SWEET CHILD OF MINE
~
Loss of Temper
With one hand holding his chalice, the other reached out to the side showing his guests the way onward, while his mouth like the horizon was tight. Their tall host stepped lightly aside: "Please, enter my home of your own free will."
Father Azreal immediately stepped forward, his rough garments rustling crudely; his Jedi partner moved forward silently. "So, Astronomer…" the monk began in an elderly tenor, "This is the 'Apostate's Sanctum', is it."
With a straight face, "I felt the name appropriate, Father."
Accent on the 'course': "Of course you would."
Violet doe eyes narrowing slightly, "But of course." Nodding to the Jedi, who chose to remain silent, Judas respected his choice. "This way, gentlemen."
Avrael was tall enough, though slightly shorter than his companion and a good foot below their lithe host: so it was that, when Judas extracted a white gem on a fine silver chain from beneath his turtle-neck, the bald monk was trapped in the shadow of Judas' shoulder and their silent third party. This was no great trouble to navigation through the Sanctum, but it did leave Avrael guessing half the time, and unable to appreciate a majority of the cavernous architecture positively sprawling around him. The Jedi knew this, and thought it an interesting insight to the shared past of the two; Avrael saw this for what it was; and Judas didn't particularly care what either of them thought of it, or much of anything at this point. His appreciable cold malignancy for Avrael was an unspoken, understood thing; the matter of the Jedi's presence, as in, the question of why was it here, was something else for Judas' mind to mull over.
But as for Avrael, there was no love lost between them.
"So, Judas…" he began, missing the appelation.
"So, Avrael…" the host interrupted, equally omitting title.
"However did you acquire that wonderful drinking-vessel, that hand-crafted golden chalice? Sweat of your worker's brow? Game of cards?" As he spoke the monk was lost in darkness, though if visible his eyes could be seen to never look directly at Judas. They never had, and never would.
"By the skill of my hand I crafted it; from the finest gold I crafted it, from gold I smelt in my own fires, gotten with money I earned with my own hands. As a businessmen my lowest worker made no less than five percent of what the CEO made, all with pensions written in stone and twice as strong."
"Oh really?"
"Inspect, Avrael; you have absolutely no other purpose in life."
"Oh, thank you for sucha grace. As if Judas could bestow personal worth."
"Inspect, human." There was an edge to the voice of Judas; many years of long debate had utterly hardened him to his opponent.
"Still a bigot, eh—AAAIE!" shriek promptly quieted, the old fool's body collapsed, writhed with hands at head for a second, and was still, softly breathing. A single bead of blood ran down Judas' forehead and was lost in an eyebrow. The Jedi walked on, unmoved.
It wasn't that Judas lacked patience, or the ability to remain utterly unmoved by verbal assault. But that this ancient enemy of his should be sent to inspect his sanctuary… that he should have this deceiver and corrupter within the walls of his own home…! There was a time when he tried to reason with the unreasonable; a time when he ran from the riot; and a time when his games of mind were employed to their fullest, to avoid confrontation. But not here, not now, not with him. Not again. Like the semitic response to being forced to wear a star of David… again… Judas swallowed his passion and meeted out a Mind Blast as justly dizzying consequences.
Minutes passed, always gaining height, always ascending the stone stairways, until finally they came upon a lift: "By in large the middle two-thirds of the Sanctum are empty, unused; we now go to the upper places." The sumptuous music of silence reigned between the two; the droids were no doubt finished with moving by now, focusing instead of welding and masonry and stone-cutting. Finally the lift opened into a wide expanse: a vast vault, in the center of which sat the huge cylinder of a mighty telescope, surrounded by computer hardware, with a simple padded chair waiting patiently at the eyepiece for Judas' eventual possession: the Seat of Apothecary.
The Jedi nodded to his host, and they two made their way to one of the four utility lifts at the dome's perimeter: they lead up scaffolding to a crown-like cat walk as high as the dome itself, lit from below by four natural-gas torches burning brilliantly when the telescope wasn't in use. The two men slowly paced around its vast cirlce, the wind a thin whistle about their clothes.
"Why have you come back to Coruscant, Judas?"
"Oh come now Mace, I have become no Sith Lord—"
"I recall you were dead, Judas. Killed by something we feel was a Sith Lord."
"Never was much of a swordsman, Master Windu."
"The thing was eventually confronted and killed, Judas."
"Better than not. But why no 'Master Ferreus', Master Windu?"
"No man dies and returns unchanged. That the philosopher-Jedi I once knew has returned from death, and yet with no great Truth on his lips to show for it, surprises me. And I find an empty tower, temple to your own vanity. Smells of the demagogue. Sithly."
Silence reigned.
"I find that I am not debating any given idea or item as such, but rather the purity of my character verses reasonable suspicions that are on the whole entirely circumstantial. But convenient for me, observe that I had absolutely nothing to do with any of this evidence against me: it is not merely circumstantial, but immaterial. Tell me, did it ever strike Master Windu that perhaps I am simply observing the stars, and making a Sanctuary for any who would seek solace from the world without?"
"'A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense; never for attack.'" The simple rhyme for teaching padawans the difference between the Light and the Dark rang crisp in the night air, recalling much more than Judas' treatment of his old enemy that evening: no doubt the Jedi Master had been watching this tower ever since planetfall. Mace stopped walking, while Judas continued on in his track. Seconds passed, and once he was a few paces away, Judas turned, calling out into the darkness:
"Thus the name: 'Apothecary Sanctum'. But I do not think this philosopher, alone and quiet in his study, poses any more threat to the Temple and the Order than the Temple and the Order to itself. Mace, listen to me…" The old Master had turned to leave, but stopped, turning once again to face Judas. "What if a philosopher did return from death with the Truth on his lips, and it was that you were wrong? What of that, Master Windu? Have you ever conceived in your wildest dreams that there might be something amiss with the Code? Or may I now consider myself officially excommunicated, like so many others of so many other Ages, as the world and the Jedi march off into yet another Dark Age with the plans for their own destruction in hand?"
"It will consume you, Judas. And you will become that which first killed you, and Qui-Gon. You will become an agent of the Darkness you forebode will consume us all, and it will not be the Jedi, but you who lead the world to evil. Or, at least, you will try to."
Silence.
"Then we are at an impass, Master Windu."
"More than that, Judas. You have lost the Temple."
Turning his back on Mace, Judas whispered, more to the wind than himself or his guest: "I lost that long ago, friend. Long, long ago."
