The Healers are running around the child’s bed and it takes all of
Mace considerable strength with both hands on Qui-Gon’s shoulders
to hold the man back as they work on his to pale padawan. There is
grief on every line of Qui-Gon’s body and Force because despite the
best, they all know what the outcome will be.

Obi-Wan hearts stops.

There’s a breathless moment where only a keening cry escapes the
long haired master’s lips before the entire temple freezes as the
Force rises up in outrage, roaring through them.

Light, Dark and Gray.

It all swirls through the temple, rising ever louder.

The more Force sensitive are brought to their knees, some with
nosebleeds and other with headaches.

It reaches past the temple and spreads over the planet.

In the office of a Senator, two beings stop their plotting to hear
the outrage in the Force, an illusive battle scene of men in white
crashing against Jedi’s slipping through their grasp. The elder
tries to chase the scene but falls flat for this Force image is not
for them.

No, its for the child in the bed of the temple as he comes back to
life with a scream that rattles dust out of long forgotten corridors
and wake spirits that have long since gone to rest. It belongs to the
child who is no longer a child as he lays, gasping in the medical bed
he only moments ago had died in.

Qui-Gon wrenched himself from Mace grip and past stunned healers,
wiping blood from his bottom lip even as he reached the bed of his
bloody padawan and lent over him. “Obi-Wan?” He whispered
shakily.

The copper haired child took a stuttering breath, eyes slowly
focusing on Qui-Gon. And then he jerked away, falling out of the bed,
giving a cry of shock and pain even as he scuttled from his Master.

The child looked as if he had seen a ghost even as he scrambled to
his feet and ran past them, staggering past the to stunned and
shocked Jedi’s.

“Obi-Wan!”

The cry echoes the hallways but Obi-Wan is to confused to stop.
Everything is wrong and right at the same time. He belongs yet he
does not. He is young and he’s old at the same time and he doesn’t
know where he is.

But he knows where he’s going even as he rushes past luminous
shapes that should not exist anymore and yet they do.

He staggers, runs and falls until he’s where he knows what and who
he is. At the heart of the temple  where he falls for the last time,
his hands burying themselves into the soil of the tree that is the
heart of their temple.

Obi-Wan pressed his cheek to the bark of it before sinking into the
Force, past the unifying Force, into the Living and then beyond what
the living should see. Past every shade of Force until all that existed was
Obi-Wan and the beating pulse of the Galaxy.

The Force whispers apologies for ripping him from the rest he
rightfully deserved as it offers him the chance to change. He keens
in response, confused and lost in this void of emotions and
sensations that do not all belong to him.

The Force beacons him to reach out and just feel.

For a moment Obi-Wan wants to reach for the light where he knows
peace and rest is. And then he turns away to reach out to the Galaxy
he once left and its so bright and warm and welcoming.

It whispers about all those he thought were gone but are still there,
has not left yet. All the friends who think about him, all the wonder
of the galaxy yet to be discovered that he already knows. Lost
planets, fantastic planets, creatures big and small…and Anakin.

Obi-Wan’s breath hitches and he reaches out again, past everything,
past what is and what was and what will be and finds his little nova.
Anakin is still just a bright spark inside of his mother and his
every heart beat is like the flutter of a fragile birds wings.

But it calms Obi-Wan. Anakin has yet to be born, he is still
untainted by the world around him, has yet to see the dawn of a slave
life. He can still save Anakin, he can still save him. It does not
have to end in fire and pain and loss.

Obi-Wan breathes and the Galaxy breathes with him.

When he opens his eyes and meets Qui-Gon’s half awed and half
terrified eyes, he’s calm. Calmer then he has been in years.

“Obi-Wan…are you…alright?” The old master asked quietly, his
voice hushed as if disturbing a tomb.

“…I will be.” Obi-Wan whispered back before slowly pushing
himself from the tree, fingers still buried in the soil around it. “I
think…I think I will be Master.” He slowly moved his hands out of
the soil and crawled closer to the other man only for Qui-Gon to let
out a shaking breath and wrap Obi-Wan in the tightest bear hug he has
ever received from his master. “Oh thank the Force.”

Obi-Wan blinked against the other chest before closing his eyes and
curling closer, letting the warmth, safety and familiarity close
around him.