When Paths Diverge

Hyperspace - Post-Tatooine [Year 25075 in Galactic Standard]

White light trickled in through the cracks of his eyes. There was a foreign sensation of light weight pressing down his sides, and he flinched slightly, tensing up his body in preparation for a fight. Or perhaps he meant to run, he didn't really know, because the only thing that he could focus on at that moment, was that his head ached. Everything else felt too bright and invasive.

The murmur of voices buzzing in the background stilled his motions, and barely daring to breath, he feigned unconsciousness. Gathering his thoughts took more effort on his part, and sloughing through the mangled mass of half-thoughts was more effort than it was worth. Hazy confusion floated about in the cage of his skull, and as to be expected, the lack of concise clarity only served to increase the dull throbbing sensation pressing behind the socket of his eyes.

His body hurt in a way that it hadn't for a long time. Obi-Wan was well-versed in pain, and had since developed a high tolerance to it especially once the Clone Wars had broken out and the years of exile ever since. Tatooine was not the safest place, after all, and like the harsh sandstorms that frequented the place, the planet deigned to maintain an atmosphere of roughness that was made infinitely worse by its hardened inhabitants.

Safe to say, Obi-Wan could definitely tell that he was not in an ideal situation right now. Even the act of breathing rattled his lungs in a way that had him clenching his fists at his side. He choked down a silent gulp of air, and attempted to harness and push the pain out and into the Force. The slight reprieve drained the tension from his chest, and he relaxed fractionally, albeit he was aware enough to quickly move into action at the slightest sign of threat.

It was incredibly hard to separate the streams of consciousness of the Force from the reality around him. As such, there were splotchy whites and blues and reds spinning around in his vision, each taking on a dream-like quality of their own. Smears of ink dotted the pale-opaque canvas of fading stars. Spider-webs and cracks that fractured the foundation of the space and time in between as it crept and expanded along the narrow edges of golden threads that signified a shattered thousand futures.

There was a sense of sluggishness in his blood that made his feel drained, and fatigue tugged at the corners of his eyelids. Clawing his way back felt almost impossible, but by some distant miracle, Obi-Wan somehow managed to accomplish it. Then, the first thing that he became acutely aware of, were the sounds. The voices.

"Padawan...can you hear me...?"

"Are... alright..."

"Padawan...!"

There was a jolt of recognition at the familiarity of the voice, before he finally registered that the words were coming from inside his head. It had not been spoken aloud as he had previously assumed, and that fact alone was jarring enough that it stunned him somewhat into an incomprehensible silence. It took a moment for it to fully register, and when it did, his blood turned to ice in his veins. For a moment, he almost forgot to breathe.

Obi-Wan hadn't realised that he had slammed down all his mental shields to its maximum potency until a small, startled yelp from beside him rang out. It sounded familiar to him, and it scratched away a part of his mind. For a moment, he could almost swear that it sounded like his former master, but that was impossible... wasn't it?

He trembled slightly, hardly daring to breathe, hardly daring to hope-

Perhaps this was the Afterlife? If such a thing existed, that was. Although... Qui-Gon's state of Force Ghost-ness - the visage of his former master that had appeared to him in the desert, and subsequently spent the next several years giving half-assed advise and unnecessarily cryptic comments - tended to suggest that it was most certainly possible.