Anakin sat in Yoda's chamber, his muscles sinking into the alluring comfort of the Force, the cold feelings of his bath giving way to the warm feelings of the light. Another shiver shot through his body from his head down, but the boy let out a breath and continued to focus on his submission into meditation.
"Good," Yoda said, his voice exuding a sense of true happiness. "Calm you are. At peace. Now, what saw you?"
"That thing," Anakin said. He felt lifted, the weight of the monster's image passing by like sand through his fingers for the first time. "The memory of what happened."
Yoda sighed. "Believe it real, do you?"
"I don't know. I think so. It felt real." The memory of its cold feel tore through his mind, followed by the embarrassment of having tarnished his place of rest in his night terror. Yoda closed his eyes.
"That which haunts the mind, real it is not." Anakin did not stop squirming, and the fire in his mind began to spread. Yoda touched the boy's chest, his three knurled fingers resting there gently for a moment. "Feel me do you?"
"Yes." They boy's eyes remained closed. Yoda removed his hand.
"Feel my presence do you?"
"Yes."
"Afraid do I make you?"
"No, sir."
"Your feelings, real do they make things. Without them, empty your world would be. Fear me you do not, trust me you do. See me not for the teeth I have, or the green skin. At peace is your soul when you think of me. See with your eyes that which your mind believes, mislead you will be. The monster, deceive you it will, attack you it can, but harm you it cannot." Anakin sat, his fear again sinking into peace. He thought of the clown, its teeth, as he had when he opened the door to Rafyki's room. Then he remembered something…
"I trusted it. It came to me, it was like a friend at first." Yoda nodded. "It told me about myself, it knew my feelings. I felt calm." Yoda hummed.
"Knows you it does. The Dark Side, lures us with passion. Care for us will it seem. Then capture us it will, and fall into fear we do, trapped we become."
"This didn't feel like the Dark Side. It felt…" the boy paused. "Different."
"No difference. The light, the dark, that which is between them… separated by our perceptions they are. The Force has no sides. The Jedi code, for us it is - the Force, preserves all life it does, not one over another. Its energy connects us, and in it, alone we can never be."
"Master Windu couldn't sense it at all."
"Come for you it has. But fear not. For each of us has something come."
"How can I beat it if nobody else can see it?" Yoda looked at the boy, his eyes and ears held in stillness.
"Prepare yourself to be afraid. Knows what you fear it does, and present you with those things it will. But if present in the Force you are, strike you it cannot." Something moved in the corner of Anakin's vision. His stillness was broken, his head snapping to see what it was. The fear of the monster again came up, this time consuming him. His mind returned to his nightmare, the clown's hands on his throat, the full weight of his body pinning him down. He panicked, his limbs flailing to rid themselves of the fictitious menace. He fell backwards out of the backless seat, catching himself with his hands. The feeling of the ground reminded him that the monster was not there. The vision vanished.
"I can't," he whispered. Yoda's ears and head fell as he sighed, shaking his head.
The dreary, free-form melody of the night's Twi'lek jazz soloist carried on. Souse took the death stick out of his mouth and reached for another swig of his Mandalorian ale. Peering again at the dancing girls from his half-credit stool at the back of the hall, his head collapsed into his arm. The room was spinning. A warm body plopped into the stool next to him. The table rocked as a full glass clunked into it and soon thereafter let out the hiss and crack of opening. It let out a satisfying sigh as it made itself comfortable in the less-than-cozy wooden seat.
"What's up?" the voice asked. Souse slowly lifted his heavy head, his bloodshot eyes watering in the light. It was a clown.
"The fuck d'you want?" Souse stammered out through a slur. The clown took a swig of his drink.
"To see you, of course!" Souse's head slammed back down into the table.
"No you didn't," he said, his voice muffled by his arm.
"Sure I did!" Pennywise said. He noticed that Souse's death stick, this one in the form of a cigarette as opposed to the usual vile of liquid, was burning perilously close to his fingers. "You want me to put that out for ya?" he asked.
"No now go away," Souse said. Pennywise took another swig and then lifted the death stick out of Souse's fingers.
"Ey you give, give that back!" he shouted. He grabbed at Pennywise's arm, but was too inebriated and weak to put up a serious challenge. The rest of the patrons of the bar glanced at him and laughed. "Ey you shut the fuch up, ya hear?!"
"Crazy Soussie fighting himself again," one patron said to another. Pennywise took the moment to take a long drag on the stick, nearly wiping it out. He let out the smoke with an equally long puff into the air. He chuckled.
"The hell you laughing at, clown?"
"Oh," Pennywise smirked. "Just the ridiculousness of this whole scene. Me being a clown drunk with you at a bar and you being, well… you."
"The fuck's that s'posed to mean?" Souse said, lifting his head just enough to take his first swig of his drink in a while. As soon as he did, he spit it out, the pffft of the onset of laughter powerful enough to knock his head back down, taking the open top bottle with it. Pennywise caught the bottleneck with his finger just before it had a chance to spill. Souse peered up from his elbow with his eyes which were now even more watery from drunken laughter. "Th'fuch is this?" he asked.
"Rule number fifteen of drinking," Pennywise said. "Thought you'd know it by now. No matter how good the night, drinking with a clown is always better." Souse's laughter turned to coughing, then back to laughter. Pennywise let Souse's drunkenness flow through his bowels. He took another swig of the tonic. The alcohol did nothing for him, really. No physical chemical could.
"Y'know some'n?" Souse said. "You're a good guy. Y'know that?" He collapsed back into hysterics. "Fuckin' clown." Pennywise pulled another death stick out of his jumpsuit. He flicked it with his gloved finger and it spontaneously lit.
"You want it?" he asked.
"Thanks, man," Souse said. Pennywise savoured the feeling of stupor. Really it was the second best feeling after feeding, and had none of the guilt attached to it. He especially liked the clown get-up. He could never quite control what he looked like, although he could influence it. Drunk men and children especially, all over the universe, they would often imagine clowns, mimes, and other jester-type fluff. This was no exception. Just get close to a drunk guy on a late night, do something funny, and pow! Clown-town. All the same, go near a kid in a dark room, an alleyway, or a sewer, and they'd turn him into all sorts of monsters and spooky things, but clowns seemed to be their go-to. Souse's head had drooped back into his elbow and he had gone silent.
"Wanna see a trick?" Pennywise said, not wanting to lose the feeling.
"Sure, go ahead," Souse murmured, his head still firmly planted. Pennywise reach behind himself and pulled out a long blue balloon and tapped Souse on the head with it.
"What?" Souse asked.
"Aren't ya gonna watch the trick?" he asked.
"Sure, go ahead." Souse's head remained down. Pennywise began batting Souse's head with the balloon until eventually he raised his head. "I said sure go ahead!" Pennywise put the balloon on Souse's head, balancing it.
"Try keeping the balloon on your head without it dropping or popping!" Pennywise exclaimed.
"Sure that's no problem, see!" Souse said, balancing it on his head with little difficulty. A minute passed. "So what's the catch?"
"Nothing! Congratulations, you win!" the clown said, clapping his hands. Souse rolled his eyes and his head wobbled, but the balloon remained in place. He reached for one of the unopened drinks on the table. He opened the cap and the drink exploded in his face.
"Huh hah! Huh hah!" Pennywise laughed. Souse gave the clown a smug look, then felt on top of his head.
"Ha ha, you're the, you're th'one people should be l-laughing at," he said, pulling the balloon safely from off his head. "I win!" As he said it, the balloon popped in his hand. Pennywise cackled in his seat, his legs kicking into the air and the seat tipping precariously backwards. "Aw to hell with you!" the drunkard said. Pennywise accidentally kicked the table and his seat was sent flying backwards and he crashed into the floor.
"Oof!" he yelled. Penny reveled in the drunken euphoria until eventually he felt the feeling begin to wayne. He looked up. Souse's head hung at the table, his mouth beginning to drool. Pennywise smacked him. "Get up!" The drunkard writhed a bit, mumbling something incoherent. He pushed him again, this time to no results. Souse's breathing deepened. The feeling of inebriation exhausted from Pennywise's bowels as Souse drifted into unconsciousness.
"Deadbeat," Pennywise mumbled to himself. "Just like this whole fucking planet!" He knocked down the table, taking Souse to the ground with it. The empty apathy of his daytime life sank in. He charged outside. The rest of the bar patrons carried on as usual.
Pennywise's stomach growled as he meandered through the streets of the lower levels of Coruscant, the pitch-black of the night making only meager difference to the perpetual darkness of filth and shadow which enveloped every region not blinded by a street sign or screen. He could not tell if the brooding resentment which coursed through him was caused more by the hunger or by his ceaseless frustration at being utterly dependent on other people to feel anything at all. It had been billions of years; to say that he was weary of this game was long-gone as an understatement. He stuck his leg out and tripped a passing Ithorian, taking from the pedestrian the fleeting sensation of irritation. At least it was something. He continued down the ceaseless passages, until he turned into a desolate alleyway. There he saw it. An adolescent hive rat feeding on a rotting trash heap - a meal just substantial enough to hold him over for the night. Pennywise stood at the entrance of the alley, his feet apart and his hands open. The rat glanced him, holding itself in a timid stillness. Pennywise's fanged mouth began to water. He took a short step forward, and the rat began to scamper back into the alley. Pennywise ran a few steps in pursuit, then jumped, his body now an ambiguous, ill-defined cat-person-alien in the rat's eyes. He landed next to the rat, which swerved to avoid him. He jumped to catch up, landing this time on the rat's left, and again to it's right. The chase continued for a few moments, Pennywise relishing the feeling of the rat's pounding, over-enlarged hearts. Eventually, the chase grew tiresome. He grabbed the rat with his sprawling clawlike fingers.
Pennywise sat in the five centimetres of pus and liquid rot which had dripped from the bodies which hung suspended mid-air above his head, his eyes red and watering. Of all the sewers on all the planets he had ever inhabited, Coruscant's was by far the worst. His clown hair sagged down from the watery refuse which permeated it, and his clown makeup abided on his face as a nebulous smudged mess. His fanged grimace pounded into rage as he jabbed another hole into the rat's skin. It's sudden outbreak into spasmodic squirming jilted him as it always had. He hated that feeling in his hand, and yet the pleasure he took from the actual feeding made it seem worth it. He jabbed it again, hoping not to hit any vital organs. Its screaming only amplified his lust for its life, masking for a fleeting moment the burning of the tear which pestered a bleeding scrape on his face. He snivelled. Another stab crossed the rat's belly, this time a slice which turned white before filling with red. The rat bit his finger, and he cried out. He held the rat in his hands for a moment, ceasing to torment it.
"I knew you had some fight in you, rat," he said. "I was afraid all you ever did was run away from things." Another tear dropped from his eyes, congealing some of the rat's blood on contact. The rat sank into the initial stages of shock, surrendering to the horrific fate which awaited it. Pennywise felt a wave of sadness pour over him. The emotional expressiveness of even the most primitive animals never ceased to astound him. The rat's depression only furthered the burning redness of his eyes. The hunger overcame him. The rat returned to the clumsy, laboured squirming as maggots slowly began to materialize and rise from its flesh. Pennywise's stomach turned, and he became nauseous at the sight of his own horrific doings. He forced his eyes to remain on the sight as he had for all his innumerable victims, the bringing about of anguish and fear in himself the only way his being could process and digest his meals. Keeping his eyes wide, he opened his mouth and bit down on the rodent. The fear and pain in the animal was savory enough, but nothing exceptional. The rat continued to writhe in his mouth, the taste of the agony masking the putridness of the flesh itself. It began scraping his face with its claws, its last pull out of shocked numbness exciting him and energizing him to his core.
The writhing came to a halt, and the feelings flooded away from him as the last breath of life escaped the rat. He swallowed the last bits of feeling he could. He held the rat in his mouth for a moment, then took it out.
"Come on," he said as he nudged the rat one last time to see if any life could come back to it. It remained still. His heart sank. "I thought you were a fighter," he said. He held the rat in his two hands, almost cradling it. He looked up, closing his eyes and exhaling a sigh of relief. A feeling of satisfying fullness washed away the rage, albeit only to be cut into again by the apathy and muted guilt. His eyes creaked open, the bodies above held in their dreary orbits. His head sank back to the view of the rat. Another drop of pus plopped onto his head from above. He noticed that his leg was itching, likely an infection from the gore in which he sat. He sat, bringing his knees into his arms, immersed in the pool for a long time…
Obi-Wan's finger traced across Anakin's cheek. It called to his mind how Qui-Gon's finger had done the same to his own as he passed on into the Force. He pushed the memory into the recesses of his mind. He had promised Qui-Gon that he would train this boy, and he would not let his master's death impair his final wish. Anakin became calmed, and Obi-Wan could sense the fear in the boy draining out, and the grips of sleep coming soon at hand.
"May the Force be with you, padawan," he said. "And good night." Anakin remained silent. Obi-Wan raised from his knee, and exited the room. Anakin's eyes opened. His master's presence distanced itself as he left down the temple corridors. With that distance, the fear of that monster flooded back. Anakin began again to shake, his bladder becoming weak as it had for the last week of nights. Then, peace. He sensed Obi-Wan, as if he were physically close. The images continued to roil in his mind, but there was no fear accompanying them. He knew that his master was at a distance, and yet this connection seemed so present, so real. He was never ceased to be amazed by the immense power of the Force. He looked around at the temple walls, and for once, he felt at home. His eyes grew heavy.
