Title: Finish
Author: jedishampoo
Pairing: Windu/Dooku (implied)
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Challenge: Fuh-Q-Fest Challenge. 13. Your Main Character unwillingly confesses his most-secret desire to his (will-be) lover. Drawn by jedishampoo. Character: Mace.
Summary: Mace Windu pays a last visit to Dooku. Short, 1148 words.
Author’s Notes: Wow, my first G-rated “slash.” Mace is not my normal dude to write so even though it’s not explicit it was still a challenge. More of a character-thingie and not a smut-thingie.

***

The door opened, and Mace was gestured in without a word. He let his eyes follow the calculatedly casual dignity of the black-clad arm, its measured sweep, inviting to enter and inviting to admire. Its fingers spread slightly to encompass the immaculate elegance and pricelessly tasteful decorations adorning the chambers.

He sat on a dark sofa, deceptive in its comfort. Wine was poured, dusky and rich, coating the sides of the clear glass with a film of sheerest crimson. It was succulent and smooth and tasted as expensive as it looked.

All of it was pure Dooku. All of it was a display of power and prestige; personal, showing independence of the Jedi.

Mace swirled the wine down his throat, let its vapors waft into his sinuses for a moment. Then he looked at his host, sitting next to him on the sofa. The silence, not uncomfortable, lingered for a few moments.

“So you are staying on Coruscant,” he finally said.

Dooku’s slender eyebrows rose slightly into his expansive forehead. “No, no. Of course not. In fact, I am leaving soon. Within a day.”

“Where will you go? Back to Serenno?”

“At first. I have many interests.”

Mace eyed his surroundings, the exquisite arrangements of sculpture and light and pristine bare wall. “It seems a shame to leave all this.”

Dooku smiled and relaxed his posture the tiniest bit, laying one graceful arm along the curved back of the sofa. “You lack subtlety, Mace.” He sipped at his own wine, then sighed. “I have many resources.”

“You are a resource,” Mace felt compelled to say. Seventy years of knowledge was walking away from the Order. Dooku was one of twenty Jedi, now, who’d gone. Were lost. A small number, perhaps, when counted against the hundreds of thousands of Jedi who had been and who were, but in years of experience, a millennium at least. Now, when the darkness had grown its strongest. The other members of the Council had finally accepted Dooku’s decision to leave, but Mace had found in himself a desire to try one last time to convince him otherwise.

Dooku only stared back for a few moments, gaze unreadable, before forming an answer. “No. But I hope I am still your friend, Mace. And I do hope that you have not come here to persuade me to stay.”

“If I could persuade you not to leave, that would be fortunate.”

“Semantics. You are learning double-talk from our esteemed Master Yoda.”

“Heh.” Mace shook his head. Verbal sparring with Dooku was, as it had always been, rather like their lightsaber dueling. Mace in his pride would try to proffer a few finessed jabs at the master of Makashi and was invariably outclassed. Despite his age, Dooku had lost none of his cunning, his exactness, his pride. Mace decided to fall back on his normal strategy, his strength-- the direct approach, no quarter. “It is wrong for you to leave now,” he said.

“Yet I must,” came the answer.

“You must stay.”

“Why?”

Unfortunately, Mace’s strategy was failing him in this situation. “This is foolish. You are valuable for your experience and for your point of view. The Council does not always agree with you, Dooku. But even they can see the need for the voice of opposition now and then. Especially now that Qui-Gon Jinn is dead.”

Brutal emotion flashed through Dooku’s eyes, then was quickly dispatched. Had it been anger? Sadness? Regardless, it had ultimately lost Mace his audience and his point.

“The Council has made it clear that ultimately they do not need me,” Dooku told him, face a blank haughty slate once more. He refilled Mace’s wineglass, then his own. “There are other Jedi who can fill my role. Or that of Qui-Gon.”

“Every loss is important. The future is uncertain.”

“So says Master Yoda. Yet my future lies elsewhere.”

Mace was beginning to lose his desire for this contest of conviction. “I do not wish to argue. We have covered this ground too thoroughly already.”

“I agree.” Dooku shifted, bringing his tall form a minute distance closer, and lowered his voice. The atmosphere in the room became more intimate, almost conspiratorial. “Yet if you do not wish to argue, then what is it you wish? Why did you come here, and not one of the other Masters?”

Mace felt the oddest desire to whisper his reply, but didn’t. He had never been much of a whisperer. He spread his fingers, a slight gesture of surrender to the inevitable. “Because I don’t know when to give up.”

The words and gesture were apparently not enough. “I do not believe you.” Dooku’s gaze was direct, compelling. Mace felt as if he were being read, probed, but not through the Force. This was more simple, more direct. “That is not all.”

Nonplussed, Mace stared at the finely-etched face of his host for a few moments before answering. “I have already told you that we need all the Jedi. The Order needs to remain intact.”

Dooku moved even closer. “Because you can see what the future holds? Because you fear?”

Fear. It was not an implication of weakness. Dooku was only giving a name to what the entire Jedi Council had been feeling since Qui-Gon Jinn had left them for a last journey to Naboo. A murky edge to their meditations that they chose to call the dark side.

“Because there is a shadow over the Republic. We do fear it.” Perhaps Dooku merely wished him to acknowledge it aloud. “We have to be sure the Jedi are prepared to face it. Or civilization will fall.”

“And that is your confession, Mace? Noble. Yet disappointing.” Dooku smiled and raised his wineglass in a small salute, but the casual gestures did not dissipate the air of tension. “As ever, you claim nothing for yourself.”

The master of Makashi indeed. Mace had been focused on the whole of the galaxy, as ever ignoring the personal, forgetting the nature of the man he was dealing with. And how alike they were in some ways. Only now did Mace realize what Dooku, and his pride, wanted from him.

“All right, then.” Mace laughed, and returned the salute with his own glass. It would be a relief to speak the truth, to admit a desire of his own. The man’s pride was a dangerous charisma. “I want you to stay. You are a challenge I enjoy. You are interesting. You’ve been a valuable if stubborn friend and mentor, and I will miss you. I came because I wanted to spend a last few moments with you.”

When Dooku smiled again, the amusement reached his eyes. “A fine balm to my pride. Yet knowing that does not diminish my appreciation.”

Mace waved his glass forward and Dooku’s clinked against it, and they drank. The glasses clinked again as they were set upon the table. Mace felt a touch, light yet firm and warm. He watched as the paleness of Dooku’s hand, aged but still strong, eclipsed the dark skin of his arm.

The End.