Call of Life
Theed wore peace well, during the small pockets that it had.
Aiden moved with Lira through the Market District at an unhurried pace, letting the current of people carry them rather than cutting against it. Sunlight spilled in clean sheets across pale stone and painted awnings, catching on hanging lanterns and turning them briefly into little prisms. Vendors called out in singsong Naboo cadences, their voices folding into the softer background music of fountains and distant stringed instruments. It was the kind of afternoon that tried to convince the galaxy it had never known war.
Lira, naturally, refused to be convinced in the most endearing way possible.
She darted half a step ahead, then swung back to his side like a pendulum, eyes bright with the thrill of too many options. A little bundle of laughter escaped her when a puffed, iridescent winged creature, something between a moth and a flower-petal, wobbled above a basket of fruit, startled by the motion of passersby. She pointed, delighted, and the sound of it landed in Aiden's chest like warmth.
He smiled before he meant to.
It had become an odd comfort, how easily she could do that. How quickly a single laugh could thread itself through the old tension in his shoulders and loosen it. He kept his hand near her, close enough to catch her if she tripped, close enough to reassure her if the crowd pressed too tight, without gripping, without hovering. Protective, but not smothering. He was learning the difference. Some days he even managed it.
They paused near a stall stacked with fabric bolts in soft Naboo blues and creams, embroidered with delicate patterns that looked like water ripples. Lira dragged her fingers along the edge of one bolt as if it were a living thing, grinning at the texture.
"Careful," Aiden murmured, gentle amusement in his tone. "That's someone's livelihood."
"I'm being careful," she insisted, entirely too solemn for a child who had been laughing a heartbeat ago, and then she broke again, because she knew he was not truly scolding, and because she liked the game of it.
Aiden's gaze lifted, scanning the flow of the market in a way that had become instinct even when he tried to be simply present. Faces. Hands. Patterns of movement. The places people lingered, the places they hurried. He was no longer wearing the weight of the Council on his shoulders, but the habits of a Jedi did not simply fall away because he had stepped out of their halls.
And he had not stopped being a Jedi.
He had, however, sent word to Collette to meet him here, and that was the part of his attention he kept returning to, the thread he held lightly in the Force, not tugging, just aware. It had been a few days since they last spoke. Long enough for worry to creep in at the edges, long enough for him to wonder if she had been sleeping, if she had been eating, if she had been doing that thing people did when they insisted they were fine and quietly fell apart anyway.
He did not want her doing that alone.
"Are we getting the honey cakes?" Lira asked, as if reading his mind and choosing to rescue him from it. Her eyes narrowed with exaggerated seriousness. "Because I feel like we should get the honey cakes."
Aiden let out a small breath that could have been a chuckle if he allowed it to be. "An excellent tactical recommendation."
"I know." She tipped her chin up, pleased with herself, then leaned closer as if sharing a secret. "Also, if Collette is coming, we should get two."
He glanced down at her, surprised by the simple kindness tucked into the suggestion. "Two," he agreed quietly. "That's thoughtful."
Lira shrugged, suddenly bashful, and then her attention snapped to something else, bright glass ornaments swaying in the breeze. She made a sound of awe that made a nearby vendor smile, and Aiden found himself smiling too, because it was difficult not to when she looked at the world like it still had room for wonder. He guided them toward the honey-cake stall, letting the scent of warm spice and sweet glaze settle around them. The crowd shifted. A fountain's music rose and fell. The Force around him felt…calm. Not empty, not complacent, just calm, like a lake surface that had decided to rest.
Aiden kept that calm close, cupped in both hands like something fragile, and waited for the moment Collette's presence would appear among the moving faces, hoping, quietly, that when she did, she would be willing to let him help carry whatever she had been holding.
