Title: Forbidden Fruit

Author: Sleepwalker

Time: About 7 years before TPM/Episode I

Summary: Qui-Gon Jinn and the 'girl next door' fall for each other. His apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, is a less-than-thrilled bystander.

Pairings: Q/f

Rating: M

Originally written from 6/99 to 4/00

Disclaimer: All characters and settings from SW and TPM are the property and product of the imagination of George Lucas. A bit of borrowing from Jude Watson's Jedi Apprentice series was also done. No profit of any kind was gained from this work. Well, I lie: new friendships were made as a result of my getting up the nerve to first post this thing in early 2000. That's worth more than all the money in the world. This is the first fan fic I ever wrote. It's a bit corny in spots, mushy in others, but it wouldn't rest until I'd typed it all out. Hope you enjoy. As with all fics, please do not reproduce or post on other sites without permission from the author.

Chapter1

Valia Traxis examined the edge of the blade of the good old-fashioned cleaver. She'd just sharpened it, so she knew it was keen. Perhaps she wanted to point out the fact that she held a potentially dangerous object in her hand to the large, meaty and unfortunately fellow human leaning on the other side of the counter, closely watching her. Anything to make him go away, without resorting to violence.

"Let the droid do that, sweet cheeks, and sit down with me for a while."

She bit down on a spurt of rage. Rage at being called 'sweet cheeks' by the rat-faced man, and at being told what to do with her time. It echoed a restaurant owner friend's words to her that very morning, about delegating such low-tech 'grunt work' to the machinery.

Not when it was so satisfying, as it was right now. Not when she knew she could do a better job than one of her small droids, and not when she owned this exotic fruit and juice bar and called the shots.

Thock! The blade severed the stem end of a long dark purple melon from Ord Mantell.

"I enjoy cutting them myself." She threw him a quick pointed glance, then looked back down at her work. "I'm very busy right now and I don't have time to while away with you now." Or ever.

"You had time last week," the obnoxious man said in what he probably hoped was a sweetly convincing tone. Valia cursed herself for ever having spent part of an evening with him at that antigravity dance club. What in the Core Worlds had she been thinking? One date and he thought he owned her. He'd been charming enough at first, but this possessiveness was taking on a sinister tone lately. The more she'd put him off in the week since that evening, the more tough or cold she tried to act, the more it seemed to turn him on. She'd been hit on so many times and rebuffed so many men like this in the ten years she'd lived in Galactic City that it was second nature to her to come up with ways to defend and escape. It seriously bothered her that she was now unable to safely turn this one away.

Whock! She swung the cleaver with unnecessary force. The blossom end of the melon went flying. Purple juice flew. The blade sank satisfyingly into the semi-resistant surface of the cutting board. The split in it healed itself as soon as she withdrew the blade from it. The man leered at her, apparently finding stimulation in her display of carving. "I love watching you work, " he said his gaze lingering on her breasts. " I like knives, too. I've got a personal collection from all over the galaxy I could show you sometime," he bragged.

Valia looked at the fruit she was preparing and noticed its resemblance to the male human sexual appendage. Fervently wishing it was the one belonging to the man in front of her, she savagely split the melon lengthwise. Whop!

He'd picked his time well to bother her. He'd waited until the early afternoon crowd had dwindled to nearly nothing and he'd seen her alone at the semi-outdoor bar. All her University friends weren't here now. Drre was busy back in the walk-in cooler. She glanced around at the outdoor tables scattered near the storefront on the stone-paved plaza. One other customer to the right, his back to her, and two men in nondescript tan and brown to the left at the table near the tree in a large circular planter. For all appearances, this might be a friendly encounter between proprietress and customer and nothing was wrong. The man was going on. "You owe me at least another night out, sweetheart." His emphasis was on the words 'at least'.

Valia poked the tip of her knife into the cutting surface and clenched the handle. "I owe you nothing." She was bewildered at his line of thinking. "We had a little drink, a little dance, it was nothing more."

"Nothing more?" he sneered. "The way you were wagging it in my face, I think it was a whole lot more. Quit playing hard to get, pretty little girl and be straight with me. I want you, you want me. Why are you putting off the inevitable?"

Because that will be when Hutts fly, thought Valia, her eyes blazing. He actually reached out to stroke her cheek. She jerked her head back, breath hissing through her nostrils. She nearly took a swipe at him with her knife, but controlled her hands. That was the type of thing that happened in lower parts of the City or in an alcohol or stimulant bar, she thought in dismay. Not here. Maybe he wants me to hurt him. Maybe he gets turned on by pain. Maybe he wants my store and this is how he's planning to make me lose it. She continued to work, trying to maintain outward calm, removing the bitter, thorny projections from the melon she knew the kitchen droid would miss half of. Logic, sarcasm, attitude, and ignoring him had not worked to get rid of him. She thought of the blaster mounted on the wall in the back of the store. She thought of the commlink in her pocket that would connect her to the police. Her would-be lover had done nothing to warrant using either. Even if he left her alone now, he might find her later...

Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn glanced over at the counter yet again. His padawan Obi -Wan Kenobi followed his master's eyes, breaking off his conversation. The diminutive young woman working behind the counter was really giving the business to something with a cleaver. Her pale ash-blonde thick braid swung as she brought it down. Her face was calm. Almost. Her eyes looked as though she could do murder. He'd heard snatches of low conversation from here and it was clear she wanted the persistent man leaning in front of her to be gone. Obi-Wan wondered if he was criminally stupid, harassing a woman wielding a knife like that or just supremely confident she'd never hurt him.

"Forgive me, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon said, swinging his attention back to his apprentice. "What were you saying?" They were both becoming distracted by the discordant encounter. They could almost feel more than they could hear it.

"What did the Council decide to do about the genocide rumors on Concord Dawn?"

Qui-Gon answered him, while keeping a surreptitious ear toward the bar. He wouldn't be disrespectful to his young student again by letting his eyes wander. He could picture the woman in his mind. They'd noticed her on each of the previous visits to the fruit bar. She appeared to be in charge of the place. She moved with a quiet efficiency, but was quick with a good-natured musical laugh with the other employees and nearly every customer. He'd given her a cursory appraisal from a distance. Cute was the word that had come to his mind. She was small and trim. She wore practical, simple clothing, none of the elaborate flowing gowns most Coruscanti women wore these days. Juices in a rainbow of colors spattered a white apron, which concealed most of the front of her. Her hair was almost a white-blonde, and sensibly pulled back and up. Fine cheekbones and jawline. Upper lip thin and chiseled above a full lower one. Small, aristocratic nose. All this noted and filed dispassionately. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had already traveled enough in their few years together to have seen a jadingly huge number of beautiful women, human and otherwise. The two of them had been approached with offers by royalty and courtesans, propositioned by prostitutes and seen a galaxy of everything in between. These were not temptations to distract a Jedi, but simply a part of the colorful mosaic of real life Qui-Gon hoped to teach his padawan about.

"I told you already, I'm all out of those! They've had a fungus outbreak on Alderaan and the crop was ruined. There won't be any neowallams until next season." The conversation at the counter intruded again.

"Well, that may be," said the man greasily. "But I'm looking at something a whole lot tastier right now anyway."

Whock! Purple droplets spattered. "For once and for all, please just go away, Yersinn. I told you I don't want to see you ever again."

There was a pause, followed by a lengthy soft reply from the rat-faced man that was laced with enough half-heard painfully descriptive obscenities to make both Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan gape at each other and then up toward the counter. The woman had stopped her angry chopping and was staring at the man, her face a study in shocked intimidation.

Qui-Gon met Obi-Wan's eyes across the table and gestured toward the counter with his head. They both silently left their chairs and slipped to the bar. Obi-Wan casually sidled to the counter at the man's immediate right and leaned his elbow on it. Yersinn's head jerked in annoyance as he caught sight of the young man choosing this spot over the entire length of the bar to stand. Obi-Wan bobbed his eyebrows and head in a friendly casual greeting. Qui-Gon loomed silently, yet unnoticed to his left.

"She really is all out of neowallams. We asked earlier. We just got back from Alderaan, as a matter of fact," Obi-Wan fibbed easily. "Terrible. Just terrible." He wore an expression of blithe friendliness on his smooth face, but his eyes were sharp.

"What would you know about it?" Yersinn's voice had gone from oil to sludge. "Beat it, kid," he said dismissively, staying planted at the counter. He suddenly sensed another presence, and turned belligerently, fists already clenching and starting to swing at any more obnoxious intrusions on his courting. The other man he saw had only a handful of centimeters height advantage on him, but there was just enough of an angry glower in Qui-Gon's return stare to put a sudden chill in the pit of his stomach and make him take stock of this new situation. His hands and forearms suddenly went numb. He turned back to the young man who was still leaning next to him, a bland look on his face. Obi-Wan shifted his stance slowly, just so the hilt of the lightsaber hanging at his waist was revealed. Jedi. The chill turned into a deep freeze.

Qui-Gon nodded almost imperceptibly at Obi-Wan over Yersinn's head.

"This place has nothing you need or want. You'd do well to never come here again." Obi-Wan drifted a hand across the space between himself and Yersinn, speaking in the smooth modulated tones as taught to him by his master. "You'll leave her alone." Yersinn stared back at him, slack-jawed. He pushed himself away from the counter and moved off across the plaza, rubbing his hands, without a backward look. Obi-Wan glanced at his master for approval. Qui-Gon nodded.

Valia had watched the entire incident a half-meter from her with a death-grip on the handle of her knife and the commlink clutched in the other. She exhaled and let go slowly, laying both down on the counter. So they were Jedi. She'd suspected from their dress; master and apprentice, apparently. She recalled seeing these two here before. She saw quite a number of Jedi at her business, as the Temple was an easy walk north of here. She knew people who were openly afraid of them, and she couldn't understand why. She liked them as customers. They were unfailingly polite, they paid their tabs, and didn't trash the tables. What was there to be afraid of? Yet she'd never seen anything quite like this. There was no denying the mystique and powerful aura that surrounded them. But they were supposedly, from all she'd heard since childhood, on the side of justice and good. They'd just been blessed with keys to the all-pervasive "Force", unlike most other creatures. Being near them was no big deal.

No big deal...her musing echoed as her eyes went from the younger to the older man, then traveled slowly up his big frame to his face. He was so...large. She inexplicably thought of violet-blue seas of water and long green grass. She was suddenly reminded of a king in a long-forgotten childhood fairy tale as she took in his noble features and long hair. Brown, just beginning to be streaked with silver. A little more frost in his beard. She imagined some ancient ancestor of his standing on the deck of a ship, the kind of ship that sailed on the watery surfaces of other far-off worlds, that hair flying, those broad shoulders carving the wind...

Now where had she come up with that? A minute ago she was being verbally harassed, and the next she was fancifully daydreaming. The Jedi warrior/ king/sailor spoke.

"Did he threaten you?" he asked her. His voice was deep and soft, tinged with an unidentifiable accent.

"You could say that," Valia shot back, her eyes having dropped back down to her pile of purple melons. Was he joking? No, there had been no joke within light-years of that stern face. "Please, don't make me repeat what he said." She wondered how it was possible to feel so violated by mere words and ideas.

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, turned his head and held up his hands, palms out toward her in a gesture that said 'I wouldn't dream of it'. "We heard enough to get the idea," Obi-Wan added.

"Does he know where you live?" came the next query from the older, taller man.

"I...I never...he probably...he isn't my...no, I don't think so." She hadn't been insane enough to give that information away. Unless he'd followed her before. She hoped not. Why was she having trouble answering this man's questions? She'd done nothing wrong, but his unspoken demand for the complete truth was making her feel put on the spot.

"Did he hurt you?" he asked this question more softly still, in a voice that felt to Valia like a soothing brush of silk.

"No, no..."

Well...on second thought, yes. But not so anyone could see. But she got the distinct impression that this man could and did see. That penetrating gaze seemed to go right through her. She nervously looked up at him again.

Blue, she thought numbly. His eyes are blue. They were so deep-set and shadowed she'd never really seen them until now. Until he was standing right in front of her. She looked into them just long enough to take note of the fine creases fanning out from them, and the concerned smile in them, then dropped her own. All through this conversation Valia had sensed a strange...closing in of their presences. They were much closer to her now than on the other side of the counter. They were in her head! She had the eerie sensation of her mind being explored, politely, but explored nonetheless by the master and to a lesser extent, the younger student. She felt a curious questing from them. It should have been creepy, but...it wasn't. A blanket-like peace enveloped her. No one was going to hurt her now. The message was almost as clear as if it were spoken aloud. She felt and obeyed a sudden urge to look straight into those blue eyes of the Jedi master. It was as if one gentle finger had lifted her chin. He was looking into her eyes piercingly but kindly. His was a face that looked as though it could say more with a twitch of a finely sculpted brow than one of the blow-hards in the Senate could speak in an hour. She had time to study the masculine bone structure under the skin. His virility was as thick and potent as a fruit syrup. This, combined with the sexual overtones of the incident which had brought him here in the first place, was downright unsettling. She was held this way for perhaps four seconds when she decided it was best after all to assert herself. This was a little too intense. Don't play with my head, she thought firmly at him. Abruptly her mind was her sole territory again. She was left with a strangely bereft feeling. The tall Jedi then did indeed twitch one brow, and gave her an 'as you wish' sort of nod. He looked as if he would turn to go.

Manners! What a revolutionary concept. "Wait! Thank you," she said, addressing them both. "I really appreciate what you did." She had no idea what sort of important things they must spent their lives doing, and they'd been kind enough to help her. They both bowed to her. Valia was bemused at the idea of these two mystical men bowing to her, especially the tall, lordly one. She smiled, some self-confidence returning.

"I am Qui-Gon Jinn, and this is my apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi," he introduced them. She nodded, memorizing the names and faces as she would do with any of her customers.

"Valia Traxis. Please, let me cover your tab."

"That isn't necessary," said Qui-Gon.

"No really, it's all right. I want to, " she said, piling the pieces of fruit she'd already cut up into a bowl. She needed to be doing something, be busy, move normally.

"Isn't that bad for business, too much of that?" Obi-Wan asked her. Valia grinned at him. He was much easier to look directly at. She liked him immediately. She'd have bet every piece of her cutlery that he had a few birthdays to go before his twentieth. His face was face was smooth and boyishly cute, his eyes inquisitive and green. His hair was cropped fuzzily short. A thin braid trailed from behind his right ear and just brushed his shoulder. So young, not much more than a boy. She sensed a great, calm power in him already. What did that say about the power of his master, the man?

"Too much, yes. There are plenty of other things that are bad for my business, such as the terrible fungus outbreak you witnessed on Alderaan," she winked at him. "But this isn't one of them." She rinsed off the cutting board and knife and placed them under the sanitizing scanner. "I don't think my bottom line today will suffer."

"Do you own this place, Miss Traxis?" Qui-Gon asked.

"Yes, I do," she said proudly. She removed the cutting board and leaned it against the splashboard on the back counter. "Just call me Lia," she said, flapping one hand casually as she carefully took the knife from under the scanner with the other.

"Lia..." The sound of her nickname being tried by the big soft-spoken man was like a caress of thick velvet. Valia had never heard it sound anything like that in her life. Stupefied all over again, she nearly dropped the knife on the floor, or into her foot. She was sure he hadn't intended it to sound as intimate as it had sounded to her own ears. He just had a nice voice, that was all. That had to be it. What was with her? After everything that had happened in the last few minutes, she needed to go sit in the walk-in cooler for a while. A slow drag on her water pipe would be good, too.

Qui-Gon Jinn regarded her, startled to find himself assessing her in ways he normally didn't when meeting someone. 'Cute' had been way off the mark. She was beautiful up close. Maybe thirty years old. Hard to tell. There was a guilelessness about her that suggested she had no idea how beautiful she was, and didn't give too much thought to her appearance. As though she had the good sense to leave well enough alone. She was fresh and unpretentious, a rarity on Coruscant. He'd studied her hands after they'd sent her abuser on his way. They were long and strong looking. A nail or two was chipped, and they had been stained purple, but the skin looked soft. While Obi-Wan had kept a wary eye on her cleaver, he'd been staring fascinatedly at the sinews in the backs of her hands. He'd positively itched to reach out and cover one of them with his own, only in a gesture of comfort. It was just something he did with people, just the way he was. But instinct had warned him away from doing so. She would not have appreciated his touching her. Then she had lifted her head to look at him, revealing an arresting pair of dark gray eyes. Interest flared. They were breathtaking. She'd looked away, and he'd known a wildly irrational, selfish desire to see them again. Curiosity and need to determine whether she was really as all right as she wanted him to believe drove him to bid the gentle command: Look at me. Her eyes were tipped upward at the outer corners, almost slanted. The irises were slightly darker at the outer edges. Dusky lashes circled them. He looked beneath the surface features. Her life-force was brilliant, vivid. But there were remnants of pain, sick fear and humiliation. For the second time, he had to quell the same dangerous fury. He would never get over the senselessness of abuse of any kind. But what really disturbed him was the personal way he was responding to this trivial incident. He was astonished at the surge of protectiveness she was rousing in him. But her life was not his affair. He and Obi-Wan had simply been in the right place at the right time to help her. Then her nostrils had flared and something strong and imperious in her eyes had flashed at him, reminding him that he too had overstepped his bounds, if only slightly. This was no young girl. No trampled flower. She'd be just fine; he'd thought and released her, a little sadly. He felt mildly disoriented, as though he'd spent several days in her eyes instead of several seconds.

When they finished at the counter and turned to go, Qui-Gon was convinced that this encounter would be forgotten by this time tomorrow.

Or maybe not. He was unable to pin down the vague sensation that something deep inside him was not the same as it had been before. An odd tugging pulled at him as they walked away from the fruit bar. He turned to look back. The woman called Lia was looking back at him, this time with more warmth. She was saying something to her now returned staff member. Then, predictably, she glanced downward.