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Characters: Luke Skywalker & Amberdrake
Date: April 12th
Location: Outside the Welcome Center
Situation: Prosthetics issues
Warnings/Rating: None, I don't think

He'd already been given - or offered - more help with the cybernetic than he could frankly have hoped for, which was something of a relief. Both because it was new and he was still getting used to it, and because of the situation here, which he wasn't sure what to think of, yet.

Shaking his head, Luke leaned against the wall outside the building while he waited for Amberdrake to appear, feeling vaguely hopeful about what he'd said he could do. So far, the instances of pain and the feeling of the hand that wasn't there (that the Force insisted wasn't there, had never been there) had been few, but Luke was distinctly aware that it'd been only two weeks...

He pushed that thought away and looked up at the noise of footsteps.

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"Ah," Amberdrake tilted his head a little to one side, watching the young man intently for a moment. Then he smiled, again, at the snort. "If you ever wish to talk about it to someone, I'll offer my ear. That's what I actually do for a living; I am a... therapist, of sorts."

Yes, of sorts. Gods, but he needed a better way to describe what he was!

"...Though that word grossly over-simplifies what I do. Kestra'chern just doesn't translate very well, no matter how I try it."

Freezing for a moment, Luke stared at nothing and then scrubbed his face, dropping his hands to give Amberdrake a tiny, quirked smile.

"I... maybe. I haven't exactly... been able to tell anyone." He looked away, shrugging. More like, hadn't thought it was the right time or that he should. Leia was the only one he might be willing to tell, but therein lay the problem.

Actually being able to talk about some of it, at least, with someone who had no vested interest in it either way... might be nice. Wasn't like there hadn't been questions if he needed to talk, but what he needed to talk about... wasn't something he was going to tell to anyone in the Alliance. Yet, anyway.

"Sort of like a healer for mind and body both?" Luke ventured after a moment, when he didn't feel quite as tense any longer.

"Something like that," Amberdrake had waited during that tension, radiating a low-level calm as he often did in such situations. "Most kestra'chern are not Healers, though we all know the basics, and things like massage therapy and injury recovery therapy. That I also happen to be a fully-trained Healer... I make use of it as a kestra'chern. It's a bonus to my skill-set. I can't be a full-time Healer, though I was an emergency Healer during the War... and thus I did more Healing than anyone preferred."

It was always better to not have to use your emergency Healers! And the capital W in War was pretty much audible in his voice... most of Urtho's army referred to it as such, and had for decades. It was its own entity; an eternal, dark monster with its own whims and hungers.

Luke was definitely grateful (and a bit startled) for the sense of peace coming from Amberdrake - it made it far easier to recenter himself and draw in a breath and let go, for now, of the worst of the tension.

"War always need people who can patch up injuries, and they end up having to do it more than anyone likes," Luke said with a nod, grimacing a little. They'd lost so many, just between the time Luke had joined the Alliance and right before he ended up here.

Hoth had been a big one, but it was hardly the only large battle with many rebel losses. Vrogas Vas stood out...

"What was it about? The war you mentioned?"

Amberdrake looked down for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

"Power, of course," he chuckled, a touch wry. "The rallying point Ma'ar built his army around was superior breed theory... that people like me, with my brown skin, were decadent foreigners who needed to be taught a lesson. 'Taught a lesson' devolved quickly into 'wiped out', of course. That was the start of the war, anyway.

"It lasted over a decade... Ma'ar's real goal was world domination, but his grudge against my kind for not simply laying down and dying for the cause was palpable. He had similar hatred for gryphons, and tervardi, hertasi, dyheli, kyree... anything that didn't look like him or was created by him, honestly. And even that latter... he didn't treat the makaar very kindly, either. They were just his attempt at countering Urtho's gryphons.

"It was a war ultimately between two Adept Mages of such power that they could create entire races from scratch. Urtho stood against him, and we rallied behind him. But the world will never be the same, not in so very many ways."

"I guess that is a usual starting point," Luke agreed dryly, but fell quiet, frowning, as Amberdrake continued. Most of that sounded familiar, if in slightly different form and shape, as the galaxy stood now. Luke shook his head, grimacing.

"Entire races? That's..." a sigh, and nodded, "the Emperor, who controls a large part of the whole galaxy where I'm from, doesn't have much over for anyone who's not human either, so he's created policies that oppress them... Or they end up as slaves a lot."

Shaking his head, Luke turned around in his seat to be able to reach out and squeeze Amberdrake's shoulder.

"Hopefully it'll heal as much as possible, at least? And you have helped both yourself and all those other races."

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