PRETENSE

by ardavenport

"Ah ha! I smell good fortune!" Wofaga bustled through the dark, narrow hallways to the back pantry of the boarding house. Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi followed. Their guide rounded the sturdy, round table and chairs that took up almost half of the small room.

"I won't be a moment," Wofaga called back to them as his green cape and pale, blue head tails disappeared through the swinging door at the opposite end of the room. Obi-Wan looked about. The room was floor-to-ceiling with dark brown cupboards and shelves stacked with supplies in sacks and jars and boxes. A neglected droid didn't even look up at them from its alcove in one corner and only a hint of natural light shone down from the tiny, narrow window that mostly only showed the side of the next building less than 2 meters away. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so and yellowed light panels in the room's high ceiling dispelled some of the gloom. The aroma of dinner from the kitchen beyond welcomed them.

Obi-Wan's stomach growled.

He cleared his throat and folded his arms, his hand disappearing into the wide, opposite sleeves of his brown robe. Qui-Gon's mouth curled in a hint of a smile, but he didn't say anything about his young apprentice's lack of control. Neither one of them had eaten anything substantial since rising many hours ago. Every time they'd started to pause for a meal, something new had come up to take them elsewhere. The day-season of this polar city made "morning" and "evening" into virtual concepts. Technology and artificial lighting should have rendered this time of perpetual daylight into a simple curiosity. But the natives of this city took the seasonal lack of a natural day and night as a cue to not maintain any daily schedule at all. Half their time had been wasted in just looking for people who were out shopping or eating or sleeping or partying or doing just about anything other than their appointed jobs. Qui-Gon wondered how this city managed to function at all, but it obviously did.

Boisterous voices and some banging noises came from the kitchen door. Qui-Gon Jinn removed his long, dark robe, hung it over the back of one of the chairs and sat down. Obi-Wan did the same. Neither one spoke while they both gratefully settled into the silence. They'd only been introduced to Wofaga two days ago and the Twi'lek had talked every waking second of that time. It did seem to be true, about what Councilor Ikot had said; Wofaga knew everything about everyone. But getting information from Wofaga was something like looking for a gold ring in a garbage heap; you had to sift through all the gossip to find anything useful. Not even using the Force worked to focus the Twi'lek's mind on their immediate business; underneath all his flippant and carefree manners, Wofaga was far from weak-willed.

Footsteps approached and the kitchen door banged open. Wofaga returned. His dark eyes alight, he bore a wide grin on his pale face and a tray laden with food.

"And these are just the appetizers." Their host praised the skill of the boarding house's cook, Voreedi, while he laid out plates, cups and napkins for his guests. Qui-Gon partook only sparingly of the flavored nuts, cakes and jellied fruit while Obi-Wan, with his teenager's metabolism, helped himself more generously.

"I had the droid fix up the spare room in my suite for you, and I'm sure Someruned will have returned by the time we eat and rest up." Obi-Wan glanced at his Master and then at the sad droid in its corner. This was the first time that they'd heard that they were actually going to be staying with Wofaga. Obviously there had to be more than one droid in the house. Qui-Gon sighed and patiently tried to extract some information about what their new accommodations were. Over three more courses of the meal that their host ferried in from the kitchen, they learned that Wofaga's downshaft neighbor was a flatulent Vreen with too many relatives, Councilor Ikot's husband was cheating on her, the fruit sellers on the central city boulevard had formed a syndicate to corner the market in rare metals, a newly imported plant fungus could be killed with native Rulmat root extracts and tattooing Twi'lek head tails might be coming back into fashion and it might possibly replace tail extensions which were a repulsive trend that never should have been started.. Obi-Wan just ate and managed to have his mouth full whenever Wofaga tried to draw him into the conversation. They'd found that more people talking gave Wofaga more opportunities to go off on yet another tangent.

A bumping and a clatter came from the kitchen. Wofaga leapt up.

"Oh, I forgot the dessert!" Before he could reach the door, it swung open. A male human (presumably the much bragged-about cook, Voreedi) with short, graying hair and beard pushed through with another tray.

"Wofaga, you flitterjit, you expect me to wait around while you—."

He froze. He was as tall as Qui-Gon, broader in the chest and shoulders, and he wore food-stained blue coveralls and soft boots. Obi-Wan felt a chill in the Force when he looked at the man's eyes. Fear, anger, dread, contempt. And aimed right at the two Jedi. Obi-Wan stiffened from the raw emotion that he felt coming off of the man. His hand twitched to the lightsaber on his belt. But instantly he knew that this was the wrong response and he pulled his hand back. He did not know what was happening, but this was not a hostile situation.

The tray crashed to the floor. Sweet, gooey sauce and pastries splattered on the floor; plastic bowls and utensils bounced away, spreading the mess further. The man turned and fled, the door swinging shut behind him.

For the first time in two days Wofaga was speechless. He just stared after the spectacle, confused and clutching the sleeves of his tailored, green suit. Qui-Gon had looked equally surprised when the cook had first appeared, but now Obi-Wan saw his mentor's expression change.

"Master?" he asked when Qui-Gon suddenly rose and swiftly went to the kitchen door.

"Stay, Padawan."

"But–"

"STAY." Qui-Gon commanded. Obi-Wan obeyed.

"Well," Wofaga finally managed. They both stayed.

The kitchen was a mess. Qui-Gon didn't think it had anything to do with the current confrontation. Voreedi was obviously an untidy cook. He sat at a small, central table, his back to the Jedi. Qui-Gon stepped into the room, away from the door, but not too close to Voreedi. He straightened, folding his arms before him, hands tucked into the wide, opposing sleeves of his rough tunic.

The cook picked at the scarred and cracked surface of the table. The chair creaked when he shifted his weight. Qui-Gon waited and watched, feeling more and more certain about what he sensed.

Looking down, Voreedi thought he should clean the table top, but that would mean getting up and going around the Jedi to get what he needed from the pantry. He finally turned his head just enough so he could see Qui-Gon in his peripheral vision. The Jedi hadn't moved a millimeter. He sighed, accepting that he couldn't possibly win a waiting game.

"You see into my mind, Jedi? Tell what I'm thinking?"

"You surrendered a child to the Temple," the Jedi Master stated.

Voreedi grunted. "I guess you Jedi are as sharp as you say you are. I suppose that's good."

Voreedi kept his back to Qui-Gon and fought back the tears. All those years ago and it still hurt that much. Or maybe it was just the surprise, to turn around and find them in his own pantry. Or maybe it was the kid. His throat tightened. He knew he couldn't speak without sounding hysterical. Voreedi didn't feel hysterical, but he refused to look that way, and especially not in front of this guy. He was practically a caricature of what a Jedi knight was supposed to be, tall and straight and spare, long flowing brown hair and beard, and simple, utilitarian clothes.

Something started burning.

"Bozag!" Voreedi slammed the table. He went to the oven to rescue his bread. The loaf in the back where the oven was hottest was a charred loss, but the others were salvageable. Some of those ignorant, upshaft palates might even consider them a treat. He cut away the blacker parts and tossed the usable bits into the bin and then stared down at the burned rubble on the cutting board. The burned grain almost smelled good to him.

His culinary misfortune seemed to break the stalemate for him and he found his voice.

"It's not that I have any hard feelings toward you, Jedi. It's just...hard." He got only silence from behind hin. He couldn't even hear the man breathing. 'Say something, you faithless faerzak,' Voreedi thought, but he got nothing. He finally turned.

"You people don't give anything back, do you?"

Qui-Gon raised his eyebrows. "What would you have me say?"

That's a fair question, Voreedi had to admit. He wiped black crumbs off the front of his clothes and really looked at this unwelcome reminder from the past. A person could easily go their whole life without ever seeing a Jedi in person. Voreedi knew from experience that if you tried, you could go a long time without hearing about them, too. He stared hard at what he'd been avoiding for so long it had become a habit he didn't even think about. Cold, dark blue eyes calmly returned his stare. Voreedi looked down; he was far out of his league to challenge this guy. His boots and belt were worn, but not too badly; his wrinkled tunic and pants were a grimy off-white. The grottier a Jedi looked, the higher up in rank they were supposed to be. If that was really true, this one was probably a Master for sure.

The only thing remotely new he had on him was the black and silver lightsaber hilt hanging off of his belt. A Jedi was supposed to be so good with their laser blade that they could pick fleas off a person's head with it, without even singeing the hair. Of the fleas. Voreedi decided that this guy looked like he could do it.

He leaned back on the counter and folded his arms high across his chest, like he meant it. What would I have him say?

"Y'know nobody even thinks anything of the testing. Take your kid into the med center and they just do it without asking. Chances of your number coming up are so small, it's not worth thinking about. Usually.

"Then when it does. Suddenly you don't have a kid anymore." Voreedi actually saw a little motion in the Jedi's shoulders.

"The decision to give a child to be trained as a Jedi is voluntary, the parents–."

Voreedi raised his hand as if to strike the words from the air. "Everyone around you telling you what a great thing it is. Everyone telling you how much good your child is going to do for the Republic as a Jedi. What an honor it's supposed to be.

"You tell me how voluntary that is, Jedi. I'll tell you it's not. And you know better, too." The Jedi glanced down at the floor, away from his reply. Voreedi felt some real satisfaction, 'Yeah, he knows.'

Qui-Gon knew this type of confrontation was very rare. In the whole galaxy, the Jedi numbered in the thousands while all the intelligent beings in the Republic numbered beyond the trillions. And yet, sometimes this happened. Qui-Gon knew little of own his origins. And he'd deliberately not inquired about them. Many Jedi didn't, even though the information was freely available if they chose to look for it. There really wasn't much point. It could likely lead to encounters just like this.

Feeling somewhat empty-handed, Qui-Gon looked back up at the cook.

"What is done cannot be undone."

Voreedi made a face. "That's your excuse?" He gestured toward the kitchen door and the pantry beyond. "That what you tell your kid in there?"

Qui-Gon's eye widened. He knew that there were truly no coincidences with the Force. Was this meeting a more serious turn of fate than he'd initially thought?

"Are you implying that...my Padawan is possibly related–?"

Voreedi snorted. "Not unless that kid of yours has darkened his hair, lightened his skin and had a sex change." He smiled when he saw a look of relief on the Jedi's face. 'I scared the guy. I actually scared him. Thought I was going to give to him a bit of what his people did to me.' The Jedi's posture had completely changed; that brief flash of worry had made him look almost normal. Then his back straightened and he resumed his previous stance.

But Voreedi wasn't buying the pretense anymore. He pushed off from the counter to his table and turned the extra chair toward his visitor. "Sit down," he said before taking his own seat. The Jedi exhaled and accepted the offer. Voreedi put his elbows up on the table's scared surface and took another long look. It was a lot easier to look at this guy when he was sitting down.

"Belada, my kid's mother, thought it was just great," he confessed. "I was always more eager to raise kids than she was. So, I think she felt like she was off the hook when it happened. But she knew how bad I felt about it. Gave me two more kids. But," he raised a warning figure, "I swear I lost a lifetime of worry when Bir and Obin got tested." He shrugged. "Came up negative for both. Belada laughed about me getting all worked up about it."

"The Jedi discourage familial contacts outside the Order. But they're not forbidden, either. You could inquire," Qui-Gon offered. He rested his arm on the table and then thought better of it when he felt the light film of grease on its abused surface.

Voreedi brushed the suggestion aside. "I'm not that sentimental." Qui-Gon nodded; he hadn't expected anything; he'd noticed how Voreedi had conspicuously not named the child that had gone to the Jedi. The man looked away, running his hand over his short, graying hair. Then he turned back, leaning over the table toward him.

"All I want to say is this. When it happened, all I heard from everyone–Belada, my own family, everybody I knew, that jerk from Curoscant–was what a great thing it was," his voice rose. "Well, it wasn't.

"You come to people and tell them it's not their kid anymore." He pointed an accusing finger at Qui-Gon and lowered his voice. "Don't pretend it's something else, because it isn't."

Qui-Gon returned a small nod, meekly accepting the pronouncement. There wasn't any point in denying that pressuring people into giving away their babies and toddlers to be trained as Jedi was an abuse. Voreedi leaned back in his chair; the plastic creaked loudly. The kitchen water heater hummed in the silence. Some nondescript sounds came from the pantry door. Wofaga was talking.

The Jedi sat in his chair, not quite looking back at him, not denying anything. Not apologizing either. Voreedi couldn't really blame him; it was just the way he'd been raised. It was obviously the way he was raising the kid in the pantry. Even with just a glance, Voreedi could see he was well on the way to becoming a Jedi copy of this guy. And it was the way his own daughter had been raised.

Voreedi waited a little longer but Qui-Gon remained neutral. He wasn't going to get anything more out of him. He heaved himself out his chair and went to the back door.

"I'm going out," he announced taking his wrap off a peg on the back wall. "For a walk."

"If you want me and my Padawan to leave–."

"No," Voreedi cut him off. "I know enough about Jedi to know that you wouldn't be here unless it was something important. I don't have any business getting in the way of that." He gestured at his well-used kitchen. "I don't care about you staying here or eating my food. Just don't expect me to be around when you are. Though I don't know how you expect to get anything important done with Wofaga." He reached for the door switch and then stopped, smiling.

"Tell Wofaga that you can't say about what we talked about. That it's Jedi business. That's close enough to the truth anyway. Wofaga will twist his head tails into a knot wondering what kind of business I could have with you people." He flipped the door switch. "If you want to do something, go clean up that mess in the pantry." He left.

Qui-Gon let out a long breath only after the door shut. He leaned back and let the built up tension flow out of him. He'd felt closure from Voreedi, a sense of acceptance that had been missing for too long. And Qui-Gon didn't mind being the target of the cook's overdue rant. Not all things that the Jedi Order was responsible for were good. He would need to meditate on it. But later.

Qui-Gon rose and crossed the kitchen. He pulled the swinging door open and looked down. The tray and dishes had been picked up and Obi-Wan was cleaning a grill on the now active droid. One of the cupboards was opened, revealing little used cleaners and droid parts. A long cable connected the droid to a power socket in it's alcove and the machine effusively thanked his Padawan for his attentions. The clean up was well under way, which saved Qui-Gon some time. He'd just been planning on telling Obi-Wan to do it anyway.

Obi-Wan silently acknowledged his Master. He sensed a return to calm. He just didn't know what the calm was returning from. But their Twi'lek host was all over his Master with questions as soon as he'd opened the door. Qui-Gon stepped around the mess that the droid was just beginning to tackle. He hadn't been so careful going into the kitchen as he noticed bright dessert sauce splatters on his boots.

"I'm sorry, Wofaga." He folded his arms, his hands disappearing into the opposite sleeves of his tunic. "I'm not at liberty to discuss it," he replied to Wofaga's obvious disappointment. But a quick glance told his Padawan that they were going to discuss it privately, later. There was no reason to expect that Obi-Wan would be spared a similar situation in the future. They would both meditate over it.

"Jedi business."

– END –

(This story was first posted on tf.n - 18-Dec-2005)

Disclaimer: All characters and situations belong to George and Lucasfilm; I'm just playing in their sandbox.