#i will do a more detailed drawing of her one day
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||The Thread of Fate|| Part Eighteen
Summary: Soulmate AU. They say the Thread of Fate connects you to your one true love. It may tangle. It may stretch. But it will never break. Wrapped around your little finger it tightens when it feels your soulmate is close and loosens when they are far. And becomes visible with the colors of your soulmate’s Nation when you finally fall in love with them.
Pairing: Zuko x OroraOC (ATLA)
Rating || Genres || Warnings: T+ Romance. Adventure.
Previous Chapters - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen, Part Sixteen, Part Seventeen,
A/N: Prepare yourselves people. Note - Italics is Flashback.
It was late.
But for some reason, she couldn't sleep.
Sighing to herself as her blue eyes flitted from one waterbender form to the other, Orora could feel her hand start to fall asleep where she was resting it under her chin. Setting the scroll she had been studying to the side, the young waterbender glanced at the night sky through the window. She should probably be sleeping, considering they had an early morning tomorrow.
Picking up her bag, she put the scroll inside and was about to put it away but she paused when she spotted a paper at the very bottom of the bag. Taking it she unfolded it, and was surprised to see a drawing of Appa. Orora didn't remember keeping it.
And honestly, with Zuko being sick and then moving to the Upper Ring, she had actually forgotten that Aang, Katara and Sokka were actually in Ba Sing Se.
She gnawed at her bottom lip as set the paper aside. Had Appa found Aang? And if so, had they already left the city? Maybe if they were still here she could go and meet them.
That would be fun, she mused to herself, her mind wandering to those few days she had spent with all of them aboard the Water Tribe boat while sailing towards land.
The candle flickered low as she sat on her futon with her back against the wall. Her blanket pooled around her legs, where one was stretched out in front of her, while the other she had pulled up towards her chest a little, wrapping her arms around it in a loose embrace. As she continued to stare out the window, her mind began to wander to the first days of her journey.
They seemed like such a long time ago, and yet she remembered every single detail.
After all, she made her first friends during those few days.
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With her bag slung over her shoulder, and the gentle breeze from the open waters brushing against her face, Orora could hardly dare to bring herself to believe that she was actually about to do this.
She had initially thought even getting on the boat would be a struggle, since she didn't think Master Pakku, the appointed leader of the small expedition, would even allow her to go.
But luckily, she had asked him while Katara had been standing next to him.
And that girl had been able to convince the grouchy old man and invited Orora onto the ship.
"So, are you excited? I mean this is your first time away from home right?" Katara's happy voice had Orora breaking away from her thoughts and turning to look at her. She smiled and shrugged. "I guess I'm a little nervous. I mean, I've never even seen actual land before." She said with a small laugh.
"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll love it. I did when I saw land and trees and plants for the first time. More then what you've seen at the Spirit Oasis." Katara reassured her, smiling she glanced over her shoulder where her brother, Aang were helping Appa settle onto the boat.
"Come on!" The girl reached out to take Orora's hand, an act that took the other girl by surprise. "Sokka? Aang? This is Orora, she's going ashore for the first time."
To say Orora was a little stunned would be an understatement. She'd just been introduced to the Avatar.
The Avatar.
Sliding down from where he sat on top of the giant bison's head, Aang grinned and held out his hand. "Hey! Nice to meet you! You must be pretty excited."
Orora blinked.
Like any other person living in their world, she had heard fantastical tales about the Avatar. She had been told about the power they possessed, had read up on all previous Avatars out of curiosity and been fascinated by it all. She had even witnessed that awesome power during the Fire Nation attack.
And yet, here stood the Avatar.
A young boy.
A kid.
Aang frowned as he waved his hand in front of Orora's face. "Erm....hello? You alright there Orora?" He asked. The girl quickly shook her head, her thoughts returning back to her as she nodded. "Yes, I'm sorry. Its nice to meet you Avatar Aang." She said, taking his hand and shaking it. "Just Aang is fine." He replied, still smiling.
A loud grunt from behind had him continuing. "Oh and this is Appa, my flying bison and this is Momo." He added when a small creature landed on his shoulder. Orora smiled, it was cute.
"So you've never gone ashore your whole life?" The other boy, Sokka, asked as he walked to stand next to them. He looked like the typical boy she had seen play soldier in the streets. Orora shrugged. "My father didn't believe in women leaving the house unless they had to." Beside her Katara frowned. "Well that's just wrong. If we had that rule at the South Pole, Sokka here would never get anything done. He relies on me to do everything for him." She added with a grin.
Sokka frowned. "Not everything." He grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. Katara smiled good-naturedly at her brother before adding. "Why don't you go put your things downstairs, then we can have lunch together."
Orora nodded. "Sounds good to me."
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It was a little strange being invited to sit with people her own age. Growing up she had always been something of an outcast. Girls were taught of marriage, healing, keeping house and babies the whole time they were growing up. And that was what they talked about as well.
But not Orora.
She was more interested in reading books and learning as much about waterbending as she could. And other topics as well, but waterbending was always her favorite subject. That wasn't to say other girls didn't like to learn, they did, just not at the same obsessive level as Orora.
So there she was, sitting in a small circle with Aang, Sokka, and Katara.
With no idea what to say.
"Now that you've satisfied your curiosity about Soulmates, why don't you tell us why you decided to come on this expedition?" Katara, ever the friendly and kindhearted girl asked.
As was her nature, Orora stuck to the truth.
"My father found out I used waterbending to defend myself by fighting off some Fire Nation soldiers." She shrugged. "So he banished me."
An awkward silence followed her words, where the other three stared at her before glancing at one another. Sensing that whatever she had said was wrong, a feeling she was familiar with, Orora made to leave.
"I'm sorry if that made you uncomfortable. I'll just-"
"Wait, where are you going?" Aang suddenly asked, reaching out to grasp her wrist since he was sitting the closest. "You didn't make any of us uncomfortable. Its just, your news surprised us that's all."
Sokka and Katara nodded along, to which Orora blinked. Sensing that maybe she didn't have the best social skills, Katara decided to intervene. "Hey Sokka? Why don't you take out one of your maps and show Orora all the places she can go visit?"
The girl had barely gotten the word maps out of her mouth before her brother was speeding away to take them out of his bag on Appa's saddle. He'd already started to chatter away, going a mile a minute, prompting Orora to glance at Katara and Aang. "Is he always this excited about maps?" She asked. Both of them laughed, with Sokka pouting slightly at her words, before continuing with his tirade of words.
Still it was fun sitting there, bent over the map and having all three of them point out the locations she could visit, should she choose to. In between their recommendations, they began to tell stories of their own adventures while they had been visiting those locations themselves.
Orora was fascinated, and began to ask questions herself. It didn't take long before all four of them fell into a comfortable and easy rhythm where they were chatting and exchanging thoughts as if they had been doing so for a long time.
And they continued to talk, long after the sun had gone down and only stopped when Pakku said it was time for bed.
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The next few days would come to be the best days Orora had ever had.
Why?
Because she made her first friends.
Orora had worried that all three of them were simply tolerating her for as long as they were there.
How wrong she was.
It actually surprised her that they wanted her around because they liked her. And truthfully, she liked them back.
Sokka with his jokes and penchant to think of himself as more then he was, always managed to make her smile. And when he got to know that she didn't know much about hand-to-hand combat, he took it upon himself to teach her a few moves. For her own safety.
"I could always use my waterbending on them." She had countered.
"Yeah, but what if you don't have water available to you?" He had asked. "Look, I've taught Katara a few moves too, even though she's good at waterbending. Its better to be prepared. Trust me."
It was strange to have someone else be so sincere with her and actually worry about her. While she went through a punching move Sokka was making her perfect, a random thought occurred to her. She paused, standing just a few feet away from Sokka and frowned at him.
"Is this what its like?" She asked.
"Is what like this?" Sokka asked with a confused frown.
"To have a brother? Is this what its like."
He may have known her for only a few days, but Sokka had learned that Orora tended to speak her mind no matter the thought. She didn't worry about offending anyone and that took guts. It kind of reminded him of Katara and her own beliefs.
Though having her ask him if having a brother meant someone looking out for her, he did feel a small amount of pity for the other girl. She'd told them about her entire family, and he couldn't really wrap his head around the fact that her brothers didn't take care of her like he took care of Katara.
Weren't all brothers supposed to take care of their sisters?
Still Sokka smiled. "Yeah, I guess in a way it is, though it also comes with healthy helping of teasing and arguing." He added with a grin.
"It must be nice." She said, her demeanor turning a little sad. "Neither of my two brothers acted like you are. Its strange. But nice." She added, to which Sokka waved an arm. "Their loss. They're missing out on having a cool sister."
Grinning at his compliment, the young girl dropped into the stance he had just taught once more, committing all that he had to teach to memory.
The best part of chatting with Sokka, was when he showed her his weapons and she created exact replicas of them out of ice. He nearly burst into happy tears when she created one for his boomerang and it had actually worked when she'd thrown it in the air.
Though it took off half of a passenger's beard as it went by.
He had looked around in confusion at the sight of the ice boomerang stuck in the post in front of him, before he began to lament the loss of his facial hair.
Sokka and Orora glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes, identical expressions of nervousness on their faces and sneaked away as if nothing had happened.
Forming a silent pact, neither of them spoke of that moment again.
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For someone who held immense power, being friends with Aang was a breeze.
Pun not intended.
On the very second day, he had offered to take her up on Appa. And Orora had very nearly screamed out in joy when he did.
"Sorry." She said, once she had calmed down. "But since I saw Appa I've wanted to go for a ride, but I didn't want to offend you by asking."
Aang shook his head. "No worries. Appa loves giving rides to new people. He thinks its the best way to travel, and I agree with him." The boy grinned, patting Appa on the nose as he did.
"Well I guess its a good thing I was saving something for him then." So saying, she quickly reached into her bag and pulled out a hunk of bread. It was a little stale, but Appa didn't seem to mind. With one swipe of his tongue, he'd swallowed the bread and let out a happy groan.
Before licking one very wet tongue all along her body.
Aang had laughed himself hoarse at her expression. Though with a quick waterbending move the saliva had been thrown into the water. Still, that did not deter her from climbing up beside Aang on Appa's head and waving at Katara and Sokka who watched from nearby.
"Appa! Yip yip!"
Her initial reaction was letting out a yelp of surprise and hanging onto Appa's reins for dear life. But that was the only sign of nervousness she showed. Pretty soon she was enjoying the cool wind in her hair and against her face. Not to mention the view from so far up.
"I agree with Appa." She said, after a few minutes of enjoying the ride in silence. "This is the best way to travel." They didn't go far, the boat they were traveling by stayed in view, but it was still an astounding experience.
"Does it always feel this freeing and amazing? Flying whenever you want to?" She sighed wistfully. Aang nodded.
"Yeah, it is. And its even better when I use my staff." Orora had seen it many times and had asked about it some time ago. "I wish I could go with you so I could fly all the time." The waterbender sighed, holding her hand out to catch a cloud as it floated by.
"Well why don't you?"
His words had her frowning at him. "What do you mean?" She asked, to which he shrugged, his arms held out in front of him where he was holding the reins. "What I mean is, you could always come travel with me, Katara and Sokka. You'll fit right in!" He added with a grin.
Orora pursed her lips, forehead creased as she thought over what he had just said.
Travel with the Avatar and his friends? That would truly be an adventure. They were all so nice and they were her friends. People who actually liked her and didn't mind that she was so forward with her words. Really Katara seemed to get a kick out of it whenever she would knock Sokka down a notch from whatever pedestal he put himself on.
And yet..........
She looked away, staring out at the horizon, the clouds floating around them. So far up here, it felt like she was in a whole other world.
Seeing her hesitate, Aang reached out to pat her on the shoulder. "You don't have to decide now. Just think about it. Its just Katara and I were talking." She stayed silent so he continued. "But I know its also important to go out into the world on your own and find yourself, as I'm sure that's what you're trying to do."
Orora raised an eyebrow at him. "How did you figure that?" Aang grinned.
"Through my mystical powers as the Avatar." He said in a low spooky voice, prompting Orora to roll her eyes and smile at him. Aang chuckled. "And also because, I'm pretty observant, and well, I can see that you feel a little lost now that you don't have a purpose in life."
Still surprised at his ability to observe so eloquently, Orora nodded. "Yeah, I mean, I want to see the world. This is going to be the first time I'm out there and just being myself and not hiding behind a mask. I've been doing it for so long that it feels strange walking around and being just myself." Aang smiled at her in an encouraging manner, prompting her to continue. "And you're right, I want to find my place in it as well. As the Avatar, you know your place in the world, and for Katara and Sokka, their place is beside you."
Silence followed her words for a good few minutes, where the both of them just sat there with Appa lazily moving through the air. Finally, with a clearing of her throat. "Maybe, in the future, when I find out more about myself, I can come with you guys?" She asked, feeling a little uncertain and shy.
Though his response told her she didn't have to feel that way at all. "Well there's a spot reserved just for you then. I'll tell Katara and Sokka too, make sure Sokka doesn't try to fill it by buying a new pet or something."
Orora laughed.
"Hey, did you know you could bend clouds because of the water in them?"
"You can really do that?"
"Yeah! Here, I'll teach you."
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Katara was a force to be reckoned with.
Orora had heard whispers of the girl who had found a place in Master Pakku's class. The Healing Huts had gossiped non-stop about it. And while she had admired the girl from afar, now Orora actually got to practice and exchange knowledge with her.
The other girls at the Healing Hut had either thought her too snobbish or too intimidating for their likeness. In reality, Orora had just been uncertain when it came to approaching them.
Mostly because she didn't know how to make friends. And no matter how hard she tried, there were no texts in her father's library that could help her with that either.
Talking with Katara was easy. She was so eager and ready with a kind word. It was amazing how she had turned out after all that had happened to her. The other girl had told Orora about their mother being taken by the Fire Nation, and while Orora had never had a strong relationship with her mother, she knew it would devastate her if something were to happen to her. And even though Katara carried that sadness with her in her heart, she didn't show it.
And that was incredibly strong of her.
With her own expertise in the art of Healing, she was able to teach Katara new things. It was fun talking to another waterbender and exchanging information. Katara, for her part, taught waterbending moves Orora didn't know. Her scrolls helped, but they could only help so much. In a span of few a days, Orora learned more then she could ever hope to.
She and Katara would go through waterbending forms together in the evening. Sometimes Aang would join them, having still a long way to go till he mastered waterbending. Between the three of them it was fun and Sokka would often get splashed with water more times then they could count.
One night, after finishing a good session where Orora had taught Katara a few waterbending tricks using ice, the girls settled around the fire to chat. "I heard you guys are leaving tomorrow." Orora's words had Katara sighing and nodding.
"Yeah, we have to start flying now that we're closer to land. We need to find Aang an Earthbending teacher." She added as a way to explain further. Orora nodded, eyes staring into the small fireplace that had been created to keep them warm.
"Did you think about Aang's offer?" The younger girl asked, her voice soft and gentle as she tried to gauge the older girl's reaction. It was strange, how Orora was older then her, and yet Katara had more world experience then she did. But then, maybe it wasn't fair to compare their lives.
"Thats all I've been thinking about the past two days." Orora finally responded. "And I......I don't know." Reaching up to where her long braid rested over her shoulder, she began to play with it by running her fingers through it. The fire crackled in front of them, casting shadows all around, and a warmth to settle in them.
It reminded her of the fire she had seen when her supposed soulmate had saved her.
Allowing the silence to continue, Orora sighed before moving to lay down on her back. Already the constellations had begun to change, the further they traveled from the North Pole. Katara glanced at Orora before grinning and laying down beside her as well, arms tucked behind her head. At last, the older girl spoke.
"Katara?"
She hummed in response to show she was listening. Orora licked her lips, eyes tracing the stars above. "Do you ever wander about your place in the world?"
"Huh." Katara frowned, pausing briefly as she thought over her answer. "Well, I don't really wander about it. I mean I've always known."
Turning her head to the side, she glanced at Katara, a little surprised. "You did?"
Her gaze trained to the heavens Katara shrugged. "Yeah. I mean, when my mom died, my place was at the South Pole taking care of my family. And when we found Aang in that iceberg and decided to travel with him, my purpose shifted to making sure he got to the North Pole safely. I mean, the whole world depends on him."
Orora smiled softly, gaze returning to the sky. "In a way, the world depends on you too. Since you're making sure Aang doesn't get himself eaten while riding a sea serpent or something."
Katara laughed softly before she continued. "True. Lately though, I've found that my place in life is to fight for the innocent alongside Aang and Sokka. To try and end this war and make this world safe."
The older girl was silent for a moment. "That's a pretty big commitment to make isn't it?" She said, her voice soft. "Especially considering you're all just kids, and I don't mean that in an offending way."
Katara pursed her lips before nodding. "No, I get what you're saying. And yeah." She moved to sit up, resuming her previous position. "I suppose it is."
The two of them remained motionless for a little while, each lost in her own thoughts, contemplating on what they had just spoken about. Finally, Katara turned her head to smile at Orora who was still on her back.
"But that's my place in the world." She said with a determined gleam in her eyes. "And, I'll be seeing it through with Aang and Sokka beside me."
Sitting up, Orora smiled at the other girl. "That's very brave and noble of you Katara." Fiddling with the end of her braid, the girl pursed her lips. "I wish I had that kind of strength."
Smiling kindly, Katara reached out to wrap an arm around Orora's shoulders. "Once you find your place in the world I'm sure you'll do the same. You're very brave coming out here and thinking of going off on your own Orora. I don't think I would be able to do it."
Orora grinned at the compliment before playfully nudging Katara with her shoulder. "Yeah, but you've already done so many other things. I mean what fourteen year old can say that she's helped earthbenders bust out of prison."
The other girl grinned proudly and nodded. "True, but, my point is, that no matter what you decide Orora, we'll understand."
Sighing Orora nodded smiling at her. "Thanks Katara." She smiled back.
"Anytime."
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Someone was shaking her.
"Orora?"
And calling out to her.
"Orora, wake up."
Reluctantly, she forced her eyes to open just a little. The room was bathed in early morning sunshine, and she could hear the birds chirping outside. But what really caught her attention, was Zuko crouching beside her, hand on her shoulder and looking at her with a concerned expression.
"Are you alright?" He asked, reaching up to brush her tousled hair from her face. "I came in to wake you, and you were just sitting up like this." Her back was aching from where she had been sitting up the entire night, and her neck had a slight crick in it. Nodding the girl reached up to rub her eyes. "Yeah, I just fell asleep thinking."
"And you couldn't have fallen asleep thinking while lying down?" Giving him a grumpy yet sleepy look, she raised her hand, only to cover his face with it and push him backwards, making him fall back.
"I'm still too sleepy to deal with you Zuko. At least let me wash my face first." She grumbled, already moving to stand up and stretching to get rid of some of the ache in her body. Zuko laughed as he stood. "Yeah well, you better be quick. Uncle wants us to set out within the hour."
She pushed him towards the door. "I'll be out when I'm ready."
Taking advantage of her still semi-awake state, he couldn't help but tease her more. "And that will take you two hours? Or three?"
He grinned at her as he stood at her door. Orora glared at him. "At least I don't spend half an hour on my hair making sure it falls perfectly over my forehead."
With that she slammed the door in his face.
Zuko stood there for a moment, reaching up to the aforementioned hair and running is fingers through it. "I only spend fifteen minutes on that." He called through the door.
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A carriage was waiting for them outside. Iroh and Zuko were at the foot of the stairs that led up to their apartment above the tea shop, waiting for Orora to come down.
"Whats taking her so long?" The Prince grumbled, tapping his foot impatiently, his back towards the stairs. Iroh, going through a last minute checking of whatever they would need for the tea serving, glanced up and chuckled.
"You should prepare yourself for such tardiness my nephew. A lady always takes her time." Seeing movement at the top of the stairs, he smiled at the sight of his descending Pupil. "But it is always worth the wait."
Hearing her footsteps behind him, Zuko whirled around. "Finally! I knew you woul....." He trailed off, his eyes widening. Behind him, his Uncle laughed to himself before sneaking away. Orora, looking up from where she had been adjusting the folds of her dress, raised an eyebrow at him.
"It takes time to get ready Zuko." She responded, reaching up to fix her signature blue dragon comb in her hair. Since their arrival in Ba Sing Se, Orora had taken to wearing dark greens and gold. And while those dresses had been pretty on her, the lighter green of the dress she wore currently, fashioned after the latest Earth Kingdom fashion, made her an absolute vision.
Or at least to Zuko's eyes.
The soft green seemed to make her skin glow and her eyes seemed to.....Spirits! When had he begun to take notice of things like that and started writing poetry about it?!
It was all Orora's fault, he mused, as she stared up at him with a questioning look in her eyes. She made him see things in a way that even the ugliest of things looked beautiful.
After all, she had claimed his scar as beautiful, despite the fact that it marred half his face.
Or maybe it was just his lovesick brain that was making her appear much prettier to him then she really was?
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, a blush clear across her pale skin, he cleared his throat. Avoiding her gaze, he reached out to grab her hand and pull her out of the tea shop. "You better hope the Earth King doesn't mind people who are late." He said, helping her into the carriage, and climbing in behind her.
She shrugged. "If we're lucky, maybe he woke up late." Iroh laughed as he sat across from the two teens. Given his more robust figure, he had to take up one side of the carriage, while Zuko and Orora sat next to each other on the other side.
The carriage ride was silent, all three of them looking out of their respective windows and it wasn't long before they were standing in front of the palace where they were to meet the King.
"Many times I imagined myself here, at the threshold of the palace. But I always thought I would be here as a conqueror." Iroh continued, as all three of them walked towards the entrance. "Instead, we are the Earth King's personal guests, here to serve him tea." He chuckled. "Destiny is a funny thing."
Zuko glanced at Orora out of the corner of his eyes, only to catch her doing the same to him. The two smiled at one another. "It sure is, Uncle." The Prince stated.
Once inside they were shown to a spacious and beautifully decorated room. Setting the small basket he had brought down, Iroh started to unpack everything. The three of them settled next to one another, with Iroh putting the ingredients and everything else on the table. Orora helped him make it appear like a proper presentation, as they waited for the Earth King.
They waited.
And they waited some more.
And a little more.
The teapot began to steam away, and Orora yawned hugely, her eyes actually tearing up as she did.
"What's taking so long?" Zuko finally spoke up, clearly at the end of his patience.
Iroh shrugged as he poured some hot tea. "Maybe the Earth King overslept." Orora smirked at Zuko. "Well maybe I was right then."
No sooner had the words come out of her mouth when several Dai Li agents entered the room and began to create a circle around them. The moment they entered the entire atmosphere of the room changed. The hair at the nape of her neck stood up on end, an icy feeling trailed down her back as her eyes darted around.
Zuko seemed to be thinking along the same lines as her, as he leaned forward to whisper. "Something's not right."
And then suddenly, Princess Azula of the Fire Nation, and more importantly Zuko's sister and her Master's niece, was standing in front of them.
"It's tea time!" She stated, a gleam in her eyes that had nothing to do with the joy of seeing her family.
Zuko quickly stood. "Azula!" He shifted so he was standing in front of both Uncle and Orora, the latter of whom was staring at the Princess with a look that could freeze even the brightest of fires.
"Have you met the Dai Li?" Azula continued as if she were talking of the weather and not the multiple deadly earthbenders that surrounded them. "They're earthbenders, but they have a killer instinct that's so firebender. I just love it."
Orora stood to stand just behind Zuko, placing a hand on his elbow. A gesture that did not go unnoticed by the ever observant Princess, who narrowed her eyes at them. Picking up the steaming tea, Iroh smiled at his niece. "Did I ever tell you how I got the nickname 'The Dragon of the West'?" He asked, his voice pleasant.
Azula made a face, checking her nails as she spoke in a condescending tone. "I'm not interested in a lengthy anecdote, Uncle."
Iroh smiled. "It's more of a demonstration, really." He brought the cup to his lips, closing his eyes as he took a deep sip. Zuko looked over at him, smiling briefly. The next moment Orora felt him grab the hand on his elbow and pull her against him, and behind Iroh.
And not a moment too soon.
Iroh opened his mouth wide, letting a huge stream of fire. It was so intense that she could actually feel it, despite Zuko shielding her. Taking the distraction as an advantage, Iroh made an escape route through a wall and out into the corridor. Zuko kept a firm grip on her hand, pulling her along. But she quickly pulled away from his grip, pulling out a stream of water from the hidden water satchel around her thigh and sending several icicles flying through the air. Catching and stopping a few rock projectiles shot by the Agents. Up ahead was a dead end, but that didn't stop her Master, who blasted a hole through the wall, and quickly jumped down and land on some bushes.
"Quick! Jump!" He called out to her and Zuko. Orora did not hesitate, creating a frozen slide and skating down to come to a stop next to him.
She glanced back up to where Zuko stood at the edge.
"Come on! You'll be fine!" Iroh called, just as Orora yelled. "Zuko! Jump now!"
But then he said something that made her heart stop in her chest. "No! I'm tired of running! It's time I faced Azula!"
She froze, a coldness settling in the pit of her stomach. "Zuko! No!" The girl screamed, moving as if she were about to go back to him. But Iroh wasn't having it. Reaching out he quickly and rather roughly grasped her wrist and pulled her away.
"No! Master! We have to go back! We have to help him!" She cried, trying her best to break away from him, stumbling as she did. "So you could be captured like him?" Her Master yelled over his shoulder. "We have a better chance of helping him from out here!"
Despite the panic churning in her stomach, and the fact that she felt as if she were choking on her heart, the girl was quick to see sense and stopped struggling, following after him.
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"That son of a hog-monkey! What in the world was he thinking?! Was he dropped on his head as a baby?! Facing off against all those Agents and his sister! I cannot believe him!"
Once they were at a safe location, all that fear had melted away to be replaced with an anger that burned in her eyes. She was growling under her breath, while also threatening to maim or seriously harm Zuko for being so stupid.
Iroh glanced at Orora as they hid behind an abandoned living quarter. He neglected to state how she had been about to follow after his nephew in the same amount of danger.
Best not to aggravate her then she already was.
Still, he shushed her, motioning for her to lean forward. "We need to secure an Agent for information. Then we shall both go to the Avatar and ask him for his help."
Orora blinked. "Wait, Aang? Can't we do this on our own? I don't want to involve him, Katara and Sokka. What if they get hurt?" Iroh shook his head. "There is strength in numbers, and it would do us well to have that on our side."
Peaking out from behind their hiding place, her Master turned back to her with a smile. "Now, lets see how good you've gotten with your bending." He motioned for her to step forward and take the lead in capturing a Dai Lee agent.
She could hear footsteps as they approached. The moment they sounded near enough, she threw her arm out, catching the Agent around the waist with a water whip and swinging him in the air. The Agent screamed his head off, his loss of composure costing him the stone gloves he wore as they fell from his hands. Twisting her arm, she slammed the man down on the ground, knocking him out.
"Excellent form my dear." Iroh applauded as he appeared at her side with some rope. "Now lets get to find the Avatar."
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It really didn't take long.
Once the Agent woke, he was quick to give up any information he had. It helped speed things along that Orora threatened him with an ice dagger. She wouldn't seriously hurt him, but enough to make him see she was not in the mood for any false leads.
Iroh knocked and the door slid open to quickly reveal........the girl they had met while traveling the countryside. Orora blinked over Iroh's shoulder, having not expected her to being there.
"I need your help." Iroh stated in a grave tone, to which the girl simply waved at him. Behind her, Orora could see Sokka and Aang in varying degrees of disbelief.
"Aang! Sokka!" She called out, rushing past Iroh to envelope both boys in a brief hug. "Wait! Orora!" Aang's voice came muffled against her shoulder before she pulled back and grinned at them both.
"You cut your hair?" The girl rolled her eyes. "Really Sokka? That's the first thing you notice about me."
Sokka nodded. "Well in my defense its the first thing I observed. And your white hair." He added head tilting in curiosity. Aang, having recovered from his shock, hugged Orora again. "Its so good to see you! I like your new look." He added with a small smile, referring to her white patch of hair. Orora smiled back before Aang's attention returned to Iroh and Toph.
"You guys know each other?" He asked, surprise coating his voice. The blind girl nodded. "I met them in the woods once and knocked him down." Iroh smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. "Then he gave me some tea and some very good advice."
Iroh took a tentative step forward. "May I come in?" The girl nodded and stepped aside to allow him in. Once she'd shut the door, he turned to look at them. "Princess Azula is here in Ba Sing Se." He said, his voice grave and serious.
Aang frowned. "She must have Katara." Orora's eyes widened in horror. "She was captured too?" Sokka frowned at her words.
"Too?" He questioned, raising an eyebrow. Iroh nodded. "She has captured my nephew as well."
A beat of silence, in which Orroa glanced nervously at Aang, ready to step in. If she had to beg them to save Zuko, she would.
"Then we'll work together to fight Azula, and save Katara and Zuko." Aang finally stated, looking at Iroh and then Orora. She closed her eyes briefly, before shooting him a small smile of gratitude.
Sokka, though, had other thoughts. "Whoa there! You lost me at Zuko."
It was Iroh who stepped forward to make a case for his nephew. Placing his hands on Sokka's shoulders he spoke. "I know how you must feel about my nephew. But believe me when I tell you that there is good inside him." He said, almost sounding like he was begging Sokka to believe him.
Sokka pushed Iroh away "Good inside him isn't enough!" He stated with venom in his voice. "Why don't you come back when it's outside him too, okay?"
Aang stepped forward. "Katara's in trouble." He said, trying to reason with his friend. "All of Ba Sing Se is in trouble. Working together is our best chance."
Sokka pursed his lips, looking just as reluctant as he felt. A moment passed, before Orora stepped forward. "Sokka." She said, her voice soft. He turned to look at her. Orora gulped, pursing her lips. "He saved my life at the North Pole. I would be dead if it weren't for him. I owe him."
A beat of silence.
"Please."
Finally, something shifted in his eyes and Sokka nodded silently. Heaving a sigh of relief Orora moved to hug him briefly, to which he patted her on the back a little awkwardly.
"We brought someone along who might help us." Iroh said, already leading the way outside to the nervous looking Dai Li agent. The blind girl quickly eartbended a couple of pillars around the man, forcing him to stand up. Orora reached out, yanking away the cloth that covered his mouth.
The moment it was off, the Agent started to speak. "Azula and Long Feng are plotting a coup! They're going to overthrow the Earth King!" He confessed, eyes wide with fear at the sight of several angry looking people in front of him.
Sokka stepped forward, waving his weapon in the man's face. "My sister! Where are they keeping Katara?"
The Agent eyes the weapon nervously. "In the Crystal Catacombs of Old Ba Sing Se, deep beneath the palace." That was all the information they needed. Glancing at one another they nodded, and leaving the Agent where he was, set off to find the Catacombs.
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There was no way to actually find the Catacombs.
Toph, as Orora learned the blind girl was called, was able to feel them underground. "Well, what do you know? There is an ancient city down there. But it's deep." Taking up a stance, she made a tunnel through the ground, leading downwards. Sokka stood to the side, going over what they were all supposed to do.
"We should split up." He finally said, turning to Aang. "Aang, you go with Iroh and Orora to look for Katara and the angry jerk." Turning to Iroh, he placed a hand on his shoulder. "No offense."
Iroh simply shrugged in response. "None taken." He stated in a tone that told Orora that he actually agreed with Sokka.
Continuing where he left off, he went on. "And I'll go with Toph to warn the Earth King of Azula's coup."
Orora stepped forward. "We can meet back at the Jasmine Dragon. Its the new tea shop that just opened up. Ask anyone about it. They'll know."
Sokka nodded. "Good idea. Its best if we have a meeting spot. Good luck!" With that, he patted Toph on the shoulder and led her away. Orora turned to where Iroh and Aang were standing at the entrance of the tunnel.
Inhaling deeply, she gave a nervous smile. "Well, lets get going then."
With every step they made their way deeper and deeper underground. Aang earthbended their way forward, while Iroh lit a small fire in his hand to give them light as it slowly grew darker.
"Congratulations on learning a new element Aang." Orora said, smiling at her friend. He smiled back. "Thanks Orora. I'm still getting the hang of it, but its been coming to me. Toph is a great teacher."
Orora nodded. "She looks it. Her ability to sense things with her feet is amazing." Though she was speaking normally, Orora was actually really worried about both Zuko and Katara. She just hoped neither of them were hurt.
"Have you really been traveling with Iroh and Zuko all this time?" Aang asked, a little curious about his friend's choice of companions.
"Iroh has been my teacher these past few months, and I've learned a great deal from him." She finally responded. "And.......Zuko........he...well......." She pursed her lips, her gaze flickering towards her finger where the thread was wrapped around the tip.
And that small movement was enough for Aang to stop short and stare at her. "No way!" He breathed, grey eyes wide and disbelieving. "Zuko is your soulmate?!" He asked, or rather demanded to know. They had paused where they were. "No wonder you had all those questions about Soulmates back on the boat."
He raised a hand to his forehead as he blew out a small breath. "I can't imagine what you went through when you realized your soulmate was the Prince of the Fire Nation itself."
She let out a dry chuckle. "Tell me about it. Seems fate has a weird sense of humor." Glancing at Iroh who was looking at them both patiently, she extended a hand to lay on Aang's shoulder.
"Look, I promise I'll tell you everything once we get out of here with both Katara and Zuko safe." She promised. Questions burned at the tip of his tongue, but being reminded of Katara had him nodding and moving the next piece of boulder that was in their way.
"Well at least it'll be easy for us to find Zuko. We can just follow the string." Aang said, before glancing at his own little finger. "Then again, it wouldn't have mattered since we would've found Katara the same way."
It took a moment for Orora to realize what he had just said. Grinning, she quickly threw her arms around Aang from behind in a brief yet fierce hug. "I'm so happy for you Aang. You both deserve each other." She added, to which Aang beamed, though the light in his eyes slightly diminished.
"Whats wrong?" She asked, frowning at him. Moving another section of earth out of the way, he sighed. The young Avatar was silent for a good few moments before he turned to Iroh who had remained quiet, wanting to give the both of them the time they needed to catch up and ease their worries however they could. Even if it meant idle chatter.
"So, Toph thinks you give pretty good advice, and great tea!" He added with a smile.
Iroh chuckled. "The key to both is proper aging. What's on your mind?" He asked just as Aang earthbended again before replying.
"Well, I met with this guru who was supposed to help me master the Avatar State and control this great power, but to do it, I had to let go of someone I love. And I just couldn't." All three of them came to a stop.
"Wait! He wanted you to break your bond with Katara?" Orora demanded, sounding disturbed. She turned to look at her Master.
Iroh gave her a small nod of confirmation. "Perfection and power are overrated." He stated. "I think you were very wise to choose happiness and love."
"Especially since both of them can be very hard to come by." Orora added, to which Aang nodded in agreement.
"But what happens if we can't save anyone and beat Azula?" Aang added, sounding frustrated. "Without the Avatar State, what if I'm not powerful enough?"
Iroh hummed in thought as they walked further underground, his fire the only source of light. "I don't know the answer." He responded honestly. "Sometimes, life is like this dark tunnel. You can't always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you just keep moving." Aang earthbended the last of the rocks away to reveal the Crystal Catacombs. Iroh's fire went out and the sudden gust of wind and he smiled. "You will come to a better place."
Reaching out to place a comforting hand on Aang's arm, Orora smiled at him. "You have people standing beside you Aang. Ready to fight with you. Avatar State or no, you won't be fighting alone. And that's another kind of power."
Aang smiled in gratitude. "You've changed since I last saw you Orora." He said, to which she shrugged. "We've all changed." Lifting her hand, she observed it closely.
"Come on. Lets find our Soulmates."
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Never in his wildest dreams had he thought he would be imprisoned alongside the water tribe girl he had hunted alongside the Avatar for so long.
Katara, he remembered Orora saying her name was. After the initial yelling, and his confession about loosing his mother, just as she had lost hers, they had both fallen silent.
He couldn't help but berate himself for trying to face off Azula. But then when it came to his sister, he tended to not think and just do, to try and overtake her. A sigh left him, as his mind conjured the face Orora had made when she had realized he wasn't going to follow them.
She was going to tear him a new one when they were together again. The thought of her yelling at him had a small smile pulling at his lips.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you before." Katara's apologetic voice cut through the silence.
Zuko shrugged, indifferent to her words because really, they hadn't hurt him. He'd been hurt worse by his Father. "It doesn't matter."
There was a brief pause before she continued. "It's just that for so long now, whenever I would imagine the face of the enemy, it was your face."
Raising a hand to his scar, he nodded. "My face? I see."
She shook her head, approaching him. "No, no, that's-that's not what I mean."
Zuko sighed. "It's okay. I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever." He paused, as once again his mind wandered off to Orora. "But then someone made me realize that it wasn't an ugly thing. Not when there was another reason behind it." He wasn't about to tell Katara the whole story. So he just shrugged and added. "But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark."
Katara pursed her lips. "Maybe you could be free of it."
"What?" There was an element of disbelief in his tone. Katara nodded.
"I have healing abilities." She said, pulling out the vial that contained the water from the Spirit Oasis.
"It's a scar, it can't be healed. Besides, Orora has been traveling with us, and I'm sure she's a much better Healer then you. And if she couldn't heal it, I doubt you could." He hadn't meant to undermine her abilities, but he knew Orora more, knew that she was a strong Healer and would've offered to heal him if she could.
Katara shook her head. "She is a better Healer then I am, but she didn't have this." She held up the small vial. "This is water from the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole. It has special properties, so I've been saving it for something important." She moved to stand in front of Zuko. "I don't know if it would work, but," She trailed off, reaching up hesitantly to place her hand on his scar.
Just as Orora had done so many times.
And yet when he closed his eyes, he only envisioned her, with her gentle words and the ability to knock him in his place.
Suddenly he felt a tug on his finger.
A loud rumbling sound followed by a crash had them both jumping where they stood. As the cloud of dust settled, three figures emerged from the opening.
Aang, Iroh and Orora.
"Aang! Orora!" Katara ran to hug the both of them together, while Iroh ran to embrace Zuko. Aang smiled briefly at the hug, before glaring at Zuko. Zuko glared back at Aang, not liking the way Orora was hugging him.
Granted she was also hugging Katara, but still. "I knew you would come." Katara said to Aang before smiling at Orora. "Its so good to see you again Orora." The girl smiled back.
"And you, Spirits, you had us all worried. Both of you." She added, finally moving to give Zuko a brief hug. Brief because Zuko pushed her off a little, prompting her to look a little hurt at his dismissal. But he barely noticed as he rounded on his Uncle.
"Uncle, I don't understand. What are you doing with the Avatar?" He asked, pointing to Aang.
Aang glared at the Prince. "Saving you, that's what." He said in a slightly sarcastic tone. Zuko growled, fists clenching as he took a step in Aang's direction, but was stopped by Iroh and Orora both.
"Zuko, it's time we talked." He turned to look at Aang and Katara. "Go help your other friends. We'll catch up with you." The both of them move to walk away, but then stop when they realized Orora wasn't following them.
Noticing their hesitance, the older girl quickly smiled at them. "I'll be right there guys. I hope that spot on your team is still open for me." Nodding, the both of disappeared into a cave.
Spot on the team?
Was Orora leaving?
Was she leaving him?
She was leaving him.
Orora was leaving him.
Dread filled his heart and clouded his mind, as he turned his head to the side.
"Why, Uncle?" He voiced, the hurt evident in his tone. Though from the fact that his Uncle had gone to his enemy, the Avatar for help, or that Orora was probably leaving him to go with the Avatar, he did not know.
"You're not the man you used to be, Zuko." He smiled. "You are stronger and wiser and freer than you have ever been. And now you have come to the crossroads of your destiny. It's time for you to choose. It's time for you to choose good."
Good?
He had done good once before.
And that had earned him a scar.
He had done good before.
And had saved his soulmate, who was now leaving him.
Doing good had never worked in his favor.
He felt Orora step forward. "Zuko, you-AH!" Her words were cut off with a scream as the Crystals around them grew and encapsulated her and Iroh. Zuko assumed a fighting stance, and was greeted with the sight of his sister and two Dai Li agent sliding into the chamber.
"I expected this kind of treachery from Uncle." Azula spoke, her voice soft and sweet like honey. "But Zuko, Prince Zuko, you're a lot of things, but you're not a traitor, are you?" She asked, her voice soft at the end.
"Release them immediately!" He ordered, power behind his words as he glared at his sister. Orora grunted slightly as she tried to free herself, but stopped when Iroh shook his head at her. His message was clear.
Don't draw attention to yourself.
Azula shrugged. "It's not too late for you, Zuko. You can still redeem yourself."
Iroh, not wanting Zuko to be influenced by his sister's words tried to intervene. "The kind of redemption she offers is not for you."
Azula sighed in a way a mother would sigh at a naughty child. "Why don't you let him decide, Uncle?" She said, before turning her sweetened attention back to her brother. "I need you, Zuko. I've plotted every move of this day, this glorious day in Fire Nation history, and the only way we win is together. At the end of this day, you will have your honor back. You will have Father's love. You will have everything you want."
She painted a pretty picture. She painted the exact picture he had wanted for so long. The very picture Orora had said he deserved. He deserved honor and love. He deserved everything.
Didn't he?
Hadn't he suffered enough?
For once Orora was silent. She knew if she spoke, Azula would not hold back in shutting her up. Iroh was right, maybe it was best to stay quiet and let Zuko decide on his own. He was changed now.
He would make the right choice.
Still, that didn't stop Iroh from pleading with his nephew. "Zuko I am begging you. Look into your heart and see what it is that you truly want."
Azula shrugs. "You are free to choose." She gestured to the Dai Li agents who promptly left, probably to get reinforcements. With one backward glance at the three of them, she disappeared into the darkness of the cave where Aang and Katara had gone.
The chamber echoed with a silence that pressed against his chest. His mind whirled, his heart burned. He could feel the eyes of his Uncle and his Soulmate at the back of his head.
"Zuko." Her soft comforting voice floated through the air. "Listen to your heart. What does it tell you?" She said the same words as his Uncle.
Finally, he turned. He looked to his Uncle first, who gave him a gentle smile. Then he looked at Orora.
Amber found blue.
He knew the moment she understood what he was about to do. He could see it in her eyes.
So without a backwards glance, he followed after his sister, leaving his Soulmate to call out to him as he raced away.
As far away from those heartbroken cries as possible.
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As soon as he had disappeared, Orora began to struggle even more fiercely. "We have to get out. We have to help Aang and Katara. Azula will kill them." She was speaking in an almost frenzied tone as she tried to free her wrists where they were encapsulated in Crystal.
Iroh stood where he was, his eyes closed, a look of utter sorrow and disappointment on his face. "I thought I taught him enough." He lamented.
A wave of emotion rose within her, threatened to overtake her. But she stomped it down with a vicious growl.
No!
Her friends were in danger!
Now was not the time!
And maybe, maybe they were wrong. Maybe Zuko had gone to help Aang and Katara.
Maybe he would change his mind.
Suddenly the earth rumbled and a lone Dai Li agent appeared. He quickly looked around and once he was sure no one else was there, he quickly earthbended the Crystals, freeing them both.
"I am honored to help a High Ranking Officer of the White Lotus." He said, bowing respectfully to Iroh. Iroh nodded, before turning to Orora.
"Go help your friends. I need to take care of some business."
But his Pupil was already gone.
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She arrived to a horrific scene.
Aang flying through the air, crashing into a building. Azula, Zuko and more then a dozen Dai Li agents, surrounding Katara who was on the ground.
Sheer anger coursed through her veins. Taking a running start, she leaped from her heightened location, using a large wave from a nearby canal to create a slide of ice which she quickly skated down, coming to land in front of Katara.
Her arms raised on either side of her body. The water slide split apart, only to create multiple sharp yet deadly daggers of ice.
Pointing straight at her Soulmate, his sister and the Agent.
"Take one more step and I'll send one right through you." She warned, her eyes dancing with a deadly gleam as she glared at them all.
One of the Agents, thinking she was bluffing, did step forward. Only to find two ice daggers embedded in his forearms. He dropped to the floor screaming in pain as blood oozed from his wounds.
Letting out a grunt, she threw her arms out, allowing each ice dagger to fly forward. While several hit their marks to various points of injuries, many of the Agents brought up shields of rock, while Zuko and Azula simply sent forward a burst of fire, melting them.
"Out of our way peasant." Azula growled, blue fire burning in her hands. She allowed a huge ball of it to fly towards Orora, who dodged, only to be knocked flying back by a Dai Li agent. She slammed into a pillar wall. Her entire body screamed with pain as she slid to the ground. Pushing herself onto her knees, the girl shot into position once more.
It was fight or die, and her entire sense of being had gone into survival mode.
In front of her, Katara had gathered enough strength to stand up. Waving her arms she created an octopus like creature around her, and not a moment too soon.
More Dai Li agents arrived.
While several surrounded Katara, even more surrounded her. Orora growled, bringing up twin whips of water in her hand. The ends of each tip was topped with a spiked boulder of ice. She panted as her eyes darted from one enemy face to another, looking for a chance to land a shot if any of them tried anything.
But then a light shone in the chamber.
Brighter then a hundred candles.
Every eye turned to Aang as he floated in the air. His eyes and tattoos glowing.
Orora gasped. Was this it? Was he about to go into the Avatar State?
So lost were they all in the sheer power of what Aang was about to unleash, that no one noticed Azula sneaking up behind Aang.
Until it was too late.
Lightning flashed, and the tips of Azula's fingers smoked as her aim found it's target.
Aang dropped to the ground.
"No!" A scream tore from her throat. With a single move of her boulder water whips, she was able to knock down the still surprised Dai Li agents. Seeing the path clear, she ran for Aang, creating a wave to catch his body just before he crashed to the ground.
And she wasn't the only one running towards him.
Both her and Katara reached him at the same time. Katara's hair was undone, her clothes torn. And Orora was sure she was in a similar state. Tears streamed down the other girl's face, as she cradled Aang's body and wept loudly.
Knowing exactly what Katara had just lost, Orora moved to stand protectively in front of the younger children. Waving her arms in a circle around her, she managed to call the water towards her and create several circular trunks of ice in front of her. With a flick of her wrist, a sharp round slate of ice lifted from each trunk. One move and they would fly through the air, cutting off limb or head if she desired.
Her eyes were full of pure hatred when she looked at Azula.
"I will kill you." She growled in a threatening manner. Azula simply smiled in a condescending manner.
But then Orora's gaze found his.
Where she had looked at him with such trust and adoration just this morning, now there was only hurt, anger and disdain.
So powerful were her emotions, that he actually hesitated in attacking her, his stance softened and his arms lowered a little.
A blast of fire stopped Azula from attacking. Iroh, the source of the blast, jumped down from the wall of the cave and stood in front of Orora and her friends.
"You've got to get out of here. I'll hold them off as long as I can." He called over his shoulder as he sent another wall of raging fire at his own family and the agents.
Her heart dropped and fear settled in her bones. "No! Master!"
"Orora!" He roared, stopping her in her tracks. "You swore an oath to do as I asked you. You swore!"
She stopped short.
After a moment a cry of utter frustration fell from her lips, and she threw her arms forward, allowing the trunks of ice to fly through the air and take several Dai Li agents down with them.
Running towards Aang and Katara, she quickly gathered them both close. Katara looked at her with such hopeless eyes that Orora felt her heart break for the young girl.
"Hang on." She said, creating a pillar of water and waterbending all three of them out by way of a waterfall.
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Once his Pupil had disappeared from view, Iroh took a deep breath and submitted. The Dai Li quickly encased him in crystals. He raised his head to see his niece smiling in a triumphant manner.
His eyes met Zuko's before Iroh looked away, ashamed, disappointed, but most of all, saddened.
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It was no easy task, taking both Katara and Aang back to the tea shop. The girl was barely walking, so lost she was at the realization that her other half was dead. Luckily, the waterfall had opened up to a canal close to the tea shop, and Orora had managed to get Sokka's attention from where he kept watch on Appa.
The moment they were on, Orora wasted no time. "Appa! Yip yip" She called. They had to get out as fast as they could.
Once they were in the air, she turned her attention to Katara and Aang. The girl was placing Aang's body against Appa. And though her eyes still held that lost and devastated look, she reached around her neck to pull out a vial.
Bending the water from inside, the young girl pressed the now glowing water against the wound on Aang's back.
She was sitting beside Sokka, anxiously peering over the saddle just like the rest of them. In her heart she prayed. She prayed to every Spirit out there. She prayed to Yue.
She prayed and prayed.
A gentle glow suddenly ignited the night sky and Orora watched as Katara suddenly smiled, tears in her eyes and hugged Aang to her chest.
He was alive.
Aang was alive.
He was alive.
But then, why did she still feel like the world had ended.
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"We've done it, Zuko." Azula stated as she sat on the Earth King's throne. "It's taken a hundred years, but the Fire Nation has conquered Ba Sing Se."
Zuko, still reeling from what had happened, was having a hard time believing everything. "I betrayed Uncle." He said in a low voice.
He betrayed his Soulmate.
Azula stood. "No, he betrayed you." She clarified before continuing. "Zuko, when you return home, Father will welcome you as a war hero."
Zuko shook his head. "But I don't have the Avatar. What if Father doesn't restore my honor?" He asked his sister, feeling those first lick of panic along his skin.
"He doesn't need to, Zuko." She reassured him, placing ah and on his shoulder. "Today, you restored your own honor."
With that she walked away, disappearing into the dark.
His shoulders slumped, as if the weight of the entire world was on them. His hand had been clenched in a fist at his side the entire time, but now with Azula gone, he lifted it up.
Opening his fingers he stared at the object within.
A small blue hair comb set with the carving of a dragon.
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#zuko imagine#zuko x reader#zuko x oc#fire lord zuko#zuko#atla zuko#prince zuko#prince zuko x oc#the thread of fate#avatar the last airbender fanfiction#avatar the last airbender#avatar aang#netflix avatar#avatar: the last airbender#avatar#aang#katara#sokka#toph#iroh
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#death note#death note fanart#misa amane#rem#remisa#my art#not kinktober for once#i just wanted to doodle lesbains#bc i’ve been feeling bad. and what makes that better? lesbians#i love remisa#i need to draw them more tbh#rem is fun to draw#love her long arms#and her face#she’s v pretty but i had to simplify her for the doodle#i will do a more detailed drawing of her one day#in other news i’ve made the executive decision to skip class tomorrow bc they’re doing nothing new and i’m tired#i have so much to do :(#at one point i had all of my shit together but now i’m a hot mess. what went wrong#getting back around to the ‘should i drop out of school’ phase. it comes back every once in a while#but i’m almost there. i just need to make it another year/year and a half#but then i’ll need a masters. ugh#i don’t really want to keep going but i also don’t want a shitty job though tbh i don’t want any job. i just want to sit in gardens and dra#but no. i must suffer for eternity
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"Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a vampire in love with a human. Better integration than I could possibly have dreamed."
(just some Sundown The Vampire in Retreat fanart. More details and B&W vers. under the cut, etc).
:)
#I thought this movie was really cute and charming in a lot of ways#also I love Bruce Campbell's look in this one so much I had to draw him#I wanted to make him really warm to contrast her vampiric appearance which is more or less what they do in the movie#although he's pretty gray#I also like the costume designer's attention to detail like everyone is dressed more or less like they would be at the time they died#and a vampire western is just one of those ideas you pull from a hat that sound insane and are#but anyway charming film! I watched it twice this year! Then what! It's full on youtube so it's easier#I feel like she looked more like the actress in the sketch ALSO her actress played Muffy in April Fools Day????!#I fucking love that movie so much and Muffy is my girl she's like such an insane genius I love her to death#that movie is like a very long Are You Afraid of the Dark episode and this movie is a fairy tale with vampires. Iconic choices honestly#sundown the vampire in retreat#bruce campbell#I usually don't tag actors or actresses but I deserve this one#fanart#artists on tumblr#art#digital art#illustration#my art#digital drawing
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Once again I am putting Mitsuba into a historical gown <3
(Regency era clothing my beloved)
#fanart#owari no seraph#seraph of the end#mitsuba sangu#digital art#my art#I still don't really like drawing loads of tiny little details#thanks to Slacky for the colour inspiration#you are 100% correct blue IS her colour <3#(although I do like drawing her in pastel green haha)#ONE MORE DAY AND THEN I HAVE A WEEK OFF FROM WORK#BUT I HAVE BEEN GIVEN SO MUCH TO DO IN NOT ENOUGH TIME#AHHHHHHHHH
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i'm the antonymph of the internet
#how many tributes to this song will i make in my life#MANY ! it literally changed my life and means a lot to me. i love antonymph and vylet pony's music is worth checking out - please do.#unsupervised internet access as a queer neurodivergent kid anthem !!#i chose to do misty since we all know i like drawing her in experimental pieces and putting her in outfits. she also has art in a gir hoodi#from the clash team in treasure trove!! :D#this is also experimental/stylistic as well!! had fun!! nice to just draw something in one day and not worry. leaves me tired but...#haven't done a nice piece like so in one day in a while!!! i'm very proud :] it's a fun one#anyways... both a little tribute to the song and misty as a character#ihave so many thoughts about misty even if i dont talk publicly on them. shes a very interesting character to me and i care about her so#much. i compared her to fluttershy in the past - and realized that if i liked ttcc as a kid she would've been my favorite.#fluttershy on her own meant a lot to me as a child. including mlp itself as it's one of the core things that got me into drawing art online#a lot of my analysis on misty and headcanons at least on the more emotional scale do come from a bit of projecting but...it makes it more#fun to me when i can put myself into the shoes of a character like her who i already relate to. rrghh too bad im scared to talk about her#too much in nuanced detail in public since some people are... not so nice about her. though i know the tumblr audience is nice and unders#standing!!#anyways from me just having fun being me#i let misty have a little bit of fun... something i think she would possibly enjoy? i do see her as someone who gets nostalgic#and is stuck in more childish things and matters. she wants to play ip dip with you...its very sweet to me. letting myself and her be#confident through a song that means so much to me is kind of powerful to me. i had a lot of fun making this drawing.#anyways. love this song. love ttcc. love mity /p. be swag and be self indulgent and have fun. you can do anything u want forevah#toontown#toontown corporate clash#antonymph#guz art#rainmaker
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Being a villain isn’t all fun and games! Just mostly (Patreon)
#Doodles#Villainsona#Just Desserts#Charm compilation <3 It's been a while!#Especially so for some of these - like the first ones!#Some of my very earliest Charm doodles were set to ''Ready as I'll ever be''#A lot happier the first time around admittedly haha ♪ Or more confident and proud and feeling justified perhaps#Charm's villainy has gotten a lot more angsty which is very funny on her cute face hehe <3#She'll cut loose again once she fully gives into it - if you're gonna be evil you might as well make it fun! She'll get there#Yet another WOY style TVAU Charm - I'm gonna get an outfit one of these days I swear!#I've been working on a design breakdown of classic Charm lately actually she's just - agh how did I do it first try??#Accidentally excellent design with lots of stops and places for the eye to rest and a good mix of 3D details and 2D ''textures''#She was designed with the 3D-looks-2D style in mind initially - I have to get back into that mental space somehow agh#Another style that every time I see it out in the wild I'm like ''Oh Charm would look perfect'' lol - y'know the Little People toy line?#Soft plastic with cute chibi proportions! I did talk about the designs as cute palm-sized toys way early on as well haha#Just so fun to imagine holding her like an ice cream cone pfft#Candle ♥ I sometimes forget that candlemaking for Charm is what drawing is for me lol - expression! Delight!#She makes candles based on her interests :D#This one just so happens to be green with red accents - and look the red wick is back! Probably could've gone with a pink one for tongue but#It's fine ♪ A different candle perhaps! Hehe <3#Do aliens exist in the JD universe? I mean it's me so probably but hmmm#Taffyyyy <3 Sweetest sheep best little lad <3#So relaxing to hug ♥#That last one feels so oddly on-model?? Or on-vibe??? I dunno I'm just terribly happy with it hehe#Charm being cute and posed just a little strange in a natural way :D I like it very much!
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when i make the gtmpota whodunit? video.....then
#posts made by people who haven't started working on it at all but intend to really get serious about that when it's officially september....#which are also posts made by people w/the autistique inertia; the adhd exec dysfunction; the perfectionism avoidance...#the Very Slow Artists even when they do get going and can't Just draw quickly / without editing much#the people who don't really picture faces or voices for characters & are shit at making things up like say a character design....#still like oh jeez how do i even throw together like various inspirations into any solid enough idea of how to draw brooke#then head in hands when i remember tina's also in that scene technically & it Would be funnier to include her#she doesn't even have Any appearance description from the book to be a helpful little detail like e.g. brooke's glasses; zeke's freckles....#so help me god i'll make this quasimatic which also i'd probably be putting together via windows media maker lmfao#but lord.......held back by the scruff of the neck. if i could do things more easily imagine the material#however. it is me being me doing the things the way i do that creates all the preexisting material & leads to me wanting to make this one#now one of the less Relatively niche things i could post about but still like. whom else is raring to make the whodunit sequence#imagine if a year out almost someone did though lol. like well....two cakes#speaking of niche but not i was seeing some reddit post the other day about like marble hornets lore of yore like yeah lol...#being informally around for this as ppl in the replies are like ''well all i have is the vaguest speculation''#like well me too i guess but a little less vague and a little more informed. anyways
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RAHHH I FINISHED SCULPTING MY PARTS !!!!
#txt#nendo.txt#no pics yet cuz i have to sand them down tomorrow#i did one round of clay to do the major changes (mostly her hair) then waited a day for dry time#sanded it down until it looked all nice n smooth ^^#then today i did some more intensive sanding and carving down to make sure the pieces fit together still .#added the smaller details... like her lil earrings and pockets and such..#tomorrow ill be sanding again! and then i just have to wait til tuesday when my sealant gets here#THEN I CAN PAINT!!!#im excited to paint them cuz thatll let me actually see how my mods are turning out#biggest thing im worried about is drawing the face on but i think itll be alright#ive practiced drawing on the eye shape once and it wasnt toooo bad#it left a bit of color smudge when i wiped it off though but thats on unsealed plastic#im excited for when my paint coats are done and i can add a bit of gradients and blushing with my pastels#im looking forward to that i think itll look cool#itll add another layer to the face but eh thats just how it is#i think ill add her freckles in that step too cuz i dont want to smudge them with my hands when doing the eyes#ANYWAY!! progress ^w^
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HANAMUSA (JESSIExDELIA) MASTER POST
I probably should have started doing this forever ago but I wasn’t sure how long I was gonna stick with drawing these comics. But I guess we’re in it now! This will be continually updated~ EVERYTHING UNDER THE CUT
BEFORE YOU START:
This post is required reading about Team Rocket’s ages since that’s usually a question that comes up a lot LOL. As for Delia’s age, she is said to be 29 in Takeshi Shudo’s (original writer on Pokémon) novel that built out the world and characters of the anime.
Next, I feel like this chart helps give the vibe of what these characters relationship is (all just headcanons except for their names and ages)!
WHERE TO START:
Here’s a post I made detailing how Jessie, James and Meowth initially start living with Delia. It also goes into what each character does in this AU. Before going into the post, you might enjoy this fanfic my girlfriend commissioned! It’s based off of said post and is a more enjoyable read.
Here’s also a list of headcanons!
COMICS:
Here’s all the comics I’ve done! The order of most of them are pretty ambiguous and up in the air but I put them in the order I kinda see in my head! There are some that do take place before Jessie and Delia start dating though! Also a few comics that have several parts but the “next” and “prev” links will be in each comic. So I’ll only link the first part of those ones in this masterpost.
Pre-Relationship
Fast Food
Ophidiophobia
Whipped
Making Eyes
Hairbrush
Inquiries
Separated
First Kiss
During Relationship
Big Bed
Tattoo
Crumbs
Pet Clown
I’d Like To
Jessica
Lipstick (not a comic but some fun extra dialogue for this)
Glow
Official
Stare Down
Shovel Talk
Invisible Walls
Date Night
Face Blind
One Motto Away
Snowgasboard
Delia’s Got a Cold
Mr. Jessie Ketchum
Peek-At-Chu
Hands Off Pikachu!
Wine Nights with James
Beauty and the Beach
Turning Point Arc
Sunscreen
Where Do Babies Come From
Love Life
Ugly
Ace Trainers
Pikasitting
Mother’s Day
Father’s Day
Gift for Delia
Gift for Jessie
Jessilina Fan
Crossdressing
Hickeys
Journey Arc
Tone
Cooking Twerp
Son
Cooking Advice
Serperior Facts
Cassidy’s Cabin Arc
Father/Son Bonding
Glasses
Uniform
Study Help
Happy Valentine’s Day
Wrapped
Daddy Daughter Double Battle
Splinter
Married Life
Wedding
Arbok/Weezing Reunion
Snake Eyes
MISC DRAWINGS:
I’ll update this with links to my other miscellaneous drawings later!
FAQ:
What does "Hanamusa" mean?
Hanamusa is a combination of Delia and Jessie's Japanese names, Hanako and Musashi respectively.
When does this AU take place?
It takes place sometime after the Mezase Pokémon Master/To Be a Pokémon Master series. So all the events that happened in the series, unless retconned within the series, happened. Ash is 10 at the start of the comics.
What's the status between Jessie, James, Meowth and Giovanni/Team Rocket?
Not great terms since they were fired, but also not the worst terms. Giovanni just let the three of them go without any further issues.
I will say that I've always loved the theory that Giovanni keeps Jessie specifically around because of her parentage and he as a soft spot for her that he keeps a secret. I feel like Matori was the one that got the three of them fired and Giovanni wasn't able to make an excuse for them this time (without showing nepotism/special treatment) so he was forced to let them go.
If you headcanon Delia as a lesbian, how did Ash come to be?
Delia was young when she had Ash and I hc that she just didn’t really explore her sexuality much! I myself didn’t realized I liked women until I was 18 and didn’t know I liked ONLY women until like 2 years ago. She got married, had a baby and realized after her husband left that she liked women (trans people exist obviously but I’m also interpreting Ash’s father as a cis man).
Who do you think Ash’s dad is?
I don’t know and I don’t really care to explore it. I’m going off of the novel interpretation that he’s just a deadbeat that left to be a trainer, failed and never came back because of the shame. He’s not important.
Isn’t Giovanni Ash’s dad?
That’s a common misconception that people remember wrong from the Pokémon Live show. Delia mentions she dated Giovanni but then left him and his gang after meeting Ash’s father. I also don’t consider the live show canon personally! I follow The Birth of Mewtwo timeline where Madame Boss founded Team Rocket.
Do you think Delia and Giovanni dated at least?
Nah, I think he’s too old for her? I always got the vibe from The Birth of Mewtwo that he was quite a bit older than Jessie and it’d be sus if he was dating Delia when she was married to, and had a child with her husband at 18/19. He’s a bad guy but not a BAD guy.
You mentioned you still ship Jessie and James. Why not make a Jessie, James, Delia polycule?
I have a few reasons I’ve mentioned before! 1. I’m in super deep with this AU already and I feel it’d be very confusing for casual viewers of my stuff if James was added into the relationship haha. 2. I’ve drawn Jessie and James together since 2011 and took this AU as an opportunity to try my hand at writing them as queer, platonic besties bc I love that interpretation of them a lot as well. 3. I’m not poly myself and the way I write this ship is largely based off of my experiences with my girlfriend. I just know I’d favor the Jessie/Delia of it all which isn’t fair and not a good interpretation of a poly relationship. All that said, I DO super enjoy seeing peoples’ poly headcanons and art!
Who does James end up with in this AU?
No one. He's aroace and is happy to be single
Do Jessie and James have all their Pokémon in this AU
I think they have all the Pokémon that they did by the end of Mezase Pokémon Master (all their Pokémon that were left at HQ). Most of their released Pokémon have stayed released and the Alola Pokémon are still in Alola. I bring back Arbok and Weezing post-Jessie and Delia getting married. I may bring back Chimecho, Growlie and Cacnea if I think of an idea I like!
What are Meowth and James up to in this AU?
Hop back to the top of this post under the "Where to Start" section. All your questions will be answered.
Does Ash travel with anyone at this point of his life?
I don't have anyone in particular in mind! I could see him making new friends (Nemona???) or traveling with different combinations of old friends. Like him, Misty and Goh, him, Dawn and Cilan, him, Serena and Lillie etc.
Will Delia ever get over her phobia of snake Pokémon
Not fully! I think overcoming fears is fine and good but I think real PHOBIAS are much harder to get past and I don't want to cheapen it. She slowly gets used to Jessie's Seviper specifically and gets to the point where she can pet it comfortably with Jessie in the room. But otherwise, still scared and would need that same amount of time per Pokémon
Is Jessie gaining weight or is it just me?
Not just you! Jessie puts on a bit of relationship weight overtime as you'll see in the later comics in the timeline. Jessie grew in poverty, never knowing when her next meal would be and that continued into her life as a Team Rocket member. Once she was able to settle down (with a woman who runs her own restaurant no less) she's able to live a healthier lifestyle with regular meals and puts on some weight because of that.
Does Jessie ever feel self conscious about gaining weight?
Nope! She feels happier and healthier and hotter. She's also unreasonably excited to clear out her old clothes and get a new wardrobe.
Would Jessie and Delia ever have kids together or adopt?
Nah, Ash is enough for them! I have come up with hypothetical kids for them but they're not canon to this AU. Just a fun little thing for me.
Will you ever put this on webtoon?
Nah. People mostly ask me this because they want to read everything in the order of the timeline but to my knowledge, you can’t reorder chapters or installments which would defeat the purpose. I also don’t think nintendo fan stuff would fly there. Also, also it’s just extra work and another place to upload and I want to keep this all fun for myself~
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Simon "Ghost" Riley x Fem!reader
From the request here
Fandom: Call of Duty
Character(s): Simon Riley, Reader
Summary: When a movie night has you questioning your bodies worth, Simon catches you in the shower to show you that your body is perfect just the way that it is.
Word Count: 4.3 k
Warnings:
“Look at the jugs on her,” one of the guys says at the busty blonde that has just been introduced for the first time in the film. A few others follow suit, whooping at the gorgeous, petite female main character popping up on screen as the movie really gets going. “That’s a woman you could lose yourself in. Fuck, I wish I could find a girl like her; I’d be a happy man for life. To have that waiting at home for me, I’d never even be tempted to stray.”
This is usually how movie night on base goes: people piling into the rec center ready to watch the latest movie from the personal collection from one of the members, but mostly it just devolves into a testosterone fest of horny boys itching to have something to focus their sexual frustrations on by ogling at the new pretty little thing on screen. Usually it doesn’t bother you, you’re used to being around all that chaos, but tonight just feels different.
Simon isn’t one for this type of gathering, but he comes to keep an on the crowd and be nearer to you and as he watches out of the corner of his eye from his place standing towards the back, he notices how your body language changes as the guys continue to raucously talk about the leading lady and how beautiful she is. It’s almost imperceptible the way you shift in your seat while you pick at the skin of your lower lip with your teeth, your shoulders slumping down as you cross your arms, but he catches it outright. He knows you and he knows this isn’t normal.
Something is bothering you.
The longer you sit there the worse it gets. Their lustful words just cut different tonight; maybe it’s exhaustion from being overworked or perhaps you’re just having an off day, but the longer they hoot and holler over the girl plastered before your eyes, the more you want to crawl out of your skin.
It’s about halfway through the movie when you slowly get up from your seat, trying not to draw attention to yourself by leaving too quickly and exit the rec without looking back. Simon is instantly concerned and wants to rush after you, but one of the newer recruits that seems to be the ringleader in all this turns to him as if to drag him into the depraved fun.
“Whatcha think; gotta admit she’s a fine thing, ain’t she Lieutenant?” he asks, nodding back at the screen. “Come on, even you gotta admit she’s perfect. Couldn’t hope to find anyone better.”
The look that Simon gives the young man through his mask, that stone cold glare that could make even the bravest man shiver, instantly shuts him up and has him facing forward again to join his brothers in arms in their jokes. His brow furrows angrily behind the fabric as he looks over the crowd of boys once more before heading out, leaving quietly like a specter on his way to find where you had gotten to.
Simon checks all the usual places, but you are nowhere to be found: the little area outside the rec where you usually join him for a smoke break, the mess hall, even your barracks are empty. Then he hears movement in the communal bathroom and knows he’s finally found you.
It looks like you’ve been rushing to get done before anyone can catch you. Your hair is damp from the shower and it drips down to leave dark stains onto your t-shirt as you stand staring at yourself in the mirror behind the sink. Simon watches quietly from his obscured place by the door as you look yourself over, scrutinizing each detail from head to toe before you give up with a sigh and a diversion of your eyes, focusing on your toothbrush instead as you pick it up and turn on the faucet. So absorbed in what you are doing, you don’t hear the lock click closed or the pair of heavy boots that cross the length of the room until there is a presence upon you.
“God, you’re so beautiful baby,” you hear that deep, gravelly voice sound from behind you while a bulky arm wraps itself around your waist from behind as Simon presses up against your back. You look back up into the mirror in front of you and are instantly met with a pair of brilliant brown eyes as he slowly removes his balaclava. “Just standin’ there fresh outta the shower and ya look like a fantasy.”
Setting the mask on the sink he joins his other arm around you and leans his face in, the tip of his nose nuzzles into the side of your neck before he presses his lips against your jugular. His lips catch the feeling of your pulse quickening through the vein at his touch. Rough hands begin to splay across your clothed stomach, running across and down to your hips with gentle caresses that make you pause. Your eyes stare into the mirror to take in your combined form as he drapes himself over you, hot lips peppering your skin with no sign of letting up.
You chuckle dismissively, trying to play off his words as a joke. Your head still isn’t in the right place and even though you enjoy the feeling of his touch, disastrous thoughts still circle throughout to cloud your mind so that you second guess even his affections.
“Oh, come off it,” you return as you grab the toothpaste off the countertop. “I do not.”
There is no hesitation in his reply. “I’m serious,” he breathes that husky whisper against your skin as his lips continue down to your shoulder as his fingers pull the t-shirt away from your collar bone to reveal more skin for him to adorn with his mouth.
You roll your eyes in the mirror so that as he looks up briefly he catches the movement. “Yeah, sure,” you again dismiss him. “Whatever you say.”
Before you can even unscrew the cap to the toothpaste, Simon reaches past you to turn off the tap and take your things out of your hands before he rotates you around so that you face him. Your backside presses into the edge of the sink as you rest up against it, mouth scrunched to one side as he gazes back at you with intent. There is a subtle frown on his lips and an anxious look in his copper eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, concerned. “Somethin’ happen? Cause I did see ya leave in a hurry back there.”
You divert your eyes, ashamed of your lack of confidence that has come forward tonight. “I don’t know, it’s nothing,” you shrug, but he isn’t buying any of it.
His large hand rests itself up under your chin, pulling your head back up to look into his face. “I think ya do know,” he says. “Will ya tell me?”
Clearing your throat, you give yourself a moment to figure out how best to proceed. “It’s just,” you say hesitantly, “I guess sometimes I just wish I looked like that, you know? I know I’m usually not this self-conscious, but tonight I guess I just hit a rough patch with my insecurities and something about the shit they were saying just got to me I guess. You see the way the guys talk about girls like in that movie, like she’s the most gorgeous thing in the world. She’s so perfect and… I…”
You gesture with your head down the length of your body to emphasize your point that you are nothing like the actress: your breasts are on the smaller side, your thighs are incredibly thick, and your stomach is not completely flat. Simon follows your hand, looking you up and down before his eyes meet yours again.
“I’m not. I know it’s fucking stupid and I shouldn’t care about all that, it doesn’t really matter, but sometimes it’s just hard to ignore. I’m not the standard when it comes to beauty, but sometimes I just want to feel like I’m the most irresistible person in the room.”
It seems like he wants to say something, you can see his mouth shifting, but instead his gaze drifts down to your lips and he pulls your chin forward to close the distance between your mouths. Instantly he overtakes your mouth with his own, tenderly capturing your lips over and over with a gentle desperation that makes him shudder against you as he moves in closer.
“Who the fuck said ya ain’t perfect?” he asks, his voice breathy against your lips. “Gimme that bastard’s name. You tell me right now so I can go ring their fuckin’ neck. Cause that is a goddamn lie.”
“No one said anything like that, it’s just the way I feel,” you answer honestly. “And you’re only saying that because you like me.”
Immediately Simon pulls you into another long kiss as if he is trying to take those insecure words right out of your mouth before you can say anything else. Breaking the kiss, Simon licks his flushed lips and shakes his head. “Really? Ya don’t think your body can drive someone wild? Then what’s this, hmm?” he asks, grabbing your wrist to pull your hand forward so that he can place the palm over top of the soft bulge growing in his boxers. “See whatcha do to me, sweetheart? Ya think that’s lyin’?”
Your hand rubs over the swell and his hips unconsciously buck slightly against your hand as he hums in approval of your touch. It is instantaneous the way you have him begging for even a simple touch from you; no other has ever held that kind of power over him, not anyone that he would give it to so freely like he does you. The warm pressure from your hand causes the pulsing to intensify as he grows harder and you find your heart beat starting to match its throbbing.
“Ya don’t think I catch the men lookin’ at ya from time to time?” he asks as he leans his head forward until it rests against your own, hands moving up under the hem of your shirt to play with the toasty skin of your abdomen as he talks. “Ya don’t think I see that their eyes glaze over as they linger on your body a bit too long for my fuckin’ likin’? Just cause they won’t say it out loud doesn’t make it any less true that you have something about ya that would drive any man wild.”
His words are like a balm to your mind and the longer he speaks the more you find yourself falling under their spell. Rough fingers are pushing up higher into your shirt, pulling it up over your waist as he runs his palms across the area while his hips press into yours. He’s not forceful or harsh, his advances are only full of adoration in that type of intense devotion that only Simon Riley is capable of when it comes to savoring the best damn thing he has ever had.
“Don’t let what ya heard back there hurt ya,” he says softly. “Yeah, ya don’t look like that bird on the screen, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t an absolute beauty. You’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen and I ain’t just sayin’ it, baby. But ya don’t just have ta take my word for it. Let me show ya that no one can hold a candle to what ya got.”
Simon pulls you over to one of the empty showers and gets it going, fiddling with the taps to make sure the water is going nice and warm before he turns his undivided attention back to you. Instantly his mouth is back on yours as one by one each piece of your clothing is removed and set aside in tandem with his own until you both stand before the other bare.
“I’ve already showered,” you mutter out between pauses as merely just a statement of fact rather than a reason to deny him.
Simon murmurs his disagreement into your mouth. “Don’t care,” he replies through a break in his kiss, continuing to take off your clothes as he dizzyingly tries to get at your body. “Can’t be havin’ those fuckin’ negative thoughts in that head of yours. Wanna take care of ya, make ya feel like the true beauty ya are.”
More kissing, so much that your lips are burning and raw from the friction. His mouth must be aflame too, but he doesn’t let up; he can’t, he’s captured in the wake of your allure and there is no getting out.
“What if someone comes in?” The last of your questions spills out quick.
He chuckles at your needless worry. “Already locked the door sweetheart.”
Stretching his hand out, he checks the temperature to be sure it’s right before dragging you inside the steamy oasis. The curtain is barely pulled closed before he has you pinned at the back wall, his stocky torso rubbing against your voluptuous naked body as he steals the breath from your lungs, kissing you so thoroughly that there is no distinction between faces anymore.
The change in temperature has your nipples hardening, the blossoms spiking forward at attention, and Simon can feel them poking against his chest the longer he has your mouth locked in that dance of back and forth. The moment he is aware of their presence his mouth is salivating to get at them.
You might think they are not perfect enough, but to him they are exactly what he wants.
Breaking the kiss abruptly, removing his mouth so quickly that a trial of spit still connects your lips a moment, he tilts his head downward. Being on the smaller side, he can fit your breast almost entirely in his mouth and he does, filling the cavity with as much of your tit as he can without choking.
You can hardly remember anymore why the stupid comments had you so upset in the first place when you have a man like Simon who will dote on you like you are royalty. His is the only opinion you have come to care about and it is clear that there is nothing he will ever want more than you.
He moans deep and guttural into your breast as he sucks while letting the end of his tongue flick around the nipple, circling the sensitive tissue until you are writhing against him as he holds you steady to the wall so that he can work. There is another breast after all that requires his attention and he intends to show it the same amount of affection as the other. Switching sides, he gets to work, keeping the first breast warm by cupping it in his hand.
It’s minutes of you quivering and whimpering before he emerges panting with his lips swollen and red, satisfied with his work so far. Giving his lips a break, Simon gently strokes your cheek with his fingers as he gazes into your eyes, swaying your bodies from side to side in easy movements. “Stay with me luv,” he says softly as he watches you take heavy breaths, “I ain’t done just yet.”
Those lips are on the move again to decorate your body, over your sternum and waist, until he has to kneel before you to get any further. He’s on his knees, all 6’4” of him bent to you as he places kisses across your belly while the heated water runs over his dirty blonde hair and down his back, rippling across the muscles in his shoulders as he holds your hips squeezed securely between his broad hands.
“You’re perfect just the way ya are, baby,” he groans against your moist skin, letting his lips linger wherever he puts them. “Just like this: real, curves for fuckin’ days, so much skin I get drunk tryin’ to get at it all. And the best goddamn part is that it’s all mine.”
More kisses he places along all the areas you think unworthy of adoration, but that he finds absolutely exquisite. “Mine, all mine.”
His words devolve into incoherent babble as he nestles his face into your abdomen to leave burning trails of his desire with his lips that even the warm water cannot wash away from your skin. Your body writhes in his double-handed grasp as your head falls back to rest against the wall as every inch of tender flesh prickles with the overstimulating sensation of being doted upon.
Lips keep trailing further downward from your stomach to the mound of your sex, through the trimmed patch of hair at the top of your pussy, before they sink into the bulk of your thick, stocky thighs.
“Ya think I get on my knees for any girl?” he asks from his place at the bottom of the shower as he stares up into your face with half-lidded eyes that darken the more he plays with you. “You’re the only one who can bring me to fuckin’ kneel, baby. You and your gorgeous body. I’m at it’s goddamn mercy.”
Placing his hand on your calf, he nods and you know exactly what he wants: that juicy cunt smothering his features, your bulky thighs crush against his ears. Carefully he helps you to adjust your footing so that he can lift your leg. Propping it up on his own thigh, he sits back on his calves so that his face sits at the same level as your pussy and he leans in, smothering his face right between those dangerously thick pieces of flesh as you widen your stance with his guidance to make it easier. Hardened fingertips dig themselves into your body, forcing you even more firmly against his face until his nose is pressed into your clit and he moves his head back and forth to stimulate it with the tip.
There is little oxygen to be had between the heat from the water and the heat between your legs, but it doesn’t matter. The sound of your soft, breathy gasps and moans as he penetrates your entrance with his tongue is enough to sustain him until he can come up to breathe. Lapping and thrusting, wriggling and applying pressure, if there is even a whisper of a negative thought left in your brain it is overshadowed completely now by the overwhelming euphoria of being devoured to the brink of insanity.
You buck wild and untamed, panting heavily as the warmth in your belly begins gathering quicker than you could have thought, the coil pulling tightly as minute by aching minute Simon draws your body to the edge of its release. He is relentless in his endeavor, putting your needs above anything else- even breathing. That tongue has moved up to your clit now and with weighty presses over the tiny bean you soon are spilling over the edge and he has to hold onto you tight so that you don’t slip and fall.
Simon stays locked to your pussy until the very last second, keeping his movements going even as you try to pry him off from the sensitivity that is almost too much to handle. It isn’t until you finally stop writhing that he emerges from between your legs with a smile that has your stomach doing somersaults as he wipes his mouth clean of your cum.
“Second course,” he growls before you even have a chance to fully come down from your high.
Oh you have got him down bad tonight.
He carefully flips you round to face the wall and uses his feet to make you spread your legs as wide as you can get them. A hefty hand runs itself over the curve of your ass, following the line down all the way to the underside before he grabs it in his hand and gives the meat a firm squeeze.
“Those little boys just don’t know how to handle this much woman; all these fuckin’ curves are too much pleasure for a bastard that don’t know the treasure he’s got. But I know what a fuckin’ feast ya are,” he groans as he aligns your hips and enters you from behind with a forceful grunt that reverberates off the enclosed space of the shower.
You push palms flat against the wall to steady yourself. “They don’t know how ta treat ya right, how ta love a body that just keeps givin’ and givin’. But I don’t have that problem, sweetheart.”
Simon’s devout words are like liquid fire and as his cock stretches you wide, the euphoria of his talk runs through you to make you burn. Your body is his religion and goddamn does he always worship it right. All those cares, all that self-loathing and doubt entirely evaporate from your mind as he pushes your shoulders forward to make you arch your back so that he can pound into your pussy hard and deep from behind, making your plump ass bounce off his pelvis with a recoil that draws his gaze.
“Fuck,” he breathes, so obsessed with the way you look around him that he is trying to ingrain the image in his mind.
His aching exclamation thrills you, making your heart skip a beat as his thrusts continue to rock through you. To be craved in such a way, to be thought of like the woman in the movie, that is what he is giving you now and it is euphoric. His intensity is orgasmic and your body responds in kind as he grabs you to move you closer.
“Don’t concern yourself with the bullshit ideas of some puny little boys when ya got a man who will always make sure you feel like a fuckin’ princess when you’re in his arms,” he says in a whisper at your ear as he pulls you back to leans against his chest. “Cause ya are, sweetheart. Your my fuckin’ goddess of a woman.”
The way he says it makes you ache all over and you can feel it twinge in your clit. “Say it again,” you beg, needing to hear him make those sweet combinations of sounds once more until your body vibrates with pleasure.
His hand comes up to cup around your breast so that he can massage the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, causing you to mewl at the sensation. “You are so fuckin’ beautiful baby, so goddamn perfect just like this, and I love every last fuckin’ inch of ya. My princess.”
Your cheeks feel like they are glowing and on fire as thrusts after thrust he pounds into you, stretching you and filling you full on all of his passion for your body. You will never be able to make everyone see you for the gorgeous being that you truly are, but that doesn’t matter anymore. Simon is more than enough to keep you feeling like the most beautiful girl in the whole world; you are safe with him.
Your head falls back against his shoulder, eyes fluttering shut as his arms that are filled with your waist clamp down tighter to secure you to him so that he can shove his cock even harder into your now dripping core. “Yes, yes,” you whimper out.
“Come for me again,” he practically demands as he watches you falling apart once more. “Come on, pretty girl, one more for me. One more together.”
Your limbs are tingling with each snap of his hips against your ass. It’s close, right there, you can almost feel it again as the coil wounds itself tight once more in the pit of your stomach. You clench down on him, making him falter before recovering and continuing on. A few more pumps of him deep in your core and it is right there at the precipice.
“Let go for me,” he whispers into your ear as you clench once more around him and something about the way he says it sets you off. You come for the second time, the orgasm rocketing through you until you can feel it like fire shooting through your veins as you shake with the intensity of it all.
Quickly he pulls out just in time as he too pops off and comes between your thighs as you clamp them together around his cock. The ejaculate runs down your legs as he milks every last bit out of the tip until his body hangs limp and his head falls down to rest the forehead against your shoulder. Still he holds you close, murmuring soft praises against your neck about how fucking amazing that was and how there is no one else that will ever look more beautiful all flushed and exhausted.
Holding onto you, Simon takes a few steps back forcing you to come along until you are both submerged under the showerhead to let that soothing water run over your bodies until you can both come back down from your high. There are no words yet, none that need to be said out loud, all he needs to do is keep you wrapped in his arms a little longer.
It’s quiet, just the sound of the water rushing filling the silent space for a while, until a noise breaks you both out of the moment. There is a banging on the door from the outside, repeated knocking loudly and clearly; you’ve been in here for too long, but Simon doesn’t seem to be bothered. There is no attempt to leave the steamy oasis yet and soon the sound subsides and you are both left in the silence once again.
“They’ll just have to fuckin’ wait,” he says against the side of your head in a hushed whisper, lips tempting your earlobe. “They can consider it a punishment for making ya upset. Besides, I’m still busy and you’re not goin’ anywhere.”
#simon ghost riley#simon riley#call of duty#ghost cod#ghost mw2#cod mw2#ghost x reader#simon riley x reader#simon riley smut#simon ghost riley smut#simon smut#simon#ghost simon riley#simon riley x you#simon ghost x reader#simon ghost riley x reader#simon ghost smut#simin ghost riley#simon ghost x you#ghost#cod ghost#cod mwf2#cod
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candy
ellie williams x reader
🫧 happy valentines day to all my beautiful followers | enjoy this vday special 🩷 am i uploading this ar midnight because a bitch had classes and work yes but its valentines (was technically) IM GGONNA WRITE AN ELLIE FIC 🧘♀️
🫧 inspired by the song candy by doja cat | bed of roses PT2
🫧 description: fluffy, cute surprises, reader knows how to know paint a bit, just fluff, cute fluff,ellie sings to you (i took the scene from the game because i cherish it sm) smut, SLUT SMUT💋, power dynamic, dom!ellie, sub!reader, you and ellie live together, reader is PUSSYHUNGRY (mmm im so- i would do anything for that tsunami), reader eats out ellie on stairs (you’re welcome), fingering, praises, no use of y/n, use of petnames like doll, mama, and good girl, very little degradation, hair pulling, clit sucking, face grinding, cum eating, just ellie getting eaten so good! enjoy
She's just like candy, she's so sweet
but you know that it ain't real cherry
know that it ain't real cherry
🫧
it was valetines day today which meant ellie got to spoil you rotten; it is very well- deserved.
you would always be very thoughtful with your gifts.
this valentines day, you sneakily woke up around 1 AM and worked until dawn on customizing a wooden workstation that you got her for her artwork.
you knew you had work in the morning but you would do anything for the woman who’s protected you, provided for you, and pleased you.
you painted the workstation very carefully a dark earth-green. you let each coat of paint dry before beginning to carefully paint details on it.
you were going to paint symbols for each of her favorite memories onto it. you took references from her own beautiful drawings.
one of the details you painted were the beginning of Joel’s; now her guitar, painting even the moth.
one of the guitar strings then ran around the whole work-station, dragging the brush till the end.
you began to draw small moths and different flowers with herbs carefully placing them along the string line.
lastly, finishing it up by drawing a silhouette of the both of your bodies intertwined, then painting an outline of ellie’s knife and joel’s gun side by side on the side of her workbench.
once you were done, you carved both of your initials into the side of the workbench.
you transfered all of her essentials from the small broken down drawers; that could barely hold up to her made with so much love customized workstation.
you made your way back into your shared warm bed, careful not to wake up ellie.
sunrise made its way into the sky, ellie waking up now as you now slept.
ellie noticed you got up in the middle of the night, searching for your warmth but she shrugged it off before knocking into slumber again.
ellie got up very quietly, planting a kiss on your head before heading into her work room to get her guitar.
she walked into her art room, stepping as she scans the room. she immediately stopped in her steps, her eyes falling onto your beautiful workstation.
ellie’s heart pounds outside of her chest, tears wanting to form in her hazel eyes as a rush of emotions take over her.
she walks around the small wooden dark-green station, her handing brushing it softly as she takes in your designs.
she couldnt help but think about although you had work sadly on valetines day, you still did this for her.
this was bigger than the world to ellie.
you were the most perfect girl and if one thing was for certain, ellie would be spending an eternity of valetine’s day with you.
🫧
I can be your sugar when you're fiendin' for that sweet spot
Put me in your mouth, baby, and eat it 'til your teeth rot
I can be your cherry, apple, pecan,
or your key lime
Baby, I got everything and so much more than she's got
you were now currently at work, you hated how you got called in today.
you asked ellie if she was going to be good with you going to work today, in which she responded by pulling down your panties.
lets just say, you had a very pleasant morning before going into work.
while you were away at work, ellie got to work on her surprise because eating your cum for breakfast wasn’t enough.
she went to almost all the floral shops she could, selling them out of their pink and red roses.
ellie covered the entryway with petals, even the staircase that leads upstairs, and leading all the way up into your room.
the living room, she had a fairy lights hung along with pink lit candles on the ground.
ellie had a huge case of flowers waiting for you, wrapped in the arrangement of your inital.
that was only the downstairs, your room was filled with more surprises.
your shared bed was covered in rose petals, a couple small gifts waiting for you while your surprise gift was tucked away by ellie.
ellie finished up any last miniute preparations before you came home from work.
she changed from her pj shirt and boyshorts from this morning to a flannel with a black-tee and some baggy shorts that exposed her Calvin Klein lining.
She's just like candy, she's so sweet
But you know that it ain't real cherry, know that it ain't real cherry
She's just like candy, she's so sweet (She's so sweet)
But you know that it ain't real, know that it ain't real
🫧
you came home a bit exhausted but excited because you picked up a teddy bear that held a heart with the writing “i love u” on it from a street vendor, leaving your job.
once you made it home, beginning to turn the keys to step through your front door.
you open the door to see your beautiful auburn-hair girlfriend.
she was sitting there on your shared loveseat, her beautiful fingers strumming her guitar.
the melodious tone from the strums of her guitar strumming the song your love for each other shares.
she began to sing softly “talking away” your hand cant help but go ovee your mouth as you felt tears begin to form.
the sound of her silky voice singing through your ears, making your heart pound and face hot.
“today’s another day to find you”
you could listen to ellie sing for the rest of your life, tears were already streaming down your face. ellie couldn’t look you in the eyes while she sang because if she did, she wouldn’t be able to finish.
you made her heart go a million miles per minute like a schoolgirl crush.
you made her stomach flutter like she was born with a butterfly nest inside her.
you made her soul shine like the sun after never-ending rain.
ellie finished serenating you, putting her guitar down
she finally looked up at you, clutching a teddy bear with tears streaming down your face.
before ellie could say anything, you ran into her arms; immediately taking you in to her embrace.
this was a feeling words couldn’t express, but only actions.
your heart felt like it was going to pop out of your chest with the clash of ellie’s lips onto yours.
you weren’t alone with ellie barely being able to catch her breath but so desperate for you.
the way your lips moved with such hasty movement but yet still passionately and amorously.
you began to walk towards the staircase, lips not leaving a moment. your eyes slightly opening time to time to make sure you were guiding you and ellie correctly.
“all i wanted-“ you began but were interrupted by her lips again.
“all day was to” ellie pulled away momentarily to let you continue.
“come home to this” you whined out against her lips, your tongue slightly licking over them.
🫧
Sugar coated, lies unfolded, you still lick the wrapper
It's addictive, you know this, but you still lick the wrapper
Sugar coated, lies unfolded, you still lick the wrapper
It's addictive, you know this, but you still lick the wrapper
you were fillied with arousal and need to please as you dropped to your knees…on the staircase. you could careless at this given moment.
your hands ran through her back, feeling each crevess of each toned muscle, then coming back around to her arms.
you gave her strong-toned arms a soft squeeze before having them go up to her chest. you needed to have her.
“doll i got a surprise in the room, lets-” ellie begins but you didn’t care.
“no” you said, looking her in the eyes as you unzip and unbutton her shorts “right here, right now” you whine out, pulling down ellie shorts completely.
ellie would be lying if she said you dying to eat her out on each other’s staircase wasn’t the hottest thing, especially on fucking valentine’s day.
it was you, how could she deny you.
“that desperate, mama?” she teases you as you peck her toned abdomen. you gave her a slight whimper as you nod.
she brings herself down to sit on the stairs, grabbing you by your jaw to pull you in for a kiss.
your lips meet again, your hand traveling down into her boxers immediately feeling seeping slick cunt “you drive me insane” you moan out, your mind was so drunk by her.
she had you high on her scent, taste, look, and touch. anything ellie did could have you on your knees, just like this.
your fingers begin to rub her clit in circular motion causing her breathing to hitch and soft moans of content escape her mouth as your lips travel down to her neck.
you begin to suck on the skin as your fingers massaged her clit, slightly putting pressure here and there causing ellie to let out gentle-yet-loud groan.
ellie’s hips began to rise to meet your hand “my beautiful doll-s’good f’me” she mumbled under her breathy moans.
you were sure you left her a purpletrail from her neck leading into her shoulder before going down a couple more steps.
you waste no time in pulling off her boxers, meeting with her wet pussy “s’pretty els, i love you.” you were just completely dazed by ellie at this point, wanting to please her and have her taste on you for days.
“you gonna drool or eat up, doll?” ellie smirks, she knew the effect she had on you and it made you fiend to please her even more.
your hands go to spread her thighs open a bit more before diving your head in between her legs. you met face to face with her juiced pussy, her slick coating your tongue as you lick a stripe.
“ah fuck, doll!” ellie moans out, her hips slightly bucking against your face as her hand had a grip on your hair.
the way you were on your knees on these steps buried into ellie’s pussy, your tongue collects her juices as you begin to swirl your tongue around her clit sucking softly.
she tasted just like candy, you grab her one of her thighs, hooking it up to balance on your shoulder.
the wider angle made her throw her head back “s’fuck doll! just like that. eat it just like that.” her vile voice praising the way you took the way she slopped her pussy against your tongue.
ellie began to work herself towards her orgasm on your tongue, her hand following the movement of your head.
you ate her out like this was your last meal, not wanting to let a single drop “god fuck-y-you’re insane!” she whined out as you worked you fucked her with yout tongue.
ellies stomach stomach flexes, her toned abdomen becoming more prominent as her breathy moans turn into pants and loud gutteral moans as you took your free hand; licking her asshole all the way up to her clit.
“fuck fuck fuck, doll! s’such a good girl” ellie’s hand swore she could’ve pulled your hair our by now but you could careless, the only thing on your mind was making this woman cum.
she deserved the way you ate her with delight, completely letting her use your face for her orgasm.
your nails dig into her thigh as you feel yourself slowly loosing your breath; but you were not leaving till she had came all over your face.
“s’close god! youre such a fuckin’ slut f’me.” her orgasm finally riding out.
“atta girl, lick it all up again.” she praises, pulling you back up from her pussy to her lips, tasting herself momentarily before her hand finds the back of your head guiding you to the white cum-beed that seaped out of her now fucked-out hole.
you licked her from asshole up, completely picking up her cum onto the tip on tongue causing you moan out as your lips were wrapped around her.
once you pulled away meeting her eyes, her cum covering your lips causing your face to glisten lightly.
“you’re a demon” ellie brings you into her embrace on the stairs.
“its not my fault you’re my favorite candy”
🫧
She's just like candy, she's so sweet
But you know that it ain't real cherry, know that it ain't real cherry
She's just like candy, she's so sweet
a/n > part 2 ??? 😇
#the last of us fandom#the last of us fanfiction#ellie williams hcs#ellie tlou smut#ellie williams fanfic#ellie williams x reader#ellie x reader#ellie the last of us#ellie williams headcanons#ellie williams x y/n#ellie williams smut#ellie williams#tlou hbo#tlou#ellie tlou#tlou2#ellie williams x female reader#ellie williams x you#ellie williams fluff#the last of us#lesbian#valentines day#happy valentine's day
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Netflix wants to chop down your family tree
Netflix has unveiled the details of its new anti-password-sharing policy, detailing a suite of complex gymnastics that customers will be expected to undergo if their living arrangements trigger Netflix’s automated enforcement mechanisms:
https://thestreamable.com/news/confirmed-netflix-unveils-first-details-of-new-anti-password-sharing-measures
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes
Netflix says that its new policy allows members of the same “household” to share an account. This policy comes with an assumption: that there is a commonly understood, universal meaning of “household,” and that software can determine who is and is not a member of your household.
This is a very old corporate delusion in the world of technology. In the early 2000s, I spent years trying to bring some balance to an effort at DVB, whose digital television standards are used in most of the world (but not the USA) when they rolled out CPCM, a DRM system that was supposed to limit video-sharing to a single household.
Their term of art for this was the “authorized domain”: a software-defined family unit whose borders were privately negotiated by corporate executives from media companies, broadcasters, tech and consumer electronics companies in closed-door sessions all around the world, with no public minutes or proceedings.
https://onezero.medium.com/the-internet-heist-part-iii-8561f6d5a4dc
These guys (they were nearly all guys) were proud of how much “flexibility” they’d built into their definition of “household.” For example, if you owned a houseboat, or a luxury car with seatback displays, or a summer villa in another country, the Authorized Domain would be able to figure out how to get the video onto all those screens.
But what about other kinds of families? I suggested that one of our test cases should be a family based in Manila: where the dad travels to remote provinces to do agricultural labor; the daughter is a nanny in California; and the son is doing construction work in the UAE. This suggestion was roundly rejected as an “edge case.”
Of course, this isn’t an edge case. There are orders of magnitude more people whose family looks like this than there are people whose family owns a villa in another country. Owning a houseboat or a luxury car makes you an outlier. Having an itinerant agricultural breadwinner in your family does not.
But everyone who is in the room when a cartel draws up a standard definition of what constitutes a household is almost certainly drawn from a pool that is more likely to have a summer villa than a child doing domestic work or construction labor half a world away. These weirdos, so dissimilar from the global majority, get to define the boxes that computers will shove the rest of the world into. If your family doesn’t look like their family, that’s tough: “Computer says no.”
One day at a CPCM meeting, we got to talking about the problem of “content laundering” and how the way to prevent it would be to put limits on how often someone could leave a household and join another one. No one, they argued, would ever have to change households every week.
I put my hand up and said, “What about a child whose divorced parents share custody of her? She’s absolutely going to change households every week.” They thought about it for a moment, then the rep from a giant IT company that had recently been convicted of criminal antitrust violations said, “Oh, we can solve that: we’ll give her a toll-free number to call when she gets locked out of her account.”
That was the solution they went with. If you are a child coping with the dissolution of your parents’ marriage, you will have the obligation to call up a media company every month — or more often — and explain that Mummy and Daddy don’t love each other any more, but can I please have my TV back?
I never forgot that day. I even wrote a science fiction story about it called (what else?) “Authorized Domain”:
https://craphound.com/news/2011/10/31/authorised-domain/
I think everyone understood that this was an absurd “solution,” but they had already decided that they were going to complete the seemingly straightforward business of defining a category like “household” using software, and once that train left the station, nothing was going to stop it.
This is a recurring form of techno-hubris: the idea that baseline concepts like “family” have crisp definitions and that any exceptions are outliers that would never swallow the rule. It’s such a common misstep that there’s a whole enre* called “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About ______”:
https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood
In that list: names, time, currency, birthdays, timezones, email addresses, national borders, nations, biometrics, gender, language, alphabets, phone numbers, addresses, systems of measurement, and, of course, families. These categories are touchstones in our everyday life, and we think we know what they mean — but then we try to define them, and the list of exceptions spirals out into a hairy, fractal infinity.
Historically, these fuzzy categorical edges didn’t matter so much, because they were usually interpreted by humans using common sense. My grandfather was born “Avrom Doctorovitch” (or at least, that’s one way to transliterate his name, which was spelled in a different alphabet, but which was also transliterating his first name from yet another alphabet). When he came to Canada as a refugee, his surname was anglicized to “Doctorow.” Other cousins are “Doctorov,” “Doctoroff,” and “Doktorovitch.”
Naturally, his first name could have been “Abraham” or “Abe,” but his first employer (a fellow Eastern European emigre) decided that was too ethnic and in sincere effort to help him fit in, he called my grandfather “Bill.” When my grandfather attained citizenship, his papers read “Abraham William Doctorow.” He went by “Abe,” “Billy,” “Bill,” “William,” “Abraham” and “Avrom.”
Practically, it didn’t matter that variations on all of these appeared on various forms of ID, contracts, and paperwork. His reparations check from the German government had a different variation from the name on the papers he used to open his bank account, but the bank still let him deposit it.
All of my relatives from his generation have more than one name. Another grandfather of mine was born “Aleksander,” and called “Sasha” by friends, but had his name changed to “Seymour” when he got to Canada. His ID was also a mismatched grab-bag of variations on that theme.
None of this mattered to him, either. Airlines would sell him tickets and border guards would stamp his passport and rental agencies would let him drive away in cars despite the minor variations on all his ID.
But after 9/11, all that changed, for everyone who had blithely trundled along with semi-matching names across their official papers and database entries. Suddenly, it was “computer says no” everywhere you turned, unless everything matched perfectly. There was a global rush for legal name-changes after 9/11 — not because people changed their names, but because people needed to perform the bureaucratic ritual necessary to have the name they’d used all along be recognized in these new, brittle, ambiguity-incinerating machines.
For important categories, ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. The fact that you can write anything on an envelope (including a direction to deliver the letter to the granny flat over the garage, not the front door) means that we don’t have to define “address” — we can leave it usefully hairy around the edges.
Once the database schema is formalized, then “address” gets defined too — the number of lines it can have, the number of characters each line can have, the kinds of characters and even words (woe betide anyone who lives in Scunthorpe).
If you have a “real” address, a “real” name, a “real” date of birth, all of this might seem distant to you. These “edge” cases — seasonal agricultural workers, refugees with randomly assigned “English” names — are very far from your experience.
That’s true — for now (but not forever). The “Shitty Technology Adoption Curve” describes the process by which abusive technologies work their way up the privilege gradient. Every bad technological idea is first rolled out on poor people, refugees, prisoners, kids, mental patients and other people who can’t push back.
Their bodies are used to sand the rough edges and sharp corners off the technology, to normalize it so that it can climb up through the social ranks, imposed on people with more and more power and influence. 20 years ago, if you ate your dinner under an always-on #CCTV, it was because you were in a supermax prison. Today, it’s because you bought a premium home surveillance system from Google, Amazon or Apple.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/impunity-corrodes/#arise-ye-prisoners
The Netflix anti-sharing tools are designed for rich people. If you travel for business and stay in the kind of hotel where the TV has its own Netflix client that you can plug your username and password into, Netflix will give you a seven-day temporary code to use.
But for the most hardcore road-warriors, Netflix has thin gruel. Unless you connect to your home wifi network every 31 days and stream a show, Netflix will lock out your devices. Once blocked, you have to “contact Netflix” (laughs in Big Tech customer service).
Why is Netflix putting the screws to its customers? It’s part of the enshittification cycle, where platform companies first allocate surpluses to their customers, luring them in and using them as bait for business customers. Once they turn up, the companies reallocate surpluses to businesses, lavishing them with low commissions and lots of revenue opportunities. And once they’re locked in, the company starts to claw back the surpluses for itself.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
Remember when Netflix was in the business of mailing red envelopes full of DVDs around the country? That was allocating surpluses to users. The movie companies hated this, viewed it as theft — a proposition that was at least as valid as Netflix’s complaints about password sharing, but every pirate wants to be an admiral, and when Netflix did it to the studios, that was “progress,” but when you do it to Netflix, that’s theft.
Then, once Netflix had users locked in and migrated to the web (and later, apps), it shifted surpluses to studios, paying fat licensing fees to stream their movies and connect them to a huge audience.
Finally, once the studios were locked in, Netflix started to harvest the surplus for its shareholders: raising prices, lowering streaming rates, knocking off other studios’ best performing shows with in-house clones, etc. Users’ surpluses are also on the menu: the password “sharing” that let you define a household according to your family’s own idiosyncratic contours is unilaterally abolished in a quest to punish feckless Gen Z kids for buying avocado toast instead of their own Netflix subscriptions.
Netflix was able to ignore the studios’ outraged howls when it built a business by nonconsenually distributing their products in red envelopes. But now that Netflix has come for your family, don’t even think about giving Netfix some of what it gave to the MPAA.
As a technical matter, it’s not really that hard to modify Netflix’s app so that every stream you pull seems to come from your house, no matter where you are. But doing so would require reverse-engineering Netflix’s app, and that would violate Section 1201 of the DMCA, the CFAA, and eleventy-seven other horrible laws. Netflix’s lawyers would nuke you until the rubble bounced.
When Netflix was getting started, it could freely interoperate with the DVDs that the studios had put on the market. It could repurpose those DVDs in ways that the studios strenuously objected to. In other words, Netfix used adversarial interoperability (AKA Competitive Compatibility or ComCom) to launch its business:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability
Today, Netflix is on the vanguard of the war to abolish adversarial interop. They helped lead the charge to pervert W3C web-standards, creating a DRM video standard called EME that made it a crime to build a full-featured browser without getting permission from media companies and restricting its functionality to their specifications:
https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/
When they used adversarial interoperability to build a multi-billion-dollar global company using the movie studios’ products in ways the studios hated, that was progress. When you define “family” in ways that makes Netflix less money, that’s felony contempt of business model.
[Image ID: A Victorian family tree template populated by tintypes of old-timey people. In the foreground stands a menacing, chainsaw-wielding figure, his face obscured by a hoodie. The blade of the chainsaw is poised to chop down the family tree. A Netflix 'N' logo has been superimposed over the man's face.]
#pluralistic#enshittification#shitty technology adoption curve#cpcm#interoperabiltiy#comcom#adversarial interoperability#interop#netflix#family#ambiguity#digitizatio#nym wars#authorized domain#dvb#dvds#password sharing
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☆ CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT
“i want to wear his initial on a chain 'round my neck, not because he owns me, but because he really knows me” - taylor swift (1.6k)
contains: luke castellan x daughter of ares! reader. secret relationship: the three times u guys were almost caught and the one time u were. pre-tlt.
kashaf’s note: working on requests as well so dw!! again. i just like this 1 lyric from this song <;/3
1.
MORNINGS AT CAMP half-blood were both weird and normal — at a summer camp for kids with godlike abilities, you’d think that maybe they’d be cut some slack from all the monsters they’ve had to evade and maybe be allowed to sleep in some days, but no, life at camp half-blood was a regular survival of the fittest regime.
or: eat, or be eaten, as you liked to remind your cabin.
maybe that was why you were notorious among ares cabin, but to the rest of camp half-blood you simply embodied an other-worldly discipline, more of a tactician than anything, when compared to the rest of your half-siblings.
“hey,” clarisse says in an undertone, nudging you as you take your designated seat beside her, “where were you last night?”
your hand stilled as you picked up your goblet, shrugging your shoulders as the once-boisterous table came to a stand-still, eager to discover their shrewd head counselor’s indiscretions, hoping for something to loosen your high esteem for them: everyone remembered the time the entire cabin was put on cleaning detail for an entire month to repent for the mistakes of one.
your penchant for collective punishment wasn’t at all well-received among your half-siblings, but well, no one had really challenged you on your position yet, so.
“in bed,” you said, slowly, taking a sip, “why?”
clarisse shrugged, spearing a carrot from your plate, masking her annoyance with you — out of all of your half-siblings, camp half-blood, even, no one could boast of a relationship as close as yours and clarisse’s, yet no one could be more opposite. clarisse was chaotic, you were contained; clarisse was ruthless, you were just.
“i dunno, i just saw two people on the roof of hermes cabin.”
“and?” you drawled, ignoring the blood rushing in your ears, as the rest of your cabin looked on gleefully.
“one of them was castellan,” clarisse paused, searching your face for a reaction — you were grateful for all the nights spent in hermes cabin, because if not for the stolls persuading you to play poker with them almost every time, your expression would’ve never survived under clarisse’s scrutiny.
“the other one,” clarisse pauses as if thoughtful for once, then pointedly stares, pointing her fork at you, “looked like you.”
the other cabins are also looking in your direction as the dining pavilion is so quiet that you can hear a pin drop, before the table finally registers clarisse’s words, resulting in so much whooping and jeering, you’d think ares cabin won the lottery.
you snag a bite of clarisse’s pancakes, each word punctuated by a bite, “what would i be doing with castellan?” you pause, feeling the table pause with you. wrinkling your nose, you continued, “i swear, next you’re gonna say you saw us making out during capture the flag.”
you grinned as the table erupted into laughter once more, this time by your design. while everyone else went back to their original conversations, you’re summoning the memories of last night.
how luke had wrapped his arm around your shoulders and attempted to woo you with myths about the stars, how you had laughed and called him corny. how the moonlight had illuminated his face in the moment, when he laughed back, drawing you in closer, with his usual snarky response of, “you love it though.”
clarisse snapped her fingers in front of your face, bringing you out of your reverie. she frowned, whispering, “you’d tell me though, if that was you, right?”
“yeah,” you nodded, trying not to feel guilty about lying — clarisse deserved the truth. but it went against your agreement with luke. you tried not to think about how you’re essentially picking a boy over your sister.
2.
like all things camp half-blood, if not careful, could result in death — like capture the flag, but did that stop you, or anyone else for that matter, in taking it upon yourself to make winning a matter of life or death.
this week, you orchestrated an alliance with hermes cabin, because of their numbers and ability to launch unforeseen tactics, and hephaestus cabin, for their resourcefulness. it also didn’t hurt that the head counselors were your boyfriend and his friend, respectively.
you’re standing by zeus’ fist, discussing strategy with luke and charlie, while your respective cabins go off doing whatever it is to prepare, when luke’s sloppily-tied breastplate catches your attention.
before you’re fully aware of what you’re doing, you’ve already reached forward to grab it, while charlie stares at you like you’ve been cursed by athena and turned into medusa.
“so,” charlie says, slowly, “anything you guys wanna tell me?”
luke is silent, watching you work, while you’re too busy focused on fixing the breastplate to notice the knowing expression on charlie’s face, one you would’ve been irritated by if you had.
“nothing,” you say, nonchalantly, whirling back around to face charlie when you’re finished, while luke gets swarmed by the stolls, “these things just bother me.”
“in general, or luke specifically?” charlie grins, that annoying, all-knowing look is back, and although reluctantly, you can see what it is about him that has silena beauregard so hung over.
“in general,” you say as if it were obvious, as if you’re trying to convince a child that storks are the ones to deliver babies, and no, you’re not lying, (both statements hold the same level of ridiculousness), “it’s the adhd — makes it distracting.”
“uh huh,” he says skeptically, “i’ll take your word for it.”
you resist the urge to shake him and question him more, but before you can toughen up and just ask, “what do you mean?” he’s already turned away, and capture the flag is about to begin.
3.
“what’s that?” annabeth points at the tiny “L” on your necklace as it swings to and fro, finally set loose from the captivity of your neon orange camp half-blood tee, hidden under your armor.
“what?” you glance down, dropping the sword in your hand to hastily tuck it away, all the while cursing both yourself and luke for being stupidly sentimental. (it was his idea after all, though, you’re not sure how or where he got the necklace from, but you didn’t really care if it was stolen — you wouldn’t put it past him, especially since he was a son of hermes.)
“was that for luke? are you dating him?” annabeth persists, eyes widening with question after question — nothing can satiate the curiosity of athena kids, especially not annabeth, not when luke castellan, her brother, is in the equation.
“no,” you say, trying to catch your breath from the sword technique you had just shown her, and the gaggle of younger campers who have now caught on, looking at you eagerly.
“no to what? no to the initial on your necklace being for luke, or no to you dating him?” another camper chimes in with a bright grin, probably a child of apollo, and you’re so close to shooting yourself on the spot.
“no to all of the above,” you grit out, really regretting being nice for one of the few times in your life, because no one had asked you, in particular, to demonstrate sword-fighting to these kids, luke could’ve done it, but where your boyfriend was concerned, you were too.
“then, how come you have an “L” necklace?” annabeth asks again.
“it’s my mom’s,” you lie, “i’m a year-rounder, so it reminds me of her — before all this,” you waved in the general direction of camp half-blood.
the campers ohh’ed in unison, but you knew annabeth wasn’t convinced.
you sighed, it could’ve been worse.
+4.
you’re not sure when or where the whispers that your boyfriend had returned originated, but after what seemed like eons of not seeing him, you couldn’t find it in yourself to verify the rumors before dropping your sword in the middle of training and sprinting toward half-blood hill to see him for yourself.
you ignore the calls of your name from your half-siblings, as you were kind of in the middle of demonstrating a technique, instead choosing to focus on more important things, like if your boyfriend was even alive.
when you finally do make it to half-blood hill, and catch sight of your boyfriend, with chris and charlie in tow, you don’t stop sprinting, uncaring for all of the whispers from the other campers as they look on.
when you finally do come in contact with luke, you nearly tackle him into the ground, as he drops his backpack behind the two of you, arms coming to wrap around you to secure you, as you mumbled, “i missed you, asshole,” into the crook of his neck.
luke laughed, the sound reverberating against your skin, and you get off him, taking a step back. he starts to say something, “i —” but is cut off by you grabbing his wrist, and tugging him over your shoulder, his back slamming into the dirt ground. distantly, you can hear the rest of campers gasp, before buzzing with excitement. ignoring them all, you put your knee on his chest, bringing your forearm under his neck.
“i swear to everyone, if you disappear like that again—” you begin, as luke cuts you off.
“i won’t,” he promises, grinning as you pull him up. luke slings an arm around your shoulder, and you finally notice the jagged scar running down his cheek.
he catches your gaze and stares at the ground instead, avoiding you.
“you look kinda hot now with the scar,” you settle for, you know you’ll get the chance to properly speak about it later, but for now, this’ll have to do.
a light pink dusts his cheeks, and luke, looking up at the campers gathered behind chiron, then glances back at you, smirking, “looks like you gave them quite a show.”
you glared at him, shoving him, “i’m going to kill you.”
luke shrugged, wrapping the arm around you tighter, “the damage’s done, now i’ll finally be able to hang out with my girl in peace.”
© sayoneee on tumblr. do not repost, plagiarize, translate or claim any of my works as your own.
#luke castellan x reader#percy jackson x reader#percy jackson#percy jackon and the olympians#pjo x reader#luke x reader#ares cabin#luke castellan fluff#luke castellan imagines#luke castellan x yn#luke castellan x y/n#luke castellan x you#luke castellan x fem! reader#hermes cabin#percy jackson imagines#luke castellan one shot#luke castellan one-shot#luke castellan oneshot#percy jackson fluff#percy jackson and the olympians#woc friendly#kashaf ki likhai
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1.2k / 18 / soap soulmate au, part 1
...
You're Soap's enemy. One of Graves' Shadows. You just betrayed him, and now he's seeing his name tattooed across your skin. The Las Almas night nearly eclipses the soulmark's inky color. But it's there, clear as day. He can't wrap his adrenaline-addled mind around it.
He ghosts up behind where you're posted--pacing, patrolling, on the lookout for him--and wraps his hand around your mouth. You react in surprise, grabbing his wrist. But before you can twist out of his grasp, he slides the blade of your fallen Shadow's knife against your back.
If you're his soulmate, it changes nothing. He'll still be one man against dozens, chances slim to none that he'll make it out of this alive. But he has to know.
"You," he growls. "What's your name?"
You still. You're trained to keep a cool head under far more extreme circumstances than this.
"Your name," Soap repeats, voice like gravel.
He loosens his grip just enough to let you speak.
You release a slow breath out. "Classified."
He increases the pressure of his knife against your back. "That bastard Graves trusts you, aye? Not many others posted this way. Nobody'll find you for awhile." He presses the tip of the knife back into the fabric of your uniform. He'll keep the pressure there until he gets what he wants. "Your full name."
You say nothing for a long moment. But then, you see no reason to die overlooking these twisting Las Almas alleyways. You tell him your full name.
It confirms what he already knows. It's the name printed on his own skin, the name he's repeated to himself thousands of times over. The knife disappears from your back.
"Look at me," he tells you.
You push his arm away and turn on him, drawing your sidearm and training it at his chest. You step back, looking him up and down. "You're the one we're looking for. Aren't you? Capture or kill--" Your voice falters when you see he pulls his shirtsleeve up, revealing his own soulmate. He doesn't give you one goddamn second to try to deny it or turn your eyes away the way you've been trained. Your name. Tattooed on your target's arm.
Seeing you eye to eye, Soap's breath catches in his throat. His own name on the side of your neck is clear as day to him now.
"You're her," he says, still not quite believing it.
You take another step back. What are you supposed to do? You should shoot him, yes, but could you even make your finger pull the fucking trigger now? You lower your gun, but you don't put it away.
"You should go," you tell him, voice low. "Now."
But he doesn't move. He wants to take this moment in, study your face, memorize every detail. You're the real thing. His blue eyes stay locked onto yours, and a myriad of scenarios play through his mind, just like yours. What happens if he leaves? Will he be able to find you again?
He takes a step toward you.
"Don't do that," you warn him, sliding back a step to keep the same distance between you. "Don't make me hurt you."
"You wouldn't." He moves for you now with the confidence of a man who believes that, too. He wants to touch you again. Just to make sure you're really here. His voice is rough and thick. "I need to look at you."
You bite down on a gasp when your heel knocks against the wall. He's getting too close. You can't let your control on the situation slip. You can't forget why you're here or what will happen if Graves finds out about this.
"Back off," you warn him again. You still have your sidearm in hand, but you're terrified he's right--pointing it at him is an empty threat.
"Can't."
He moves in close to you, his breath hot on your neck. You swear you can feel his body heat through the layers of both your uniforms. Your nerves are on fire. His scent is everywhere. This can't be happening. Not now. It should be a dream, meeting your soulmate, but it's a nightmare.
"Listen to me," you force out. "They'll find you and kill you. Leave. Now."
"Can't." Soap is close enough to whisper it into your ear. His hands close around your arms. "Can't think straight with you in front of me." His gaze darkens as he pushes forward, pressing you into the wall and pinning you there. If he's not going to live to see morning, he's going to kiss you. He has to taste you.
You hear another Shadow under you, boots thudding against the metal stairs, scaling up to your lookout perch.
You try to fight the panic welling up in your throat. You could both be shot for this. Killed for it. Worse.
You can't let them see him. If you give him what he wants, he'll go, right?
You grab his collar and pull him forward, meeting his lips in a searing kiss. His lips feel like stubble and taste like blood. He shudders, feeling your body suddenly pressed against his. He deepens the kiss. He's starving, but it's not enough. Just the taste and feel of you isn't enough. His fingers weave into your hair and he pulls you close, pressing even harder against your body.
You forget yourself for a moment. Your brain chemistry shifts hard, heat and want burning in your veins.
Then you hear voices from below and reality washes over you again. With a strangled groan, you push him away. "God damn you. Hide."
Soap has to force himself to let you go. It takes every ounce of control to keep from reaching for you again. But the look in your eyes when you push him away... he knows you've crossed a line.
He disappears the moment two more Shadows crest the top of the iron staircase.
You avoid rousing suspicion as you lie to your allies' faces, reporting no sightings of either target. By the time you're forced to leave your post and follow the others back to the nearest rendezvous point, you're resigned to never seeing him again. It's better not to wonder.
All you can think about are his fingers weaving into your hair, his lips on yours, the burning grip of his hands around your wrists. You tell yourself not to think about it... but then your mind goes back to it, over and over. No matter how much you tell yourself it's better not to fantasize.
Even when you learn he evaded capture, he's a wanted man. A dead man walking. You're better off pretending you never saw your name tattooed on his skin.
...
There is no other thought on Soap's mind but you long after he slips away into the Las Almas night. The sight of you leaving with the other Shadows haunts him when he closes his eyes. He wakes up adrenalized, thinking about you in his hands, his heart pounding like it could punch through his rib cage.
His soulmate got away, and the weight of regret is setting in.
...
[part 1] / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5
more Soap / masterlist tag
#soulmate soap#mine#story#soulmate au#john soap mactavish#johnny soap mactavish#soap cod#johnny mactavish#soap mactavish#soap x reader#soap x you#johnny mactavish x reader#johnny mactavish x you#cod#cod x reader#call of duty#call of duty x reader#cod mw2#cod mwii#tf 141#tf 141 x reader
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the trees told me about you.
the trees whisper to you and gojo thinks that makes you special.
a/n: i just started watching frieren and i NEEDED something fantasy okay????
also, i love him <3
pairing: prince!gojo satoru x f!elf!reader
The trees whisper to you.
Whisper words that ghost past your ears and leave your eyes sparkling with warmth, staring at the twinkling green leafs that bristle in the wind.
No one else can hear them, except for you.
Some think you're mad, others just don’t like you cause you’re different – either way, you’ve long ago learned not to care.
Because the trees speak to you, tell you secrets of the world and bring you the love you’ve never felt elsewhere. They don’t judge you because you look different, and they make you feel included – loved.
So even though you’re glared at and cruel words are whispered behind your back;
She’s not right. Spending her days talking to trees…
They say her parents abandoned her when she was young… you don’t have to wonder why.
What a lonely life… but no one wants to talk to a girl who thinks trees speak.
You’ve learned that there’s no point worrying and no point in trying to change their minds.
A life of solitude is one you’ve accepted for yourself. And besides, you don’t feel all that alone in the first, shrouded by trees, protected from the small, the feeling of the dirt and grass and earth beneath your fingers as you smile and laugh and talk.
Yeah, you don’t feel alone at all.
At least, until you meet him.
-
“You know they all think you’re insane, right?”
A moment ago, you’d been positive you’d been alone. You hadn’t heard him walk up, the crunch of his footsteps along the forest floor or even the rustling of his clothing; so when you hear his voice, so much louder, harsher, sharper than the voices that whisper in your ears, it makes you jump.
You’re startled, incredibly so. You lose your footing beneath you, your bum hitting the ground harshly as you turn your head to face the voice, worrying just who it was that had snuck up on you.
It’s a boy. Roughly your age, or at least you assume so. He’s tall. Even though you’re on the ground, you know he’d tower over you. He’s got bright white hair that shifts to a purple hue when the sun hits him just right. And his eyes are a striking blue that rivals even the sky and unlike anything you’ve ever seen.
You’d lived in your small village all your life and you’re positive you’ve never seen this boy before.
“Who… who are you?” Your words come out shakier than you want but then again, you’re not all that accustomed to speaking to others. Most of your time is spent listening… and even you know there’s a difference between listening to trees and real people. You’ve never had someone speak so directly to you before – most of the time, they opt for whispering behind your back even though both you and them are aware you can hear them.
Still, you force yourself to speak; “what are you doing here?”
He’s grinning. Ear to ear. And it’s wide and it’s bright and there’s a twinkle in his eyes that seems some sort of mischievous, yet, the smile feels real and genuine and almost… kind(?).
Then, he’s crouching, moving so he’s more level to you and his head tilts to the right. “Gojo Satoru,” he introduces, saying his name with pride. “And I am going for a light stroll in the woods.”
Gojo Satoru…
Gojo…
That’s… that’s last the name of the king—
Your eyes widen, instantly shifting to meet his gaze while he continues to just smile at you, bright and happy, hands clasped in front of him without a care in the world. You take in his clothes properly then, the detailing and the quality of the fabric, hemmed with laces – clothes you’ve never even had half enough coin to buy.
Clothes you’d never be able to buy.
You’d heard the King had a son but you’d never seen him or any drawings of him either.
A boy that looks like this though? Looks like he could be the King’s son.
“I ventured through the village beforehand,” he gestures over his shoulder. “You are not well-liked.”
You blink out of your daze, frowning at his words.
Shifting, you move so you’re sitting straighter, straightening out your blouse as you glare at him. “That’s rather rude.”
He shrugs, still grinning. “You didn’t deny it though.”
And you frown because you know he’s right.
“Okay, so, what’s the King’s son doing taking a stroll in the woods well outside of the castle grounds?”
He pauses, raising a brow; “so you did recognize me…” He hums lightly, pointing at you.
You nod; “yes, I did.”
You’re well aware that your lack of respect for the King’s son could get you arrested, or worse. But, you don't care all that much. You figure that Gojo would’ve done something by now if he was really bothered by it, and… well, he’s the one who snuck up on you in the first place.
Laughing lightly, Gojo shrugs; “couldn’t stand being there anymore.”
You raise a brow; “the castle?”
He nods. “It’s so… stuffy! Gods, no one knows how to have any fun in there! And I'm constantly getting reprimanded for trying to liven the place up a little.” His words are dramatic, doubled by his actions as he wildly waves his hands around, rolling his eyes as he sulks. “You’d think royalty, with all the money we have, would know how to make things at least a little exciting… but no! They’re dreadfully boring.”
He finishes his rambling with a loud huff, and a second passes before you burst out in laughter.
Gojo blinks at you, once, twice, stunned before he’s grinning once more.
“That’s funny?” He asks, watching you amusedly.
Clutching at your stomach, you shake your head; “sorry,” you gasp. “I just never expected the King’s son to be so… un-princely?”
Chuckling, Gojo’s eyes trail your figure as you continue to laugh; “no?”
“No,” you snort, calming yourself down. Then, a second later, you glance at him; “so you ran away?”
“For now,” he agrees. “And you?”
You blink; “what about me?”
“What are you doing here?”
Your smile fades. “Well… you heard.”
“So, you really do talk to trees?”
You pause, bewildered. “You believe me?”
“Why would you lie?”
And it’s the first time you’ve heard someone say that to you… because, yes, why would you lie? Why would you make all this up?
And yet he’s the first one who believes you.
“I’ve never seen someone like you before you, you know,” he shuffles closer and your breath halts, eyeing him as he leans in. “I thought you all died out.”
Subconsciously, your fingers move to touch the tip of your pointy ears that’s hidden by your hair. “We did,” you whisper, “it’s just me.”
Resting his head on his crossed arms, Gojo fidgets in the spot. “That’s unfortunate.”
You hum, not sure how else to respond. It was unfortunate and sad, but no one else had ever seemed to think so. At least not anyone in your village. Scorned and judged because of your smaller stature and your pointy ears… you were a freak amongst humans in your village and they constantly liked to remind you of the fact.
“You think the trees talk to you because you’re different?”
Wide eyed, you turn to Gojo. “What?”
“I don’t hear them,” he frowns, and he strains his ear, cupping it for emphasis as if that’ll help. “And I’m royalty. They should talk to me… but they don’t. I bet it’s because you’re an elf. Makes you extra special then.”
Lips parting, you glance around, taking in the trees, hearing the whispers that have softened, before turning back to his blue eyes. “More special than the prince?”
He smirks; “I guess,” he obliges, chuckling. “Just this once.”
You smile. A real, genuine smile.
“You shouldn’t hide them, either.”
“Hm?”
“Your ears,” he explains, reaching forward. You barely have time to react before he’s brushing back your hair, the tips of his fingers brushing against the skin of your ears as he tucks the hair behind, revealing your insecurity to his eyes. He doesn’t look away, and panicked, you watch him, overwhelmed by how close he suddenly is, breath stuck in the back of your throat.
But he doesn’t look disgusted or freaked out.
He looks… amazed.
“You shouldn’t hide them,” his gaze shifts back to yours, grinning again but this time it’s softer, more demure. “They’re what make you you.”
“They make me look strange. Different,” you mumble to yourself, lowering your gaze as you attempt to pull your hair back out from behind your ear.
Gojo grabs your wrist, small in his own grasp, halting your movements.
You turn to him with parted lips.
“No,” he whispers and it’s the softest he’s sounded, but yet, it’s still so confident. Like he doesn’t doubt a single word he says. “No, they make you special.”
You stare back at him, stunned. But you don’t pull away and you don’t move. You like it, having him this close. This boy who you've just met. This boy who is the King’s son. The prince. Next in line for the throne.
This boy who’s made you feel more normal than you ever have your entire life.
But then he’s pulling away, despite the disappointment that burns through you, standing up straight as you crane your head up to look at him. He’s grinning, ear to ear again, as he takes small steps back.
“I should go,” he explains, laughing. “My father is probably throwing a fit. But, come back tomorrow okay?”
You raise a brow, tilting your head in wonder.
He just laughs.
“I plan to run away again.”
Is all he says and then he’s turning, offering you a short wave before disappearing through the thick of the trees, leaving you to yourself and the whispers.
You stare at the place he left, undeniably grinning from ear to ear yourself now.
“Yes,” you nod to the whispers. “I think I like him too.”
#jjk#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu kaisen x reader#gojo satoru#gojo satoru x reader#gojo x reader#gojo fluff#fantasy au
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Ready for another azriel request??? I’m rereading the series right now so I’m BEGGING for some azriel action😭 I was thinking something a little angsty maybe azriel and the reader (obviously mated) get into an argument or he snaps at her or something like that (you can decide) and so she starts to distance herself and one day she gets attacked or kidnapped or something (again you can decide) and azriel is panicking and stuff. I just really want some groveling or begging or something idk. Ending with fluff obviously. Sorry all of my requests are long and detailed😭 thank you thooo❤️
hey love! I planned this out awhile ago but I've been busy with visiting family; thank you for the request as always💜
There With You
Azriel x Reader
warnings: reader is captured but no explicit torture, miscommunication trope
The rustling of leaves sounded to your right, hand instinctively reaching for the dagger at your hip as you and Azriel looked to the source of the noise.
A breath you hadn’t realized you were holding blew from your lips at the sight of the crow landing in the tree, dried Autumn leaves drifting to the ground beneath the creature.
Allowing your hand to drop from your weapon, you continued your walk through the wood, the distraction of the bird causing your misstep.
The branch underneath your boot cracked in an echo that seemed to silence the rest of the forest, the world growing eerily quiet around you for a moment. Azriel stood still as stone to your left, hazel eyes simmering with something akin to anger.
“You need to be more careful,” he murmured, voice as soft and cutting as the cool wind that whipped through the air. Holding back the sigh that aimed to leave your lips, you hissed through your teeth, gaze slicing to meet your mate’s.
“I stepped on a branch, Azriel,” you retorted, face growing heated at the awareness of how something as small as a snapping branch could blow your mission. Nonetheless, the condescension with which Az was speaking to you was enough to lead you to dig your heels in for this argument. “A cracked stick in the forest isn’t going to summon the entire Autumn Court,” you muttered bitterly.
A scarred hand took your arm in a gentle but firm grip. “You know well that we do not need to summon the High Court. A farmer looking to gain favor with Beron could see us. That is all it would take to destroy the mission...” he trailed off, removing his hand to drag it over his tired features.
“I told Rhys this was a bad strategy. He knows how much more difficult you make this,” your mate grumbled, barely loud enough for you to hear. Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes as you stopped abruptly.
Azriel’s eyes widened, jaw dropping slightly as his head turned to you. Before he could speak, you raised a stiff hand, pausing him in his own tracks. “I make this difficult? I didn’t realize what a burden I am, Azriel.” The words spewed from you in a fountain of anger, welling up inside, hands clenched at your sides.
“Let’s go in different directions. We’ll cover ground more quickly, and we can find the book and get out of here... without making this anymore difficult for you,” you shot over your shoulder, shaking off the shadow that tried to keep you from walking away.
A soft huff sounded from behind you, betraying the feelings of guilt you could feel through the bond before you shut it off. Drawing your dagger, you angrily whacked at any branches and leaves that dared cross your path, stomping through the wood in search of the book Eris had taken from his father’s study for you.
Blinded by your anger, you missed the sound of soldiers being winnowed in behind you until it was too late. The rush of leaves on the wind perked your ears, but by the time that you turned to see one of the Vanserra brothers behind you with his guard, a circle of fire had engulfed you.
Walls of flame surrounded you, a dome of heat drawing the oxygen from your lungs as black spotted your vision. Opening the bond with your little remaining strength, you felt Azriel’s panic before losing consciousness.
~~~
You awoke in a damp room, dark save for the flickering fae light in the center of the cell. Head pounding you force your eyes to take in the cold, wet stone, the wall to which you are chained.
Mouth dry with thirst, your head bobs towards the creaking door, a vaguely familiar figure stepping through it. “Keep this closed. We don’t need anyone above hearing what happens in here.” Dark laughter sounded from the guards as they dutifully closed the heavy door.
The moment the bar slid into the lock, amber eyes shot to you, Eris’s voice laced with concern as he spoke. “Where is Azriel?” he demanded, a soft hand cupping your jaw as he helped you focus on him.
Swallowing thickly, you gazed up at the flaming red hair, burning whiskey eyes that demanded an answer that you wouldn’t, couldn’t give. “We split to cover more ground quickly,” you muttered, a half-truth. “We were struggling to find the book you left for us.”
The last part came out as a hiss, Eris’s hand dropping from you as though burned by your words. Any sign of pity left his expression, the mask of Autumn Lord slipping on easily. “Of course he would struggle with such simple instructions,” he drawled, looking down at you, a cat toying with a mouse.
An exasperated huff of laughter escaped you at the male bravado. “If you could discard whatever issue exists between you two for one moment,” you shot back, “I would appreciate some assistance - perhaps some context - to our current situation.”
Yanking on the chains for emphasis, your expression turned from teasing to paled at Eris’s grim reaction. The Lord’s lips thinned as he blew out a quiet breath, golden eyes searching the thick walls of the room before he dared to speak.
“I cannot let you escape under my watch,” he muttered, a hand running through the deep red of his hair, gears turning in his head. “Azriel knows where you are. I have asked one of my more... inept brothers, to guard you while I arrange a meeting with my father.”
Flames danced in his eyes, searing intensity reminding you of Eris’s power when he turned to you. “If any harm comes to my younger brother, be assured that your mate will regret ever crossing the boundary into my Court.”
Something sparked inside of you at his words, the intensity with which Eris defended his family. Respect welled deep inside of you, breath short as you nodded. “I will keep your family safe, Eris,” you breathed, fighting the smile that tugged at your lips as his features softened under the comfort of your promise.
“Make sure your bond is open so that he can sense you,” Eris directed, turning on his heel to leave. You did as he said, opening your bond as you reached out in any direction for where Azriel might be. Eris’s steps halted for a moment, a sharp catch in his breath before he shook his head, hand lifting to knock on the cell door.
Eris didn’t bother to look back when he strode through the archway, graceful steps leading him from the depths of your enclosure. One guard flashed his yellow teeth in a grin that sent disgust through you, your middle finger struggling to angle in response before he slammed the door.
No sooner had the dust settled from the sliding entryway than shadows swirled in front of you, Azriel materializing in the darkness. Your mate collapsed to the ground in front of you, his knees hitting stone as wings sagged behind him.
“I am so sorry,” he choked out, hazel eyes glowing with unshed tears in the dim light, “I failed you.” Your heart cleaved in two at his statement, shaking your head vigorously as you fought to keep your own emotions in check.
“Azriel, you didn’t fail me. I am the one who left, who makes things difficult...” you swallowed at those words, shame overwhelming at the thought of holding back your mate, your Court.
Panic was etched across Azriel’s features as he reached for your chains, regret and love flowing through the bond. “No,” he ground out, “that is not what I meant.” His forehead rested against yours, slick with sweat as the shackles broke free.
A scarred hand found your cheek, the outside world ceasing to exist as Azriel’s gaze focused on you. “I am a fool,” he murmured. “I meant to say that missions with you are difficult because you are all that I can focus on, you are all that I care about. I am the burden, because I would throw away any mission, any Court, any world to keep you safe.”
His throat worked, voice thick as his lashes wetted with tears. “And yet I still failed you, still nearly lost you because of my own inability-“
Arms wrapping around him, you ignored your wrists, sore from the shackles, in favor of twining your hands at the nape of your mate’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss. Love and admiration flowed both ways through your connection, and despite everything, you couldn’t fight the smile you offered Azriel.
“You are not, and have never been a failure, Azriel. You are my love, my perfect mate, and I should have stayed to communicate instead of trying to prove myself to the one person who I know I don’t have anything to prove to.”
Azriel nodded, a beautiful smile stretching across his lips as he lifted you into his arms. “You are perfect. And I am sorry that I ever let you forget it,” he whispered, sweeping you into a pool of shadows as he transported you out of the dungeons.
Once more you were surrounded by the crisp air of the Autumn Forest, the moonlight shining down on the babbling brook as you walked hand-in-hand with your mate. “We still have to find the book,” you noted, bumping Azriel’s shoulder in playful reminder.
He laughed softly, hand reaching into the side pocket of his leathers to pull out a small leather-bound journal, waving it in the air. “Found it just as I heard the Autumn soldiers,” he grimaced, eyes shuttering at the memory.
Your hand found his arm, giving a reassuring squeeze as you leaned your head against him, quiet comfort settling over the two of you.
“Let’s head home, then,” you whispered. “I could use a warm bath.” You felt Azriel’s lips press against your hair, strong arms scooping you up effortlessly.
Azriel’s warm breath tickled your neck, shadows dancing as the Autumn Court began to fade around you, darkness swallowing the landscape. “As long as I get to be there with you.”
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