They hadn't spoken for many hours, not since they'd left the Core.

Anakin Skywalker kept his eyes on the dashboard indicators, even though they were traveling in hyperspace and the ship was flying on the navcomputer. His Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, pored over star charts on a datascreen. Every so often he would raise a chart in magnified holo-mode and walk through it, studying the planets more closely.

Anakin usually admired his Master's thoroughness, but today he felt irritated by it. Obi-Wan studied things. He made logical conclusions and plotted strategies. What did he know about leaps in intuition, dreams, risks, compulsions, knowing a step could mean disaster but taking it anyway? What did he know, Anakin thought bitterly, about guilt?

A Jedi Master was dead, and Anakin had seen her die. Master Yaddle had hung above him in a night crowded with stars, held by the Force. She had saved a population by absorbing the destructive power of a bomb with her own body. She had become one with the Force. The great light had sent him crashing to his knees. He'd thought he would never be able to get up again.

And he'd known that as soon as he could feel again, as soon as he could think, he would feel responsible for her death.

Before that mission he had experienced a vision that had haunted him.

The only thing about it that had been clear was that it involved Master Yaddle. During the mission he had thought he understood what the vision meant. Yet he had kept going forward, kept pushing. He had thought he could change fate at any moment. And because he had thought those things, Yaddle had made a great sacrifice — a sacrifice he should have made — and she had died for it.