The Jedi Temple, Wednesday

"It's good that you're here," Mical said quietly.

"Why?" Atton asked. "Did you have another lecture about healing ready for me?"

And here he was, just sprawled out in one of the nice chairs out in the nice conference room that didn't look like it was hewn out of marble for the specific purposes of destroying Jedi bone structure. It was not a great setting to talk about the massive gaping hole in his chest.

"I was going to ask if you were willing to speak to Asida," Mical said blandly.

Atton looked up and squinted at him.

"Mira's Padawan," Mical said patiently. "She's not coping as well as the others. In fact, I would say her coping strategies rather remind me of you."

The squint turned into a grimace. "Thanks," Atton said flatly. "I always love being psychoanalyzed. No word on the remains of that giant-ass starship yet?"

"No," Mical said, and now he was the one to sag back into his seat. "Visas has been looking, but it appears as if it has disappeared into thin air."

"Or it's been vaporized."

A short silence.

"That is also possible."

Atton pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why are we even trying?" he said. "We've been mopping up every scrap of bantha poodoo the last few generations left behind for years now, and all we've got to show for it is dead Jedi. Where does this end, huh? I thought we were in this to make things better. I know Mira was."

Why was Mical smiling at him?

"Stop that," Atton ordered.

"This is why in some ways you are more Jedi than I, you know," Mical said. He was still smiling. The bastard. "There's an idealist underneath all that cynicism that cannot help himself but wish for an optimal outcome." He sat forward. "I am a historian," he said. "And I look at these past hundred years as a constant exercise in hubris. The Jedi Order, the Sith, even the Republic - perpetually grasping for more, causing only more pain and destruction in their striving."

He shook his head.

"If all we manage to do in our tenure is to sweep up the debris that the past generations have left us, we will have done more for the galaxy, as Jedi, than those who came before us," he said. "To return not greatness but stability to the Republic... that is why we are trying. That is the best that we can accomplish. Mira's death is a tragedy, and we will mourn her forever. But she saw that clearly, and she acted on it."

Atton closed his eyes.

"As they say on earth," he muttered, "You are such an asshole."

All he received was a shrug. Space, Mical was learning.

[[ establishy ]]