Chapter 9

"I think that's a job for the owner-operator." Drre nodded toward the front of the store, topknot of hair waving as her head moved. Valia followed the direction of her server's look. She was being teased, because there was Qui-Gon. She grabbed a tray and waved Drre off with a sardonic smile.

She studied him from behind the counter. He looked tired. He looked like he had a headache. Here was the picture of a man who could use a pick-me-up, or encouragement or...something. An oddly powerful nurturing impulse welled up in her. This was a new feeling toward him, but one she could at least act on. She began putting things together on the tray. He might not want to talk today, but that was fine, she supposed. Maybe that would help sink this crush she had on him. She'd just have to watch her thoughts around him. If she was tempted to think physically arousing images of him, she'd just make herself think about something else. Like the very unsexy dispute she was having with the manufacturer who'd supposedly repaired one of her stasis units. And she had something she wanted to ask him about.

The weather had abruptly cooled down. It was as regulated on Coruscant as possible, but nature still feebly gasped now and then. She poured two mugfuls of a hot spiced juice mix that was always a big seller when it got chilly. She headed out with her tray.

Qui-Gon's scowl softened when he saw her coming. She stopped next to him and gave him an exaggerated cautious look. "Do you want to talk about it, or should I take a flying leap off the next building?"

He answered with a dry chuckle. "Is it that obvious?"

"Everyone else was terrified to wait on you," she teased. "So they threw me out here."

Qui-Gon gestured toward a chair. "Please."

Valia set down the tray and took a seat. She pushed a mug toward him. "Here. Try some of this. And then you can tell me what's bothering you."

Qui-Gon absently took the offered mug and gazed off at some mysterious point in space.

"Or not," she said when he remained silent. He smiled at her and lifted the mug to drink. He admired her through the drifting steam over its rim. She was dressed in an almost black shade of purple. Those tempting wisps of hair were drifting against her neck again. He wrenched his eyes away from her breasts and sighed. How could he possibly tell her that she herself was part of the trouble? Yet he felt better already just being near her. He warmed his hands on the mug. She sat calmly next to him, peeling and slicing a thick-skinned blue fruit.

"It's Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon began with the air of a man uncomfortable discussing his student with a non-Jedi. With anyone.

"Is he sick? Is there something wrong with him?"

"No. Not physically. He's..." he trailed off.

"Getting an attitude?" Valia supplied helpfully, taking a guess. She had a suspicion what the problem was.

"That would be a good way to put it, yes."

Valia raised her eyes to look at him. "He's not peeved about that melon-juggling thing, is he?"

"No, I don't think so." He and Qui-Gon had had another seething, silent argument about something completely trivial. Qui-Gon hadn't seen him since he'd stalked away afterward, which had been yesterday.

"How old is he?" Valia asked after his brief sketch.

"He'll be eighteen in a few weeks."

Valia laid down her small vibro-blade and pushed a plateful of sliced fruit toward him. She took a fortifying sip out of her own mug. "Well," she said, trying to think of what to say to him. "I have no experience raising teenaged boys whatsoever. With the possible exception of my good friend Ravi." This got another smile out of Qui-Gon. "Maybe he's just going through another phase of that typical teen-age angst. It's usually a hard age for anyone. Is he your first padawan?"

"No, he's the third."

Valia raised her eyebrows. "How did your first two turn out?"

"The first was a success. The second..." A look of pain flicked across his expressive features and then was gone. "Well, let's just say the outcome wasn't what I'd hoped. We had a terrible falling out."

All right, thought Valia. We won't go there. But I wonder if he worries he's going to relive whatever happened.

"I get the feeling that you and Obi-Wan are very close. Am I right in guessing you're much closer to him than the other two?"

Affection softened the Jedi Master's face. "Yes. You're right."

"Well, some famous philosopher, I forget who, said we hurt the ones we love the most. It doesn't make any sense, but it seems to be true. Maybe that's what's going on." She picked up a piece of fruit and flicked a seed from it. "He's very protective of you." Trying to protect you from me, she thought.

His eyebrows went up and his forehead wrinkled. "I would think it's more the other way around."

"Oh, I think it goes both ways with you two. And maybe he's threatened by anything that would come between you." Or anyone. Out of the Jedi master and apprentice pairs she'd seen, none seemed more like father and son than this one. She popped the slice of fruit in her mouth and munched. Then she proceeded to tell him several anecdotal and funny stories about her brothers and cousins when they had been seventeen or so, and the parental agony they had caused. And how it had been resolved. When she finished, he was smiling broadly.

"Why haven't you been to your homeworld for so long, Lia?" he asked after a pause.

"Because I am home," she quickly returned. The look Qui-Gon gave her said he'd patiently wait for her to elaborate the real reason.

"Well, I have no reason to go back to Nyme'. And not much time to be away from the store. I still talk to my family every now and then." She drained her mug. "My father chose my younger brother instead of me to run the farm. It's in his very capable hands. It will pass on to him when Papa is gone. My ever so fertile brother pleases my father by carrying on the Traxis dynasty."

Was that just the slightest bitter aftertaste left by her words? Qui-Gon clearly saw there were large issues here she was just now getting over. He did some mental backwards tip-toeing of his own and refrained from asking her for more details about her past for now.

"And another thing. I really don't care for space travel. It's a stupid thing really, but every time I'm on a ship about to make the jump to hyperspace, I think 'this is it. I'm going to die'. Just a silly phobia, I suppose."

Qui-Gon gave her a long, searching look. Finally he spoke. "If it helps you, my dear one, I will tell you that you need not worry you are going to die that way. You're going to live to be a hundred. You are going to be around for a very long time, my beautiful juice-slinging friend."

Valia's eyebrows arched into her bangs. She stared at him frozen in mid-chew. She wasn't sure which part of his triple-part bomb hit her with the most impact, the fact that he'd called her beautiful, that he considered her dear, or that she was going to live to be a very old woman. She finished chewing and swallowed. She nearly laughed at his pronouncement. "Well," she managed. "How do you happen to know that?" Then she remembered she was talking to a Jedi Master.

Qui-Gon Jinn shrugged under his dark robe. "I just...do." Every once in a while he was gifted with a glimpse into the future. These glimpses came at odd times. Then he was the one to look away from her eyes, as if embarrassed to have revealed too much of his thoughts.

Valia smiled at him. She was enjoying this unprecedented display of vulnerability in him. But there had been a touch of sadness in his eyes. She was rocked by her own wave of protectiveness for him. And an urge to change the subject. She remembered the unusual object tucked in a pocket of her blouse. She pulled out the knotted blade of grass. It was drying but still green.

"You know," she said, turning it over in her fingers, "I've gotten some really interesting tips from customers over the years. Some of them weren't so nice. Not nearly as nice as this. You wouldn't happen to know who might have left this one, would you?" She showed him the long blade of grass with the intricately woven knot in the center. It was a small work of art. She'd found it on their table after he and Obi-Wan had last visited.

He smiled as he looked at it. "Perhaps it just fell out of that tree."

"Perhaps one of you two has very nimble fingers."

"Perhaps."

Valia held his eyes captive for several heartbeats with her own. Those incredibly beautiful, upswept eyes, above matching cheekbones.

"I confess. I left it."

"You made this?"

'Yes."

She marveled at the neat, flat knot, amazed that his large hands had fashioned such a thing. "How did you do this?" she asked, trying to trace the pattern.

He leaned forward on the table, smiling. "Ancient Jedi secret."

She smirked at him.

"It's sometimes used as a teaching exercise in patience, or a meditative tool. But something just told me you would appreciate it for its own sake."

She leaned her face against one hand and turned it over, examining it closely. She did find herself outrageously charmed by his small gift. She flashed him another smile, then dropped her eyes. She squashed the urge to run. She also fought the urge to let herself read anything into this.

"I...well, yes. I do. Thank you." She wondered what there might be that he still needed to summon reserves of patience for. Probably Obi-Wan was enough.

There was almost nothing in Qui-Gon Jinn's life that was soft, warm or pretty. He didn't wish for any other life than the one he'd always known as a Jedi. That was the way it was destined to be. But he did know enough to appreciate and savor small pleasures when he encountered them, without ever letting them rule his life. If this was the closest he would ever get to this woman, it would have to be enough. He told himself he should not dare to hope for more. He reached out and took her hand with both of his. "Thank you," he said softly, giving it a brief squeeze. He rose from the table.

"You're...you're welcome. But what did I do?" Valia's hand felt like it was shimmering.

"You listened."

"I think I exercised my jaws more than my ears."

He looked fondly down at her. "You took the time to be kind and try to help."

She waved a hand as if it was nothing. "I can't believe kindness has become such a rare commodity."

Qui-Gon wondered at her character, how it was that ten years on Coruscant hadn't made her crusty, paranoid or completely decadent. I wish kindness really were as abundant as you see it, he thought. It isn't. He nodded his head northward. "There are those even in the Jedi temple who probably wouldn't have bothered to hear out an old knight and his concerns."

"Oh, get out of town! You're not old," she blurted immediately and truthfully. Did he really feel that way or had he just been using an idle form of speech? She'd revised her opinion of his age after the first time she'd seen him at saber practice. There had been absolutely nothing old about what she'd seen. And there was nothing old about the ageless, youthful glint that was in his eyes most of the time. As soon as she conjured images from those sweaty, bare-chested workouts, she caught herself. She remembered she wasn't going to think about that. He was giving her that searching look again. Too late. All right, she thought. She looked straight into his eyes, thinking I've seen you with half your clothes off, and I really liked what I saw. His eyebrows quirked. A small sideways smile pulled at his mouth. "And you flatter me, Miss Traxis."

Valia could only return a creeping smile of her own, and helplessly roll her eyes. Did he refer to her thoughts or her words? She could feel herself starting to blush. She'd really been having a problem with that the last few months. She rose from the table, busying herself clearing it to keep her eyes lowered. "Well, I think things will work out between you and Obi-Wan. I'm sure you two will kiss and make up soon enough."

Qui-Gon snorted at her choice of wording at the same time she regretted it. Who was reading whose mind now? The thought of kissing her had occurred to him just earlier. And countless other times.

"Just a figure of speech, Master Jinn," she said coyly, and slowly returned to the counter. She watched him stride away with a considerably lighter step than when he'd arrived. She picked up the grass knot from the tray and looked at it again. She finally noticed Ravi sitting at the counter. He looked questioningly at the object in her fingers.

"Is that what they study over there?" he nodded his head in the direction of the temple. "Basketweaving?"

For once Valia didn't have a smart-ass retort for her young friend. She merely gave him a sour look and carefully pocketed the knot.