FicWad

The two Jedi starfighters return to realspace almost on top of the outermost line of skirmish, riding high on a cresting wave of attacking ARCs and V-wings. The most visible of all the Open Circle pilots, Anakin Skywalker takes his right hand off of the control yoke of his Eta-2 fighter to activate its long-range scanners, and then pours on the speed. His threat-assessment screen displays the signatures and deployment of many Separatist capital vessels: Trade Federation Lucrehulks, including core ships, battleships, and droid control ships; Techno Union Hardcells, with their columnar thruster packages and egg-shaped fuselages; Commerce Guild Diamond cruisers and Corporate Alliance Fantails; and frigates, gunboats, and communications ships featuring huge circular transponders, not to mention the swarms of droid starfighters, tri-fighters, and vulture droids. The whole Separatist parade. Not even at Praesitlyn, Belderone, or Tythe had there been so many Separatist ships.

Target practice. Anakin allows himself a swift, sharp smile before switching his headset over to the battle net, hailing his wingmate. "Let's leave the small stuff for Odd Ball and the other pilots. While Artoo and Arfour look for the Chancellor's beacon, we should go straight for the ones that matter."

Accustomed to Anakin's disregard for call signs, Obi-Wan answers in kind, his voice deceptively mild. "Anakin, there are thousands of ships between us and the heart of this battle. What's more, the shielding on the Separatist capital ships is far too strong for our weapons."

"That's why this should be fun, Master. Just follow my lead, okay?"

Obi-Wan's sigh is clearly audible over the comlink. "You know I will try, Anakin."

"Oh, no, you won't, Master! There is no try/, remember? It's /do or /do not/," Anakin half teases and half scolds. "You just make sure that you /do/!" Anakin scans the threat-assessment display, committing to memory vector lines of the closest enemy fighters. Then he opens a channel to R2-D2. "Battle speed, Artoo!"

The yellow Eta-2 barrels forward, indicators on the console redlining. Just short of the roiling fray, when he can sense several droid ships drawing a bead on him, Anakin shoves the yoke into a corner pushover and streaks out of the maneuver with all weapons blazing, causing droids to flare and flame on all sides of him. Wending through clouds of expanding fire, he locks down the trigger of the laser cannons and then makes a second pass through the outermost wave of enemy ships, destroying a dozen more fighters in a heartbeat. But the tri-fighters are on to him by this point, almost as eager for payback as if they were truly sentient. A sunburst of scarlet beams sears past the bubble canopy, and a fighter appears almost directly at his starboard side. An instant later, a second volley sizzles down from overhead as droid fighters appear to port and to starboard. R2-D2 lets loose several urgent whistles and tweets as their starfighter rocks, throwing Anakin against the safety harness. Automatically swerving hard to starboard, Anakin catches the first ship easily with a simple sideslip shot. The second fighter shears off as quickly as it can, away from the expanding fragmentation cloud, and Anakin races into its aft wash, triggering his lasers. A ball of fire, the last of the droid fighters careens into the flak-dazzled tri-fighter, and the two of them both explode.

Although Obi-Wan's familiar presence is still lapping steadily at the edges of awareness, warming him as though he were standing near an open fire, Anakin immediately checks his display, just to make absolutely sure that Obi-Wan is still with him.

As though aware of his attention, the comlink comes alive. "Are you all right?"

"A bit toasted, but okay. Stay with me!"

"Do I have a choice?" comes the ruefully cheerful reply.

"Always, Master. Trust me!"

"I do trust you, Anakin. I just cannot always keep up with you!"
"Don't worry, Master. I won't let you get lost out here."

Deeper into the melee now, ARC-170s, V-wings, and droid fighters are snarled together in a crazy cat's cradle of combat, chasing one another, colliding with one another, and twirling out of the fight with engines smoking or wings blown apart. Weapons themselves, the droids are highly accurate with their bolts, but they're also much slower to recover and easily confused by random maneuvers. While this often makes for effortless kills, the sheer number of enemy droids present makes it difficult to accurately gauge how much progress is being made against them. Eventually, though, the two Jedi, working in tandem, manage to carve away a large enough chunk of the seemingly endless ranks of droids that a path through the churning mass of combat opens up. Signaling for Obi-Wan to stay on his tail, Anakin pushes his way through into the next layer of battle, where the larger frigates are. Now truly in the thick of things, where ranged fire from various Republic capital ships breaks continuously against the particle and ray shields of their Separatist targets, blinding light pulses continually behind each canopy's blast tinting. A living illustration of a core tenet of the Jedi Code - "There is no death; there is the Force." - Anakin and Obi-Wan throw themselves into the engagement, two tiny specks of Force-centered, death-defying concentration, burning so brilliantly bright in the Force that they blaze like beacons against the backdrop of the battle, so intently focused that not even the mammoth cruisers against which they so fearlessly hurl themselves - one of them often deliberately harassing and distracting one of these much larger ships so that the other can slip in close, undetected, and swoop down along the hull to target vulnerable shield generators - can touch them. At least not yet.

For now, at least, the Force is with them, protecting them in its bright embrace.

***

Antifighter flak flashes continuously on all sides. Even louder than the clatter of shrapnel and the snarl of his sublight drives, his cockpit hums and rings with the near hits of turbolaser fire from the capital ships that are so closely crowding space around him. At times his whirling spinning dives through the brilliant debris clouds of battle skim bursts so proximate that the energy-scatter slams his starfighter hard enough to bounce his head off of the supports of his pilot's chair. All in all, it's enough to make Obi-Wan Kenobi envy the clones.

The clones, at least, have helmets.

"Arfour," he calls over his internal comm, "can't you do something with the inertials?"

The navigational droid ganged into the socket on his starfighter's left wing whistles back something that sounds suspiciously like a human apology, and Obi-Wan's slight frown deepens. His and Anakin's recent continuous state of deployment has seen R4-P17 spending the majority of its time with Anakin's eccentric little astromech droid, and it is, as a result, definitely starting to pick up R2-D2's bad habits.

New bursts of flak bracket his path. He exhales a long sigh as he reaches into the Force, feeling for a safe channel through the swarms of shrapnel and sizzling nets of particle beams.

There isn't one.

Of course. Force /forfend /that this should be easy. Determinedly locking a reflexive snarl behind his teeth, Obi-Wan twists his starfighter around another explosion that could have just as easily peeled its armor like an overripe Ithorian starfruit. He hates this part! Hates it. Force take it all, flying's for the droids!

His cockpit speakers crackle. "There isn't a droid made that can outfly you, Master."

Obi-Wan is still sometimes surprised by the new depth and resonance of that voice, its calm confidence and maturity. It often seems as if it were only a week ago when Anakin was a babbling ten-year-old who wouldn't stop pestering him about Form Zero philosophy and Form I lightsaber combat.

"Sorry," he mutters distractedly, kicking into a dive that slips past a turbo-laser burst by no more than a meter. "Did I say that out loud?"

"It wouldn't matter if you hadn't. I know what you're thinking, Master."

"Oh, do you, now?" Obi-Wan looks up through his cockpit canopy to find his onetime Padawan learner flying inverted, mirroring him so closely that, but for the transparisteel (and, of course, the vacuum of space) between them, they might have shaken hands. Anakin grins down at him, teeth flashing, his flight headset shining against his sun-kissed skin, the brightness of the metal and his wildly curling hair glimmering against the dark backdrop of his unremittingly dull near-black clothing, the color of all of his visible clothing - with the exception of the true black leather glove, belt, and boots - so dark that only the closest of observations could reveal that it is actually an extremely dark brown. Obi-Wan smiles warmly up at him, unable not to respond to such an unselfconscious display of open affection. "Is this some new gift of the Force, then?" he asks, arching an eyebrow at Anakin in gentle teasing.

"Not the Force, Master. Experience. That's what you're /always /thinking."

Obi-Wan keeps hoping to hear some of Anakin's old cocky grin slip back into his tone, but it never really has. Not since Jabiim. Perhaps not since Geonosis, if the truth be told. The war has burned that brash cheekiness out of him. Nevertheless, Obi-Wan stubbornly persists in trying, now and again, to spark a real smile - not just a predator's flashing grin or some absent-minded, quickly slipping, close imitation of a mellow half-smile from some emotion too fleeting to ever completely reach Anakin's eyes - from his former Padawan. And Anakin, bless his far too enormous and giving heart, inevitably tries to answer him with some of his old careless teasing. Together, they try to pretend that the war hasn't changed them so utterly that they cannot still share in such old familiar things. These familiar exchanges are soothing to both of them, despite what seems like razor wire sharp edges and barbed hooks to others.

"Ah." Obi-Wan nods one, briefly, understandingly, but then immediately takes one hand off of the starfighter's control yoke to direct his upside-down and almost gently smiling friend's attention forward. Dead ahead, a blue-white point of light is splintering into four laser-straight trails of ion drives. "And what does experience tell you we should do about those incoming tri-fighters?" he asks, sustaining the levity for as long as he can.

/"That we should break - /right!"

Obi-Wan is already making that exact move even as Anakin speaks, and because they are inverted to each other breaking right shoots him one way while Anakin whips into the opposite direction. The tri-fighters' cannons rips at the space between them, tracking faster than their starfighters can slip. His onboard threat display chimes a warning: two of the droids have remote sensor locks on him. The others must inevitably be lighting up his partner. "Anakin! Slip-jaws!"

"My thought exactly."

The slip-jaws maneuver is a favorite tactic of Jedi pilots, so named for the scissor-like mandibles of the Kashyyyk slashspider. At first, they simply blow past the tri-fighters, spinning in evasive spirals as the droid ships wrench themselves into pursuit, executing maneuvers that would have killed any living pilot. As the droids close rapidly on their tails, though, cannonfire stitching space to all sides, the two Jedi pull their ships through perfectly mirrored rolls that send them streaking head-on towards each other from opposite ends of a vast Republic cruiser. For merely human - or indeed, most simply living - pilots, this would have been a suicide dive. By the time you could see your partner's starfighter streaking towards you at a respectable fraction of lightspeed, it would already be far too late for any merely human or simply organic reflexes to react. But of course, these two particular pilots are far from just being merely human.

The Force nudges hands on control yokes just so and the Jedi starfighters twist and flash past each other belly-to-belly, close enough to scorch each other's paint. Tri-fighters are the Trade Federation's absolute latest in space-qualified droids. But even the electronic reflexes of the tri-fighters' superior droid brains are too slow for this, and so one of Obi-Wan's pursuers meets one of Anakin's head-on, both vanishing in a blossom of flame.

Unfortunately, the shock wave of debris and expanding gas rocks Obi-Wan until he has to fight the control yoke, barely keeping his starfighter out of a tumble that otherwise would've smeared him across the nearby cruiser's ventral hull. Before he can quite manage to straighten completely out, his threat display chimes again. "Oh, marvelous," he grumbles under his breath, seeing that Anakin's surviving pursuer has, of course, switched targets. "Why is it always me?"

"Perfect." Anakin's voice carries a grim satisfaction as it echoes out of the cockpit speakers. "Both of them are on your tail."

"Perfect is not the word I would use." Obi-Wan twists his yoke, juking madly as space all around him flares scarlet. "We have to split them up!"

"Break left." Anakin sounds as calm as a stone, but Obi-Wan would be more concerned if his voice weren't so steady. "The turbolaser tower off your port bow: thread its guns. I'll take things from there."

"Easy for you to say," Obi-Wan mutters irritably as he whips sideways along the cruiser's superstructure and fire from the pursuing tri-fighters blasts burning chunks from the cruiser's armor. "Why am I always the bait?" he grumbles, even though he knows perfectly well why he is almost always the lure: because he has learned to trust Anakin's instincts implicitly and knows that Anakin's often shockingly bold actions - which have on countless occasions allowed them to prevail against seemingly impossible odds - are the result of a connection with the Living Force that is far more intimate than his own. Obi-Wan has foresight, yes, and a circumspection that has just as often pulled them back from the brink, but his strength is in the Unifying Force. Part of the beauty of their partnership is that they are able to play to these highly complementary separate strengths. Obi-Wan's faith in Anakin's ability has, over the years, grown so strong that he can be the bait without any threat of distraction by the specters of fear and doubt. He may not always trust in his own ability to keep pace with Anakin, but Anakin himself Obi-Wan does not doubt. While he does occasionally complain, it is only because such good natured bickering has become a part of their routine, a shared ritual, a familiar and comforting dance. The easy give and take of their playful teasing banter and verbal sparring is a natural reflection of their overall relationship - on the one hand exhilaratingly challenging and on the other as warmly supportive as the touch of a lovingly steadying hand. These exchanges increasingly garner startled, askance looks from their more reserved Jedi brethren as well as from amongst the ranks of the often quite dignified dignitaries of the Galactic Republic, but Anakin and Obi-Wan are so used to this game of verbal thrust and parry and riposte that they will not willingly give it up unless circumstances absolutely necessitate a more somber mien, not even for the sake of much vaunted Jedi dignity. They both simply respect their friendship far too much to treat any part of it so carelessly.

"I'm right behind you. Artoo, lock on."

Obi-Wan spins his starfighter between the recoiling turbo-cannons close enough that the energy-scatter makes his cockpit clang like a gong, but cannonfire still flashes past him from the tri-fighters behind. Although he does trust Anakin utterly, Obi-Wan has no such faith regarding his ability to match Anakin's piloting skills, which are far greater than his own, a fact that he reminds his former Padawan of by calling attention to the seeming severity of his plight. "Anakin, they are all over me, you know."

"Dead ahead. Move right to clear my shot. Now!"

Obi-Wan flares his port jets to make the starfighter kick off to the right. One of the tri-fighters behind him decides it can't follow and goes for a ventral slip that takes it directly into the blasts from Anakin's cannons. It promptly disintegrates into a boil of superheated gas.

"Good shooting, Artoo." Anakin's dry chuckle over the cockpit's speakers vanishes behind the clang of lasers blasting ablative shielding off Obi-Wan's left wing.

Obi-Wan has just enough time to snap out a warning, "I'm running out of tricks here - " before he is forced to clear the vast Republic cruiser, which unfortunately puts him on course for the curving hull of one of the Trade Federation's battleships. Seemingly all of space between the two capital ships is blazing with turbolaser exchanges. Some of those flashing energy blasts are as big around as his entire ship is, and Obi-Wan is more than aware of the fact that the merest graze would blow him to atoms. Yet, he dives right in. He has the Force to guide him through, while the tri-fighter only has its electronic reflexes. Unfortunately, those electronic reflexes operate at roughly the speed of light, so the tri-fighter stays on his tail as though he were dragging the droid with a tow cable. When Obi-Wan goes left and Anakin right, the tri-fighter swings halfway through the difference, and the same happens with shifts of up and down. It is actually averaging his movements with Anakin's; somehow, its droid brain has realized that as long as it stays between the two Jedi, Anakin can't fire on it without hitting his partner. The tri-fighter, meanwhile, suffers from no similar restraint, and so Obi-Wan necessarily must fly through a storm of scarlet needles. "Blast! No wonder we're losing the war!" Obi-Wan gasps, honestly startled by this sudden and unexpected development. "They're getting /smarter/."

"What was that, Master? I didn't copy."

Obi-Wan just kicks his starfighter into a tight spiral toward the Federation cruiser. "I'm taking the deck! Anakin, do try to hurry up. I really don't like this!"

"Good idea. I need some room to maneuver." Cannonfire tracks closer and closer, until Obi-Wan's cockpit speakers buzz. "Cut right, Obi-Wan! Hard right! Don't let him get a handle on you! Artoo, lock on!"

Obi-Wan's starfighter streaks with incredible speed along the curve of the Separatist cruiser's dorsal hull, antifighter flak bursting on all sides as the cruiser's guns try, and fail, to pick him off, until he can roll a right wingover into the service trench that stretches the length of the cruiser's hull. This low and close to the deck, the cruiser's antifighter guns can't depress their angle of fire enough to get a shot at him, but unfortunately the tri-fighter has managed to stay right on his tail, so he's still not in the clear. At the far end of the service trench, the massive support buttresses of the cruiser's towering bridge leave no room for even Obi-Wan's small ship. He is forced to kick his starfighter into a half roll that whips him out of the trench, shooting him straight up the tower's angled leading edge. One burst of his underjets jerks him past the forward viewports of the bridge with only meters to spare, and yet still the tri-fighter follows his path exactly. "Of course," he sighs. "That would have been too easy. Anakin, where are you?" One of the control surfaces on his left wing shatters in a burst of plasma, and his awareness is extended so far by the Force, his senses so inextricably bound up with the ship, that it feels as if he's just been shot in the arm. The shock makes him want to recoil, automatically, like a child who has burned his hands, pulling his senses and himself back away from the starfighter and his Force-enhanced awareness of space around him, and yet he knows that he cannot, that he must not, that he can't afford either the distraction of the sympathetic pain or the loss of awareness that would result if he were to pull away from it. So although Obi-Wan hisses reflexively and the muscles in his left arm jump and crawl as though they've been shocked, he determinedly pushes himself to reach deeper into the Force, further out into the ship, holding it and himself together, continuing his evasive course and allowing no response to the hit other than an only half-vocalized, "Ouch!" as Arfour begins bleeping and shrieking a blue streak. He automatically toggles switches, once more fighting against the natural drift of the yoke, and R4-P17 stubbornly continues to shrill at him until finally Obi-Wan keys internal comm. "Don't try to fix it, Arfour. I've shut it down."

"I have the lock!" Anakin finally snaps. "Go! Firing - now!"

The damage to the little starfighter is much worse than Obi-Wan likes, and it would be still worse, if not for the fact that he is essentially holding a good part of the structure of the left wing rigidly in place through the power of his will and the Force alone. Nevertheless, Obi-Wan is in motion almost as soon as Anakin's mouth opens to issue the command to go, twisting his ship away and hitting maximum drag on its intact wing as the starfighter shoots into a barely controlled arc high and right while Anakin's cannons vaporize the last tri-fighter. Afterwards, Obi-Wan fires his retros to stall the damaged starfighter in the blind spot behind the Separatist cruiser's bridge. He hangs there for a few seconds to get both his breathing and heart rate under control, automatically reaching out into the Force to jiggle another piece of the left wing that has come loose under the strain of that last evasive action back into place and willing it, as well as the wing and the entire ship, to remain there, to keep on holding together. Obi-Wan has a bad feeling that the faithful little Eta-2 isn't going to be seeing any more action after this particular battle is over with, but he needs the little craft to hold together for as long as possible, and so he pushes to infuse himself ever more deeply into both the Force and ship, once again increasing his awareness of the small craft and drawing enough strength from the Force to reinforce every flaw, every weakness, every damaged portion, of the starfighter. As long as the fighter holds together well enough to remain flyable for the duration of the engagement, he and Anakin can always find another means to return to the surface - granted that they survive the mission. Resisting the urge to sigh, Obi-Wan hails his partner. "Thanks, Anakin. That was - thanks. That's all."

"Don't thank me. It was Artoo's shooting."

Obi-Wan smiles and shakes his head, the response is so typically Anakin - honest almost to the point of flippancy, and none too gently redirecting praise to where Anakin believes it is due, even at expense to himself. This is another little ritual of theirs: Anakin would not quite reprimand Obi-Wan for not automatically thinking of thanking the little astromech droid as he would have if Artoo had been a biological entity, and then Obi-Wan would tease Anakin about his droid, as if it were solely the fact that the little astromech is technically Anakin's droid now that makes Artoo so independent. "Yes. I suppose, if you like, you can thank your droid for me as well. And, Anakin - ?"

"Yes, Master?"

"Next time, you're the bait."

This is the face that Obi-Wan Kenobi turns to the world: that of a phenomenal pilot ,who doesn't particularly like to fly; a devastating warrior, who'd rather not fight; a negotiator without peer, who frankly prefers to sit alone in a quiet cave and meditate; a General in the Grand Army of the Republic, who cannot wait for this war to be over and his rank to become obsolete; a Jedi Master, who in his innermost being still most naturally thinks of himself as the unchosen, failed Jedi hopeful who became Qui-Gon Jinn's Padawan following a series of puzzlingly convenient accidents that Obi-Wan frankly believes Master Yoda orchestrated; and a respected member of the Jedi High Council, who is rather bemused by the respect afforded to him for this position and cannot shake the feeling that Master Yoda is still entirely too pleased by his appointment to said position. Inside, Obi-Wan feels as if he is none of the things for which he is so often known and admired - neither pilot nor warrior nor negotiator, General nor Jedi nor Master on the Jedi High Council. At the deepest level of his being, Obi-Wan Kenobi still feels like a Padawan (hence, an enduring penchant for short hair). Yet, because he lives his life according to that feeling, as if he really were still a Padawan, striving at every opportunity to learn and to become worthy of the respect others increasingly accord him, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi Master without parallel.

It is a truism of the Order that a Jedi's education truly begins only when he becomes a Master, that everything important about being a Master is learned from one's student. Obi-Wan feels and lives the truth of this saying every day. He still sometimes dreams of the time when he was a Padawan in fact as well as feeling; he dreams that his beloved Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, did not die on Naboo, at the plasma-fueled generator core in the palace in Theed. He dreams that his Master's wise guiding hand is still with him, helping to steer his course. But Qui-Gon's death is an old pain now, one Obi-Wan long ago came as much to terms with as he believes it is possible for him to ever become. After all, a Jedi does not cling to the past. And Obi-Wan Kenobi knows, too, that to have lived his life without being Master to Anakin Skywalker would have left him a much different man. A lesser man. Anakin has taught him a great deal. Obi-Wan sees so much of Qui-Gon in Anakin that it often hurts his heart; Anakin, at the very least, mirrors Qui-Gon's flair for the dramatic, as well as his casual disregard for rules. Training Anakin - and fighting beside him, all these years - has unlocked something inside of Obi-Wan. It's as though Anakin - and, by extension, Qui-Gon - has finally rubbed off on him a bit, and has loosened that clenched-jaw insistence on constant, controlled restraint and absolute correctness that Qui-Gon always said was Obi-Wan's greatest flaw.

Of all the many things Anakin Skywalker has taught Obi-Wan Kenobi, perhaps the most important is that he has finally learned how to relax again, a skill Obi-Wan lost as an unchosen youngling in the Jedi Temple, refused by the one who would eventually become his Master.

Obi-Wan often smiles now, and sometimes even jokes, and has become known for the wisdom that gentle humor can provide. Though he does not know it, his increasingly close - and always far more equalized than most others consider wise or even quite right - relationship with Anakin has molded him into the great Jedi Qui-Gon always said he might someday be. And it is characteristic of Obi-Wan that he is entirely unaware of this. Being named to the High Council came as a complete surprise to him; even now, he is still astonished by the faith the Jedi Council has in his abilities, the credit the other Council Masters give to his wisdom. Greatness has never been an ambition of his. Obi-Wan wants only to live his life as a Jedi and to perform whatever tasks he might be given to the best of his ability. To others, it is no surprise that he is respected throughout the Jedi Order for his insight as well as his warrior skill. He has become a hero to the next generation of Padawans; he is the Jedi their Masters hold up before them as a model of all that is good, all that is right, within the Order. He is the being who the Council assigns to their most important missions. He is modest, centered, and always kind.

He truly is the ultimate Jedi.

Yet, more than anything else, Obi-Wan Kenobi is both happy and proud to be Anakin Skywalker's best friend.

***

"Artoo, where's that signal?"

From its socket beside the cockpit, R2-D2 whistles and beeps, and a translation spiders across Anakin's console readout: SCANNING. LOTS OF ECM SIGNAL JAMMING.

"Keep on it." He glances over at Obi-Wan's starfighter limping through the battle, a hundred meters off his left wing. "I can feel his jitters from all the way over here. He's usually not nearly this jumpy. It has to be a reaction to whatever it was that he felt back on the ship."

Anakin frowns, remembering with shame his angry response to their failure to capture Dooku at Tythe and the way that Obi-Wan had gone chasing after him, trying to help calm him down by reassuring him that they hadn't been wasting their time and reminding him that, even if they hadn't gotten Dooku during their long rotation among the Outer Rim, they had still managed to help the Order track down the maker of the mechno-chair that had been the Order's first solid link and lead to the mysterious Sith Lord Sidious. Obi-Wan had been trying so hard to comfort him, and Anakin had selfishly kept turning aside, twisting Obi-Wan's words around and throwing them back at him. Out of frustration, he had hurt Obi-Wan, deliberately, just because he could, and when his former Master had suddenly passed out, his eyes rolling back in his head and his legs collapsing underneath him as if he were a puppet whose strings had all suddenly been simultaneously cut, Anakin's heart had frozen in his chest. He had been positive, for one heartsick irrational moment, that he had caused Obi-Wan's collapse, somehow, terrified that his anger had finally grown so great that it had blossomed into hatred and therefore maliciously and intentionally attacked his former Master, striking him down, turning Anakin into the monster that the High Council has always feared he would become. He had hated himself, then, and panicked, crying out for Obi-Wan and begging him to wake up, to be all right, to not have been hurt because of Anakin's childish anger and petty frustration.

Fortunately, the disturbance or whatever it was had been mercifully short, or else Anakin is not sure what would have happened, what he might have done, out of fear for Obi-Wan and disgust with himself. He still can't even begin to guess, much less understand, what could have made Obi-Wan lose consciousness like that, even if Obi-Wan claims it was only a disturbance in the Force - one that Anakin didn't feel at all, except through Obi-Wan's sudden unaccountable distress, which frankly makes him think that there has to be some other explanation for the incident that they're overlooking somehow, especially since Anakin has never heard of any kind of disturbance in the Force ever causing a Jedi to lose consciousness like that, no matter how powerful the disturbance - and he hates the fact that they had essentially been instantly forced to just pick up and pack themselves on back home, to Coruscant, afterwards. Yet, what else could they have done? The Separatists had been attacking the capital and Chancellor Palpatine had been taken hostage by General Grievous. There had been no other choice but to head for Coruscant, immediately, and never mind Obi-Wan's sudden inexplicable fainting fit.

Still, knowing that there had been no other choice doesn't keep Anakin from wishing that Obi-Wan could have at least rested more. He is trying - and mostly failing - not to worry about this when a tootle from Artoo spiders into the following message: A JEDI IS ALWAYS CALM.

Anakin scowls blackly. For an instant, a murderous rage threatens his concentration, one that washes his sight red and would, under almost any other circumstances, frighten Anakin with the intensity of his fury. Because he is angry for Obi-Wan's sake, though, he hardly notices the inappropriate intensity of his emotional response to Artoo's little joke. "He won't think it's funny," he snaps instead, showing his displeasure. "Neither do I. Less joking, more scanning."

For Anakin Skywalker, starfighter battles are usually as close to fun as he ever comes.

This one isn't.

It's not because of the overwhelming odds or the danger he's in; Anakin doesn't care about odds, and he doesn't think of himself as being in any particular danger. A few wings of droid fighters just don't do all that much to scare a man who's been a Podracer since he was six and who won the Boonta Cup at age nine - and who was, in fact, the only human to ever finish a Podrace, let alone win one. In those days, though, Anakin had used the Force without knowing it; he had thought the Force was something inside him, a feeling, an instinct, a string of lucky guesses that led him through maneuvers other pilots wouldn't dare attempt. Now, though . . .

Now -

Now he could reach into the Force whenever he might want to and feel the engagement raging throughout space surrounding Coruscant, all the way down to the level of the planet, as though the whole battle were happening wholly within his own head. Now, whenever he might wish to engage the enemy, his vehicle would become his body. The pulses of its engines would be the beating of his heart, the firing of its weapons the blows of his fists. Flying, Anakin could easily forget about his slavery, about Qui-Gon Jinn's murder and the torturous death of his own mother, about Geonosis and Jabiim, Aargonar and Muunilinst and all the other catastrophes of this far too long and savage war. He could also forget about everything that has been done to him. And everything he has done as well. He could even put aside, for however long battle might roar about him, the steady glowing starfire of his love for the woman who is most likely waiting for him on the world below - the woman whose breath now breathes his only free air, whose heartbeat has become his only music, and whose face is the only true beauty his eyes have ever seen whose perfection his rough touch has ever been allowed to fully worship. He could put all of this aside because he is a Jedi and because there are times in which he must do a Jedi's work.

But today is different.

Today isn't just about some fun target practice, about dodging lasers and blasting droids. Today is about the life of the man who might as well have been his father, a man who could all too easily die if the Jedi could not reach him in time.

Anakin has been too late before, and he is determined that he never will be again.

Obi-Wan's voice comes over the cockpit speakers, a welcome distraction from the distinctly unhelpful circling of his own dark thoughts in spite of the fact that it is distressfully flat and tight. "Does your droid have anything? Arfour's hopeless. I think that last cannon hit cooked his motivator."

Anakin can see the precise look that must be on his former Master's face - a mask of calm belied by a jaw so tight that when he spoke his mouth would barely move - and his frown deepens, deep creases of concern furrowing his brow. "Don't worry, Master. If his beacon's working, Artoo'll find it. Have you thought about how we'll find the Chancellor if - "

"No." Obi-Wan sounds absolutely certain. "There's no need to consider it. Until the possible becomes actual, it is only a distraction. Be mindful of what is, not what might be."

Knowing that his former Master is already far too stressed and on edge, Anakin struggles to stop himself from reminding Obi-Wan that he isn't a Padawan anymore. "I should have been here," he says at last, the words hissing through his teeth. "I told you. I should have been here."

"Anakin, he was defended by Stass Allie and Shaak Ti. If two Masters could not prevent this, do you think you could have? Stass Allie is clever and valiant, and Shaak Ti is the most cunning Jedi I've ever met. She's even taught me a few tricks."

Anakin gathers that this is supposed to impress him, though he is singularly unimpressed. "But General Grievous - "

"Master Ti has faced him before, Anakin. After Muunilinst. She is not only subtle and experienced, but very capable indeed. Seats on the Jedi Council aren't handed out as party favors, you know." Obi-Wan's voice would be sharp if he weren't so obviously tired.

"I've noticed," Anakin snaps, and then lets it drop. The middle of a space battle is no place to get into this particular sore subject, especially not when Obi-Wan is already unsettled and is obviously far more drained from what happened earlier than he had admitted to being. Yet, Anakin can't help but think that he still should have been here, instead of Stass Allie and Shaak Ti, members of the High Council or not. If he had been here, on Coruscant, Chancellor Palpatine would already be safely back home. Instead, Anakin had been off running around the Outer Rim with Obi-Wan for months, like some useless Padawan, while all Palpatine had for protectors were Jedi who were clever and subtle/. Clever and subtle! He can whip any ten /clever and subtle Jedi with his lightsaber tied behind his back. But he also knows better than to say so.

"Put yourself in the moment, Anakin. Focus."

"Copy that, Master," Anakin smiles dryly, unable to help himself. "Focusing now." R2-D2 twitters then, though, making Anakin check his console readout. "We've got him, Master! The cruiser's dead ahead of us, up there in that battle cluster. It's General Grievous' flagship - /Invisible Hand/."

"Anakin, there are /dozens of cruisers and other Separatist craft dead ahead!"/

"Ah," Anakin pauses for a moment, nonplused, realizing that Obi-Wan's reaction - however testy - is essentially justified. "Yes, well . . . come on then! We'll need to get closer."

"So I would assume . . . "

Resisting a sudden fleeting urge to roll his eyes or respond with some kind of similarly childish comment, Anakin sends his starfighter into a steep climb away from the outlying edge of the closest cluster of battle, veering tangent to it rather than simply plowing ahead into the thick of battle and engaging the smaller outlying fighters and droids, eventually gaining enough altitude to plot a path that bypasses those outermost rings of smaller craft and targets the nearest of the Separatist' larger frigates, a sleek needle-nosed cruiser currently acting as a picket ship, shielding some of the larger capital ships. Losing two missiles to draw the picket's attention, he yaws to port, pushes over, and then comes back at the vessel with lasers. "Run the hull!" he snaps tersely. "Target the shield generator!"

"Any closer and we'll be /inside the thing, Anakin!"/

"That's the idea!"

Silently, trustingly, even though he knows that the picket ship isn't the vessel they need to get into and it doesn't present as a target inherently important enough to render some kind of immediately apparent gain for them, should they engage it - certainly not anything worth risking the possible outcome of their mission over - Obi-Wan follows him, unleashing with all cannons.

The path Anakin has traced places them back in the thick of the heaviest fighting, where ranged fire from the Republic capital ships breaks constantly against the shields - occasionally punching through those shields to chew gaping holes in the vessels beneath them, eventually to consume them entirely in brilliant explosions of fire and ripped fragments of metallic alloys and ultradurable synthetic materials - of their Separatist targets. Once again, blinding light from the constant blasting of weapons pulses behind the canopy blast tinting. The picket ship Anakin has piqued with missiles is already under heavy bombardment, and he understands, instinctively, that a high-yield torpedo would be too much for it, so he rushes forward to deliver it, blindly trusting Obi-Wan to protect him and provide cover. Obi-Wan follows him as smoothly as if they have choreographed the run beforehand, and soon the torpedo is tearing safely away from between the starfighter's cockpit-linked fuselages, burning its way swiftly and unerringly towards the picket. The ship's shield fails for an instant then, and in that instant the huge incoming turbolaser bolts do their worst. Struck broadside, the picket bursts apart like an overripe fruit, venting long plumes of incandescence and then spilling itself entirely open in a heavy mist of light from superheated gases and gouts of jagged shrapnel and particulate matter.

Anakin jinks victoriously away, whooping into the comm. "There!" he crows, fiercely satisfied. "Now we've got a clear shot at Grievous! You see him? He's dead ahead!"

"Which one? Anakin, there are still /dozens /of ships in front of us!"

"It's the one crawling with vulture fighters."

The vulture fighters clinging to the long curves of the Trade Federation cruiser indicated by Palpatine's beacon cause eerily life-like ripples across the surface of the cruiser, as if it were some metallic marine predator bristling with Alderaanian walking barnacles.

"Oh. That one." Anakin can practically hear Obi-Wan's stomach dropping. "Oh, this should be easy . . . "

Now some of those vulture fighters begin to strip themselves away from the cruiser, igniting their drives and looping out towards the two Jedi. "Easy? No. But it might be fun." Sometimes, a little bit of teasing is the only way to get Obi-Wan to loosen up. "Lunch at Dex's says I'll blast two for each of yours. Artoo can keep score."

"Anakin - "

"Oh, all right, then, dinner! And I promise this time I won't let Artoo cheat."

"No games, Anakin. There's too much at stake. Have you taken a good look at those point-defense arrays? The ship is much too heavily shielded for us if we are acting alone, and this is hardly the time to bait him, considering this is a rescue mission." There, that is precisely the tone Anakin has been looking for, the one with a slightly scolding, schoolmasterish edge. It's the tone that means Obi-Wan is back on form, and it makes Anakin grin with delighted relief. "Have your droid tight-beam a report to the Temple. And send out a call for any Jedi in nearby starfighters. We'll come at it from all sides."

"Way ahead of you." But when he checks his comm readout, Anakin has to shake his head. "There's still too much ECM. Artoo can't raise the Temple. I think the only reason we can even talk to each other is that we're practically side by side."

"And Jedi beacons?"

"No joy, Master." Anakin's stomach clenches violently, but he fights the tension out of his voice. "We may be the only two Jedi out here." Anakin refuses to give voice to the sickening suspicion that the battle has been going badly enough for the Republic that they are actually the only two Jedi left alive or in good enough shape to join in this desperately important struggle.

"Then we will have to be enough. Switching to clone fighter channel." Anakin spins his comm dial to the new frequency just in time to hear Obi-Wan hail Squad Seven. "Odd Ball, do you copy? We need help."

Anakin knows that it's Commander Odd Ball, even if the clone captain's helmet speaker does flatten the humanity rather disturbingly out of his voice. "Copy, Red Leader."

"Mark my position and form up your squad behind me. We're going in."

"Yes, General Kenobi. We're on our way."

The droid fighters have managed to visually lose themselves against the background of the battle, but R2-D2 has been tracking them on scan. Anakin shifts his grip on his starfighter's control yoke. "Ten vultures inbound, high and left to my orientation. More on the way."

"I have them. Anakin, wait - the cruiser's bay shields have dropped! I'm reading four, no, /six /ships incoming." Obi-Wan's voice rises. "Tri-fighters! Coming in fast!"

Anakin's smile tightens down towards a snarl. He can sense the clone fighters beginning to move up into position behind them, but they're taking far too long to arrive. "Tri-fighters first, Master. The vultures can wait."

"Agreed. Slip back and right to swing behind me. We'll take them on the slant."

Let Obi-Wan go first? With a blown left control surface and a half-crippled R-unit? With Palpatine's /life /at stake?

Anakin's eyebrows climb up nearly to his hairline at the preposterousness of his former Master's proposal. If he didn't know better, he would think that his Master had struck his head when he passed out, not that he had caught him before he could hit the floor. Grimly, he shakes his head, forgetting for a moment that Obi-Wan can't see him.

I don't think so, Master.

"Negative," Anakin flatly snaps. "I'm going head-to-head. See you on the far side."

"Take it easy! Wait for Odd Ball and Squad Seven. Anakin - "

He can hear the frustration in Obi-Wan's voice as he kicks his starfighter's sublights and surges past him; his former Master still hasn't gotten entirely adjusted to not being able to order Anakin around. Not that Anakin has ever really been much for following orders, whether Obi-Wan's or anyone else's, even before his Knighting ceremony . . .

"We're coming up on your tail. Sorry we're late. Too many vulture droids to avoid." The digitized voice of the clone whose call sign is Odd Ball sounds as calm as if he were ordering up dinner. "I'm on your right, Red Leader. Setting S-foils in attack position. Where's Red Five?"

"Anakin, form up!"

But Anakin is already streaking out to meet the Trade Federation fighters. "Incoming!"

Obi-Wan's all too familiar sigh comes clearly over the comm, and Anakin knows exactly what the Jedi Master is thinking. It is the same thing he's always thinking: He still has much to learn. Anakin's Anakin's smile thins to a grim straight line as enemy starfighters swarm around him, and he thinks the same thing he always thinks back to Obi-Wan's thought: We'll see about that. Then he gives himself over to the battle, and his starfighter whirls and his cannons hammer as droids on all sides begin to burst into clouds of debris and superheated gas. This is how he relaxes.

The living image of the Jedi Order's believed and acknowledged Chosen One, this is the face that Anakin Skywalker most often turns towards the galaxy at large: the most powerful Jedi of his generation, and perhaps of any generation; the fastest; the strongest; an unbeatable pilot; an unstoppable warrior. On the ground, in the air, on the sea, or in space, there is no one who can even come close to equaling or to even touching him - except, perhaps, for his former Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and given the fact that they are partners in the Force, why would anyone ever need to worry about Anakin having to beat Obi-Wan? With Obi-Wan Kenobi by his side, Anakin Skywalker has the power to reshape the galaxy's destiny - and has done so already, many, many times. Even by himself, he is an unmitigated force of nature. He has not just power, not just skill, but dash - that rare, invaluable combination of unforgettable, unmatchable boldness and grace that has made him one of the two greatest heroes of his time, half of the wildly idolized and much beloved team of Anakin and Obi-Wan/, /Kenobi and Skywalker. He is, quite simply, the complete and utter best there is at what he does. The absolute best there has ever been. He is a weapon whose potential destructive power is widely known to be without match, without peer. And Anakin Skywalker knows it. HoloNet features call him the Hero With No Fear. And why not? What should he be afraid of? Except -

Fear lives inside him anyway, chewing away at the firewalls around his heart.

Although he knows that it is foolishly superstitious and completely counterproductive, the power of his fear is such that sometimes Anakin cannot stop himself from thinking of the dread that eats away at his heart as a dragon. Children on Tatooine tell each other stories about the dragons that live inside the suns: smaller cousins of these sundragons are supposed to live inside the fusion furnaces that power everything, from starships to Podracers. Anakin's fear, however, is a whole other kind of dragon. A cold kind. A dead kind. Though not nearly dead enough, unfortunately.

Not long after Anakin had first became Obi-Wan's Padawan all those years ago, some minor mission brought them into a dead system, one so immeasurably old that its star had long ago turned into a frigid dwarf of hypercompacted trace metals, hovering only a quantum fraction of a degree above absolute zero. For some reason, Anakin can never quite remember what the mission might have been for - though he has a feeling that it was either a training mission or a test, in the wake of the disaster at Zonama Sekot - but he has never quite managed to completely forget that dead star. It had scared him. Terribly.

"Stars can die - ?!"

"It is the way of the universe, Padawan, which is another manner of saying that it is the will of the Force," Obi-Wan had calmly told him. "Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out. This is why Jedi form no attachments: all things pass. To hold on to something - or someone - beyond its time is to set your selfish desires against the Force. That is a path of misery, Anakin, and the Jedi do not walk it."

Yet, that is the cold fear that lives inside Anakin Skywalker: the dragon of that dead star.

It is a cold, ancient, dead voice within his heart that whispers all things die . . . In bright day, he cannot hear it, and battle, a mission, even a report before the Jedi Council, can make him forget that it's even there. But at night -

At night, the walls Anakin has built to contain that fear sometimes start to frost over. And sometimes they start to crack. At night, the dead-star dragon sometimes sneaks through the cracks and crawls up into his brain and chews upon the inside of his skull. The dragon whispers of what Anakin has lost. And what he will lose. The dragon reminds him, each and every one of those nights, about how he had broken his promise to Qui-Gon Jinn, to remain close to him and to hide, if so ordered, during the struggle for Naboo; how he had instead purposefully allowed a Naboo starfighter to carry him into the thick of battle, even into the Trade Federation battleship housing the command center for the invading droid army, where he had accidentally triggered a chain reaction of explosions that had ultimately destroyed the Neimoidian ship; how he had indulged in a thoughtlessly selfish display of adrenaline-fueled acrobatics - a series of spiraling loops and lightning quick zigzags around the remains of the Naboo fleet - just because he loved to fly and the freedom he'd felt as he blitzed across the outskirts of the battle had made him feel more wholly alive than anything else ever had, even Podracing; and how Qui-Gon Jinn had died before Anakin could reach the injured Jedi Master in the melting pit because of those precious minutes he had wasted on his own pleasure.

The dragon makes him a fraud, and Anakin can no more forget that than he can block its evil whisperings entirely from his mind. The dragon calls his attention to that fact constantly, mercilessly, reminding him, every night it claws its way free of its imprisoning pen, what a fraud he is by recalling to him how he'd held his dying mother in his arms and how she had spent her last strength to say I knew you would come for me, Anakin . . . /He does not need the dragon to remind him /why he was too late to save Shmi Skywalker, though: Anakin has never been able to forget the fact that it was his own selfishness, his pleasure in Padmé's company - in the heady rush from their dangerous game of flirting, as he lured her closer and closer to the edge, leading her further and further away from her responsibilities and tempting her to give in to him, to give in to the forbidden feelings that were tormenting her and simply allow herself to love him, as he so very badly wanted her to - that kept him on Naboo too long, in spite of his foreboding dreams about Shmi and pain, until it was far too late for him to save his mother when he finally yielded the deceptive safety of Naboo for the starkly waiting dangers of Tatooine. Instead, the dragon also reminds him, every night, that someday he will lose Obi-Wan, too. He will lose Padmé. Or they will lose him.

All things die, Anakin Skywalker. Even stars burn out . . .

The only answers he ever has for these dead cold whispers are his memories of Obi-Wan's voice, or Master Yoda's, soothingly repeating the quiet mantra of the Jedi Code or patiently elaborating on Jedi rules of conduct. One particular lesson in Jedi philosophy that he has always found extremely difficult to grasp - Explanation is not an escape from suffering. Nor is explanation awareness. Openness to the world, to what is, can never be acquired, thus. To see what is, make your mind like a mirror, to reflect what is as it is, not as your heart or mind would see it. The shape of a container is not the nature of that which is contained. - often occurs to him, in such moments, rolling through his mind in the familiar soothing tones of his former Master's melodious voice, calming him until enlightenment and freedom from fear flickers at the edges of his mind. But sometimes he can't quite remember that beloved voice, cannot remember the aphorisms, or the Code, or even the voice of Master Yoda, lecturing in his inscrutably backwardly logical way on the proper rules of conduct for a true Jedi.

All things die . . .

He can barely even think about it.

But right now he doesn't have a choice, because the man he flies to rescue is a far closer friend than he's ever hoped to have. That's what puts the edge in his voice when he tries to make a joke; that's what flattens his mouth and tightens the burn-scar high on his right cheek, near his eye. The Supreme Chancellor has been family to Anakin. Ever since his return to Coruscant after the terrible mission to retake Naboo, Palpatine has always been there, always caring, always free with advice and unstinting in aid, openly offering him a sympathetic ear and a kindly, loving, unconditional acceptance of Anakin exactly as he is - the sort of acceptance Anakin cannot and never could get from another Jedi. Not even from Obi-Wan. He has been able to tell Palpatine things he could never share with his Master. He has also been able to tell Palpatine things he couldn't even bring himself to tell his beloved Padmé. And now the Supreme Chancellor is in the worst kind of danger. So Anakin is on his way, despite the dread boiling through his blood.

That's what makes him a real hero, though Anakin himself would not likely see things in such a light. Yet, it is nevertheless true that he is not a hero because of what HoloNet labels him, since Anakin is not without fear, but rather because he is stronger than fear. He looks the dragon in the eye and he doesn't even slow down. If anyone can save Palpatine from General Grievous and the Separatists holding him prisoner, Anakin will. Because he's already the best, and he's still getting better. Even if, locked away behind the walls of his heart, the dragon that is his fear coils and squirms and hisses, spitting an endless stream of mindless terror.

Even if his real fear, in a universe where even stars can die, is that being the best will never quite be good enough.

***

Obi-Wan's damaged starfighter jolts sideways as Anakin whips by him, using his forward altitude jets to kick himself into a skew-flip so that he is facing backwards, able to blast the last of the tri-fighters on his tail with an almost languorously graceful ease. After that, there are only vulture droids left.

A lot of vulture droids. Too many to avoid, as Odd Ball said.

"Did you like that one, Master?"

"Very pretty," Obi-Wan replies distractedly, his cannons stitching plasma across the hull of a swooping vulture fighter until the droid explodes. "But we're not through yet."

"Watch this!" Anakin flips his starfighter again neatly and dives, spinning, directly through the flock of vulture droids. Their drives blaze as they come around and he leads them streaking for the upper deck of a laser-scarred Separatist cruiser. "This is where the fun begins. I'm going to lead them through the needle. Are they all still after me?"

Obi-Wan's mind is a humming blank of incredulity as his threat display tallies the vultures on Anakin's tail. There are twelve of the droids. Twelve/, for Force's sake! "Anakin, you have /twelve droids on your tail. Don't try to lead them anywhere; it's far too dangerous! First Jedi principle of combat: survive."

"Sorry. No choice." Anakin slips his starfighter through the storm of cannonfire as effortlessly as if he were stitching cloth. "Come down here and help thin them out a little."

Obi-Wan slams his control yoke forward as though jamming it against its impact-rest might allow him to push his battered fighter faster in pursuit. "Nothing fancy, Arfour," he warns - as though either the damaged droid or his damaged ship were still capable of anything fancy! "Just hold me steady." He reaches into the Force and feels for his shot. "On my mark, break left - now!" The shutdown control surface of his left wing turns the left break into a tight overhead spiral that traverses Obi-Wan's guns across the paths of four vultures - flash flash flash flash - and then all four are gone. He flies on through the clouds of glowing plasma, unable to waste any time going around. Anakin still has eight of them on his tail. And what is this/? Obi-Wan frowns. That cruiser looks familiar. /The needle? he thinks. Force, no! /Please, tell me you're kidding! Anakin, you really are going to be the death of me!/

***

Anakin's starfighter skims only meters above the cruiser's dorsal hull. Cannon misses from the vulture fighters swooping towards him are blasting chunks out of the armor of their own cruiser - always a plus, when the enemy help to destroy themselves. With a shark's smile, he nods once, satisfied. "Okay, Artoo. Where's that trench?"

His forward screen lights up with a topographic map of the cruiser's hull. Just ahead is the trench that Obi-Wan led that one stubborn tri-fighter into earlier. With a grin that is almost a grimace, Anakin flips his starfighter through a razor sharp wingover down past the rim of that channel. The walls of the service trench flash past him as he streaks for the bridge tower at the far end. From where he is, he can't even see the minuscule slit between its support struts. In any case, with eight vulture droids in pursuit, he could never pull off a slant up the tower's leading edge, as Obi-Wan had. But that's all right. He isn't planning to.

His cockpit comm buzzes. "Don't try it, Anakin! It's too tight."

Too tight for you, maybe, with your jangled nerves and that damaged fighter. But, "I'll get through," is all Anakin says. When R2-D2 whistles in nervous agreement with Obi-Wan, Anakin frowns, oddly hurt. "Easy, Artoo," he scolds. "We've done this before."

Cannonfire blazes past him, impacting on the support struts ahead, and it's too late to change his mind now. He's committed. He will bring his ship through, or he will die.

Strangely, at that precise moment, he doesn't actually care which will happen.

"Use the Force!" Obi-Wan sounds truly worried now. "/Think yourself through, and the ship will follow."/

"What do you expect me to do? Close my eyes and whistle?" Anakin mutters irritably under his breath, then says aloud, "Copy that. Thinking /now/." R2-D2's squeal is as close to terrified as a droid can sound. Glowing letters spider across Anakin's readout: ABORT! ABORT ABORT! Anakin smiles. "Wrong thought."

***

Obi-Wan can only stare openmouthed as Anakin's starfighter snaps onto its side and scrapes through the slit with only centimeters to spare. He fully expects one of the struts to completely knock R2's dome off. The vulture droids try to follow Anakin . . . but they are just a hair too big. When the first two impact, Obi-Wan automatically triggers his cannons in a downward sweep. The evasion maneuvers preprogrammed into the surviving vulture fighters' droid brains send them diving away from Obi-Wan's lasers - straight into the fireball expanding from the front of the struts. When it's all over, Obi-Wan looks up to find Anakin soaring straight out from the cruiser in a quick snap-roll of victory. Obi-Wan matches his course, though without the added triumphal flourish.

"I'll give you the first four," Anakin all but laughs over the comm, "but the other eight are mine."

"Anakin - "

"Oh, all right, we'll split them!"

Obi-Wan opens his mouth to retort - and then abruptly snaps it shut again, without having said anything. There is absolutely nothing that he can say to that, nothing that he can trust himself to say to Anakin in response to either the insane stunt the young Jedi has just pulled off (almost literally by the skin of his teeth) or his gleefully reckless response to his own success at pulling the stunt off. Obi-Wan's stomach roils with a wholly unpleasant sensation, a devastating feeling so like what he had felt when he had been trapped by the laser wall outside of the melting pit, on Naboo, able to see everything that was happening but unable to do a thing to save Maser Qui-Gon - utterly consumed by sick fury and a yammering worry that had reduced him to an almost primal rage of thwarted protectiveness - that for a moment he feels physically ill. Shaking his head once, violently, Obi-Wan automatically rejects both the anger and worry, flatly refusing to allow their darkness to take root in him. Steadying both himself and his battered ship, centering himself yet again in the Force, Obi-Wan silently, determinedly, follows Anakin away from the cruiser.

As they leave the Separatist ship behind, their sensors show Squad Seven dead ahead. The clone pilots are fully engaged, looping through a dogfight so tight that their ion trails look like a glowing ball of unraveled yarn.

"Odd Ball's in trouble. I'm going to go help him out."

"Don't," Obi-Wan orders flatly, hating what he is saying but knowing that it is necessary. "He's doing his job. We need to do ours."

"Master, they're getting eaten alive over - "

The anguish in his former Padawan's voice is palpable, and Obi-Wan vainly wishes that just this once there could be a kinder way of accomplishing what he knows he must. "Every one of them would gladly trade his life for Palpatine's. Will you trade Palpatine's life for theirs?"

"No - no, of course not, but - "

"Anakin, I understand: you want to save everyone. You always do. But you can't."

Anakin's voice snaps tight. "Don't remind me."

"Anakin . . . fine, then," Obi-Wan sighs, wishing he could spare a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose and drive back the tension headache threatening to form. "We'll talk about this later. For now, focus on the mission. We need to get to the command ship. We have a fairly clear shot at Grievous now, and we must take it." Without waiting for a reply, Obi-Wan targets the command cruiser and shoots away at maximum thrust, his mouth filled with the bitter taste of sour ashes - the familiar taste of hated cruelty in the name of necessity.

***