SWEET CHILD OF MINE

~

Some Things In Life…

Blue silk shone as fickle candlelight flickered about her room, Judas looming tall over her wide, soft bed, watching those eyes flutter, and that serious face crease occasionally in joy so fleeting with dreams of comfort and calm, a warm house with food enough for tomorrow. Any droid that attempted to break the stillness and enter the room received a quick, static shock to his transistors: so had the dark host laid his designs.

Loosing the shadows from his handsome features, Judas reached up and clasped his shoulder-length hair back with a black circlet above his ears, then leaned fully into the relative light about the sleeping beauty, guest in his Apothecary Sanctum.

Silk sheets fluttered at the bed's edge, a forearm coming to rest at it's rim. A rich baritone voice whispered carefully and precisely into her sleeping ears, as two violet eyes flickered and danced with an ancient energy.

"What is your name, sweetheart?"

"Cath-er-ine.", came the clumsy reply, in three syllables; then "Christine.", it continued; and "Constantine." was conclusion to that matter.

With discipline of mind that had nothing to do with the Force Judas had every letter burned with infinite depth into the seat of his memory.

"Where are your parents?"

With the heartbreaking crumple of Catherine's forehead his heart fluttered and begged him never to ask her any more questions but to just let her be and not poke or prod or try for any knowledge, for what was knowledge but an endless listing of facts and what is that to a girl's sweet heart—

Then Judas swallowed hard: powerful mind, to get feedback from her consciuos like that. It was as if he had tried to pour water into a jug, only to find his cup more full than before. Shocking and surprising.

"I don't know. I've never known. Never knew them. Stop, please." She murmured. Oh that she'd not plead with him!

Of course: the problem of all hypnopaedic technique: the subconscious mind only knows two proper responses: yes and no. To the sleeping human brain, anything else is heresy. Anything else is pain. Thus Catherine.

So he advanced no more. Aiming his own high-powered perception at himself, long ago most of his delusions had been painfully burned away. That within his mortal mind there were locked doors and dark rooms beyond, he was entirely aware  --but more so, far, far more so, he had the keys, and had walked those halls; knew them well; and was at peace within. Which is several steps of impossibility removed from what that drear decimal, that horrible number, 99.99999 per cent, of all people, would ever accomplish, a point of pride he reveled in as much as suicide.

"Everything is done for its own sake, and any claim otherwise is delusion: I will stop. My darling Catherine, sleep well." She smiled sweetly, and turned over; but Judas, in the embrace of a deep melancholy, left her room for the streets.

~

Pondering as he often did why there was a Divine imperitive that it rained as often as and only upon his exit from the Sanctum, its Master careened through the avenues of Coruscant on iron-shod boots splashing violently in puddles of the fat, cascading rain. Collar turned up, he wore neither hat nor hood, stalking as it were the streets with the cold, cold rain pouring as it was through (now) black hair, streaming sourly onto the back of his gloomy trenchcoat.

In the complete darkness at this level between lonely streetlights, his eyes were useless –so Judas moved with senses other than those of sight. For warning of human presence he could detect near every aspect of their circulatory system; but for general navigation, there was his training with the Force. How incredibly useful a tool it was! Pity lessons were foregone for all but the choice, and the elite. Typically of a type of mind, mindset, and worldview (in ascending order) that he disdained as intellectual ridiculum, but which ruled so much of civilization with as serious and fanatic a grip as any. As they all were.

But then there was Catie… candle at the center of a dark cloud stretching to infinity in either direction in Time, there was Catie. For whose sake he now moved like the wind through a downpour.

Finally Judas reached the nearest taxi stop: like walking into a stadium mid-game, the alley opened up to a thousand shops, ten thousand shoppers, and ten million flourescent signs all promising happiness if you just, convenient for them, gave them your money. A pair of newlywed men making out shuffled a little to the side, unaware they were keeping a three-foot distance between themselves and the dripping and tightly-fastened trenchcoated figure, looming tall and darker than the stormclouds above. The crowds all melted around the former Jedi and his bubble in their midst, hundreds of men and women, idiots taken advantage of, pin-heads whose stupidity was put to (for once) good use by one of a vastly more powerful stature, and their ambivalence to just that equally (ab) used. The more "wise" (read: fanatic) among them probably disdained all his fellows for walking in such a strange way, in such a strange fashion, holding all those others that succumbed, just as they themselves did, to his bubble as idiots and morons. Contemplating such Judas would have laughed grimly, were it not for his intense concentration: only a small bit used for "crowd-control", more for vision (preferred the Force in this sort of situation to his natural eyes, didn't want to even see the beastly things out here), still more considering what he was to buy, but the far majority spent on who he was to buy it all for.

Finally chosen, a taxi was summoned, and slowed to receive its client. The goat-being was given orders for downtown, and a certain store particular in the favor he held for it. But, as expected, Judas was given the –shall we say, scenic route, and was not only able to sample the "flavor" of various regions of Galactic City even he was not foolish enough to try and purge. To this end, as they pulled up to the humble storefront at the close of a half-hour, Judas paid rather for the five-minute cab-ride the meter would display were it not for the dishonesty of its gruesome captain. Finding his door locked, he telekinetically forced the lock and waved open his door; upon the protests of the goat being, Judas, with back-turned, commanded he just drive; so drive he did, straight into a telephone pole. But what with a low-velocity impact, the goat-fellow got out entirely unhurt but very pissed at the transit system's incapacity to fix potholes and place communications arrays. Judas' lips curled at the disgusting, corrupt, and wickedly stupid alien: worse than human. That which is easy for him to deceive has only itself to blame, and none other.

He entered the place, quickly closing its glossy wooden door with fine brass handle: an outlet of Corellian Silk and Leather, he once owned and governed thousands of stores like these spread all across the Inner Core. And once upon a time, he would've never allowed the hire of this female that now approached: one would think she had never seen nor looked at anything in this entire store, to be wearing such tramp outfit. But his successor was as good as could be had: another philosopher-Jedi-monk was simply not to be had! Hoping to Homer's ho theos that she was not the manager, and that as a saleslady would leave him alone, but without impetus enough to paw her mind (being slimy and vulgar to the touch), Judas walked in the general direction of that which he had been considering for Catherine Christine Constantine. But his lady's antithesis approached undaunted by the fire in his eyes: she did not look into them. Not, she dared not, but rather, simply did not.

Seeing the shimmering sable cowgirl-esque leather jacket, but simultaneously wishing some man of substance (who was also very handsome and good in bed) would buy it for her and entirely missing the, to you and I, utterly hysterical look on Judas' face, this silly girl opened her mouth. "Oooh, good choice. Your girlfriend will love it. Now, you obviously have good taste; so why not see these over here?" That she ended every single clause with a ridiculous emphasis was just one more nail in a coffin riffe already with them.

Utterly controlled, lips in an entirely straight line, eyes intense but focused on the jacket's brass clasps, "Daughter."

It was as if those two syllables rang like the clanger of a bell within an empty skull. Slight pause afterward, before "Uh-huh, riiight. Daughter—you!" She hit him on the arm. "You just don't want other people to know you're buying things for a fuck buddy who's barely eighteen! You old cradle-robber, don't look at me like that, I know this business, part'ner!" Mockery of a country-girl accent, based on the style of the jacket in his arms. How obscene. But what was worse was yet to come; for, just as he considered being indecent and asking "What makes you think I give a fuck what you think", she smiled and said

"You dirty old man, I know you!"

This was too much. He burst out laughing with a wide smile genuine as a bar of solid gold.

"Of course you do, honny! Of course you do. You've learned my secret, dearie." He sighed heavily. "Well dammit now that I haven't fooled you we might as well be honest. I don't know… these clothes, really, but she's really into 'em. A petite girl for her age…"

All the while this nameless saleswoman had a sickeningly wide smile on her face (as in, you look at it, and in its utter indifference to the anatomy of the human face it yet stretched to absurdity in four directions), nodding and firing off semiautomatic 50-caliber rounds of "Uh-huh uh-huh-uh-huh."

"…but as I'm a jealous sumbitch and can't have ladies like you catching on to my game—"

"Something less revealing?" It was a profitable venture for her: sales was her talent, and damn good she had one. Judas was fully aware that he simultaneously admired her talent and utterly disdained the quality of her character. "Oh, we do so well with that kind of style; I dunno but if that's your thing, then cool an all, but I dunno I guess the top dudes of this place—" here her face contourted in a gruesome warping of features designed to communicate displeasure in no uncertain terms, "—I mean, they pay me like well an all, but talk about a buncha prudes! Anyway my man…" she laid a nail-bitten hand on his forearm, "…that's just the thing for the season. You know, the 'winter' look is like totally in, even during the summer well that's a stretch well the autumn, y'know, early autumn and spring y'know. So--!"

But a garrulous little girl's oral tangents aside, after about eight hours of shopping and hiring a Quasimoto-looking baggage man (who, in point of fact, hauled less cargo than his employer), Judas hailed another cab, and made his way back home with a week's worth of clothes for his de facto adopted daughter –but as yet his powerful introspection had not considered his reactions to nor feelings for Catherine.

Some things in life are too holy.