Private Mt. Grace

[Colette]

Aiden Porte

"Right," Colette grumbled as her dimples tugged at her lips. "Yeah."

The people around were just going about their business. It was a fitting mirror to Colette herself, or so she felt. The last few weeks hadn't seen her do much of anything productive at all. Just wandering, thinking, trying to find answers she'd slowly come to realize she would never find.

"Reina took my trust. Showed that even if you do your best it won't always mean it's their best." She scratched the back of her head and then looked over at Aiden. "And for some reason I just get so unreasonably angry when I think about her and I don't know why."

"Like a voice that refuses to shut the hell up. Screaming about… Something. It's annoying."

Loss of potential was always hard to swallow. Especially if you were the one who squandered it.

"Part of me feels betrayed, the other feels like I deserve it, and then another just wants to move on."

 

[Aiden Porte]

Colette​

Aiden let her speak without rushing to fill the space. The wind off the canal carried cool air between them, tugging gently at his sleeves as he leaned an elbow on the stone railing.

"That anger?" he said quietly. "It usually means something mattered more than we wanted to admit."

He didn't look at her right away. His gaze stayed on the water below, where a small skiff drifted under the bridge, its wake soft and unhurried.

"You trusted her. You invested in her. You saw a version of her she didn't grow into." He finally turned to her, expression steady, not pitying, simply present. "That kind of disappointment hits every layer at once. It feels personal even when it isn't."

Aiden's voice softened, grounded.

"Being angry doesn't make you wrong. Feeling betrayed doesn't make you weak. Wanting to move on doesn't erase any of the rest."

"It just means you're human. And that you cared."

A beat of silence, light as a breath.

"When you're ready, the anger will quiet. Not because you force it to, but because you finally stop needing it to make sense of what happened."

 

[Colette]

Aiden Porte

It mattered more than she wanted to admit.

Colette needed a moment to process that one. It had been her first apprentice and she had felt personally responsible for the things that had happened. To be told that she never listened and that she never cared, that she was just like the person she had saved her apprentice from was a deep cut that — even now, after weeks or even months — felt as fresh as it had on the day it'd been lashed into her skin.

"Right, yeah, I guess." Colette sighed. "Just feels weird to hold onto it when I know I shouldn't."

"Anyway," Colette shook herself out of it. "We're here now. With the people."

"You said you had something you wanted to show me."

 

[Aiden Porte]

Colette​

Aiden's gaze followed the movement of the crowd, vendors calling to customers, children weaving between fountains, guards chatting idly near the steps of the rotunda. The hum of Theed's life surrounded them, steady and unforced.

He glanced back at Colette, a small, knowing smile tugging at his lips. "This is it," he said quietly, gesturing to the city around them. "No speeches, no halls, no robes. Just life as it is."

For a moment, he let the words settle, the sound of laughter and distant bells filling the pause. Then, with that calm steadiness she had come to recognize in him, he added, "If you want to know what they think of us, don't ask me." He nodded toward the streets, the people moving through them. "Ask them. Ask those that walk among us what they think of the Jedi. You'll hear the truth there, not in anything carved into a temple wall."

His gaze returned to the crowd, voice low but certain. "That's where the Order's measure really lies, in their eyes, not ours."

 

[Colette]

Aiden Porte

Peace was one of those things that always existed in the silence between moments. Uneasy peace, heavy peace, just like the ebb and flow of quiet itself. It wasn't weighed down in this place. Colette observed the children and the parents. People taking moments to themselves to merely exist rather than work.

"Right," she agreed and slowly nodded her head. "We serve as inspiration for people. Help see what others might miss."

There was no real point in approaching people for an answer here. Asking 'what would you do without the Jedi?' could be seen as patronizing at best and threatening at worst. Colette continued to look through the crowds to try and see what they were feeling. Safe, warm, perhaps a little worried about the state of the galaxy but not overly so.

"They're happy." She said and nodded. "But what about other places?"

"Is this the only enclave or do you have more?"

 

[Aiden Porte]

Colette​

Aiden followed her line of sight, watching the city the way one watched a living thing, patiently, without trying to impose meaning where it would not offer itself. He nodded once at her assessment.

"They are," he said simply. "Happiness doesn't announce itself. It just…carries on."

At her question, his expression shifted, not guarded, but thoughtful. "No. Naboo isn't the only enclave," he replied. "But it is one of the few that sits so openly among the people. Others are smaller. Quieter. Some are little more than waystations, places to rest, to teach, to tend wounds before moving on."

He gestured vaguely, not to any single direction, but outward, beyond Theed, beyond Naboo itself. "There are Jedi embedded with relief convoys. With agricultural worlds recovering from famine. Some travel constantly, never staying long enough to build anything permanent. They go where the need is sharpest and the resources are thinnest."

Aiden looked back to the crowd, to a vendor laughing with a customer, to a child tugging at a parent's sleeve. "Naboo isn't a model meant to be copied everywhere," he said. "It's an anchor. A place of return. Not because it's perfect, but because it reminds us what peace looks like when it's allowed to breathe."

He glanced at Colette then, meeting her eyes. "Other places aren't like this. You know that. Fear weighs heavier there. Suspicion too. But the work doesn't change, only the shape it takes."

He paused, then added quietly. "This isn't where the Jedi end. It's where we remember why we leave."