DISCLAIMER: Star Wars and all publicly recognisable characters, names and references, etc are the sole property of George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd, Lucasarts Inc and 20th Century Fox. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
Theed Bluff seemed cold and damp. His soft boots had absorbed a lot of moisture from the lush grass. All those waterfalls -- it was pretty to look at, but soggy to walk on. No wonder there were no animals roaming around up here, they'd get foot rot in a week. Why he'd chosen to walk all the way back out here instead of borrowing a landcruiser... well, he knew why.
I'm too damn old to go slushing around with wet feet... He thought about the stories he'd been hearing for the last three days. Qui-Gon waded without hesitation into cold water to follow the young Gungan to his city... Qui-Gon led the boy Anakin running across the desert on Tatooine... Qui-Gon had come within a straw of killing the Sith...
Wet feet, he thought again. Well, I'm twelve years older than you, old friend.
Back at the little temple again, perched at the very tip of an outcropping. All stone, austere, beautiful. Okay, yes, like Jinn-- and what the hell would Qui-Gon have said if I'd told him that in my dotage I'm starting to see beauty everywhere, including in his broken old face?
But the thought finished itself: ...agreed...
The embers were cool, the ash still there.
But the boy Obi-Wan was also still there.
His face said plainly that former Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum was not wanted.
An angry glance from a Jedi was enough to turn most life forms back the way they came, all over the galaxy, and Valorum could easily see why. Aside from the boy's private grief, heaven only knew what Jedi ritual he might be trespassing upon.
Valorum set his face. Going where you weren't really wanted and acting welcome was a political skill that he'd mastered when he was Kenobi's age, if not younger. Without preliminary, he pulled the small packet out of his cloak and said, "I promised." He knew that would be enough.
Obi-Wan made no acknowledgement, but did not interfere as Valorum moved forward, unfolded the paper packet, and added the old, cold ash to the warm ash that had been Jinn.
And that was it.
Deep inside, in a corner of himself that was capable of something besides blank grief, Obi-Wan Kenobi was amazed at his complete lack of any need to know whose ashes Supreme Chancellor Valorum had just mixed with Qui-Gon's. Why didn't he resent this secret? He had no idea, but a search of his feelings proved it to be so.
One might think it would have to be for love, but Qui-Gon's gift for attachment to living beings had flung so wide a net that nothing could be ruled out. Old lover, old friend, member of his birth family... but it could even have been a promise to a relative stranger. Something he'd done as part of a mission-- once promised, the stars would change course before it failed to occur.
Obi-Wan studied Valorum, dully wishing him elsewhere. The Chancellor was nearly as tall as Qui-Gon, but there all resemblance ended. Where Qui-Gon was supple, Valorum was unbending; where Qui-Gon was solid, Valorum was thin and straight as a needle.
And Valorum's face... It had always been a stern face, but the events of the past week had made it positively harsh. Shock and grief had carved the lines down his cheeks even deeper, pulled the set of his mouth even tighter, pulled his black brows further down over his deepset pale eyes. And above the pale skin of a man who almost never had leisure in true sunlight, there was the famous ice white hair, cropped warrior-close to his skull.
But now this was a defeated warrior. Even his presence here had been a courtesy, a gesture from the new Supreme Chancellor acknowledging a well-known friendship of the unseated one. Though if he had a promise to keep, he would have borrowed or chartered something. Finis Valorum's promises, unlike those of most politicians, were honored. Always.
The last pale flakes settled softly down on the dark red of the embers. Gravity here was slightly less than on Coruscant, so their rate of descent looked particularly graceful and sad to his eyes, as if slowed by a desire not to fall.
So long ago. 'You'll see it done?' 'I will.'
Done. That was all he'd come for, and this was not a place he cared to linger. Finis stepped back, taking a last glance at the raised hearth.
Despite the blaze that had burned here at nightfall, it gave no warmth. The night's cold seemed thicker inside the framing of the little temple that had housed Jinn's pyre, even though its stone archwork was completely open to the passing winds.
It wasn't cold that was making Obi-Wan Kenobi sit hunched in a corner, though.
Poor kid, Valorum thought. Dull eyes, pale skin. Even his face slack, despite the hint of puppy roundness still lingering in his cheeks. Blaming himself, of course. Sweet agony of despising yourself.
Finn Valorum had been the kind of boy who couldn't see a pond of calm water without picking up a stick to stir it up. He'd been the kind of politician who had an instinct for catching people off balance, slightly unprepared-- and, if people weren't off balance and he wanted them to be, a gift for unsettling them.
And all his life, he was the kind of man who never once looked at suffering without at least wondering if he could help. He drew a breath.
"Obi-Wan, can you talk to me?"
"What for?"
"I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss."
"I know it," he said. "And I am for yours."
It still meant, 'get out of here and leave me alone.' It meant, 'you can't touch my grief.' It meant, 'I just have to suffer through this, and I will.'
Valorum had known beings of all shapes and sizes, whose ancestors had spawned and evolved in wildly different gene pools all over the galaxy. Yet, no matter what the physiology, no matter how many tentacles or eyes or mouths or palps or internal gaseous reservoirs a life form had, misery always looked the same.
He'd seen it a million times, in a million ways, during his career: in a duty visit to a soldier grieving a mate lost in battle, in Senatorial tours to comfort whole populations of people whose villages had been swallowed in a volcano or drowned in a flood, in a long-ago Supreme Chancellor whose deputy had betrayed and deposed her. He called it The Droop.
Even though he couldn't feel the Force himself, Valorum had always associated the droop with a sense of disconnection from the Force. He'd asked Jinn if he was right, and gotten a very complicated, thoughtful expression on Jinn's face in return, but never an answer in words.
Jinn... You could see the droop even inside some types of rigidity, the bearing some people imposed on themselves so they could carry on.
"You're more like him than you realize," Valorum said, chasing a memory. "Except he said you were wiser than he."
It surprised Kenobi. Bitterness surfaced. "Much good it did him."
"Yeah, I have to admit, I didn't believe it either," Valorum nodded, folding his arms and leaning against a pillar. Kenobi's expression changed. "But he also told me that you had a much better sense of humor than his, and that, I did believe. Sardonic, like Councillor Yoda's."
Obi-Wan's eyes shifted upward from the ground to Valorum's face.
Valorum scratched his nose. "I'd just told him to go fuck a Hutt, and he said, 'Obi-Wan would find that amusing.'" He smiled slightly. "I kind of gathered that he didn't, not entirely."
"You said that to Master Qui-Gon?" There were about fifteen different tones mixed in the boy's voice, but bitterness was not one of them.
"No, I said it to my friend Jinn," Finis answered easily. "It was a chink in his armor, you know-- I could always nail him with something truly sleazy. The man didn't have a vulgar bone in his body."
Obi-Wan's glance went inward-- remembering, agreeing. Alive. His hunched posture had unfurled slightly.
"So he didn't tell you that?" Valorum went on. "Hmmh. He told me about the time you said that he didn't have a personal responsibility to find new homes for every pathetic stray in the known universe. And the second time you said it, and the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth.... I think after that, I was supposed to take it for granted that you'd said it."
Obi-Wan's focus came outward again.
"He also mentioned that little moment on Ord Mandell when he asked if you thought there was some way he might fix his mistake, and you suggested time travel."
The Apprentice was beginning to look scandalized, but Valorum's arsenal was far from empty. "Don't you remember-- you were there when he told me how, when he wouldn't let that freighter captain saddle him with a Twi'lek harem, you told him he was an ingrate. What were you then, fifteen? Remember the look on his face when I said you were right?"
Obi-Wan choked. It was a laugh, a gasp, an outcry from a pain so huge it could swallow worlds. "Master," he said miserably.
"Stand up, boy," said Valorum. He walked over, a little surprised the young Jedi had obeyed-- force of habit, maybe. Valorum reached out and ran the young man's Padawan braid through his fingertips-- a shockingly intimate gesture, but there were gray-white hairs shining out of the brown.
"I remember what Jinn looked like with one of these," Valorum said softly. Obi-Wan's eyebrows quirked.
"Didn't know him then, just saw him going by when Master Yoda would come to the Chancellor's office -- Keek, you wouldn't remember her, probably before your time ... damn, before you were born," Finis said, subtracting the years.
"Chancellor Keek liked to send Yoda everywhere. She'd call him in, tell him where the crisis was, and say, 'fix it.' Full text of her instructions, fix it." He took a deep breath. "And Yoda did, Padawan Qui-Gon by his side..." he grinned. "Well, Padawan Qui-Gon towering over him, actually." Obi-Wan smiled a little.
Finis looked straight into Obi-Wan's eyes. "We were all lucky to have him. You were the luckiest."
Obi-Wan nodded slightly. "I do know it," he said quietly.
"Good." Valorum let go of the Padawan braid, and set his hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder. "It's natural that you think his death was your fault right now, but if you still think that way a year from now, I'll look you up and kick your teeth in."
Valorum patted the Apprentice's shoulder and gave him a rapid little nod as if they'd exchanged pleasantries, then turned and walked away. He slowed his pace as he passed next to the firepit and dipped his fingers into it lightly, then seemed to scratch his face as he continued walking.
A moment later, Obi-Wan realized what he'd seen. On Valorum's homeworld, there was a ritual where you dipped your fingers into the ash of a loved one and marked your face. The four corners of the face represented the four corners of the world. It meant you were offering the dead spirit a home, to keep it from getting lost in the stars.
He stared after Valorum, imagining the old man trying to kick in the teeth of a healthy young Jedi Knight. The thought made him smile again.
His eyes went to the firepit. "Master," he said, and settled back into his vigil place to finish the night.