Private Tectonic | Colette

[Auteme]

Colette
​

"...Good morning," she said, getting a handle on her surprise only a moment slower than usual.

She had, of course, not been expecting company. Hoth was among the most notable rocks of nothing in the galaxy; there were very few people who would enjoy spending time here. A hermit, perhaps, but not forever. The secluded 'enclave', if it could be called that, had been abandoned for quite a while. Jend-Ro couldn't be found even in the places most suited to him. The cold and the silence, as they had been for him, were now her only companions.

Perhaps it was better that way. She was not in the place she needed to be; she was not in the place she wanted to be. She did not want to be seen, and more than ever she understood him. If only it had been a quicker process.

But now she had a guest, or maybe a few; she did not have his sensitivity for these things. Instead her senses were dulled. She hadn't even noticed them approaching. Her meditations had been taking her inward, for all the good it was doing her.

She paused a moment, then reached for a second mug, gently pouring some hot chocolate. There was that tingle of familiarity to the girl; something like a couple of degrees of separation, or some recognition from a past life.

"Are you New Jedi?" she asked.

 

[Colette]

Auteme

It was just the two of them, for the moment at the very least. Colette hadn't expected to find some random stranger at an allegedly abandoned outpost on the outskirts of Sith space. She hadn't been jumped yet and she sensed no immediate desire for anyone in the area to do so either, and given her predisposition for trusting strangers there was nothing for her to really fear here.

She accepted the cup of chocolate and held it in her hands. She didn't enjoy chocolate much, if at all, but the stranger had offered and Colette would accept.

Was Colette a new Jedi?

"I'm a padawan, yes." She admitted and took a sip of the hideously sugary drink with a barely hidden grimace. "Don't recognize you from the temple."

There was a familiarity though, something that made her seem important — yet filed away under 'not really'.

"Who are you?"

 

[Auteme]

Colette
​

One of those age-old questions. It was telling that she had to take a moment to respond.

"Mm, I don't go to the Temple enough," she admitted, as if she were still a Jedi. "But, I'm a friend of the... previous resident here."

The Jedi's arrival here threatened her mind with a dozen different thoughts, but she suspended them in favour of walking over to one of two quaint tables in the kitchen, wiry chairs posted on each side. She took a seat. "Auteme."

She raised her mug in a half-cheers. Her free hand went to pick up a pair of dice that sat on the table, both the colour of bone and worn from use. She rolled. Five and two -- she didn't allow herself to react.

 

[Colette]

Auteme

Autumn… Auuutuuummmn…

Felt familiar, but not in any important manner - at least to Colette. She took a seat in front of the strange woman. Knight-errant? No. They mentioned going to the temple. The NJO temple? Uncertain. Familiarity though. Mentioned by Valery? Possible.

"Colette." Colette said. "We expected this place to be mostly empty."

"At least not expecting other people here."

"Your friend still around?"

 

[Auteme]

Colette ​

"Nope." Roll. Twos.

"I wasn't planning on staying long. Probably leaving in the next couple of days, so I'll be out of your hair as soon as you need. I'll- well, I'm legally required to keep my mouth shut, so don't worry about me being around while you- I assume set up for operations against the Sith, all that." She waved a hand, almost dismissive of them.

Sip. Down. Roll. Five and six. A glance. A squint. "Wait. Aren't you one of the Noble kids?"

 

[Colette]

Auteme

What was she rolling for? Nervous tick? Didn't have a particularly nervous aura, but that was easy enough to conceal if you knew how. Attempts to be menacing? Nah, she would be failing that spectacularly if that was how she tried to do it. Attention-grabbing distraction? Very possible.

Colette squinted at Autumn as she branded her with the one downside of having been adopted by Valery Noble. She didn't feel like a 'Noble kid' but then she also didn't feel like she wasn't one either.

"Suppose so." She shrugged and eyed Auteme. "And you are Autumn…"

"Who, exactly?"

 

[Auteme]

Colette
​

Three and four. She rotated her mug idly.

"Ah, yeah. I'm the Chancellor. Don't tell anyone," she joked. "Back when I was a Jedi I came here every once in a while. Private place. Now that Jend-Ro's moved on, I thought I'd just... yeah.

"If you need anything around here, I can probably point you to it."

 

[Colette]

Auteme

Great, more jokes. Colette had a difficult time reading this woman and it showed in the way her brows sunk in frustration. No, it was clear that she wasn't the chancellor, whoever that was would be too busy hiding from those they answered to: the people. Granted, that could very well have been what a chancellor would actually do on Hoth, but this planet wasn't nearly as luxurious as somewhere lush like Alderaan.

Politicians were soft and malleable. Hoth was not kind to people like that.

"Well, the bedrooms would be a good first step." Colette said and pushed out of her seat to leave her nearly untouched cocoa on the table. "The kitchen seems…" She looked at the cocoa. "Decent. The heating isn't in any immediate danger of breaking down, it seems, given the temperature of the room…"

She withdrew the canteen from her belt to give it a sip only to realize that it was frozen solid. She frowned.

"Although I might have to bring someone in to look at it."

The mist of her breath swirled in the air as she sighed.

"So, why did you leave the Order?" Colette asked rather bluntly and looked over at Auteme with a questioning, highly-skeptical look. "Some other Order become your calling or something?"

 

[Auteme]

Colette ​

She felt at a strange impasse with this girl. Auteme had never felt she had a natural charisma like some people did, but she'd learned through long hours of study and practice to charm, to cajole, to convince. Colette felt immovable by her standards. It was disconcerting and refreshing at the same time. But, the middle of a conversation was not the best time for long reflections.

"I couldn't exactly be a politician and council member at the same time. I made a choice." One.

And yet the reflections came -- she thought of Dagon, how brightly he'd shone, how much pain he'd seen. She wondered what the Order would have looked like if he'd stayed; how it would have looked if she stayed. Did this girl know what preceded her? Did she care? Should she?

Two.

"The, ah, bunks- there's three rooms, first left at the end there, starting at the second door. Four rooms if we clean out the storage, which maybe we should."

 

[Colette]

Auteme

Again with the chancellor angle. Colette's hands placed themselves firmly on her hips. A bitter stare shot out at Auteme which slowly faded into a confused glance. Was it not a joke? Was this the actual chancellor? Had the chancellor been a Jedi before? She felt a knot tie in her stomach and she didn't quite know if it was the lingering surprise or disgust.

Her jaw clenched ever so slightly, her mouth shifted side to side as she kept from saying anything for now. It felt insane to even consider the chance of running into a figure of such importance in a hidden enclave, embedded within hostile territory.

"Right, I should probably check the rest of the rooms first to—"

Colette stopped and shook her head. A deep sigh parted her lips in equal parts because she knew that she had to ask and because she couldn't believe she was playing along with this.

"Actually, no." She said and crossed her arms. "You had the option to choose between politics and being a jedi, and you chose politics."

"Are you fucking stupid?"

 

[Auteme]

Colette
​

Three.

Auteme had known this girl for all of a minute. She was more than taken aback by this reaction; she was almost startled. Maybe Colette knew more about her than she knew about Colette, but she got the sense that this was more... spontaneous. "Jedi hates politics but could not name or recognize their elected officials" -- a classic. Yet to elicit this sort of vitriol...

She chalked it up to the naivety of youth. But even then, that was no excuse; at Colette's age, Auteme had set foot in the Chancellor's office for the first time. Four.

"Does being a Jedi make you special? Better?" She was coldly still.

 

[Colette]

Auteme

"It shows that I am aware of what I am." Colette answered back with a headshake. "You can change other people's minds with your mind. You can do things that most people can't, and yet you choose to pretend that you are just like them when you're not."

"There can never be trust between you and the people. Are they following you out of genuine belief or are they following you because you made them think that's what they want?" Colette had given this a lot of thought. Not on Auteme specifically, but the idea of Jedi in seats of power outside of the Order. "A force user in a seat of power is just pretending to be normal, an equal, but the force and what they can do with it will always make them stand next to the people they serve, not with them."

"So if you are the chancellor, or some politician as you say, I'd be scared as hell if you were my leader."

 

[Auteme]

Colette
​

"Well, am I frightening to you?" The chill in her voice was gone. She met Colette's gaze, silently evaluating the girl's expression for any hint of hesitation or falsehood.

 

[Colette]

"You? As a person? No." Colette frowned and shook her head. "What you have done and what you represent? Yes."

"What? Are you scared of me? I'm just a stubborn little girl with a tight grip on her opinions, and you are... Either the most persistent joker I've ever met, or the most powerful woman in the galaxy."

 

[Auteme]

Colette ​

She looked down at the dice, gave them another roll. Snake eyes, for the fifth time in a row. "Aye, por que no los dos?"

She rubbed her neck.

"Self awareness will only get you so far," she said, shaking her head. Her time here on Hoth had allowed her to properly come to the realization that she was not here to please or be friends with everyone in the galaxy. Nobody would be without doubts, 'concerns'. She did not need to cater to every person who walked into her office.

And yet there she was, confined in that office. She was unraveling what parts of her politics had been forced on her and what parts she'd kept from her youth. Had she become more sophisticated, more realistic? Or had she submitted to the power she'd taken?

But nothing could solve the stubborn little girl before her. She shifted gears.

"Where are you from, Colette?"

 

[Colette]

Auteme

Pork lost- what now? Was that some kind of language Colette was supposed to understand, or… No, it didn't matter. She shrugged as Auteme tried to make some kind of point about self-awareness and then moved on.

"Ophus-Five." Colette said and scratched at the back of her neck. "Not many outside of the planet seem aware of it other than this… Knight Keer who picked me up, and some old New Jedi Librarian that Valery knew. Aeris."

"It's… Very different from how things are out here. I think I've heard places like it called a… Communityism? Communitist? One of those big dumb words people like to use."