Private Stolen Friend

[Amos]

As Sophelia felt around her back for the ointment she would feel the com-link she was searching for. It sat nestled within the bag just as it had been before. Untouched. The Sith had not taken it, though she would soon find out why. As she offered the ointment, he simply tilted his head towards the bed. Letting her deposit the jar there before she proudly stalked away.

He did not try to stop her as she picked up the bowl and moved towards the entrance of the cave. His head simply turning to watch for a moment in unspoken amusement. Gaze flickering down towards the small jar she had left behind. Amos didn't touch the ointment as he watched her move outside. Not because he did not believe her. Not because he thought she was lying, but because pain was it's own salve. One which no one could replicate. Not for him.

After a moment, the Sith stepped away, following after her.

As Sophelia walked outside she would find that Amos' words had rung true.

Just outside the cave lay a landscape which seemed to stretch for near an eternity. The cavern he had called his home was situated near the top of a cliff, dug into the mountain itself. As she moved outside, a small lip extended almost like a balcony, but beyond that lay a forest of untold size. It's visage stretching out as far as the eye could see.

If she looked up, the Jedi would see only more cliff. A sheer face that even someone like Amos would struggle to climb. There was nothing, an emptiness. The sun was just setting as she stepped outside, birds called in the distance. Nature ruled here. A calm that could not be bought.

Peace that could not be found on other worlds.

 

[Sophelia Ardemark]

Amos

Heart dropped as she stepped outside. The wind like fingers curling through golden hair and picking at the fabric of her clothes. It was...strange. Staggering. She almost dropped that bowl of stew. Fingers tightened around it quickly. Grip turning white-knuckle. Neck craned, seeing sheer rock around and above. And that thick wood far, far below.

And nothing but the wind in her ears. The cackle of birds below. And the buzzing of something Soph assumed were a kind of insect, she'd never heard before. Nothing here felt familiar to the way she'd grown up. It was strange in a way like hearing a new language for the first time. Beautiful and unsettling in equal measure. Even the force itself moved differently here, followed currents she couldn't see and rules she'd never learned.

Lips thinned.

Even as she stood dangerously close to the precipice. Tore her eyes away from the endless horizon and looked down. Down doooOOWWWN. She wasn't scared of the fall. She'd never been scared of heights. Perhaps she should've been.

She knew Amos had followed her. She knew he was watching, behind her. Raising the bowl, she took a sip.

Why did it have to be good?

She grimaced. "Whatever you want me to open. If it's going to hurt people. Kill people. I'm not going to do it." The wind snatched up her words and threw them back toward the sith.

 

[Amos]

Amos stood still in the mouth of the cave as he watched the Jedi react to the scene laid before her. His face an unreadable mask as he studied Sophelia. He could see the rightness in her muscle. The tension forming as she took in the truth of his earlier words. Could feel the sense of fear running through her veins.

It was bare. Slight, but it was there. Not because of the heights. Not because of the situation he had put her in, but because of what it might mean. What he might ask her to do."It won't kill anyone."

The words were not a lie. Not yet.

In truth he did not know the result of the path he had asked her to walk upon. He did not know the end of the one he stepped his way through.

"Sit down." Amos told her, slowly breaking away from the mouth of the cave. Soft leather boots crunching stone as he approached her. Eyes wandering over the long landscape which sat before them. "The wind can catch."

As he spoke the clouds above them seemed to turn, slowly gathering to a dark grey. Wind slowly sweeping up the lengths of the valley and drawing up upon the cliff. "You don't need to trust me."

He said, looking down at her with a complete lack of expression. "You'll see I'm telling the truth."

 

[Sophelia Ardemark]

Soph remained staring out at the landscape below. She didn't turn as she heard Amos approach. She took another sip of stew, lowering the bowl slowly. As the threading wind picked up velocity teetering on the edge of violence. Skies swirling above to match the growing tempest. Visceral acceleration.

She pivoted to face him, parallel to that edge now. Toe of her boot causing loose gravel and rocks to skitter, collapsing down the edge below.

She made no move to do as he said. To sit. Blonde ribbons a wild thing as the wind's fingers turned into claws. Whipping around her face and head. Blue eyes searched those orbs of yellow. So foreign to her. Her expression as stony as his was unreadable.

"We'll see, Amos." A glance down and over. Over that lip. There'd been a time not so long ago when she'd wanted to give up. After she'd lost nearly everyone on Tapani. Just like the girl on Tapani, that girl was gone. A ghost. Bones of an old memory.

"You should know I don't like being told what to do." Eyes shifted back to his. Holding his gaze. Even as those clouds above them darkened further. A sudden cold downdraft followed by fat drops of rain.

Amos

 

[Amos]

Amos shrugged his shoulders. "Suit yourself. If you fall off I'll just take another Jedi."

Not that he really wanted to do that. It has taken him weeks to find the camp, another few days to observe things well enough to find Sophelia, and then another day to watch her movements. Doing it all again was not a prospect he relished, and finding someone who could actually do what he needed again would probably take even more time.

It was the same reason why he didn't use any harsher methods to convince her to do as he needed.

They wouldn't work.

Not because Sophelia was strong willed or any other nonsense Jedi told themselves. With enough pain everyone broke. Jedi, Sith, even the vaunted Mandalorians had their limits. Amos knew that better than most. It wasn't that he was unwilling to harm her, it was the simple fact that doing so would only be antithetical to what it was he needed.

That much he understood about the cursed contraption.

 

[Sophelia Ardemark]

Ugh. He would say that. Pools of blue narrowed further even as rain began to splash against her skin, hair, and clothing. She relented first. Head turned sharply back toward the mouth of the cave and she strode quickly back to the entrance. She didn't want to get her hair wet.

"Where is the ship that brought us here?"

She didn't expect a useful answer but she asked it anyway.

Finding a stool, she sunk down into it. A small carved wooden table was pushed against the rocky wall. Another stool sat across from her. She propped her feet up on it. She finished off that stew in silence. Sitting in her own storm of thoughts.

"So this is your home?" In the middle of stars forsaken nowhere. "You don't get lonely out here? I mean, I guess that's why you have a pet snake."

Amos

 

[Amos]

Did all Jedi have this much personality? He'd thought they were boring, droll. Least that was what he'd always been brought up to believe. Perhaps the Elders were not as wise as they claimed. More and more he was learning that the galaxy had changed. Perhaps isolation had been a failing.

"Gone." Amos said in answer to her first question.

Sitting himself down onto a similar wooden stool. Letting the blissful silence reign between the two of them as she finished her meal. Fingers running over the stitches in his side, ensuring they had set enough. "As close to it as I can have."

Amos admitted, still looking down at his wounds.

"I find comfort in solitude." His eyes wandered over towards the amphistaff, still curled into a ball, still watching. "I would not call it a pet."

The Amphistaff blinked in simple response. "It's more of an extension of myself."

He clarified for the Jedi, cutting off the question he knew would come next. It was a better description of the bond anyway.

 

[Sophelia Ardemark]

Soph's eyes drifted back to that serpent. There was something familiar about it. Something they'd taught her in one of the classes at Shira's Sanctuary. Amos' words about a bond kept nagging at something in her mind. Amp....amp-something. If only she'd been on time to that lecture. Maybe if she'd grown up differently with parents who supported learning about the force things would be...different.

Her senses opened in the force. Shifting and drifting toward the creature. Similar to when she and Moonbound had bonded with the juvenile Zillo beast. Sensing for those invisible threads to pluck and probe. Curious to see if there was a path to glimpse the bond. Not to control the creature. To understand.

She placed the bowl of stew down. Empty.

"Not comfort enough if you'd felt the need to track me down at a refugee camp." Fingers folded in front of her as she looked away from the serpent and back to the sith sitting across from her. "Okay. This thing you want me to open. Show it to me. But I want to know why you want to open it. How you found it and what it is."

Amos

 

[Amos]

"If you were here to comfort me." Amos let his eyes draw away from the serpent and towards Sophelia. "We would be having a different conversation."

Not that there would really be any conversing at all.

Standing before she could respond, Amos stepped through the heavy skins once more. Drawing himself away from the warming flames in the center of the cave and stalking towards it's darkened end. His hulking form nearly disappearing into the darkness as the sound of a wooden box being drawn open echoed out.

Without a word Amos plucked free the object Sophelia had asked about, a pale blue glow erupting from what he cradled in his palm. For a moment he stood there, shaking his head before he turned back and returned to his stool. As he moved Amos grabbed one of the small tables in the middle of the room. Lifting it and placing it between the two of them as he sat himself down. His massive palm covering the object as he placed it in front of Sophelia.

As he drew his way, what it was became obvious.

A dodecahedron revealed itself from under the Barbarian's hand. It's shape made of a bright electrum, slight glass panels decorating each sides line with silver enamel. "I took it from a vault."

Amos offered. "Long forgotten."

 

[Sophelia Ardemark]

Heat rushed into her face so quickly it was almost dizzying. Indignation bristled stubbornly. It was an awkward sort of fury bundled in simmering defiance. Chin lifted even as the splashes of color on her pale face betrayed her.

"Is he always like this?" Words thrown in a harsh whisper at the ball of the serpent still resting peacefully on the floor.

Blues dragged away from Amos' disappearing figure back to the mouth of the cave. She could tell the sun was setting outside amid the storm still howling. She fantasized about scaling down that cliff and disappearing into the woods below. Maybe finding that ship. Or something.

Funny how something as simple and small as a table between them could give her a false sense of security and a tick of safety. Force, his hands were massive. "A holocron?" Abandoned vault. Or, he stole it. Lips pressed together as she stared down at those glassy twelve pentagonal faces, her own reflection staring back at her - fractured and edged. Fingers scooped it into her palms as she cradled it between them both. Fingers brushing along the edges as the light refracted and bounced at sharp angles.

Soph braced for something to happen but nothing did.

Nothing so overt.

There was a susurrate in the force. So quiet. She wondered if she imagined it.

"Whelp, I think you've got the wrong girl. Might as well take me back now."

Amos

 

[Amos]

The amphistaff only flicked out it's tongue in answer to Sophelia's question.

Amos sat in place as he let her pick up the Holocron, the small light which almost always emitted from it's core growing just the tiniest bit brighter as it touched her hands. Slowly he leaned forward, his gaze almost permanently fixed upon the little Jedi. He watched her thumbs trace over the little lines, watched her eyes reflect the light back...and then nothing happened.

"Whelp, I think you've got the wrong girl. Might as well take me back now."
​

She said the words, and he almost laughed. A flicker of tension leaving him as he leaned back and let out a snort. "You think it's that easy?"

He mused.

"I thought you Jedi were taught patience." He had read the old texts, scripts left by those who had founded his tribe in millenia past. Written by the old ancients before they had found true power in the force. "I have no doubt it will take time."

Letting himself lean back Amos glanced towards the flame. "Maybe even weeks."

 

[Sophelia Ardemark]

A different kind of embarrassment surfaced. Eyes whipped upward to his own. Fingers tightening around the sharp edges of the holocron for a fraction of a moment. "Not all of us study the force for our entire lives," a low huff. For a moment, she thought about chucking that holocron right at his face.

Then she dropped it.

"What?!" Palm flattened on the surface of the smooth-carved table. "W E E K S." Arms crossed stiffly beneath her chest as she drew back. Sitting up straighter. Sitting on an imperious throne of carved hobo wood. Okay, the craftmanship was good which only made it more infuriating.

"Absolutely not. There are people who rely and depend on me. I don't live like this. Unlike you, I don't live in solitude. People WILL come for me. You will be in a sithload of trouble. YOU are in way over your head."

A glance at the balled snake.

"Tell him. Maybe he'll listen to you." Voice hissed between clenched teeth.

Amos

 

[Amos]

Amos didn't say a word, allowing Sophelia to go through the entirety of her tirade uninterrupted. His face remaining an implacable mask throughout, eventually following the Jedi's eye-line as she peered towards the Amphistaff.

The balled up snake flicked it's tongue, but offered no other answer.

"If they come, they come." There was no threat in what he said, and yet the implication was more than clear. He slowly turned his attention back towards Sophelia. His expression was more serious this time. "I cannot let you leave here until that thing is open."

He pointed to the Holocron. "Without it, I die."

Answering her second question.