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The first time Qui-Gon comes to him, it starts as a touch at the edges of his awareness, a brush along the outer perimeter of his mind. In a crowd, he might have dismissed it as nothing, but here in the desert, it is unmistakable. When he rises and turns, he already knows what he will see.
His arms wrap tighter around him beneath the folds of his robe, all the same.
The apparition looks surprisingly like a hologram - a blue, transparent figure, iridescent in the darkness. Through it, he can see the flames of the fire, the scattering of stars in the sky. To the eye, it is no more substantial than the recordings he used to keep in his quarters, the ones he watched over and over, back when the wound was still fresh. But holograms make no impression in the Force, and though this presence isn’t the solid radiance he remembers, it is a presence nonetheless, so familiar he catches himself shivering.
The spirit doesn’t speak, and Obi-Wan has no idea what to say. He has been trained in composure since he was old enough to talk, but where would he have learnt how to respond to this?
Then something brushes his mind again – searching, finding - and he realizes that he doesn’t have to say a word. The gateways have been unused for so many years, but never sealed off, never closed, and all he needs to do is drop his shields for the bond to rush through them.
His thoughts have been his alone, though, since Mustafar, Master Yoda accepting the projected image of a burning, mutilated body as the only thing that would be shared, a clinical field report delivered in the briefest way possible. Even holding the babies in his arms, he hadn't known how to reach out and touch them in the Force, not through the barriers he had drawn around him. Not across the distance suddenly so necessary to pushing forward.
“I can’t,” is what he opens his mouth to say, and he believes it, but of course it’s a lie. He might be frightened, of so many things, but the boy who remains a part of him has only ever known one definition of safety. Qui-Gon is inside him before the words have a chance to leave his lips.
It lasts a long time. Thirteen years of life and experience, emotions and thoughts laid bare within him, and Qui-Gon goes through them all with gentle, meticulous care - the sorrow, the heartache, the pride and the joy, and at last the ultimate, unimaginable failure.
Dawn is already a thin line of turquoise along the horizon when the rush of inner communication slows to a halt. In the quiet that follows, the sound of his own breathing is far louder than the crackle of the dying flames; rapid, shallow breaths that he somehow can’t manage to get under control, despite the perfect mastery of mind over matter that nowadays he almost takes for granted. Heart-rate, breathing, all the rhythms of the body…for a Jedi it should be easy to bend them to his will.
“With every inhalation, you fill your being with the Force…”
Qui-Gon’s hand, huge against his narrow chest, centering him. A firm, steady weight holding him in place, moving with him.
“…with every exhalation, you release yourself into it.”
His own long fingers pale against the fabric of Anakin’s tunic, the boy’s energy shifting under his palm, letting him guide it. Rising and falling.
There is moisture clouding his eyes as he tries to blink the recollections away. The ghost takes a quick step closer, a transparent hand coming up towards his cheek.
“Oh, Padawan;” his Master says, and the voice is every single thing he remembers. It’s the word, though, that brings it all home.
There are no strong arms to hold him, no broad shoulder to lean on, but tendrils of the Force reach out to wrap around his soul, shielding him as he falls to his knees in the sand and weeps.