A/N: I apologize profusely for how long this took! Real life struck back with a vengeance, and I've just had trouble writing all summer. Still, I'm back now, and I'll probably be updating this again soon, anyway. Thanks, everyone, for sticking with me even through a three-month hiatus!

Disclaimer: The Force is telling me Star Wars is not mine--it never has been, and it never will be.

He was floating somewhere, just on the bleary gray edges of consciousness. Part of him was telling him that he didn't want to wake at all, but he had learned long ago that what he wanted wasn't always what was best, for him or for anyone else. The inside of his head felt empty and vacant, and when he probed the recesses of his thoughts carefully, still lost somewhere that wasn't quite sleeping and wasn't quite waking, the emptiness there flared into screaming pain as if he had touched a still-bleeding wound.

It hurt, hurt so much it was almost indescribable. He had been empty and adrift before, but never like this. Never so . . . utterly alone. Before, he'd merely thought he was alone, but the others had still been there, still been out there, somewhere . . . .

Now they were all gone.

The hollow sob he could hear wrench from between his own lips brought him back to himself as it sparked pain from the cracked, bleeding tissue, and he lifted the arm that hurt slightly less to hold it to his head, reflexively brushing thick, tangled locks of hair back out of his face where they dangled down into his eyes and stuck to the planes of his face with rain and sweat and blood. Even that much movement hurt, hurt terribly until he could hardly breathe with the pain of it.

Offhand, he wondered if he was dying.

And then, with a vehemence that surprised even him, came the thought that no, he couldn't die. Not here, not like this. He might be the only one left. The only one left to destroy the Sith. And he had to. He couldn't let them get away with what they had done, with . . . this.

He pulled himself up, and the movement tore a ragged gasp from his throat. Pain roared to life along his nerve endings. He bit down on his lip so hard he tasted blood; his vision swam and he struggled to clear it without much success. It felt like there something had exploded inside his head, like a thermal detonator had gone off and somehow the blast radius had been contained inside his skull.

Damn it. He should never have let himself lie down and go to sleep in the first place. It had been a stupid mistake, and he didn't have time for those now. He'd pay for that, he thought dully. As he'd paid for every mistake he could ever remember making. Force, he already felt a thousand times worse than he had when he'd let himself drop off.

Something brushed the aching edges of his mind and he recoiled, drawing fearfully away, back inside himself. Darkness. So much darkness. And he wasn't ready to face it, not like this, not when he was weak and trembling and could barely breathe through the pain.

He struggled to reach out to the Force, to let it steady him, let it bleed the pain of too many injuries away. His reaching fingers closed around the cool metallic hilt of his lightsaber and images flooded his mind, feelings that helped to calm and center him. He took a deep breath, unlabored with the help of the Force.

His vision cleared, and the dark jungle around him came into focus. It still dripped with rain from earlier, and he realized his bare skin was soaked and trembling with the moisture despite the heat of the world around him. He wished helplessly for the warmth and reassurance of his Jedi cloak, but that was pointless, and he'd survived much worse than this before. Even if he couldn't seem to recall any of that surviving in detail right now.

All right, he told himself. Focus. This wasn't doing anyone any good.

He reached out with the Force to realize that the darkness he could feel like a throbbing ache on the edge of his mind was getting closer, its siren call resonating with the remnants of it inside his soul. He groaned, letting his head rest in the palm of his hand for a moment. The skin of his face felt scratchy and hot, and tepid water dripped down from his eyebrows, gumming lashes already sticky with blood to his cheeks.

There was a vine dangling down just above his head, within reach of his arm. He reached up and wrapped his fingers around it, twisting it several times around his wrist, then pulled. A few moments of excruciating agony later he was standing. Wavering on legs that were blistering him with pain, but standing. He still couldn't seem to get a deep breath without calling on the Force, and when he reached down with his other arm to run the fingers of the hand holding his lightsaber over his chest and stomach he could feel his ribs shifting beneath his touch. His abdomen felt hard, his innards torn and slippery, and he knew he was still bleeding inside, Force-healing trance or not.

Suddenly, he felt as if he hurt too much to move. He was so tired, so alone, so broken. Why even try?

Because he had to. He had never been one to give up, and he wasn't going to give up now. Not even if all the rest were gone and . . . .

He took a shaking breath that rubbed his raw throat into more pain. No. Don't think about that. There were still things he had to live for, Force help him. For it alone could.

He stumbled forward, further into the jungle, along the thick branch beneath his feet, and away from the darkness that haunted his every thought, dogging even his breaths as he struggled for air. How was he going to get out of this one? The thought was ever-present, demanding an answer he didn't know how to give. He didn't even know how he was still moving, but his desperation seemed to give fuel to his painfully stretched overtaxed muscles. Somehow, anyway, he was still going forward. The cries of predators he didn't know the names of rent the hot, moist air. He was panting for breath but the air felt too thick and hot to swallow, trickling only slowly into his lungs.

It didn't surprise him when he fell. He had felt it coming for the last few . . . meters? Kilometers? He'd lost track, when every meter felt like a thousand. First his foot plunged into something soft and slippery, warm and goopy through what was left of his boot, and then he stumbled, landing hard on knees that slipped treacherously out from under him. He thudded hard against the hard wood beneath him and the blackness reached out with kind, embracing hands to carry him home.

He woke sometime later from feverish dreams that taunted him with the possibility of light and love and then tore it away. He moistened lips that were cracked and crusted with blood and tried to focus. In his mind was blackness shot through with the angry red of pain.

There was someone kneeling over him, horribly cold fingers tracing over his bruised, knotted forehead. He flinched away, trying to fight it off, to protect himself, but all he could do was curl in on himself, trembling and sweaty. Kriff it, he hated being so helpless, but he it was all he could do to force his muscles to flex, let alone carry his own weight.

So much darkness he could hardly breathe through the weight of it.

"Get . . . away . . . from me." The words rasped from between his lips and provoked a cough that tore at his lungs.

The dark one didn't listen to him, though the fingers on his skin drew away. Immediately pain washed over him in crushing waves. He locked the muscles of his throat, refusing to let so much as a whimper escape, though he shook beneath the storm of torment that had been unleashed on his tortured body.

"Always so defiant," came a cruelly amused rasp of a voice. "Nothing more than a wild nek who snaps at friend and foe alike, are you, Jedi?"

One hand scrabbled among moss and puddles for his lightsaber. "I . . ." breathe, just breathe . . . "know . . . who my friends . . . are," he whispered.

"Are you so sure of that?" the dark voice taunted. "Where are your friends now, then? Why have they left you here to suffer and to die?"

His fingers closed around cool metal. "They're . . . dead. You . . . killed them."

Were those tears pricking hotly at the corners of his eyes? He never cried, but it hurt so much he wasn't surprised. He had lost everything, everything that kept him sane. Except . . . and who knew if he would ever see her again? Who knew if she and the baby were even still alive?

The thought was pure, tearing agony, and one of the tears escaped, trickling down his cheek and scoring a scorching pathway into his skin.

His fumbling fingers depressed the button and the lightsaber ignited with a hiss, thrumming to life in his hand. He raised it to swing, to kill the dark one, to end this menace once and for all, even if it cost him his life—

And could not raise his hand.

He almost sobbed with rage at his helplessness. It wasn't him, he was weak and probably dying but he knew he could still have swung his weapon one last time. Instead some impossible power held his arm down, outstretched and useless in the warm, dripping moss. Without his permission, despite his stubborn fight, his thumb eased off the button and the glowing blade disappeared, leaving the jungle quiet except for the uneven gasps of his breathing and the thumping off his heart. Far away a bird screeched, and the sound ricocheted painfully inside his head.

He spat a curse into the damp loam beneath his cheek, and he could hear the dark one's mocking cluck of disapproval. "Language, Jedi," came that voice. "Do you want me to think you were raised in a gutter?"

Those cold, clawlike fingers patted his cheek. He turned his head and tried to bite at them, but he was too slow, and all he heard was mocking laughter echoing in his ears, inside his head.

He willed the Force to kill him, to stop his breathing, to immobilize his heart, but he couldn't get a firm grip on it, and his vital organs kept functioning despite his will. He wondered if he could roll himself off this branch and fall to his death in the jungle below—but when he tried to shift his weight he found that it was not only his arm that was held immobile.

He had failed. Completely, utterly. His breath hitched in his throat at the magnitude of that failure.

"A wild nek indeed," the dark voice spoke again. "But then, a trained battle dog can be useful, if unleashed in the right direction."

His lightsaber was drawn out of his grasp, his fingers unable to clasp it and hold it to him as he so desperately tried to do, and then something else was pressed into his hand, something that felt like his weapon only different, curved and smooth.

Images exploded inside his mind. He could hear the hoarse cry that tore from his lips as he struggled to block them out, but he wasn't strong enough, his shields collapsing in tatters around him. Darkness and blood and images of the pale woman, her bald head and stark tattoos like a visage of death, who had wielded this lightsaber before him, and how he—she?—wanted to hurt, how he wanted to kill—

"Bring him," came the dark voice, a command, and he could feel it as several others moved to obey, cold, gauntleted hands lifting his battered form. His hand cradled the new weapon, the new lightsaber, to his chest as if it were infinitely precious to him though he wanted nothing more to throw it away. The weapon resonated with darkness that ate away at his thoughts, feelings, everything that was him, that he'd fought so hard and long to find and keep. No, he thought fervently, No! But all his struggles were in vain.

"You are mine now, Quinlan Vos," the dark one said.

And he couldn't fight the darkness any longer.

I woke with a start and a shuddering gasp, and for a moment had no idea where I was. My flailing hand impacted against the smooth hard metal surface of a bulkhead, and I slowly realized that I was lying on a bunk, wrapped in its one thin blanket, the ship thrumming with hyperspace around me. My throat felt raw, my chest thick and aching, and my breaths were ragged and uneven. My heartbeat thundered, too loud, in my ears, and for a moment I had trouble believing that I was uninjured, that my breaths came easily in an undamaged chest.

Quin, was my first thought. Alive.

But Force, at what cost? Had that dream been reality or simply a nightmare conjured up by all the trauma and emotional turmoil I had witnessed over the past several weeks? I sat up slowly and rested my shoulders against the bulkhead behind me as I scrubbed my hands over my face.

No use telling myself it had been nothing more than a nightmare, when I knew better. It had been real enough, for I could still feel the fading echoes of Quinlan's presence in my mind. I swallowed hard. Force, I thought desperately, the echoes and memories of the dream tearing painful wounds in my heart. Force, Quin. How was it that he always seemed to get himself in the worst situations possible? I wish I could help you, friend, I thought, aching. If I could I would be there in an instant. But there was nothing I could do now—I did not even know where Quinlan was, or where he had been taken, and for the moment Anakin was my priority. It still hurt to make choices like that, even when I had been making them all my life, but I had no time for grief or sorrow. Not even grief as personal as this.

For a moment I thought I could see the nod of approval Quinlan would probably have given me had he been here. His presence brushed mine, shot through with pain and dangerously filled with the darkness that had always been a part of him, but there in my mind, alive. The closeness of it startled me. Watch it, Obi-Wan, I thought I could hear his deep voice in my ear. You have to get out of here. Get out of here, now, we're too close.

I hesitated. Would he be all right? If we were close perhaps I could do something to rescue him—

I could feel the slow burn of his frustration. No, his voice growled. Let me do what I do best. You go. Now, Obi-Wan. This is not the time for waiting.

I hated it, my entire being railed against the order, but he was right. Why was it that I was always so constrained by duty? I wondered, my soul swelling with anger and frustration in a moment of rebellion, my hands clenching into fists.

But that was foolish. I was Jedi, and my life was not my own. I knew that, had accepted it long ago. This life was what I had always wanted. I took a deep breath and released my pain and frustration to the Force. Take care, my friend, I started, and may the Force—

It is, that I promise you. You too. And for a moment, I could feel an aching gratitude that I, at least, was alive, a gratitude I shared, and then there was a spike of pain from his presence in the Force, and he was gone, the space where his presence had been just moments before empty and echoing.

But not dead. I had had no impression of death, and I clung to that knowledge as I took a deep breath and slid out of my bunk, straightening my Jedi robes as I started toward the cockpit. I had no desire to allow Onasi to see me mussed and disordered from sleep; he thought little enough of the Jedi as it was.

I simply had to believe that Quinlan would be all right until Anakin was safe and well, and I could do something to rescue him. It was a gamble, and one I hated to make, especially when I had only just discovered that he was still alive. I took a deep breath and pressed one hand to my forehead, forcing all the extraneous thoughts and feelings out of my mind. I had to focus; I had no time for distractions.

There were tiny tremors of danger resonating through the Force, and I sped up as I neared the cockpit and reached it, only to hear raised voices. I ran the last few steps to find a pale, shaky Anakin who looked as if he shouldn't even have been awake, let alone standing, arguing with Onasi, who didn't look much more alert. Anakin swung toward me as I entered. "Master," he said, his voice deep with weariness and relief, "you felt it too." His eyes were huge and dark in his pale face and his voice trembled with a nervous energy just shy of panic.

"Danger, yes," I said. But there was the tortured knowledge of much more than a premonition of danger in Anakin's wide eyes. I crossed to him and laid my hands on his arms. "What is it, Anakin?" I asked.

"He's here." He sounded wild, frenzied. "He's coming. Palpa—S-Sidious. He's here for me, Master, he's come."

And then I felt it too, the malignant darkness emanating through the Force, reaching out to entrap all of us. I swallowed hard, and then pushed the thought from my mind for a moment. I had to calm Anakin down somehow. At the moment he was a near-hysterical mess, and that wouldn't be much help to anyone. I squeezed his arms comfortingly as I looked him up and down, critically assessing his condition.

He looked tousled and ill and terribly young, his face stark white and his hair a tangled mess that fell forward to trail down over his eyes, eyes that searched mine frantically as if desperate for any reassurance I could give. There were flushed spots of color over his cheekbones, and I could feel him trembling under my hands. He still felt overly warm and sweaty, and he had his tunic tied crookedly, my cloak on over it, which was rather too small for him and fell skewed from where he had tugged it on sideways.

"It will be all right, Anakin," I told him, projecting as much confidence and encouragement into my voice as I could. "You must trust in the Force. Don't fear the outcome."

"Y-you'll stay with me?" he mumbled, and his eyes fell down to somewhere in the vicinity of his boots, which were still loose and unfastened, I noted. "No matter what happens, you'll—you'll—"

I hesitated for a split second, for I knew that once I made this vow I would keep it, no matter what, but I couldn't refuse the heartrendingly genuine plea I could see in his downcast eyes. "I will be with you to the end, Anakin," I promised. "Regardless of whatever we may face." Including your darkness. No matter what, my brother, my friend. "You do not need to fear on that count."

Anakin nodded, and swallowed, and suddenly he was the Hero With No Fear again, even with his boots loose and his tunic lopsided. "Then I guess I will be all right," he said with that smirking half smile I recognized so well. "Whatever happens." His own hands came up to squeeze my arms in return, and I could read his thanks plainly in his eyes, though he said nothing. Perhaps he, like myself, realized that there was nothing more to be said.

I sent what strength I could over to him through the Force, and I could feel his grateful acceptance. The prosthetic leg was paining him, I thought, noticing how he winced when he shifted his weight. I hoped he would become accustomed to it soon, but for now I would do everything I could to make things easier on him. "You need to sit," I told him. "What will pushing yourself into exhaustion now accomplish?"

He took a deep breath. "I need to pilot," he said. "But that stupid—" and here he said something in Huttese that I knew better than to request a translation for and sent a venomous glance at Onasi, "won't let me."

Onasi's eyes flashed. He had been quiet during our earlier conversation, perhaps merely because he was as tired as I, but now he seemed to have regained his tongue. "There is no way in space I'm letting a traitor like him touch the controls of my ship," he growled out.

Anakin flushed furiously, his face flooding with color. "And here I thought you wanted to stay alive," he spat back.

Easy. The rebuke was gentle and delivered through the Force, but Anakin flinched as if I had struck him and subsided. I sent wordless reassurance after it, then turned to Onasi. "I'm afraid, Commander, that Anakin is right," I told him. "We will have a much better chance of not only surviving but escaping with him piloting this ship. And I assure you that he is trustworthy. I would stake much more than my life on it—and I have already."

Onasi's jaw worked mutinously and his mouth took on a sullen set. "You are more trusting than I, Kenobi," he ground out. "Or more forgiving. He can't possibly be that good."

"Wanna bet?" Anakin demanded. He leaned forward. "I find your lack of faith disturbing, Commander."

I touched his shoulder gently, urging restraint. "Anakin is the best pilot in the galaxy," I said in a mild tone. "It is as simple as that."

Anakin's eyes were the more shocked out of the two surprised looks that turned on me. He ducked his head and bit his lip, and I could see a big, sloppy grin starting to spread across his face. He seemed to stand taller despite his weakness, his shoulders straightening proudly.

He looked so surprised and so blasted happy at that simple statement of something I had always taken to be fact that my heart twisted painfully, an actual physical pain taking up residence in my chest. Force, it wasn't as if he didn't know already that he had been born to fly, was it?

But how many times have I actually acknowledged what a skilled pilot he is? I asked myself. To his face? I quickly pushed the question out of my mind before I could think about the answer.

Onasi scoffed, obvious disbelief in his eyes. "So you say," he replied. "I've seen a lot of 'best pilots in the galaxy' go down awfully quickly in a lightfight."

"Why don't you simply move aside and let him show you?" I asked. My voice was still polite, but now I edged a firm, implacable backing into it. This wasn't something I was going to let go, and it was time he realized that.

Onasi stared truculently up at me for a moment more then sighed, sounding put upon and irritated, and stood. I didn't miss the triumphant grin on Anakin's features, nor the scowl on Onasi's, but for the moment I was most concerned with helping Anakin stumble forward and sink down into the pilot's seat without injuring himself further. I managed to straighten his tunic and cloak a bit in the process.

Anakin immediately seemed stronger, more solid, more there, more himself, as he settled into the pilot's chair and his eyes roamed over the controls. "All right," he said, a tiny lopsided grin curving his features as he looked back at me. "Strap yourselves in. We might be in for a bumpy ride."

I obeyed at once and settled myself into the co-pilot's seat, taking a moment to glance over the controls in a probably futile attempt to familiarize myself with them further. It might have been better to allow Onasi to serve as Anakin's co-pilot—this was his ship, after all, and he knew its systems better than I, who had only co-piloted the ship once—but I decided that that disadvantage would be offset by the Force bond Anakin and I shared and our long years of working together as a team. Onasi said nothing, but his lips tightened and he refused to take the other seat, instead bracing himself with a hand on both of our chairs.

I said nothing as I fastened my safety straps. It was his decision, and if he got tossed around later because he hadn't wanted to follow Anakin's orders, that was his problem. Perhaps it would make him more amenable to following Anakin's lead in the future, and that would only be a good thing as far as I was concerned.

Anakin's eyes slipped closed, his breathing evening out and deepening with slow rhythm. The tight lines around his features smoothed, the hardness of his set mouth relaxing, and then his fingers were flying over the controls. He set his hand over the hyperspace lever for a moment, then, suddenly, his fingers tightened and closed and he pulled it back, throwing the switches that kicked the sublight drives into gear at the same time with his other hand. The ship shuddered as the blue galaxy of hyperspace around us stretched out into elongated starlines and then snapped back into the clarity of realspace.

"Sith it," Onasi swore violently from behind us, and even I could feel my breath hitch in surprise. A huge wedge-shaped ship cut across the sky in front of us, bisecting the stars. There was another, smaller cruiser on its other side. I recognized the bigger ship immediately—a Victory-class Star Destroyer, new on the market and one of the most powerful ships in the Republic Fleet. "What the hell are you doing, boy?" Onasi demanded. "Bringing us out of hyperspace into this."

Anakin ignored him and slapped the controls to his right, but his sudden surge of annoyance, mingled with urgency and focused concentration, reached me, and I suddenly realized the answer to Onasi's question. How Anakin had sensed it, I didn't know, but I knew better than to question his instincts and reflexes when it came to this sort of thing.

"There's a gravity well projector," I told Onasi. "On the Star Destroyer. If we had stayed in hyperspace we'd just have been wrenched out in a moment anyway. At least this way we have the element of surprise."

"Obi-Wan," Anakin's terse voice broke in. "Lock in the auxiliary power." He glanced over at me and grinned. "You know, Master. This is where the fun begins." I knew that smile, and so I shook my head even as I obeyed his order.

Onasi wasn't going to know what had hit him.

The com crackled to life, and a voice I recognized as that of a clone pilot struggled through the static to order, "Unidentified Telosian cruiser. Stand down and wait for boarding. This is a cruiser of the Galactic Empire. Repeat, stand down and prepare for boarding."

"They certainly don't waste time, do they?" I muttered.

Anakin switched the com off with a sideways swat of his hand. "They know who we are," he said in an odd, far-away voice, and I didn't bother to ask how he had obtained that information. Even for a Jedi, Anakin was sometimes eerie.

Onasi did bother with the question, however. Both Anakin and I ignored him. It was not really one of those things that was easily explained.

"They were waiting for us, weren't they?" I asked.

Anakin shrugged as he brought the ship hard to the side. "Probably," he said. "Hold on!"

He threw the ship hard into reverse.

Onasi gave a choked yelp as he was slammed into the wall at the back of the cockpit, and I could see Anakin's grin, but I forbore from mentioning it. "Pull all the power from the deflector shields and shunt it into engines, Obi-Wan," Anakin said, and I obeyed. "Be ready to fire if they get a lock on us," he added, and then he threw the ship to the side. It shot forward, right between the two cruisers, and Anakin slapped the com on. "Tell the Emperor he can eat my ion-trail," he said fiercely, and switched it off again.

"Anakin—" I started, but he just shook his head.

"They're going to start firing in a second," he said, and then stopped the ship so that for a moment we were hovering right over the bridge of the Star Destroyer.

I could see his hand press down on the trigger for the ship's lasers at the same time Onasi burst out, "What in all nine hells do you think you're doing?"

"Saving our backsides," Anakin answered as the green laser bolts impacted against the ship's bridge, leaving scored tracks of black, twisted metal where they hit. The ship's shields flickered into life a second later, and our ship shot forward again.

"Why didn't they have their shields up?" Onasi demanded, grabbing onto the back of my seat with one hand to steady himself.

"Not fast enough," Anakin said distractedly. "It'd be crazy for a light transport this size to go head-to-head with a Star Destroyer. It's suicide. They know that. They're clones."

"I don't see how that matters," Onasi said acerbically, but Anakin just shook his head as he flipped the ship up onto its side to avoid a laser bolt from the ship we had just passed over. Our ship rolled, and then we were under the Star Destroyer.

But I could see what Anakin was getting at. "Their tactics will be conventional," I said.

Anakin nodded as he reached up to flip a switch above his head. "They wouldn't normally do something suicidal, and they don't expect other people to do it, either," he said, his eyes on the controls. "They're not as bad as droids that way, but it's a tendency that's definitely there." He grinned at me, quickly. "Jango Fett was a cautious tactician who preferred not to take risks."

The exact opposite of Anakin, whose tactics were audacious, unconventional, and invariably risky, but I kept that thought to myself.

"They're launching their fighters now," Anakin muttered, and fired again as the big ship's shields flickered.

"Why bother firing?" Onasi asked, a cynical weariness in his voice. "It is suicide for us to go up against that thing. Its shields are too strong."

"They have to lower them to launch fighters," Anakin said. "We've got to disable them if we want to escape. They're not going to decide it's too costly for them to follow us, so we have to make sure they can't whether they want to or not."

"Well, then we might as well give up now," Onasi snapped.

Anakin fired again, and again. His face was suddenly a tight mask of concentration. "Never," he bit out. "Besides, we can take them."

But privately I thought that I couldn't see how we could win this battle, either. We were too badly outmatched. "Anakin," I said. "Maybe we shouldn't let them have this all on their terms."

"What?" Anakin asked, his eyes still on the viewscreen.

"There are other ways to disable a ship besides ship-to-ship combat," I replied. It was a crazy plan, but it looked like we would need a crazy plan to get us out of this.

Anakin looked at me wildly. "No, Master," he said. "It's too dangerous."

"Dangerous for me, Anakin," I said, "not for you." As far as I was concerned, it wasn't that big a risk. "If I don't return, you can always escape on your own. By splitting up, it lessens the risk that they'll get both of us."

Anakin turned the ship and shot at a nearby fighter, but his eyes had turned lost and hollow. I caught a quick echo in the Force from him—But I won't be there to make sure you don't get killed. We were so used to partnership, I thought, that we both felt off-balance when we worked alone. "You'll still be out here, flying the ship," I said. "We'll need you, Anakin, to pull it off."

"But how are you going to get on the ship?" Onasi asked suddenly from behind us. I turned to look at him. "I can use the escape pod," I answered. "If Anakin can get close enough to launch the pod into the hangar—"

"That's insane," Onasi said flatly. "It's never going to work."

"It's the best chance we have," I replied.

Anakin sighed suddenly. "Kriff it," he said. "Obi-Wan's right—I'm worse than useless in a fight, and the best chance we have is to disable the ship's hyperdrive and the gravity well projector from the inside. It's so crazy no-one will expect it."

Onasi looked angry, but he just shook his head. "Fine," he said. "Then I'm going with General Kenobi."

Anakin looked about to protest, but I spoke before he could. "There's no reason for you to put yourself—" I started, but his jaw firmed, and he looked adamant.

"You'll need someone to watch your back," was all he said, and I realized he was right.

"Very well," was all I said. "Anakin, get us close enough to the hangar. Commander Onasi and I will go down to the first escape pod and wait—launch us when we're in the right position. It's all up to you."

"Yes, Master," Anakin said. "I understand." He shot again, illuminating another fighter before it exploded into shards of fire, then turned to look up at me. "Master, may the Force be with you," he added quickly. His eyes were haunted, full of torment and uncertainty, but somehow just his saying those words—the last thing he'd said to me before Vader—made everything feel more right.

"And with you," I responded. I laid a hand on his shoulder in a momentary gesture of reassurance, and started for the escape pods, Onasi following.