It was hotter on Tatooine than Anakin remembered. He hadn't been to his homeplanet in several years, and the heat when he stepped off the ship took his breath away. But getting used to Tatooine weather was like riding a speeder-bike: once you were accustomed to it, it was never very difficult to reacclimatize yourself once again.
The Jedi he'd chosen to accompany him to Tatooine were not so lucky, most of them having lived the majority of their lives on a planet where every place you could conceivably go was temperature-controlled. Breaking with what was perhaps an unhealthy habit, Anakin had decided not to take any of his friends with him to Tatooine, not Ferus or Drin. He had chosen instead several Knights with whom he was not closely acquainted, but whom he had watched and considered trustworthy.
They found a place, ideally situated near one of the few main spaceports on the planet. Such a motley assortment of sentients could hardly be found anywhere else in the galaxy, and so all sorts of news came through it, a fair deal of it relating to Grievous when there was cause. Of the sort of news that Anakin had hoped for, though—really incriminating stuff, or at least a lead of some sort—there was nothing.
Not until they had been on Tatooine for three months, attending to the needs of the nearby populace and listening with half an ear to the spaceport's gossip, did anything vaguely interesting come up.
Anakin was outside their quarters—a squat set of apartment buildings on the edge of Mos Eisley—thinking, or rather trying not to think. That, after all, was the point of meditation. He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with scorching Tatooine air, and tried to feel the rough mud wall against his back and the sand beneath him where he sat. Tatooine was a good place for meditation, if you could stand the heat. All Anakin could think about, though, was that same tired dream.
His meditation time was slightly less serene than it ought to have been. Each time he closed his eyes, the warmth of the sand became in his mind the searing heat of the flames, and the wind in his ears became some innocent's death cry. If it were not so vague, then at least perhaps it wouldn't be so tormenting, but all Anakin knew was that it—whatever "it" was—hadn't happened yet, for the vision continued to return.
This wasn't helping. Anakin sighed, and stood, stretching his back and shoulders after sitting for so long. That was when another Jedi rounded the corner.
"I'm sorry to disturb you during your meditation, Master," said Rik, a fair-haired boy with elongated features—and indeed, he looked sorry as he bowed. That was something Anakin had yet to get used to: Knights only a few years his junior treating him with the deference accorded to wise and experienced Jedi Masters like Yoda and Windu. Anakin had not yet figured out, of course, that that was how the rest of the Order perceived him.
"I'm sorry," Rik repeated, "but we've just had a report from the station on Dagobah that we thought you should read."
Anakin nodded and followed the boy inside. There, one of the other four Knights currently on Tatooine—a woman named Shali, young as Rik and just as easily awed—handed him a transmission. Anakin read it quickly.
"Kamino?" he said, looking up when he had finished. "Are they sure?"
"Yes, Master," Rik answered.
"Why would Grievous be going there?"
Rik shrugged. "I don't know. That's all the information they had, and there's not much of it."
Anakin frowned, looking down at the flimsy in his hands. Every move Grievous made now only frustrated him further; there was some motive behind it, some method in madness, but Anakin could not see it.
"Find out what Grievous is doing there, if you can," he said out loud. "If he's making the trip himself it must be important."
"I'll look into it," Shali promised, taking the flimsy, and left the room. Rik stayed a moment, hesitant.
"Master, are you—all right?" he asked. Anakin frowned, not angry but confused.
"What makes you say that?"
"The Force feels…disturbed around you. And you look tired."
Anakin did not know how to answer. He couldn't tell Rik of the nights he lay awake, afraid to fall asleep because of what he would see when he closed his eyes. Jedi—real Jedi—did not have nightmares, in visions or otherwise, and so he had told no one.
"Maybe I've been thinking about Grievous a little too much," Anakin lied, another thing Jedi didn't do. "It's good that you said something. Anything leading to an obsession can be very dangerous."
Rik nodded and followed Shali out the low, rounded doorway, leaving the Master to himself.
There was another reason Anakin refused himself permission to tell another soul of what left him panting for breath in the night. Another person, any other person, would take it seriously and with great concern, and that would make it too real for Anakin to bear. As long as it was only in his head, he told himself, he could send it away by the force of his will, and then it could never come true. He could make it gone.
But the dream only grew more vivid, and more painful, as days went by. Anakin caught himself looking up at the stars and planets at night with eyes dark from sleeplessness and imagined them exploding into nothingness, into death.
Through no agency other than coincidence, as Anakin's dreams in time grew stronger, more Grievous tales reached the Jedi's ears. Shali traveled to Kamino, discreetly, and found nothing. The Kaminoans were simple and pleasant, but firm, and would not tell her a thing about the General's visit.
"But they're not making more soldiers for him, I'm sure of it," Shali vowed. "I checked all their facilities myself. Nothing like the mass army we've seen in the past."
"We need to start monitoring that region to make sure that we intercept any transmissions that Grievous may send or receive in the future," Anakin said.
"That could be difficult," warned Shali hesitantly. "We've got to stay unobtrusive here, and Grievous might notice if we're receiving copies of all his transmissions."
"Find a way. If there—"
He was interrupted by a knock on the frame of the open door. "What's on Naboo?" asked Rik.
Anakin blinked, his train of thought spiraling out into the distance. "I, uh—what?"
"On Naboo," Rik repeated. "Is there anything of importance to Grievous there?"
"Um—no, I don't think so," Anakin said. "Why? Has he been there?"
Rik's fine features twisted in an ungainly grimace. "The opposite, actually. You know those Banking Federation officials that were stationed on Naboo, in Theed?"
"Yes."
"Well, they've left. Supposedly they had word from Grievous himself that they were to get off the planet and back to him as soon as possible."
"Did they give a reason?"
"No. Nothing. I heard it from this old spice pirate in the cantina just now. He didn't have any answers."
"Maybe he intends to use them for something on Kamino," Shali suggested doubtfully.
"Or maybe he just wants to relocate them." Anakin frowned. "He's moved his people from system to system countless times; it could have nothing to do with Kamino. Set up the transmissions monitor, and get another one stationed to cover Naboo."
"Kamino is out of our range," Rik interjected.
"Then tell Dagobah to monitor them!"
The commlink at Anakin's belt buzzed. He lifted it and heard a static-broken voice say, "Master Skywalker, there's been a—"
The commlink went dead with a crackling hiss.
Rik and Shali were silent. Anakin stood motionless for a moment, then lowered the device to his belt again."
"Rik, I want you to see what's happening on Dagobah." He met the younger Knight's eyes. "Find out what they're doing—and while you're gone, set up a communications interceptor on Kamino."
"Should I take the transport?" Rik asked.
"You'll need the equipment," Anakin agreed. It took Rik only a few minutes to gather his things and leave, prepared to be gone for a week at the most. He returned in an hour.
"There's a problem with the ship!" he reported, panicked.
"It hasn't been stolen," Anakin guessed fearfully, knowing Tatooine well.
"No, the cockpit was locked. But they managed to get inside, and they stole all the equipment we had stored in there. There's nothing I can do on Kamino now," he said regretfully.
A sigh escaped Anakin's mouth through clenched teeth. Frustration seethed through him like a virus. Being a Master was all well and good, but this—waiting and watching, hiding, observing—was not what he had been made for. He needed action and adventure to make his life meaningful, not tedious routine made only vaguely exciting when something went wrong.
It was a moment before he could collect himself. When he did, he noticed that the eyes of every Knight in the room were warily on him, waiting to see what he would do. It was so hard to remember that he could never let himself go now, that there would always be someone watching him, looking to him for answers from a mask of calm that could never, never slip and never err.
"Take the ship anyway," Anakin said finally to Rik. "Forget about Kamino for now. Take it to Dagobah and find out what went wrong there. Then…just come back."
Rik bowed. "Yes, Master," he answered. There was relief in his attitude; there was always security in having someone else come up with solutions to the problems that arose.
But Anakin was discovering just how difficult it was to be the end-all of answers. When Rik returned a few days later—Dagobah, he reported, had suffered a storm powerful enough to damage its communications system, and would be incommunicado until things were fixed—the burden pressing down upon Anakin's shoulders had become too great to bear.
Through the mass of flame and sorrow, he now heard a laugh, a harsh, cold laugh that sounded more bestial than sentient. Anakin had thought that there was no one to whom he could turn, but that was not true. The vision was growing sharper and more vivid with each passing night, and he could no longer shield himself with pitiful denial. The Council had to know about this.
Author's Note: By the way, I know that this chapter was not worth waiting a month for. There were reasons I didn't update, all of which I don't plan to elaborate upon. I promise the next chapter will make up for it.