In Need of Your Counsel
by ardavenport
Qui-Gon Jinn had not seen Ayta Magah in literally years. They were friendly acquaintances, but their lives did not intersect in either duty or personal interests.
Except for one thing.
Time, training and age had dulled those urges. At least, they had for Qui-Gon.
She stood alone in the hallway outside his room. Her lavender eyes, shadowed under the hood of her Jedi robe, asked his permission to enter.
He stepped aside. She glided over his threshold.
The door to his room hissed shut, cutting off the dim evening lighting of the hallway and sealing them into the deeper gloom of his room. Qui-Gon had been preparing to retire. He wore only his plain, long nightshirt, covering his body down past his knees.
Reaching up to the door controls, he activated the lock and the privacy indicator, his silent acknowledgment that he knew what she had come for. They would not be interrupted for anything but the direst emergency.
As soon as the yellow active light winked on, Ayta Magah threw herself on him.
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Ayta gasped. Qui-Gon had her pinned under him on the low table in his room.
"It has been a long time," he commented.
"Yes," she breathed, gulping for air. "I had not expected that we would meet this way again. But. . . . it would seem that. . . . I am in need of your counsel."
She grasped his hair, long strands of it hanging down, sometimes sweeping her face. She wrapped it around her fingers and held it to her lips. Inhaling its scent, she twirled her fingers again, bringing his face down lower to hers.
With new lines around her eyes and about her nose, he could see how much older she looked. Her light brown skin glowed pale and ghostly, the holo-window the only light in his room. His own age reflected in her eyes, but not in her expression. The passion was there; in need of his counsel, just as she had been years ago.
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Master Dooku had disdained the young girl. She had been a Padawan then. He had always preferred maturity. But he had recommended his former Padawan as being young and robust enough for her, and also in serious need of maturing as well.
Young Qui-Gon blushed when Ayta faithfully quoted his former Master. Apparently news of his unfortunate indiscretion had reached Dooku after all. Jedi only discreetly spoke of their own needs and sexuality, so it was difficult to know who knew what, unless you were making inquiries yourself.
Seated on floor cushions across from each other at the table in his room, they had already established in the interview that there was small chance of attachment between them. They had little in common and no immediate spark of attraction.
Ayta listed her previous experience and that she had her Master's permission to make her request to him. The experience of the girl, nearly six years younger than he, surprised him. But Ayta had been burdened by an excessively hormonal physiology and maturity, and the discipline of it required an outlet even more than usual for most humanoids.
His own body reacted to the recitation of her resume and Qui-Gon blushed again. Ayta apologized. This had happened before. She told him the various gestures and phrases she used to unconsciously draw his attention to her face, the curves of her body, subtly erotic motions that would heighten his own awareness of her sexuality. She had needed to estimate his own interest, and she pronounced herself suitably attracted to him.
Qui-Gon decided then that she had a great deal to teach him and accepted her proposal.
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Ayta's clothes littered the floor of Qui-Gon's room. She still retained her seductive flair for removing them, though his past familiarity with her style made the experience less of an adventure than it had been the first few times he had participated in it. That she had not altered it marked another sign of age. And even in the midst of her seduction, Ayta had paused long enough to carefully place her lightsaber in a wall recess under the holo-window.
He now lay on his floor rug, she had spread herself on top of him, the curves of her much smaller body matching his. Jedi sleep couches were narrow and meant for single occupants.
He sensed only a lull in the storm; she was hardly finished with him.
"You did not come for me," he said as he stroked her back and caressed the smooth skin on her head. Her body, though older like his own, still pleased him.
"No. I didn't," she breathed into his neck.
She pushed herself up. He glimpsed sadness in her eyes as her head emerged into the light from the holo-window over them. Then she slid down to his side.
Lying on the rug, pressed next to him, her fingers aimlessly wandered over his chest.
"You have a new Padawan." He felt her breath on his shoulder.
Obi-Wan Kenobi had been his Padawan for years, but he was new as far as she was concerned, given the time that had passed since their last coupling. That time, he recalled, had been more about her needs than his as well.
"He is a good apprentice," Qui-Gon replied. The possibility of him referring Obi-Wan to Ayta for furthering his 'maturity' sparked glaring discord in him. So recently he had separated the boy from another Padawan, Siri Tachi. The attachment between them, pure and chaste, could not be tolerated. The break had been clean, but the remaining scars on them became visible in Siri's harsh attitude and Obi-Wan's introverted silence whenever the two crossed paths.
"Not like your last one," Ayta replied.
"No."
Young Xanatos had benefited greatly from Ayta's experience. He had always been self-assured and confident of his own considerable talents, but Ayta Magah had put him in his place. Qui-Gon had rarely seen him so humbled.
"I never, ever felt such darkness in him," Ayta said, her voice low. "There was only light in our intimacy. I was so surprised by Xanatos's fall. And when he attacked the Jedi."
"Nor did I." No emotion colored his reply, the sting of Xanatos's betrayal had faded so much. Qui-Gon had more recent scars--attachments--to cover up the older ones.
Ayta's hand had strayed lower, but it was memory that ignited his reaction, not the touch of the living woman next to him. Always attentive to responses that even he might be unaware of, Ayta lifted herself up to look at him. He saw her sadness again, felt it inside himself this time. She could not possibly know what had once been, but she could see the aftermath.
Tahl.
There was not the slightest similarity between Ayta and Tahl. Any comparison tainted those few precious hours when their love had been realized. But Ayta's sensual caresses pulled him into the speculation that he had avoided for so long, about what he and Tahl might have done with their newly revealed passion.
The Jedi Code, the prohibition against attachments, had been conveniently preserved by Tahl's death on their last mission together. Suddenly, that brief, intense attachment flared in him. He seized Ayta and rolled onto her, his body completely covering hers.
Tahl and he would go for many days at a time with only formal, unemotional interactions between them. Their Padawans would have remained unaware of the any meaning behind the little signals between them, their preparations for secret trysts away from the Temple. Rooms and secret hideaways were not difficult to arrange. They would have had more than one place to go to. Hidden among the billions of other beings living on the city-planet of Coruscant, outside of the reach of even the Jedi Order, their passion would have been unrestrained, their bond would have entwined them, sinking into forbidden depths. 'Attachment' would have been a feeble description for it. He and Tahl would have explored their mutual carnal desires, but that would have been only a shallow pursuit, something to do with their bodies while they lost themselves in each other.
Ayta looked up at him in open-mouthed surprise, which quickly changed to undisguised lust. He had no idea what drove it in her, and he knew with a hard certainly that it had nothing to do with him. But for the moment their interests coincided, just as their bodies conveniently fit together.
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Qui-Gon massaged Ayta's shoulders. She lay on her stomach on his sleep couch. He sat on the edge. He had rubbed a sheen of body oil over her whole backside. The faint scent of it mingled with that of two humans absorbed with each other. He was beginning to tire her. That had never happened before.
They were both years older than they had once been.
His fingers cast long shadows over her smooth gleaming skin in the eerie light. He watched their shifting lines of blackness, accompanied by the soft sound of his hands on her. Her muscles were soft and pliant when he applied pressure. His holo-window was set to an image of a night sky, blazing with stars and dominated by a huge blue gas giant, its light reflected on darkened, forested hills below. The light of the planet varied throughout the night and the subtle changes now fascinated his weary mind.
He had told Ayta about Tahl, his head cradled in her lap. She had stroked his hair while he spoke. The narrow sleep couch was difficult for two people together, but they had managed. Ayta liked petting hair. It excited her, but she said that she was glad that she did not have any of her own or the problems of cleaning and maintaining it.
She asked no questions about Tahl. Ayta had never met her. But Qui-Gon sensed that sadness in his companion again.
"Master Blini referred his Padawan to me," she said, her voice loud in the quiet room.
"You instructed him." There was no need for him to say what she had taught him.
Her responding sigh exhaled pure longing.
"He is so beautiful, Qui-Gon. Larger than you, and more like Master Windu in body." She turned over. "His hair is thick and full and when I sink my hands into it my whole body tingles with pleasure." She went on in considerable detail, probably more than she should have. There was no reason for him to even know the name of the young man she gloried in. After so many years of so many partners she had fallen for this one, her discipline melted by her desire.
"And his feelings?" he finally asked. He laid his palm on her stomach; her muscles had tightened. Her head fell back on the sleep couch, the tension, the anticipation left her.
"He is blissfully unaware of the depths of my wanting. He even thinks he learned something. That is the only thing that saves me. I vowed to never see him again and his Master has given me his forgiveness. But Ornin is young and tender and insecure. He does need instruction. But not from me, and that foolish, beautiful boy is convinced he has given some offense. Done something horribly wrong." Ayta's head rolled from side to side. "Only my personal assurance will relieve him of this delusion. We will meet tomorrow. With Master Blini, of course."
"You wish to dull your passion for him by sating yourself on me, before the meeting," Qui-Gon concluded.
Turning toward him, her face went from eerie highlights to shadow. He sensed her lust smoldering anew.
"Yes," she hissed before launching herself at him again.
He caught her easily.
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Ayta Magah sat cross-legged on a floor cushion, meditating while gray cleaning droids mindlessly went about their business around her. Their small boxy shapes quietly hummed over the floor, the table, the other floor cushion, the rug, the sleep couch, the walls. Qui-Gon finished feeding her tunic into the clothes refresher.
They had both washed and tended their various bruises and abrasions in the fresher. Qui-Gon was already dressed. When her clothes were cleaned, she would dress and the droids would finish with the cushion and the area of floor she now occupied.
When they were done, nothing, no residue, no scent, on displaced furnishings would remain of their interlude. His room would be simply his room once again.
His mind blank, he stared down at the machine's activity lights. They had not gotten any meaningful sleep that night. After first meal he would return to his sleep couch instead of training and going to the Archives. His body needed rest and he had no reason to deny it.
Ayta's hand reached down into his field of view. The activity lights on the clothes fresher were all green.
"You do look tired. Your Padawan will ask about it," she commented as she slipped into her underclothes.
Qui-Gon folded his arms before him. "He is free to ask."
She smiled, looking far more at peace than she had when she had stood in his doorway. More at peace than he felt.
"You look well. . . . prepared for your meeting today."
"Yes, thank you, I am." She adjusted her tunic. Then a bit of sadness returned to her eyes, violet again in the overhead lighting. The holo-window was blank, only a slightly more plain shade beige than the walls. She stepped toward him and tenderly laid her hand on his cheek.
"My passion would destroy Ornin. I know it now, deep inside me. He is young and changing; I am not. In a few years, he will be a new person. I could never say what the Force will lead him to be, but I cannot be part of it."
She touched his arm. Her fingers slid into his sleeves and gently pulled his arms apart. She raised his hands and touched her lips to them.
"Your love for Tahl would have led you to ruin, Qui-Gon. But you would have gone there together. My desires are so small compared to something so great. You easily might have been named among the Lost to the Order. But you would have been lost together."
He bowed his head over her.
"I know."
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Qui-Gon stood on the walkway overlooking the great hall. It was past midday but it felt earlier to him. He had slept heavily most of the morning and missed the second meal of the day.
Below and on the far side of the open floor, two men in Jedi robes waited, their arms folded together before them.
Ornin certainly was a handsome specimen. He had broad shoulders and a full head of rich, dark hair, much longer than was customary for many human Padawans, even a senior one. A very long braid hung halfway down his chest.
A single figure in a very ordinary brown robe crossed the floor toward them. They properly bowed to each other in greeting. Ayta Magah was more than a head shorter than either Ornin or Master Blini. They began to walk together, apparently conversing amiably, Ayta between the two larger men.
Qui-Gon sighed and stepped away from the side of the walkway, moving on, alone.
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(This story was first posted on tf.n: 23-Dec-2006)
Disclaimer: All characters and situations belong to George and Lucasfilm; I'm just playing in their sandbox.