'You had a nightmare again last night,' she said quietly, when Anakin at last opened his blue eyes.
'Jedi don't have nightmares,' came the defiant reply. 'I heard you,' Padm was quick to answer. Anakin turned to regard her. There was no compromise in her expression-she knew perfectly well that his claim was ludicrous, and she let him know that she knew it.
'I saw my mother,' he admitted, lowering his gaze. 'I saw her as clearly as I see you now. She is suffering, Padme. They're killing her! She is in pain!'
'Who?' Padme asked, moving toward him, putting a hand on his shoulder. When she looked at him more closely, she noted a determination so solid that it took her by surprise.
'I know I'm disobeying my mandate to protect you,' Anakin tried to explain.
'I know I will be punished and possibly thrown out of the Jedi Order, but I have to go.' 'Go?'
'I have to help her! I'm sorry, Padme,' he said. She saw from his expression that he meant it, that leaving her was the last thing he ever wanted to do. 'I don't have a choice.'
'Of course you don't. Not if your mother is in trouble.'
Anakin gave her an appreciative nod.
'I'll go with you,' she decided.
Anakin's eyes widened. He started to reply, ready to argue, but Padme's smile held his words in check.
'That way, you can continue to protect me,' she reasoned.
Somehow she made it sound perfectly logical. 'And you won't be disobeying your mandate.'
'I don't think this is what the Jedi Council had in mind. I fear that I'm walking into danger, and to take you with me-'
'Walking into danger,' Padme echoed, and she laughed aloud. 'A place I've never been before.'
Anakin stared at her, hardly believing what he was hearing. He couldn't resist, though, and his smile, too, began to widen. For some reason he did not quite understand, the Padawan found a good measure of justification in his abandoning the letter of his orders now that Padme was in on, and agreeing with, the plan.
Neither Padme nor Anakin could miss the stark contrast when they took her sleek starship out of hyperspace and saw the brown planet of Tatooine looming before them. How different it was from Naboo, a place of green grasses and deep blue water, with cloud patterns swirling all across it. Tatooine was just a ball of brown hanging in space, as barren as Naboo was alive.
'Home again, home again, to go to rest,' Anakin recited, a common children's rhyme.
'By hearth and heart, house and nest,' Padme added. Anakin looked over at her, pleasantly surprised. 'You know it?'
'Doesn't everyone?'
'I don't know,' Anakin said. 'I mean, I wasn't sure if anyone else… I thought it was a rhyme my mother made up for me.'
'Oh, I'm sorry,' Padme said. 'Maybe she did-maybe hers was different than the one my mother used to tell me.' Anakin shook his head doubtfully, but he wasn't bothered by the possibility. In a strange way, he was glad that Padme knew the rhyme, glad that it was a common gift from mothers to their children.
And glad, especially, that he and Padme had yet another thing in common. 'They haven't signaled any coordinates yet,' she noted.
'They probably won't, unless we ask,' Anakin replied. 'Things aren't very strict here, usually. Just find a place and park it, then hope no one steals it while you go about your business.'
'As lovely as I remember it.'
Anakin looked at her and nodded. How different things were now than that decade before when Padme had been forced to land on Tatooine with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in order to effect repairs on their ship. He tried to manage a smile, but the edge of his nervousness kept it from appearing genuine. Too many disturbing thoughts assaulted him. Was his mother all right? Was his dream a premonition of what was to come, or a replay of something that had already happened?
He brought the ship down fast, breaking through the atmosphere and soaring across the sky. 'Mos Espa,' he explained when the skyscape of the city came into sight against the horizon.
He went in hard, and some protests did squeal over the comlink. But Anakin knew his way around this place as surely as if he had never left. He did a flyby over the edge of the city, then put the starship down in a large landing bay amid a jumble of vessels of all merchant and mercenary classes. 'Yous can't just drop in uninvited!' barked the dock officer, a stout creature with a piggish face and spikes running down the length of his back and tail.
'It's a good thing you invited us, then,' Anakin said calmly, with a slight wave of his hand.
'Yes, it's a good thing I invited you then!' the officer happily replied, and Anakin and Padme walked past.
'Anakin, you're bad,' Padme said as they exited onto the dusty street.
'It's not like there are dozens of ships lined up to fill the bay,' Anakin replied, feeling pretty good about himself and the ease with which he had Force-convinced the piggish officer. He waved down a floating rickshaw pulled by an ES-PSA droid, a short and thin creature with a wheel where its legs should have been.
Anakin gave it the address and off it went, pulling them behind in the floating rickshaw, charging along the streets of Mos Espa, expertly zigging and zagging to avoid the heavy traffic, and blasting forth a shrill sound whenever someone didn't get out of die way.
'Do you think he was involved?' Padme asked Anakin.
