted to tell you...only I didn't know I wanted to.

The thought made his head hurt worse and he was reminded of the other, more probable explanation for his recent behavior.

He was going slowly insane.

The tiny tremble of connection shivered and then expanded in his mind, and he felt the welcome, and the pain that filled it. It was easy, now, to turn toward that and walk down a hall, take a left, walk down another hall, ignored by the two young Healer apprentices that saw him, and turn again, coming to a stop in front of an ordinary door.

The welcome swelled and he opened it, stepping into the room with his eyes closed, truly afraid that the room would be empty, unable to bear the thought...

The door swung shut behind him, automatically, and he held his breath.

***

Try as he might, Qui-Gon could not ignore the pain of one he loved so much. He had to touch that bond and let Obi-Wan know he was still alive, to guide him to his room. He knew he'd be sending his own pain with the message, but it couldn't be helped.

He could feel Obi-Wan approaching. *Closer now. I'm here, my Padawan. Yes, that is the door. Open it. Let me see you. Yes!*

The door opened. There he was, his eyes closed, breathing hard. Qui-Gon, weak beyond anything he'd felt before, just lay there waiting.

The young man's eyes opened. "Master? Is it really you?" He rushed to the bed and grasped Qui-Gon's hands.

"Yes. It is I."

"They told me you were dead." Obi-Wan sounded like he was choking back sobs. He was pale, and far too thin, with dark circles under his eyes.

"I seem to have recovered." He tried and failed to speak above a whisper. "What of you, my pad...you are not my Padawan any longer..." He looked at the place where Obi-Wan's braid used to be.

"You will always be my teacher, my Master. Why did they lie to me? Why didn't you send word? I thought...I thought I was going insane!"

Qui-Gon barely felt the additional pain as Obi-Wan gripped his hands. "I had to do it. I had no choice. I am sorry."

"Sorry for what, Master? It is all worth it now, now that I know you are alive...every dream, every night...all of it."

"You don't know?" Qui-Gon sighed. "Look into your mind. Is there something new there?"

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. "Something...yes. A thread of Force, like our old bond but thinner and in a different place." Qui-Gon felt the touch of Obi-Wan's mind. "You are on the other side. I don't understand, Master."

"It is my doing. When I called you, I must have forged a new bond - the bond I wished for years ago. I know you do not welcome such a bond...we can...we can break it now." A fresh surge of soul pain caused him to gasp. To his shock, not all of the pain was his.

"Master? Then you do not forgive me?"

"Forgive *you*? What have you done to need forgiveness?" Why was Obi-Wan so close to tears?

"All those women...Apina...I knew how you felt, yet I not only rejected you, I flaunted my loves in front of you. I'm sorry. I was wrong to hurt you like that. I was wrong to reject you...I love you, Qui-Gon Jinn." His eye grew wide and he sat down on Aribl's chair abruptly.

Qui-Gon's heart leaped, and then fell again. "You thought I was gone. You watched my body burn. That is all. And now you feel relief. It is not love. As for your loves...it made me happy to see you happy. You never picked anyone unworthy - Apina is a fine Jedi. There was nothing to forgive."

"No. Master...Qui-Gon...you have a bridge to my heart. It has grown sturdier as we speak. Use it, see what I truly feel."

Go to Part Four