#mod krissey writes a thing
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[ Just to Discover You ]
rated: g
fandom: Tales of Zestiria
prompt: “Stargazing” + Anyone in ToZ (I picked Rosali)
requested by: @toradh
Read on AO3
o - o - o
Alisha has known Rose long enough to be familiar with her streak of spontaneity, which is perhaps the most important thing to know about her girlfriend: that before she is a person of action or words, she’s a woman of out-of-the-blue ideas. It no longer surprises her when, on their way back to their hotel room, following the light of the low garden lamps that line the sand-dusty path, Rose suddenly grabs Alisha’s hand and pulls them to a stop.
“Rose?” Alisha hums. “Are you all right?”
“Lisha,” Rose whispers, turned away. Her eyes are trained on the intersecting pathway to the left, where the tall hedges that separate the beach from the resort bend upward in an arc overhead. When she spins around to face her again, her red hair fans out around her chin. “Hey. You wanna see the ocean at night?”
Alisha bites back a smile. Rose is always drawing a smile out of her somehow, it feels like. “While I admit the sea is certainly very romantic, I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to see anything. It’s almost midnight.”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“Lights aren’t allowed out on the beach.”
“I know, I know—sea turtles; believe me, Lisha, I get it—but wouldn’t it just be nice to experience it?”
Alisha doesn’t quite know what there is to experience in the pitch dark. Aren’t beaches usually at their most romantic during sunsets? But she shrugs and smiles because she always has a hard time telling her girlfriend no when she uses those puppy-dog eyes, and with a boisterous cheer, Rose plants her hands on Alisha’s shoulders and steers her down the branching path. Soon their flip-flops clap against wooden floorboards. Once they are out from behind the tall hedges lining the oceanfront of the property, Alisha can much better hear the rush and sigh of the ocean tide as it breaks against the shore.
They walk out to the wooden railing at the side of the large, painted wood wall that serves to block out light peeking in from the open path between the hedges. To their right descends a ramp to the sand. Down along the beach wander a few other idle figures, silhouetted against the thick darkness.
“Look! You can see the stars!”
Alisha raises her eyes. A wistful sigh falls from her and without even thinking about it, she crosses her arms over the railing. “Yes. Wow. They really are lovely, aren’t they?”
In the distance, a ukulele plays. Its notes are nearly lost to the wind.
Rose’s smile widens. She turns and leans one hip against the rail, curled towards Alisha like she has a secret to share. Somehow, even in the dark and cut off from all light, her blue eyes still glimmer. “When I was little, I used to make up constellations and give them silly names.”
“Oh?”
“I’d try to think up the wildest stories I could using what I’d see off the nearest law firm billboards.”
Alisha tries to abort her laugh and hide it behind a snicker but fails terribly. “Really?”
Rose shrugs and looks back out to the black depths of the ocean. Further beyond, where the horizon should meet the sea, there’s a thin divide that’s barely perceptible between the different shadowed hues. “There’s not much else to do when you’re living out of the back of a van with a bunch of other people.”
Alisha tilts her head and watches her. When the next sea breeze washes in, it lifts her bangs off her face and toys with the tail of her hair. Alisha breathes in and her lungs swell deep with sea salt and something else—something fresh.
Something that feels like it could still just begin, even at this midnight hour.
“There was a field trip when I was in the fourth grade,” Alisha begins, “to a planetarium.”
Rose turns and pins her with her attention. Suddenly, Alisha feels like the most important person in the world. “Yeah?”
Alisha smiles and ducks her head, eyes falling to the wood grain she can barely make out under her fingers. “The star show was amazing. I learned a lot about the sky and the seasonal constellations that you can see in different hemispheres—but more importantly, I think that was the first time I learned just how small I was. In the span of the universe, I mean.” She clears her throat and looks skyward to the blanket of stars spread above them from side to side. “I remember when I got home, I couldn’t stop crying because I felt so insignificant.”
“Aw, Lisha…”
Alisha shakes her head and smiles. When she meets Rose’s eyes, she’s unafraid. “But now that I’m older, I think I appreciate the sight—more than I did when I was nine, anyway. There’s something to be said for how comforting it is to be reminded that not everything you do has to hold power.”
The sea rolls in and slowly slides back out.
Rose’s smile turns cheeky. “Well. Someone’s feeling philosophical today.”
“I just like it, okay?”
Rose laughs. It’s bright and happy. Freeing. Slowly, she crowds Alisha against the railing until the edge of it digs into the small of her back. Alisha rests both hands on the wood behind her, and gently, Rose lays hers overtop. Both thumbs rub circles into the back of Alisha’s hands.
“You like the strangest things, Lisha,” Rose hums.
Still smiling—as if being around Rose ever allows her to stop—Alisha leans forward. “Says the woman I happen to like the most,” she says and softly, presses her lips to Rose’s.
Rose chuckles into it and wraps her arms around Alisha’s neck. Their bodies press flush together, and Rose kisses her again. And again. And again, as the ocean slips out and returns back to the shore.
#rosali#zestiria#alisha diphda#rose#fanfic: rose#fanfic: alisha#fanfic: rosali#mod krissey writes a thing#fluff bingo!#stargazing#soff kisses at midnight#and all the other sappy things#there's literally nothing here but fluff#i'm sorry#mod krissey
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Of Grief and Loss
Zestiria // AtlA AU // Oneshot # 8
[Read on AO3]
“Did you hear what the Fire Lord did?”
tw // death
- o - o - o -
This morning had started out fine, hadn’t it?
Sorey had woken early before the others to learn more airbending. Dezel never wants to use whatever time they could spend traveling and keeping ahead of the always-searching Fire Nation, so Sorey has gotten used to waking before the sun peeks over the tree-tops and learning what he can in those spare young hours when it is just him and his teacher and all of nature. And Sorey had been excited—he is excited—at his progress. Airbending is much, much easier for him than waterbending and he doesn’t know why that is; maybe there’s still something he has yet to learn, but airbending is fun. It’s freeing.
To feel wind spin between his palms like a disk had been exciting. To swing his arms and jump and rattle the branches of the surrounding canopy without touching them at all, sending upward a mad gust of gale had been thrilling. To be so loose and able to channel that endless energy Gramps had always chided him on in such a light and powerful way is incredible.
Dezel had even said once they arrive at the Northern Air Temple, he may be ready to learn how to fly.
“If there are still gliders there after everything,” he hummed with his arms crossed.
And that had been enough. That had given Sorey such hope and excitement for the future that he never thought he could be sad again.
Sorey stares at the expanse of ruined forest now and the way the thickness of the bent, half-splintered cedar trees cloak the distance in shadow for what feels like hours. He blinks slowly once, and then twice. Tension is thick in his shoulders and knots itself in the center of his forehead until he can feel his own temple throb.
Why is he out here again?
Did you hear what the Fire Lord did?
He looks down at his aching feet and swallows. His face tightens and he blinks as the first tears begin to fall. With a heave of air, he sinks to a squat and bows his head between his knees, crossing his forearms over his hair and wondering if the mortified scream building in his chest will break him before the grief racking his heart does.
- o - o - o -
“You’re refugees? From the Fire Nation?” The waitress’s voice squeaks as her voice pitches high.
There are a few glares thrown Sorey’s way from across the tavern table, but he doesn’t know what to do under them other than shrug. He was only telling the truth—for the Sparrowfeathers, anyway. And, in a sense, himself.
He doesn’t like to think about that for too long, though.
Rose sighs and rolls her eyes. “We are, anyway. But we’re merchants, so we don’t really claim allegiance to any, uh, one nation. We’re just trying to make our way in the world. You know how that is.”
The waitress clucks her tongue and with a smile, shakes her head. She places their plates of food before each of them, her brows drawn tightly together. “I used to think it was silly when we’d have people like you folks coming through our parts, but after the news of what’s been happening over there…gosh, even I wouldn’t want to be there right now.”
Lailah blinks and straightens in her seat. “What do you mean?”
“Did you hear what the Fire Lord did?” the waitress murmurs. “That man’s gone off the deep end, as far as I’m concerned. Not that any of those Lords have ever been sane to begin with, each of them doing their part to continue and contribute to this foolish war of expansion, but when I heard what he did to the Southern Water Tribe and then his own Fire Sages…” She clucks again and reminds Sorey mildly of a chicken. “There’s cruelty and then there’s cruelty, you know?”
Mikleo’s hands slam against the table and nearly upend their lunch. He rises to his feet. “Wait. What happened to the Southern Water Tribe?”
The waitress stumbles back a step, eyes wide.
Sorey’s hand is on Mikleo’s arm before he can think better of it, his grip tight and desperate.
She swallows. “W-well…word is, the Fire Lord paid a visit there himself, he did.”
“The Fire Lord—” Mikleo’s breath gives out before he can finish. He sags back into his chair, lost and pale. “Fire Lord Heldalf went to the South Pole himself? In person? Why?”
“There was a rumor going around that his missing Avatar was there, but I’m not sure how true that is. There are lots of rumors about where the Fire Nation’s Avatar is and who they are now; can’t trust that kind of word at all, but I guess he must’ve believed some rumors about the South Pole. I mean, he did find the old Avatar Michael’s sister there, so I don’t know.”
“What?!”
“Things would have ended much worse than they did, if that tyrant hadn’t accepted the rogue Fire Sage and the previous Avatar’s sister as an offer of surrender to spare the tribe, I’m sure.”
“He—?!”
Mikleo’s on his feet again and this time, Sorey doesn’t think he can tug him back down.
He’s not sure he wants to.
“Course, he just turned around and executed all of his Fire Sages as soon as they returned home. Apparently, about ten years ago or so, the Fire Sages had collaborated behind the Fire Lord’s back to smuggle the Avatar out of the Fire Nation before Heldalf could get his hands on ‘em. It was downright brave…but I guess now it’s cost them their lives.”
“W…what?” Sorey breathes, weakly.
Lailah gasps, sharp and high and hard; a strangled and choked thing. Her hand slaps over her mouth, sea-green eyes glassy and wet. “No…surely not…not all of them? He executed his own Fire Sages?”
The woman nods. Her shoulders sag, features softening in sympathy. “Afraid so, dearie. It was all very public. Advertised everywhere, across the homeland and their colonies. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. I think the Fire Lord wanted the entire world to know what would happen to those who kept the Avatar away from him.”
“The—” Sorey’s voice falters on its way out of his throat. It doesn’t feel real, any of it. “—you’re kidding.”
The woman shakes her head.
And Sorey can’t feel anything but a roar. An earthquake rattles along the faultline of his center and the instant Rose reaches across the table for him, murmuring a quiet and distraught, “Sorey—” the tension snaps out.
“I need air!” he shouts and the wind answers him.
Mikleo is still frozen, standing beside his own chair, but that’s fine. Sorey doesn’t need him to move; he doesn’t wish to bother him when he knows Mikleo, too, is at a loss for words with the news that his mother has been captured by the imperial Fire Lord, and he cannot, he cannot touch that. He cannot diminish that, he doesn’t even know what he would say—he, the person Heldalf is trying so hard to find—the reason she was taken and the reason Gramps is now—
—he places a hand on the back of his own chair and jumps and the wind carries him, lifts his feet like he was cresting a fence.
He lands a yard away and runs out the door of the tavern and ignores Lailah’s shout at his back of, “Sorey!” and the scrape of chairs against the floor and the crash of plates and alarmed cries and he runs.
- o - o - o -
“And here you still are.”
Sorey curls tighter, arms wrapped tightly around himself, as he lies on his side in the middle of his self-made forest clearing. He mumbles an apology he isn’t initially sure Dezel would hear—but it is Dezel, his airbending teacher, one of the last two remaining airbenders left in the world, the man who has always used the wind at his whim to discern the environment he could not see around himself and even though it is night and the crickets and forest life have begun their evening cadence, Dezel huffs and steps closer.
“Lailah told me that ‘rogue Fire Sage’ the woman mentioned was important to you.”
Sorey flinches. His chest swells with a shaky breath. “Y-yeah.”
“Do you wish to talk about him?”
“I…” Sorey wipes at his face and slides his hand down to grasp at his own arm, hugging himself. “Is Mikleo okay?”
“He needed space to himself for a time. But afterwards, he was able to think more clearly.”
“Oh…that’s good.”
“He believes that there is a good chance the Fire Lord took his mother for a reason, else why would he have been satisfied with the offer of her one life in exchange for the lives and wellbeing of the rest of the tribe? Therefore, he is resting in the comfort that Heldalf sees worth in keeping her alive…for now.”
Sorey swallows. He tilts his head up to see Dezel standing over him. “And that’s supposed to be a comfort?”
“An optimism. I would have thought you of all people would be familiar with such a concept.”
Sorey looks away again and brings his knees up tighter to his chest. He has to swallow down hard on the weak resentment that rises inside himself; it wouldn’t do anyone good to get angry. “I should…shouldn’t I…?”
“Sorey,” Dezel says and drops to a crouch at the boy’s back. His hands dangle in the space between his bent knees.
Sorey swallows. At the growing, swelling silence, almost expectant in nature, he tightly says, “I used to call him ‘Gramps.’ He practically raised me after we moved to the South Pole. I didn’t—I didn’t know he was a Fire Sage, really; not until he told me I was the Avatar. There were so many things he never told me about himself. I had no idea—I didn’t know what he gave up in order for—” Sorey’s breath hitched. “—he did so much for me, Dezel. For all of us. And I’m never going to be able to see him again to tell him thank you or how much I love him.”
Dezel’s voice rumbles warmly behind him. “If he was as close to you as you say, then he most likely already knew.”
“But did he?” Sorey’s voice pitches oddly; too high. He can barely talk with the too little air squeezing past his throat. “I think that’s the worst part, Dezel. I didn’t even get to tell him goodbye. I didn’t—what was the last thing I said to him? I can’t remember. I can’t remember if it was good enough.”
Dezel hums, a patient and quiet sound.
“I can’t change it now. I haven’t—” Sorey shoves his face into his hands and hiccups. “—I didn’t even get to see him after everything f-fell apart back home. At the South Pole. I had been kidnapped and when Mikleo and Lailah rescued me, we—we had to leave. We couldn’t go back. I didn’t—I never knew if he was okay or if something happened to him or if the tribe was angry at him or if he was worried about me or—I n-never got to tell him goodbye—”
Dezel says nothing, but the hand on his shoulder, warm and broad and weathered, is enough.
Sorey curls tighter and sobs and it’s like a fishhook has been sunken into his gut and is now yanked upwards, tearing up with it new wounds, making him bleed with every pent up fear and grief and yearning and never getting to resolve that loss, but instead, being forced to suffer more of it. Sorey wonders if this is what sorrow is supposed to feel like. Is it supposed to be so ugly and so bad?
“I was hoping so, so much that when this was all over, I would have been able to go back. I just wanted—want—to be able to see him again! To talk…! I didn’t get to say goodbye…!”
Dezel’s hand squeezes just the once. “So you’ve said.”
He doesn’t say another word; neither does Sorey, though his mouth works endlessly over and over again as if he wanted to. Trying to put into substance the width and vastness of the endless regret and now-never’s so loud inside of him.
Sorey cries and cries, and it feels so inhuman to be made something of such unfixable grief.
- o - o - o -
“Dezel?”
“Hm?”
It feels like hours must have passed in which Sorey laid in his little ball on the forest floor. When he pushes himself up, his joints whine and ache. The heels of his hands dig into the soil. He takes one glance to his mentor and immediately wants to look away to wipe at his tear-crusted cheeks until he remembers the man doesn’t—can’t—care about something as trivial as a red and splotchy face.
Sorey swallows. “W…what should I do?”
“That’s not the question on your mind right now.”
“No,” Sorey agrees and his shoulders slump.
As if reading his mind, Dezel crosses his arms over his chest and frowns. “But you are right. Turning yourself in would be foolish and accomplish nothing.”
“W-would it?” Sorey’s head snaps up. “What if it keeps people from dying? What if it saves Mikleo’s mom? What if no one else has to get hurt because of Fire Lord Heldalf? You heard what the lady said. Gramps’ death was a message! Because of me! If I run away from him, w-wouldn’t that—”
“—give worth to all of the Fire Sages’ sacrifice?”
Sorey stops, caught frozen with his mouth open like he had been about to object.
Dezel continues, leaning forward intently. “Sorey. I understand that the loss you have suffered is great and to avoid more deaths, you would be willing to offer yourself as peace. But turning yourself in would be exactly what the Fire Lord wants and, in the same breath, undo everything the Fire Sages gave their lives for. Your Fire Sage—Zenrus—did not die so you could roll over like a complacent dog the moment he was gone.”
Sorey flinches.
“Stop acting as if he was your spine.”
“But—”
“—I’m not saying he wasn’t important to you. But can you imagine how hurt he would be to hear that you wanted to give up everything he wanted for you, for our world, because you lost your courage the instant he died?”
Sorey doesn’t know what to say. His fingers dig into the dirt. His mouth works, but no words come.
“Find it. Find whatever bravery you have in you because this is the moment that will make you, Sorey. Not the suffering. Not that you lost him, but what you do after he is gone. You can either continue to sit here and feel sorry, or you can stand up and do something. Take what you feel and rise. No one ever said anger and hurt were helpless, bad things.”
Sorey swallows.
Dezel waits.
“Why aren’t you leaving me alone?” Sorey says through a tight throat.
“As your teacher, I will not turn my back and give you the chance to do something stupid.”
“You think I would?”
“I think you have proven you have every proclivity to.” Dezel pauses then adds, softer, “And…I know something, more than you think, about what grief can drive people to do. Especially when they are left to their own devices.”
Sorey lifts his head and looks to Dezel. “That…makes me worried about Mikleo. His mom…”
“They are fair things to worry about,” Dezel murmurs.
“What would you do if I said I wanted to rescue her?”
Dezel tilts his head. His mouth pinches into a thin, unhappy line, but he doesn’t challenge Sorey. Instead, he asks, “I would ask how you plan on doing that.”
So Sorey turns and when he places his hands into the dirt this time, he pushes himself up to his feet. His hands, dirty and rough, tighten into fists at his sides. He doesn’t try to pat off the mud caked to his palms. “Okay, good, because as long as you’re not saying ‘no,’ I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ I think I have an idea.”
#zestiria#tales of zestiria#sormik#sorey#dezel#atla au#fanfic: sorey#fanfic: dezel#fanfic: mikleo#mikleo#fanfic: sormik#lailah#fanfic: lailah#mod krissey writes a thing#again#aslkdjflakjsdf#avatar sorey#angst#grief
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Of Questions and Home
Ch. 2 of “Of Dancing and Laughter,” Zestiria - AtlA AU
[Read on AO3]
Apparently, the Southern Air Temple Sorey, Mikleo, and Lailah decided to squat in for the night isn’t as deserted and abandoned as they thought.
o - o - o
“Mikleo?”
A whisper in the night, hushed and quick. Mikleo squeezed open one eye and then two. With a sigh, he turned over on his bedroll to meet a pair of bright green eyes peering back at him in the dark. “What, Sorey?”
Sorey swallowed. His shoulders curled in, rounding his blanket under his chin. “…can I ask you a question?”
“Are you suddenly under the impression you can’t?”
A frown crossed Sorey’s features. It blinked away with his next earnest gaze to his best friend lying beside him. “I don’t know.”
Green peered at amethyst for a long stretch of time, before Sorey finally shifted and spoke again. “So, can I ask it?”
Mikleo sighed again. “Sure.”
“Would you go back? Right now? If you could?”
The question, somehow, was exactly what Mikleo had thought it would be. He feigned a modest bit of surprise. “What, home? To the South Pole?”
“Yeah,” Sorey rasped. Something in his eyes seemed to shine somehow, even in the shadow of the temple hall at the cusp of night. “I mean, I know you’re worried about your mom and all after everything that happened. And Gramps and Master Uno. And everyone else. So…I don’t know. I was wondering if you wanted to go back to make sure they were okay—”
“—no.”
Mikleo’s voice was quiet, too, but sure. He lifted his eyes from the grey stone underneath their roll pillows. Green met assured amethyst. “You know I wouldn’t, Sorey.”
Sorey exhaled slowly. “But…”
“You can’t go home. Why should I?”
“Because the people we love are there and we don’t even know how they’re doing. How your mother is doing. And it’s…it’s home.”
A beat of silence sat, bitter and heavy. Mikleo reached up to his neck and wrapped a hand around the crude pendant always there. “So are you, Sorey.”
Sorey’s eyes stayed for a long moment on his best friend’s face. Then, finally, something folded between his eyebrows. He ducked his head into his mat and pulled his blanket over his face. “Th-thank you,” came a muffled, tight voice. “You’re home too, okay?”
“Yeah,” Mikleo murmured. He didn’t dare take his eyes away from the small tuft of brown hair he could see peeking up from the blanket’s end. “I know.”
His hand squeezed the necklace before he let it go. His arm stretched out into the space between them, the chill of the temple air at night making the pale, short hair on his arms stand on end.
Mikleo didn’t have to wait long before a tanned hand peeked out from the blanket beside him and reached for his own.
Their fingers found every space in between each other to weave, to have, and to hold.
They didn’t let go until they had fallen asleep.
o - o - o
Mikleo didn’t know what he expected to happen when he wandered away from camp the following morning. He hadn’t intended to go far; he had woken up before Lailah and Sorey and had thought there must be something else he could do with this chunk of idle time other than lie there. And there was this tempting opportunity in the shadows of the halls behind them, leading further into the air temple, and Mikleo—who has never really been able to explore ruins like this before—was helpless to resist.
In hindsight, he should’ve known better than to think he could leave Sorey alone for more than a handful of minutes without him getting into some kind of trouble.
As soon as the tall, muraled walls of the temple began to shake under the tremors of a heavy impact, Mikleo groaned and cursed under his breath. He dug his sealskin boots into the floor, spun, and ran back the way he had come.
What Mikleo didn’t expect was the fact it was actually Lailah who had gotten herself in trouble.
The courtyard wasn’t as peaceful and homey as they had made it last night. The bench they had dragged over was now overturned, ashen logs from their campfire scattering soot across cracked stone tiles and over Sorey himself, who--though sitting upright--blearily seemed like he was waking up and wasn’t sure what had nearly thrown asunder his sleeping roll while he was still lying in it.
“You think we’re just gonna let you take an innocent water tribe kid as a prisoner? Think again, Fire Nation!”
Another crash and gust of wind, and Lailah gracefully landed on her feet near the entrance of the rightmost hall Mikleo had wandered down. Her sea-green gaze was fixed on her assailants—which, Mikleo had alarmingly realized half a second later was, indeed, plural. Two balls of fire hovered above her hands for the two individuals further down the center hall.
“You will regret thinking you’d ever be safe to rest here,” one of the strangers, a broad-shouldered blond, growled. The man then stomped his foot and a chunk of earth rose into the air in front of his chest. With a thrust of his fist, he launched it towards her.
Lailah effortlessly side-stepped, punching a burst of fire at the stone to blow it away from her and the remains of their camp where Sorey still sat behind her.
Immediately, the other bender with long, pale hair and bronze skin, darted forward. He leaped down from the fallen column he had stood on, a gust of wind at his back shoving him forward with unnatural speed that Mikleo knew shouldn’t be possible.
An airbender? An actually alive airbender?!
Belatedly, Mikleo realized the man was holding a staff like an extension of his arm. Lailah gracefully spun out of reach of its swinging arc, just as the earthbender shoved a foot into the stone and tossed his hands out, flexing his fingers in rapid succession.
Mikleo heard the crunch of earth rising to obey him before he saw it, widening out into four slats that boxed Lailah within them. She didn’t scream; she didn’t cry out. But the small break in her cool, determined composure on her face as soon as she realized her hands were pinned to her sides and she couldn’t pull them above the earthen slabs was enough to stir Mikleo into motion.
The airbender laughed, one hand on his hip, the other wrapped around his staff he leaned on like a third leg. “Nice! Got ‘er good, Eizen!” he said, eyes on his friend and not on the waterbender running rapidly up to his side.
His mistake.
“You idiots!” Mikleo shouted.
But when he swung his fist, the man still—somehow—impossibly, even without looking at him, neatly dodged, pivoting around Mikleo’s arm. Mikleo caught a brief glance of raised eyebrows and a mildly impressed look on that bronze face, before he decided to smash that smug face in with a kick.
The airbender caught his ankle before it rose above his chest. With a slow drag of amber eyes, he followed the twitching line of Mikleo’s leg up to his face.
“Who’re you? Another water tribe kid?”
“Not a prisoner,” Mikleo hissed. “Whatever the hell you think is going on here is all wrong. Let us go!”
“Us?”
The man’s thin eyebrow shot higher at the same time as Sorey shouted, “Mikleo! Lailah!” and ran over.
Lailah reacted first, her head whipping around. The long tail of her hair, too, was caught under the stone walls trapping her, pinned to her back. A flicker of pain crossed her face at the tug, but she shouted regardless, “Sorey! No prune-quats! Opposite of prune-quats! Un-prune-quats!”
Sorey stumbled to a halt a few feet away, fisted hands at the level of his chest.
“Un-prune-quats?” the airbender mumbled. He released Mikleo’s ankle, and Mikleo would have taken the opportunity to swing at him again, if he didn’t see the confused look the man sent his earthbending friend still half-cloaked in the shadow of the hallway.
The blond—Eizen, Mikleo remembered him being called—sighed and slowly stepped forward. “You. Child. You said you’re not prisoners?”
Mikleo’s face burned. “I have a name. It’s Mikleo! I’m one of the last waterbenders of the Southern Water Tribe and no, I’m not a prisoner. Neither is Sorey. Lailah is helping us; she’s not what you think she is! None of this is!”
The long-haired man whistled. He bent over and Mikleo immediately hated him for casting him under such a towering shadow. “No kidding? Shorty here’s a waterbender?”
“Zaveid, stop it.” Eizen scolded, now within arm’s reach. To Mikleo’s dismay, however, he crossed his arms over his chest instead of releasing Lailah. His green eyes scoured over Sorey before looking to Mikleo and frowning. “All right. I admit it: perhaps we reacted without fully understanding your situation. But you cannot blame us when who we see camping out in the ruins of an air temple is a highly dressed representative of the Fire Nation with two young water tribe boys.”
Mikleo grudgingly supposed that was…some semblance of fair.
“Please. Let her go. Lailah’s not a soldier; she’s a Fire Sage.” Sorey stepped forward, joining Mikleo’s side.
“Fire Sage?”
There was something sharp in the way both Eizen and Zaveid snapped their heads around to look at Sorey that alarmed Mikleo. Fear trickled down his spine until he reminded himself that these two had been ready to charge in at their defense even as strangers upon the idea Lailah was taking them in as prisoners.
“No kidding?” Zaveid murmured.
Eizen looked to Lailah.
Sorey nodded and before Mikleo could stop him, added, “I’m the Avatar.”
Both Eizen and Zaveid jerked to stare at Sorey again. Mikleo had a split moment to entertain the both amused and hopeful idea that they were getting whiplash from the amount of back-and-forth, until Eizen lowly repeated, “The Avatar.”
When Sorey hesitantly nodded, Zaveid lost it.
He bent over, pressed his wide hands on his knees, and laughed. “Oh, man! Yeah, Eizen!” he chortled in between his mad, hiccuping fits. “You’re not completely unlucky. At least you didn’t trigger that glowy, weird Avatar state or whatever!”
Sorey, Mikleo, and Lailah looked at each other. At least two out of the three could shrug uselessly.
o - o - o
Mikleo wondered what in all his sixteen years of living he did to deserve a nagging airbender at his back as he tried to pack up camp. After munching on blubbered seal jerky for a morning meal, Sorey and Lailah had wandered to find Atakk and ready him for their flight north, leaving him with the mundane task of tending to their bedrolls and other food supplies.
This apparently included dealing with curious, long-haired strangers who thought themselves above wearing a shirt.
“Yo. Can I ask you another question?”
Mikleo sighed through his teeth. “Nothing’s stopped you yet.”
“What’s with that weird thing around your neck?”
Mikleo didn’t finish tying his bedroll. His motions stopped, fingers frozen loosely around the ties. Quickly, he snapped his head around. His eyes lit upon Zaveid behind him, lounging on the bench Lailah had dragged over the other night, only to be upended this morning in their fight. The airbender had turned it back right side up and sat his chin in his hand, elbow propped up on a bent knee.
Mikleo’s hand went to his pendant in question. His fingers tightened around the crudely carved, cool stone. “It’s not a ‘thing.’ It’s a necklace.”
Zaveid scoffed. He pushed himself to his feet and slid his hands into the pockets of his very Earth Kingdom-looking trousers. He didn’t even look like an air nomad. But Mikleo supposed he wasn’t in a place to criticize him when his own best friend covered up his heritage in a similar fashion. “Oh, well excuse me. What, was it made by a three-year-old?”
“An eight-year-old, actually.”
Zaveid’s foot hung suspended in the air; a sauntered step half-taken. His expression lit up like a dawning realization had just occurred to him.
“No. Shut up.”
Zaveid straightened and shrugged with a smug grin. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought something.”
“And since when is that a crime?”
Mikleo made a great show of rolling his eyes and adjusted the strap of Zenrus’ packed bag he threw over his shoulder. He rose to his feet. “I may have only had the displeasure of knowing you since this morning when you and that earthbending friend of yours decided it was a good idea to—”
“—boyfriend, actually—”
Mikleo tried not to let his cheeks burn at the word; he wasn’t sure why it affected him so. It shouldn’t. “—whatever. My point is: I don’t need to have known you a lifetime to know that everything you do do manages to sound like a crime.”
Eizen, stand-offishly reclining a handful of yards away, snorted.
Zaveid at least had the decency to look mildly offended. “Hey, now. Not everything I do’s bad.”
“Says the guy who has already outrightly denied teaching the Avatar how to airbend, despite being, quite possibly, one of the last remaining airbenders alive!”
A shadow crossed Zaveid’s face. It was full of so much, maybe too much—a myriad of emotions and thoughts and feelings Mikleo couldn’t begin to describe—and Mikleo had thought he had been able to read him so easily before, but it became clear as Zaveid turned away that what he saw was just the tip of the iceberg.
Mikleo was very familiar with icebergs.
“Listen, Shorty—”
“—it’s Mikleo—”
“—I’ve already got a commitment I can’t, and won’t, not ever, back out of,” Zaveid murmured. Mikleo almost wondered if he misheard him because his voice dropped too low, but when he caught the man’s fervent glance to Eizen, who no longer seemed to be paying attention, understanding dawned. “I’m not in a place right now to take on a student, even if it is the Avatar.”
Mikleo looked away. He squeezed the bag’s strap tight with both hands.
“But don’t say I didn’t do nuthin’ for ya.” Zaveid turned and sent him a grin over his muscled shoulder. “I told ya already, didn’t I? I ain’t the last airbender. There’s a few more of us out there, trying to make do and survive even when the world thinks we’re dead. Find Dezel in Omashu. He’ll be an even better teach for the kid than I would.”
“Yeah. I remember,” Mikleo mumbled. “I just don’t get it.”
“What’s not to get?”
Mikleo gestured up to the ruins all around them with one hand. “This was your people’s home once, right? If there are other surviving air nomads like you said, then don’t you guys want to restore it? Don’t you want to gather together and rebuild everything the Fire Nation thought they took from you all?”
Zaveid chuckled. He ruffled Mikleo’s hair, which was not invited, and Mikleo squawked, trying to set his chestnut bangs right.
“That doesn’t answer my question!” Mikleo huffed.
“Yeah, well, maybe there’s not one single, easy answer.”
Mikleo snapped his gaze up to meet Zaveid’s humbled gaze.
Zaveid shrugged and looked away. “There’s a bunch of reasons I think we’re not ready to return. I mean, if the Fire Nation knew we were alive, and we had put ourselves all in one spot, then that’d make what little of us are left into a pretty easy target. Right?”
“W-well, I guess…but…”
“Maybe once the war is over and we don’t have to fear for our lives, then…but in the meanwhile, it’s not like a building or a location is what makes a place a home. Y’know?”
Slowly, Mikleo folded his hand around the pendant dangling from his throat. Soft, campfire-warm memories from last night of a hand interwoven with his own returned and with them, Mikleo could feel all the tension still building in his shoulders and over his collar release. He sighed and let go of any final grudges he held against this man and his boyfriend clearly just trying to make their own way through a war-ravaged world.
“I think we’re a lot alike, you and I,” Zaveid muttered.
Mikleo scoffed and let his hand fall to his side. “Yeah, right. Gross. Don’t make me barf.”
Still.
When Sorey and Lailah finally returned, it was worth suffering Zaveid’s annoying presence to see both Zaveid and Eizen have hilariously slack looks of dumb shock on their faces as they saw the giant black dragon they flew in on.
#zestiria#sorey#mikleo#zaveid#eizen#lailah#atla au#sormik#whY CAN I NOT THINK OF EIZEN AND ZAVEID'S SHIP NAME#i'm a sham#mod krissey writes a thing#and can't even remember a popular ship name#rip me lmao#avatar sorey#fanfic: sorey#fanfic: mikleo#fanfic: sormik#fanfic: lailah#fanfic: eizen#fanfic: zaveid
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Of Tunnels and Light
Fic #6, Zestiria - AtlA AU
[Read on AO3]
In order to avoid the ever-encroaching Fire Nation, Sorey and the gang need to sneak out of the valley surrounding the mountaintop city of Omashu. Luckily, the Sparrowfeathers know intimately well the songs and tales of the "Secret Tunnel" that cuts straight through the mountains.
o - o - o
“Ohhhhhhh my gooooooooshhhhhhh! Would you look at him? Would you just wook at ‘im! He’s adorable, yes he is!”
“You probably shouldn’t get too close, Rose.”
“Aw, he’s harmless!”
“Right now. Atakk isn’t known for being friendly to anyone else that isn’t Lailah or Sorey.”
“Oh, but I think we can make an exception for me, right? Because you’re just so cute and friendly! Aren’t you?” Rose deepens her voice and puffs out her cheeks as if she were talking to a baby as she squeezes the sides of Atakk’s snout. From where Mikleo stands a few feet away, it looks more like she’s hugging his giant nose.
“Aren’t you sweet, you big, adorable, scaley, big, winged, big dragon, you?”
Mikleo fists his hands at his side and huffs. “Rose!”
“Lighten up, would ya, Mik?” The merchant-turned-ally turns to toss a grin over her shoulder. Her hands rub all over the snout of a very happy, contended black dragon. Atakk rumbles, a sound not too unlike a purr emanating lowly from his chest. “He’s like a little pupling. He’s fine.”
Atakk rolls over and kicks his claws into the air. The surrounding forest shakes under the toss of his weight; trees shudder and shake loose idling birds. Leaves flutter slowly to the earth. Mikleo blows off the one that fell on his nose and rolls his eyes.
Rose squeals.
“Then again, maybe it’s just Fire Nation assholes he likes,” he mumbles and, despite what Sorey and Lailah said about keeping watch as Rose was finally introduced to Atakk, turns around to wander back to camp.
o - o - o
“We’ll have to cut through the mountain.”
“What? Are you kidding me? That’s the last thing we should do. You’ve heard the stories about the tunnel, right?”
“We only sing them twenty times a year--”
“--and whenever the spring comes because spring brings romance and romance brings paying audiences,” Eguille finishes, his voice overlapping with Dezel’s dry tone. He turns to Dezel and shakes the map in his hands so that it rustles very loudly in the forest clearing. “That tunnel is a tunnel of death. We’re not guiding the Avatar through a place that could potentially kill him.”
Sorey turns the instant he hears a rustle of leaves. A broad and relieved smile breaks out on his face. “Mikleo. How’d it go?”
“Well, Atakk seems to have a new best friend.” Mikleo tries not to sound too glum about it. He plops down on the log next to Sorey and props his chin in his hand. “But I think I traded one annoying situation for another. Doesn’t sound like things are going too well over here either.”
“Yeah…I hope Lailah is having better luck than us with the twins and getting food.”
Dezel sighs as if this conversation is taxing him. “He’s going to die anyway if we take the main or back roads. There was a reason we had to leave Omashu.”
“I know it as well as you do. If the Fire Nation takes Omashu…”
“So you don’t actually disagree with me.”
Eguille sighs and rolls up the map. In lieu of an answer, he turns behind him. “What do you say, Sorey? You’re the one we’re trying to smuggle out of the way of the Fire Nation’s raids. Do you think this entire crazy venture is worth risking the tunnel?”
“Tunnel?”
As Eguille walks over to unroll his map before them, Dezel mutters, “There’s a secret tunnel, known only through legends and folktales, that cuts through the mountains surrounding Omashu. As occasional performers--at Rose’s behest--we’re well familiar with the songs and tales.”
“Does that mean you sing?”
Dezel’s mouth quirks at Sorey’s question. Mikleo’s pretty sure he saw Eguille’s eyebrow give a funny twitch.
“I want to hear the song!” Sorey asks with fisted hands. Mikleo’s pretty sure those are stars he sees in his friend’s eyes.
“No.” Eguille shakes his head and quickly rolls up the scroll. He straightens to a stand and turns around. “Besides, that has nothing to do with determining our way out of this spirit-forsaken valley. If we want to get away from Omashu and the encroaching Fire Nation, then we need to decide how.”
“Well, you know what my vote is.”
Sorey and Mikleo turn around. Rose stands behind them, her feet shoulder-width apart, with her arms crossed proudly over her chest. She winks at them and then with a flourish of miming a guitar solo, belts unceremoniously, “SECRET TUNNEL!”
Eguille slaps a hand over his face. Mikleo stifles his snicker behind his hand.
Sorey gasps excitedly. “Is that the song?”
“You bet it is!” Rose grins. She makes a dismissive gesture. “I mean, more or less. Usually I make Eguille sing; he’s got the much better tenor. But that’s besides the point!” With no warning, she squats down behind Mikleo and Sorey and loops an arm around each of their necks, sticking her head in the space between them. “With you two along, it’s practically a no-brainer for us to take that Secret Tunnel, because we’ll be out through that labyrinth in no time!”
“Labyrinth?” Mikleo asks at the same time that Sorey wonders, “How’s that?”
“Uh, duh, ‘cuz the legends always say that if you trust in love, then you’ll make it through okay.”
“Trust in--” Sorey looks to Mikleo immediately.
At the same time, their faces burn bright red. Mikleo looks away first, stuffing his hands in his lap.
“See?” Rose straightens up and claps her hands in the center of their backs. “With you two dorks around, I think we’ll be just fine.”
“It’s not--” Mikleo tries to say but Rose has already stepped around the log, her attention on Eguille and Dezel as they talk about travel plans.
In the awkward silence that follows her departure, Sorey risks a glance at Mikleo’s profile. His eyes fall to his bare neck.
They still hadn’t talked about what happened that night in Omashu.
Sorey doesn’t think he knows what he wants to say of the bubbly, twisting feeling in his gut. He doesn’t know what he wants to say about, “Hey, sorry I freaked out and went all Avatar state when you got hurt,” or “Hey, do you want me to make you a new necklace? Would you even wear a new betrothal necklace? We aren’t eight anymore, but I think maybe my feelings about you haven’t changed so much as deepened, but now I kind of wonder: does a necklace even encompass everything I feel about you now?”
The words never come.
“It’s just a legend. Right?”
Sorey blinks, eyes snapping back up to Mikleo’s. His friend’s eyes seem lost in the shadows of the trees far beyond their camp. “What?”
“Nothing.” Mikleo stands up with a heavy sigh, not meeting Sorey’s eyes. “We’d better get everything packed.”
“Right…”
o - o - o
Atakk is afraid of the giant, gaping tunnel. Sorey isn’t sure what to do to calm him down, especially when even Lailah seems to be at a loss. They both walk with one hand on either side of the dragon’s belly, bringing up the rear of their wandering group as they stride deeper and deeper into the tunnel’s maze. Floating above their free hands, palm-up, are small balls of fire.
It’s Mikleo’s idea to use a map and mark the directions they came from. He borrows a blank scroll from the Sparrowfeathers’ cart and scribbles furiously at every turn. Every once in a while, his tongue peeks out between his lips when his face tightens in confusion.
Sorey thinks it’s adorable.
When they find their tenth dead-end, Dezel sighs. “This isn’t working.”
“Course not.” Rose doesn’t sound the least bit surprised; with both hands clasped behind her head, she seemed to be the epitome of relaxed. “The legends don’t say to uh, try and create a map of the tunnels’ twisting labyrinth and maybe you’ll find your way out.”
Mikleo spins around and glares.
Rose shrugs.
They retrace their steps.
When they arrive at the previous intersection of tunnels, Mikleo gets into a heated debate with Rose and Eguille, one in which Dezel occasionally throws his two cents into. Sorey straightens the same instant Atakk does--a thing Mikleo chalks up to the strange connection the two have--until Sorey worryingly mutters, “Hey. Guys, you hear that?”
Atakk grows more agitated. He wriggles and backpedals, eyes scanning the many surrounding dark tunnels.
Felice cups her hands around the back of her ears. Her twin answers for her, quiet and frowning: “No.”
Sorey’s eyes snap to the same tunnel Atakk’s does. “I think there’s--”
With an ear-piercing shriek, a giant mole-bat launches itself out of the shadows with mad flaps of its two, veined wings. Its mouth is open as it flies for their faces, teeth gleaming sharp in the dark.
Rose yelps and squats low, covering her head. Eguille throws up his hands in front of his face.
Dezel throws up a gust of wind that buffets the mole-bat, knocking it up and away before it can sink its teeth and claws into anyone. As if he had stirred a hornet’s nest, a dozen more mole-bats immediately drop from the ceiling and flutter together in a swarm. The mole-bats form a cloud of unearthly, cacophonous screams, gushing out from the tunnel and over their heads.
Atakk freaks.
Roaring loud enough to drown out the panic of the mole-bats, Atakk darts away from Lailah and Sorey’s hands, backpedaling in a mad haste.
“Atakk, wait--!”
Atakk thrashes against the walls, squirming and screaming. The bellows rising up from his chest augment the moment he realizes, beady eyes wide, that there’s no escape. There’s no sky. There is only the earth and this tomb and already, Atakk had been uncomfortable in this underground tunnel; now, it is suffocating and terrifying and Atakk wants out--wants out--wants out--
Sorey presses the heel of his hand to his temple with a quiet groan.
In a flash, Mikleo is at his side. “Sorey!”
“Calm him down!” It is perhaps the first time they have ever heard Dezel raise his voice beyond a murmur. “That damn dragon is going to bring down the entire ceiling if he--”
A sudden crack drowns out the rest of his words. It booms, reverberating throughout the underground cavern. Two more thunderous cracks follow, and then giant, lumpy chunks of rock drop.
In a brilliant spin that fans out the ends of his black coat, Dezel jumps.
It is the last thing Mikleo and Sorey see before they are flung to the side by a mighty gust of wind.
Dust fills the chamber.
o - o - o
Atakk’s screams have quieted into pitiful whines. His claws scrape and pull against the piled stone in front of them. Mikleo and Sorey hold onto each other with wide eyes, fingers fisting tightly in the dirtied blue other’s water-tribe wear.
It is so, so quiet on this side of the cave-in. It would be so, so dark without Sorey’s fire.
“Should we help him?” Sorey murmurs.
Mikleo can still taste a filmy, grainy layer of dust on his tongue, coating his mouth and drying his tongue. He shrugs weakly. “I’m not sure what good it would do.”
“Sorey! Mikleo!”
Sorey jerks up to his feet. He stumbles over to the mountain of rocks. “Lailah! Lailah, we’re here! We’re both here and okay!” With one last, meek wimper, Atakk collapses against the stone and slides down to the earth. Sorey swallows and bends to put his free hand on the side of his head. “What about you? Are you okay?”
“Oh, thank goodness! I was so worried!” There’s a pause before Lailah’s muffled voice reaches them again. “Yes! We’re all fine, thanks to Dezel’s quick thinking. I imagine you’ll learn that trick yourself sometime, Sorey!”
“Y-yeah…”
“In the meantime!” Rose’s voice drifts over. “It’s no use trying to dig through this. We’ll meet you on the other side of the tunnel, all right?”
Mikleo’s presence is warm as he joins Sorey’s side. “The other side?” he sputters. “How?! How, exactly, are we supposed to find our way out when the tunnels themselves keep on changing! This is impossible!”
“No, it’s not! You just gotta trust in love, my dude!” Rose calls back. “Sing the song if you want! You know the words by now!”
“I’m not singing!”
“Then that’s Sorey’s loss!”
Sorey’s ears burn bright red. He thinks he sees Mikleo’s face tinged red, too--or maybe that’s a trick of the firelight still burning above the palm of his hand.
“You guys will be fine! Trust me! Or rather…” Rose pauses dramatically and then adds, “Trust in love.”
Mikleo groans and shouts, “Rose!” but Rose’s laughter grows distant. When he grabs at the stone and calls for her again, there’s no answer. “This isn't funny!” he adds and with a huff, he pushes away from the pile. “Fine. Whatever. If she’s going to be like that and we’re on our own, then we’ll just…we’ll…”
“Mikleo?”
“C’mon, Sorey. I don’t think we’ve tried this tunnel yet.”
“O-okay. C’mon, Atakk…”
Atakk makes a pitiful sound but lifts himself from the ground to slunk after them.
o - o - o
The tomb is the last thing Sorey expects to find in these Secret Tunnels, but the one thing Mikleo was most anticipating. With help from Atakk, the heavy round stone blocking the entrance is shoved aside and immediately, eras-old, undisturbed dust wafts over them.
“Eugh. Gross.” Mikleo scrunches his nose up and coughs.
“But so, so cool,” Sorey breathes and when Mikleo looks to his friend’s profile and sees the wonder in his green eyes, he starts to smile.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I guess.”
Sorey turns to Mikleo to give him one bright grin, before he bounds down into the crypt. Mikleo follows.
In the antarctic tundra of the South Pole, Sorey and Mikleo have had little exposure to underground tombs and crypts and dusty rock walls covered with hieroglyphs. This feels like hallowed ground: two sarcophagi in the center of the chamber and two giant statues carved into the wall at the back, bent into a tender kiss. The ancient stones whisper stories to anyone willing to listen. Mikleo and Sorey have never seen anything like it.
“I think I want to keep this close to my heart,” Sorey murmurs, voice lost as if he were in a happy dream. “Y’know?”
“You want to keep close a tomb?” Mikleo chuckles.
“You know what I mean!” Sorey huffs and when Mikleo has to press a hand to his mouth to keep from laughing more, Sorey turns away with a sheepish smile. “I just think there’s something so neat about this. We were so, so afraid of being lost forever in these tunnels and then, all of a sudden, we found something incredible. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Well, the timing surely is convenient.”
“Yeah. And maybe it’s silly, but I think if I weren’t the Avatar, maybe I would like to find more cool, forgotten things with old stories. I think I love exploring,” Sorey whispers. Mikleo watches him, something tightening in his throat as Sorey’s fingers trace the tragic romance of Oma and Shu on the cavern wall. “I think I love this.”
Mikleo doesn’t know why his chest feels tight and at the same time so warm. Why is he, in turn, so happy to see Sorey so happy? Shouldn’t they be frustrated and hungry? Afraid? Why, of all things, is he only glad to hear Sorey talk about something he loves?
Because I think I--
Oh.
Mikleo’s breath hitches in his throat.
Oh.
Sorey doesn’t notice. His hand not occupied with keeping a fire going continues to trace the tragic romance of Oma and Shu.
Mikleo’s fingertips brush his bare neck.
“Sorey.”
Sorey lifts his gaze from the wall. “Yeah?”
“I think…I think you should let the fire go out.”
“What?”
Mikleo turns around, violet eyes burning in the firelight like iridescent burgundy. Sorey can’t take his gaze away, not when his childhood friend looks at him with such intensity and certainly not when Mikleo presses himself so close to his side. Sorey feels his heart flutter high in his throat.
“It’s okay,” Mikleo breathes. He gently takes Sorey’s hand holding the flame. Sorey turns bright red. “Let it go out.”
“Mikleo--”
“It’s okay.” Mikleo feels a thrill of pride at managing to sound so calm and so sure, so steady, despite the fireworks show his nerves are putting on at their close proximity. “It’s love. Right? The only way out is love. We have to trust it.”
“Okay.” Sorey swallows hard.
And there it is: the smallest tense of a slender eyebrow--a bend just near the curve of his eye--that probably tells Sorey a million things about what Mikleo is really feeling in this moment. Sorey has known Mikleo his entire life, far long enough to recognize what that flicker probably means, what that crack in the careful mask of his cool composure reveals: that he is afraid, that he is nervous. That he isn’t sure about what is to come. Uncertainty has always put Mikleo at his most uncomfortable; he is a young man of careful planning and thoughtful action. Not spontaneity. He is not Sorey.
And yet, if he could be just as brave…
“Sorey,” Mikleo begins, his voice soft and small. He can feel his own cheeks begin to burn. “...do you…love me?”
There’s a beat.
A brief snapshot of time where Sorey stares at Mikleo and Mikleo hesitantly raises his eyes to gaze back.
And then--
The fire goes out the same moment Sorey leans forward.
o - o - o
“Hey! You guys made it! See, I know you would!”
Sorey and Mikleo turn away from the dry valley ahead. Up in the sky high above, Atakk happily curls and uncurls, a slender, dark string sailing through the thick clouds at his leisure. His shadow passes over them as Sorey lifts a hand and jogs over to hug Lailah once she has slipped down from the giant badger-mole’s back. Over Lailah’s shoulder, he smiles at Rose and her Sparrowfeathers as they, too, descend from the back of two other badger-moles.
“You guys made it out okay, too!” Sorey passes a glance over them once the badger-moles have retreated into the tunnels. He can’t see any signs of injuries. “How did you get those badger-moles to help? That’s amazing!”
“We sang,” Rose says and puts her hands on her hips to sneer at Mikleo.
Mikleo rolls his eyes.
“How about you two?” Lailah’s hand cups Sorey’s face. She tilts his head left and right and Sorey laughs. “You didn’t get hurt, did you? How did you get out of those tunnels?”
Sorey’s face reddens. “Well…” He looks to Mikleo.
After a long moment, Mikleo shakes his head. “That’s our secret.”
“Yeah, right. Ha! I bet you two--”
Immediately, Eguille plants a hand over Rose’s mouth, dragging her by the arm ahead of the group. The bottom of Rose’s boots leave twin divets in the dirt as he marches along. “Let’s just all be glad we’re finally free of that spirit-forsaken Secret Tunnel and get on with our lives, yes? Yes,” he says.
“Agreed,” Dezel rumbles. He stops in front of Sorey. “Now that we are out of the valley, we should begin making our way for the Northern Air Temple. I will teach you airbending as we travel, but you should know that it will do you well to learn among your predecessors.”
Sorey looks up to Dezel. “My predecessors?”
Dezel nods as if this is the end of their conversation and what he has said makes complete sense. He strides ahead. Lailah giggles and follows on his heels, motioning for Sorey and Mikleo to hurry.
Sorey looks to Mikleo.
Mikleo shrugs back and smiles. After a moment, he sticks out his hand.
Sorey takes it slowly and intertwines their fingers easily. Perfectly. Finding every space in between the other to weave and to hold.
When they walk forward, it's together.
#tales of zestiria#zestiria#sormik#sorey#mikleo#atla au#fanfic: sorey#fanfic: mikleo#fanfic: sormik#it returns my friends#and a week early too bc i just recently rewatched this episode and was Inspired#mod krissey writes a thing#avatar sorey#i can't remember my tags rip
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rated: t
fandom: Tales of Symphonia
prompt: “Was Too Hard on Them” + Zelos (& the gang)
requested by: @kohakhearts
BACK AT IT AGAIN MAN i have fantastic friends & they all gifted me so many more ToS req’s for the bad things happen bingo after “Apnea” and honestly...i’m so happy man. Returning to ToS is recipe for instant joy
my AMAZING friendo taylo req’d “Was Too Hard on Them” w/ Zelos, if I remember right, the req was for the group being too hard on him. and what a GREAT prompt it was!!
also, how could i not toss my boi Lloyd in here to try and help??
it’s Zelos Angst Hours, babey. hope you enjoy!! feel free to req any of the last remaining bad things happen bingo prompts if you see something you like!
o - o - o
That’s My Emotional Support Acute Stress Response, Sir
[Read on AO3]
o - o - o
There’s fight, flight, freeze, and then there’s Zelos, who is pretty sure he has improvised a hidden fourth option of saying fuck it.
He’s not sure if it’s morally right to storm off in a--let’s be honest--deliberate, if petty, effort to guilt everyone else. Hell, Zelos isn’t one to think he typically has the luxury of debating the morality of anything in his cursed life, but being around those losers with all of their starry-eyed hope and determination has made him…think. And he hates that. He’s bad at that. Just like he’s bad at everything else.
So why is he overthinking his own anger again? He’s right to be angry. He knows he is.
Why does he feel pathetic?
“Zelos, wait!”
Zelos shuts his eyes, as close as he will let himself get to a grimace in someone else’s company. He adds a well-plastered smile, which usually does the trick. “Lloyd, I’m fine. I’m just takin’ a walk.”
“Yeah, away from camp.” Lloyd’s careless, heavy footfalls are one of his many signatures that make Zelos think, Y’know if I kept my eyes closed, I think I’d still know who it was walkin’ beside me. The brunet has a wild way of creating so much more clumsy, eccentric noise than he needs to. “What if you run into monsters?”
“Aw, are you worried about me? That’s cute.”
“Zelos…”
Zelos shrugs and lifts his hands. “I think I can take care of myself. Though it’s sweet of you to worry.”
“I’m always worried about you.”
Oh.
A twig snaps under Zelos’ shoe. He pauses, the small sound enough to break his train of thought. Or maybe that was courtesy of the humble honesty in Lloyd’s words; Lloyd who is always so forthright he doesn’t even have it in him to have a dark, knotting mess in his own head like Zelos.
“Colette’s worried too. I think everyone is, really.”
Damn.
Lloyd continues as if he doesn’t see or notice the internal knot winding itself tighter and tighter inside Zelos. Or maybe he does and he’s trying in his own Lloyd-ish-way to make it better. “If we took it too far, you can always tell us. Y’know? It’s not funny if it hurts you.”
Zelos chuckles. It sounds genuine even to his own ears. He fixes his gaze on the dark greenery around them. “What, you think I can’t take a good ribbing now and then?”
“I know that you haven’t looked at me once since I followed you out here.”
Zelos exhales and turns, which admittedly is probably exactly what Lloyd wants. The brunet even proves it by softening, the hard look in his brown eyes melting.
“There,” Zelos says and he throws on his own breathtaking smile for good measure, the one he knows gets a rise out of the girls in Meltokio. “Now I’m looking at you. Does that convince you that I’m fine? Will you leave me alone?”
Lloyd’s eyes openly search his face.
How does he do that? How does he feel comfortable enough to wear his heart on his sleeve where anybody can see it? Where anybody can take it and judge it for its own value?
How is he that brave?
“Do you want to talk about it?”
The idea is so, so ludicrous. Zelos can’t hold back the scoff that bursts up out of him. “Talking about it--”
“--you’re not looking at me again--”
“--talking about it would be suggesting that there is something wrong.” Zelos bites his words off his tongue as he turns back to Lloyd again because the young man is infuriating when he wants his way. “Which, for the record, there isn't. I’m fine. I’m not going to be bothered or put-off by a little thing like a good joke.”
Lloyd’s frown is as much of an answer as anything.
“Don’t believe me? Here, then listen to this,” Zelos adds and points to either side of his cheeks, “listen to the sounds my mouth is making: I’m glad they’re laughing at me. We’ve all been having a time of it lately. Sheena, especially. You know, I think I actually saw her smile just now?”
Lloyd blinks like he hadn’t thought about it.
It sets Zelos off again. “In fact, I think that was the first time I’ve seen her legitimately laugh after what happened with Corrine. And if that’s the case, then so what if a few things might rub me the wrong way? It’s fine. Good, even. It’s not like I’m good for anything else other than a big joke, am I right--”
“--what did you say?”
There it is again.
Somewhere out there, somehow, a roulette wheel is spinning with a grand marquis sign high above it, labeled: “What Will Zelos Do Now?” There are only three spots on this multi-colored spinning disk, each of them more exciting than the last: Flight. Fight. Freeze.
Freeze. Flight. Fight.
Fight. Freeze. Flight.
Freeze.
“Fuck,” Zelos breathes and Lloyd grabs at Zelos’ shoulders like he’s just said he’s going to jump off a cliff or something. Zelos would be lying if he tried to say he hadn’t thought about it before.
“What are you talking about, Zelos? You’re good for a lot! You’re not just a punchline!”
Lloyd shouts and hot and cold and iron and sand are a strange mixture to throw into the interior of his ribcage but it’s there, all clanking around and spinning like someone set a mixer to the highest speed and forgot the damn thing was plugged in. Zelos squeezes his face shut. “Aw, shit. Okay. Fuck. I know I started it, but can we not have this conversation?”
“But--”
“Listen.” Zelos’ chest is tight, tight, tight, and he doesn’t know how to loosen it. “I know you’re great and you mean every word you say--” --because if there’s one thing vastly different between Lloyd and him it’s that Lloyd couldn’t tell a lie to save his life-- “--but it’s just not gonna work right now, okay? Believe me.”
Lloyd’s hands on his shoulders tighten for one awful stretch of a minute.
Slowly, they pull away.
Zelos rubs a hand over his face and doesn’t want to think about what look Lloyd’s probably got on his face now. “Don’t…take this the wrong way. I appreciate what you’re trying to say. But right now? I think it’s best if I am just our local ‘punchline’ guy if that’s what you wanna call it.”
“But it hurts you.”
And Lloyd says it like it’s the only thing that matters.
Is it?
“Today, maybe.” And that honesty is harder than Lloyd knows for him to admit. When he meets Lloyd’s open-field brown with his guarded-shield blue, a small smile unwittingly stretches across his face. “But not tomorrow. Or the day after. And listen, I know I goof a lot, but I mean it when I say that it usually…doesn’t hurt. Not like this. Today was just…”
Thinking back on it, Zelos isn’t even sure he can remember just what it was that set him off into fuck it mode. Maybe it wasn’t important in the end.
“You really do mean that?”
“I told you I did, didn’t I?”
“I just…” Lloyd’s face twists and okay, Zelos kind of hates that. He hates that he’s the cause of it more. “Can’t always tell, I guess. I hate sacrifices and this whole thing kind of feels so close to being another one, y’know?”
Is a mask a sacrifice?
“But I’ll trust you,” Lloyd slowly says. “So that means you’ve gotta tell us: if someone says something that goes too far or we’re being too hard on you, speak up. You don’t have to sit through it because you think what we need to feel better is something that’s at the expense of you.”
I’ll trust you.
Oh, if Lloyd only knew those are the last three words he should ever be saying to him.
“No one is going to resent you because you were being honest with us when something actually hurt you.”
Ah.
When Zelos looks away this time, Lloyd doesn’t challenge him or call his attention back. Instead, he waits. And he waits. He waits as long as Zelos needs until finally, he thinks his throat has stopped being too tight to allow his stupid vocal cords to function.
“We should return to camp,” Zelos rasps.
“Yeah. If that’s what you want.”
And Lloyd--stupid, silly, open, brave Lloyd--stubbornly doesn’t leave his side the entire walk back.
There’s flight, freeze, or fight. And then there’s Lloyd, who Zelos is pretty sure has improvised a hidden fourth option to just face it.
#bad things happen bingo#symphonia#tales of symphonia#zelloyd#lloyd irving#zelos wilder#fanfic: lloyd#fanfic: zelos#fanfic: zelloyd#bth bingo#was too hard on them#angst and hurt/comfort#the usual uh#let's talk it out kind of fic#mod krissey writes a thing#mod krissey
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rated: g+
fandom: Tales of Zestiria
prompt: "Dragged by the Ankle”
requested by: @oliverniko
SO MY AMAZING FRIEND OLLIE REQ’D “Dragged by the Ankle” W/ MIKLEO AND ORIGINALLY I wasn’t thinking to do something to fulfill it from my AtlA AU...which is clearly where I went wrong because as soon as I thought about Mikleo from AtlA AU I got Inspired and figured out Exactly What To Do
unfortunately, the actual moment Mikleo gets dragged by his ankle is pretty short but uh he still doesn’t have the best of times
ft. “beach oval” necklaces, kiddos Mikleo & Sorey, some mean bullies, & the first time Sorey firebends
- o - o - o -
Of Promises and Necklaces
[Read on AO3]
- o - o - o -
The children of the Southern Water Tribe could be cruel.
They knew why Sorey and Zenrus’ tent sat outside of their small community’s snow walls. They never let Sorey forget as to why.
The name-calling and the snowballs only came whenever an adult wasn’t looking.
There were days Sorey would run to Zenrus in horrible tears, gasping about the other children’s laughter and unkind words. Even with all of his age and wisdom, Zenrus could only sigh and say, “It is not you these hostilities are aimed at, Sorey.” He would wrap his arms around the small boy, pull him into his lap, and mutter, “They have been hurt by an entity bigger than yourself and bigger than themselves. And now, for the first time in a long time, they finally have a target they can focus these negative energies on. It is not you, my boy. It is what you represent.”
Sorey clung to those words like he would the lantern Zenrus wanted him to carry around during those horrible stretches of weeks when the sun would forget to shine. It was just a hope, an idea, but one he so desperately craved: the thought that perhaps he didn’t have to be hated and feared.
Above all, Sorey longed so dearly not to be feared.
- o - o - o -
A small smile worked its way onto Mikleo’s face as he watched Sorey set down his lantern beside his knee. The small flame within the cage of glass flickered, casting a soft orange glow to the thick ice around them. “You really do carry that thing around with you everywhere, huh?”
Sorey’s green eyes fluttered up to Mikleo’s violets. A bright flush dusted his cheeks, and Mikleo knew it wasn’t because of the snow. Sorey looked back down. His mitted hands dug around in his coat pockets. “I guess so.”
“Why?”
Sorey shrugged. He huffed a small cloud of air out in frustration and withdrew his hands out of the deep folds of his coat. He slipped off a glove and stuck the freed hand back in to keep searching. “Gramps said I should. It kind of helps me not feel so bad when the sky gets dark for a long time. Y’know?”
Mikleo tilted his chin up. “But the sun’s been out today.”
“Yeah.”
“So why are you carrying it around today?”
Sorey shrugged again.
There was a brief pause before he answered, “Gramps said to keep carrying it around, I guess. I don’t really know why.”
Mikleo fought the small snicker that wanted to rise out of him. “Haven’t you asked him?”
“Well, yeah, but he says I’ll find out when I find out. Whatever that means,” Sorey mumbled under his breath. His face pinched tight, before he brightened with relief. “Ah-ha! There it is!”
“There what is?”
“What I dragged you out here for!” There was something radiant and hopeful in Sorey’s face as he pulled out a small blue ribbon from his pocket. At its center, dangling with every jerk of the brunet’s hand, swung a crudely-formed and round pendant with an unfamiliar pattern shakily carved onto its front. “Ta-da!” the eight-year-old boasted with a grin. “What do you think?”
Mikleo blinked. He rested his hands against his crossed calves and leaned forward to see the pendant better. “Is it a...necklace?”
Sorey nodded. His face turned sheepish and burned an even brighter red than before. “Y-yeah. But it’s also kinda more than that.” He lifted his other hand, still covered with a mitten, and cradled the necklace in his palm. “Do you remember what you were telling me Master Uno was saying the other day? About the Water Tribes to the north?”
“Yeah.” Mikleo’s eyes drew up from the necklace to his friend. “He was talking about the different traditions between our Tribes.”
“Yeah,” Sorey nodded back. He swallowed. It didn’t escape Mikleo’s notice the way his hands seemed to suddenly shake as he held the necklace. Was it because of the cold? He made a mental note to remind Sorey to put on his left hand glove again once he was done talking. “W-well, he said that when people up there want to marry each other, they make those, uh, beach oval necklaces, right?”
“Is that what he said?”
“Yeah. I think so,” Sorey’s face flushed terribly red again. He held the pendant to his chest tightly. “I kind of hope so,” he murmured, far quieter and under his breath--so soft that Mikleo almost didn’t hear the words.
“Sorey.” Nevertheless, Mikleo felt a wide smile slowly spread across his face. “Did you make me a beach oval necklace?”
“...m-maybe.”
Mikleo’s back straightened. Something warm and happy and a little bit like honored pride slid through him as he held out his hand. “Can I see it?”
Sorey made a suddenly uncertain and strangled sound. His shoulders curled in. “Wait, uh. I’m not so sure anymore.”
“It’s for me, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Then it’s fine,” Mikleo murmured around his smile. He bobbed his hand between them. Sorey’s eyes darted from the open palm, to Mikleo’s eyes, and then back to his hand.
Sorey made one more hesitant sound. Then, he nodded. “Okay. But you’ve gotta close your eyes!”
Mikleo fought the urge to roll his eyes, but he decided to humor his friend. He gently pressed his eyes closed and left his hand in midair. It took a moment for Sorey to reach forward, letting his clumsy carving dangle just above the center of his friend’s palm. Then, with a gasp, Sorey quickly thought better of it.
“Wait!” he said. He shuffled around the ice.
Mikleo raised an eyebrow. He almost opened an eye and would have, if Sorey hadn’t quickly ushered, “No! No! Keep your eyes closed!”
“Sorey?” he asked around a breathless laugh. “Now I’m just nervous.”
Sorey didn’t answer. He slipped off his other mitten still on his right hand and stuffed both of them now into his pockets. Now bare, his fingers shivered in the bitter cold as they stretched out the ribbon and dangled it in front of Mikleo’s neck. He took a deep breath and then wrapped the necklace around him.
Mikleo gasped. His eyes shot open. “Sorey!”
Sorey’s chilled fingers fumbled to tie the ribbon ends quickly. “Gimme a second!” he urged.
Mikleo raised a hand to the pendant. It was so very hard not to move until Sorey was finished tying. “You idiot! Now I can’t actually see it!” he huffed, his own pale face tinged red.
Sorey clasped both hands behind his back. He stepped back as Mikleo spun around and his shoulders bunched up into a sheepish shrug. “So? Maybe that’s a good thing!”
Mikleo heaved out a sigh. “Aren’t I the person you’re giving it to?”
“Well, yeah, but--”
“--and if I’m the one who’s wearing it, shouldn’t I get the chance to see it before I actually decide if I want to wear it?”
Sorey’s eyes darted away briefly. “If, uh, it helps, I think it looks good on you,” he offered.
“You’re hardly even looking at me,” Mikleo mumbled. He frowned, craning his head down while lifting the round pendant with his fingers. He tried his hardest to see the beach oval necklace Sorey had made for him, but no matter how hard he strained his neck, he couldn’t get a decent glimpse of it. He let the pendant fall back against the base of his throat with a sigh.
Sorey flushed again. This time, his eyes did not remove themselves from Mikleo’s face, though he kept glancing every stray moment to the necklace that now donned his best friend’s neck. He could see the stone peeking out from the furred lining of his hood; it filled him with a soft thrill of pride. “Sorry.”
Mikleo’s eyes fluttered to Sorey. He always had to do a double-take when he heard Sorey apologize; the other boy had such a strange way of pronouncing it. “...why’d you make me one?” he asked quietly.
“You don’t know?” Sorey asked, and his voice was so sincere and honest, Mikleo found himself blinking in return.
“No,” the waterbender murmured. “Should I?”
“I mean,” Sorey began and he shrugged for a third time, “I just thought it’d be obvious. I’ve told you I think I want to be friends with you forever, right?”
A small smile pulled at Mikleo’s face. He could feel any tension still present in his shoulders start to ebb. “Yeah.”
“Well, this kinda shows I mean it.” Sorey lifted a bare hand to scratch at his cheek. His green eyes turned to the side. “‘I want to be with you forever.’ So...now you know and you won’t forget. And it’ll always be with you wherever you go.”
“If I don’t take it off, you mean,” Mikleo said quietly. A warm feeling floated high in his chest.
“I...I sure hope you don’t,” Sorey murmured and lifted his eyes.
Mikleo’s smile widened.
- o - o - o -
Red dotted the snow.
Tiny pools of crimson, speckling like dark beads against the white. It spilled down Mikleo’s tight lips as the boy pushed himself upright. A hand left the snow to cup a mitten around his nose; it did little to staunch the molasses drip of blood down his chin.
“Whoa! Ed! What did you do?”
“Y-yeah! Ed, you took it a little far…”
“Shut up, Cynthia! That shows him what we think of him hanging out so much with those Fire Nation guys, anyway!”
Ed threw out a hand. His back was turned. The fur of his coat hood bristled in the arctic wind.
Sorey did not, could not, recognize the heat in his chest for the anger it was. There was something hot, hot, hot and bursting that was building within.
“What’s that dumb necklace supposed to be, anyway? An egg?”
Mikleo’s face twisted. Before Sorey could do anything, he spit on Ed’s sealskin shoes.
Ed snapped.
“Stop!” Cynthia cried, she didn’t know whether to reach out or keep her mittened hands close to her chest. Both her and the other children’s eyes were wide as Ed grabbed Mikleo’s ankle and yanked him across the snow until he was towering over him. Ed’s hand reared back for another punch.
Mikleo’s wrists snapped up to cross over his face.
Then the fire had a voice.
“Don’t hurt him!”
Ed shouted in surprise and fell back at the roar of fire that burst out of the lantern, stretching up to be nearly as tall as Sorey. Glass shards littered the snow, burst out of their metal bracings. The iron framework distorted, the circular handle twisting under the heat.
All of the children stared at him. Even Mikleo.
“W-what?” Ed gasped, but Cynthia was already there at his shoulder, pulling him away as the other children turned tail for the protective walls of the village. “The twerp can firebend?”
“Run!” she urged. “C’mon, Ed! You’ve gotta get out of here!’
Ed did not need to be told twice.
In the sharp and startling quiet afterward, the pillar of fire still rising from the lantern dimmed and ebbed. Sorey looked to Mikleo. Mikleo looked back. Sorey’s eyes darted down to the line of red leading down his friend’s chin. Feeling came back to his fingers, first. Shock and horror followed soon after, landing heavily in his stomach.
“Mikleo, are you okay?”
Mikleo sniffed. He blinked hard, or maybe it was a wince. “My nose hurts.”
“Yeah,” Sorey breathed and dipped his booted toes forward into the snow. He aborted the step before he even took it. “Um. I’ll get Gra--I mean, your mom, and she can--”
“--Sorey, I’m still not afraid of you.”
Sorey paused. Slowly, a smile broke out. “Right,” he said and scurried to Mikleo’s side.
Mikleo took his extended hand and slowly rose to his feet. When he wobbled, Sorey steadied him with both hands--incredibly warm somehow, enough to feel through his mittens and the lining of Mikleo’s coat--pressed to Mikleo’s arms.
His hand was even warmer when he took Mikleo’s own.
“That fire trick of yours was pretty cool, though,” Mikleo murmured with a laugh, hoping it hid the redness he was sure was crawling across his cheeks. He couldn’t stop smiling for some dumb, dopey reason, even with blood dripping down his face. “I thought you said you couldn’t bend?”
“I can’t.” Sorey shrugged and shook his head. He paused. “I mean, I guess I thought I couldn’t.”
“You’ve never done that before?”
“N-no.”
The two shared a look. Forest green met amaranthine and in that exchange, wonder and excitement budded.
“Gramps,” Sorey finally said as if waking up from a deep sleep.
“Yeah,” Mikleo breathed.
They hurried towards the tent camped on the outside of the village walls. The broken, warped remains of Sorey’s lantern sat forgotten in the snow behind them.
#sormik#sorey#mikleo#zestiria#bad things happen bingo#dragged by the ankle#fanfic: sorey#fanfic: mikleo#fanfic: sormik#atla au#mod krissey writes a thing#it starts out fluffy#then gets a littol angsty#but just a smidge
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rated: g
fandom: Tales of Vesperia
prompt: “Ballroom Dancing” + Ristelle
requested by: @oliverniko
YAY SO I CAN FINALLY RELEASE THIS LAKJSDLFKJDF a while ago, it was my good friend Ollie’s birthday and a few of us got together and made a zine for him filled with fanfics and fanarts that we all made. My contribution was Ristelle, using the “ballroom dancing” prompt that Ollie had given me for them AGES ago
it’s so nice to be finally able to deliver on this!! I hope you enjoy the sap!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLLIE!
- o - o - o -
La Valse de L’Amour
[Read on AO3]
- o - o - o -
Where Rita Mordio first went wrong was looking at her hands. And it’s admittedly funny, maybe: how sensory memory can be such an experiential thing to relive over and over and over again. What’s not funny is her memory and all of her foolish feelings and her hypersensitive nerves getting in the way of her vital work.
She switches on the lab’s lights and glances at her fingers. Her face burns red. The memory of warmth and satin white gloves under those same fingers the previous night floods her, latches like a sticky glob of honey to the inside of her brain.
It’s stupid. It’s so stupid.
But there’s a song stuck in her head now: some waltz-y schmaltz with bouncing strings that encourages her feet to move in a bending, swinging rhythm like the sway of the ribbons that dangled from Estelle’s hair. The princess’ pink up-do had been wrapped in gleaming, pale turquoise. Last night, Rita had half-wondered if she was seeing things or if Estelle’s hair really was sparkling with stars. Maybe she had one too many glasses of champagne?
But gosh; Estelle had been gorgeous in that aqua gown. A vision. And the way her eyes wrinkled at the edges when she laughed—
Rita stops herself and smacks her burning cheeks with both hands. Damn it! Focus, Rita! You have important research to do!
But all of your work is for her, anyway, isn’t it?
Rita swallows and ignores the orchestra in her head and the way she wants to spin to her desk and slams her hands on the worktable. She ignores the voice in her head that asks, So what does this mean? and challenges it by asking, What does what mean?
That you’ve devoted the rest of your life to helping one girl and now the only thing you can do is think about the way her hand fits perfectly in yours?
Rita shoves her hands over her face again, moaning to herself. “Ugh. Stop it…”
But the heat of Estelle’s waist under her hand is hard to forget. The twin contact points of Estelle’s palm against hers; the gravitational pull to draw the princess flush against her as they danced. Estelle had such grace to her in the arched line of her spine; such perfect ballroom behavior that was all learned, no doubt. Something she had lived under and studied because she was a princess and could have been the empress and those were the kind of things that made Rita sweat when she remembered that they were, in fact, fact.
Her eyes had followed the sweep of Estelle’s lifted jaw many times last night. The pale, soft skin of her neck had been unbearably tempting, something Rita hates actually admitting. But maybe in the solitude of her lab, such thoughts were…permissible.
And yet even with such practiced poise due to a childhood Rita had never known, she was still the same Estelle.
The bend of her painted lips to part around her kind smiles hadn’t changed. The way her sea green eyes bored into Rita and didn’t waver as Rita babbled while they stood beside the buffet table. The way Estelle’s entire universe, for one breathless moment, revolved around her. Under that kind of attention and pressure, something in Rita forgot to function.
It didn’t matter how boring their conversations were. Estelle had gotten Rita to open up about all sorts of research, even the dustiest, oldest ones of her school-hood studies, and Estelle had listened to every factoid and tangent without a single complaint.
Such an earnest audience had been—still is—the most humbling thing to experience.
Rita turns around and leans against her lab worktable. Her hands curl against the edge and remember the way she had slid those fingers up along Estelle’s arm. She remembers Estelle’s gasp: the tiniest hitch in her breathing that set off fireworks in Rita’s gut.
They had danced.
And the sway of their bodies had been everything for those few minutes of a perfect dream.
Rita slides down to the floor and brings her knees up to her chest. She cups her hands over her face; after a moment, they slide down to clasp over her chest. She closes her eyes.
“Damn,” she whispers to the air. “Can’t believe I’m in love with a fucking princess.”
But man, do I wish I could dance with her every day.
#vesperia#ristelle#rita mordio#Estellise Sidos Heurassein#mod krissey#mod krissey writes a thing#fluff bingo!#ballroom dancing#fluff#drabble#fanfic: vesperia#fanfic: rita#fanfic: estelle#fanfic: ristelle
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rated: t
fandom: Tales of Symphonia
prompt: “Coughing Up Blood” + Lloyd
requested by: @happykawaiicinnamonroll
OKAY LITERALLY thank u so much Happy u gave me like the literal best prompt paired with my FAVORITE CHARACTER EVER and i just wanna say thank u and bless u and ilu and i hope u enjoy. i had PARTICULAR fun writing this
if u like what u see and want to request ur own angst fic, hmu!! the ones unmarked are still available <3
o - o - o
Apnea
[Read on AO3]
Lloyd’s voice is raspy, warped around something in his airway. He holds up a hand; he straightens up. With a slow, deep inhale, he makes a good show of a single large breath, but it’s thin and stoppered, as if there’s a cork in that red-lipped bottleneck of his and he can’t manage to pry it free.
“S’oka--”
Then he coughs.
And it’s a hacking thing.
o - o - o
When Zelos had first raised an eyebrow at the creepy-ass lingering spirit of a four-armed swordsman, Lloyd had shrugged, grinned, and said, “Well, we’ve fought him before in an underground mine shaft. And now we have you! So no biggie! This’ll be a sinch. We’ll be out of here and at the Temple of Earth in no time.”
Zelos watches as Lloyd’s back crunches against the wide trunk of a tree and he wonders if any part of a “sinch” was supposed to be reassuring when their asses are being handed to them.
“This is your definition of easy?!” Zelos shouts across the clearing, half to make sure Lloyd is okay enough to respond and half to actually get a legitimate answer.
Lloyd stumbles forward, nearly tripping over the thick, sprawling roots. “Uh…in my defense, this wasn’t…” A strangely blank look passes over Lloyd’s face: pale and wane, before his nose scrunches like he tastes something bad. “This is harder than I remember.”
“Grand Cross!”
The forest floor lights up.
Curling white encircles the skeletal swordsman. Swords-thing? Swords-bones? Zelos isn’t sure. He’s never seen anything like it before. Not that he needs proof besides looking at the thing to know it, but when it screams in pain, it definitely isn’t human. When it crashes to the ground, sprawling out on its vertebrae, the entire Gaoracchia Forest shakes.
Once it’s standing, Genis sweeps in with an Air Thrust.
Raine shouts to Lloyd, “Lloyd! Now!”
Zelos gets a funny feeling in his gut--he’s not sure why--as he watches Lloyd nod and break into a jogging run towards the Sword Dancer. Raine charges a Photon and launches it time with Lloyd’s spinning Tempest.
As it fades, the skeleton is happy at its defeat.
Genis and Raine and Lloyd get caught up in a conversation about the spirit and what it’s doing and how they should get rid of it, considering that before it disappeared, the spirit had promised a “next time.”
Lloyd, as always, vows that he’ll get stronger which Zelos finds ironic considering he looks like he’s one wrong wind away from falling over. The fight must’ve done a bigger number than he thought. Lloyd’s voice comes out wobbly, like there’s a frog in his throat.
When Zelos meets eyes with Colette, he knows he’s not imagining things.
“We should keep moving,” Sheena says. Her gaze darts around the shadows of the thick underbrush. The long line of her shoulders is rigid. “This isn’t a safe place to rest.”
“Right.” Lloyd nods. He clears his throat.
He takes one step before the red of his shirt stretching across his shoulder blades pinches with a flinch, or maybe it’s a jerk. It’s not so much a sound as the motion that’s alarming.
Genis and Colette are at his side in an instant.
“Lloyd, you okay?” Genis’ eyes are wide, head tilted in that funny way he does when he’s trying to get a good look at his best friend’s face.
Colette puts a hand on his arm. Then, she thinks better of it and reaches into her bag. “Here--”
“--h-hang on.”
Lloyd’s voice is raspy, warped around something in his airway. He holds up a hand; he straightens up. With a slow, deep inhale, he makes a good show of a single large breath, but it’s thin and stoppered, as if there’s a cork in that red-lipped bottleneck of his and he can’t manage to pry it free.
“S’oka--”
Then he coughs.
And it’s a hacking thing.
His body bows forward. A hand jerks up to his mouth. His other hand flutters to his knee and it would seem odd, it would seem strange, but Zelos’ body seems to recognize what will happen to Lloyd’s and why before his mind does. There’s a thin, shaking inhale from a torso that decidedly does not move and Lloyd drops.
Zelos shoots forward.
He manages to loop his arms under Lloyd’s and bring him back against his chest as his boots kick forward against dead leaves and twigs.
“It’s okay,” Zelos breathes, quiet enough for only Lloyd’s ears to hear as he coughs again. And again. And again. “Hey. Breathe. I’ve got you, idiot.”
Zelos sinks to the forest floor with him.
“Lloyd!”
Colette and Genis fall to their knees on either side. Zelos doesn’t quite get their frenzied panic until he realizes there’s something wet and syrupy dripping along his forearm, trailing down his sleeve draped across the front of Lloyd’s chest.
Oh.
Oh.
Zelos pulls back to peer over Lloyd’s shaking shoulder. From ear to cheek, Zelos can see only pallid skin and glazed brown eyes. Blood drips from his open, uncharacteristically slack mouth. Zelos can feel under his arm the hiccuping spasms of sputtering lungs within his chest as they try and fail over and over again to do their one job.
“MOVE!”
On instinct, Genis rolls back as Raine fills his place and cups Lloyd’s cheek in her hand. She doesn’t hesitate when blood speckles her wrist. Her other hand glows golden-white as it passes over his front. Her face is pinched tight, focused, as under her breath, she mutters incantation after incantation.
At last, finally, when Zelos feels like his legs are falling asleep on either side of Lloyd’s from the awkward positioning, Raine pulls away and Lloyd shudders.
Genis and Colette are at his shoulders, now. Zelos is fairly certain they have nearly forgotten he’s there, even if he deserves a thanks or two for being the only thing keeping their childhood friend upright.
“W-wow,” Lloyd rasps. His chest rises and falls quickly with hungry breaths. “Thanks.”
Raine’s staff crashes hard against Lloyd’s temple.
Zelos leans back as far as he can.
Lloyd yelps and grasps for his head with bloodied gloves.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were injured?!” she cries. “I could have healed you in the fight before making you do that Photon Tempest.”
“I didn’t…I didn’t think it was that--!”
“You didn’t think, huh? Oh, that’s hardly surprising.”
Zelos tries to stuff his chuckle before it breaks free but fails.
When Colette reaches forward and takes both Lloyd’s shoulders in her hands, there’s something earnest and pained in the blue of her eyes as she searches Lloyd’s. Then she says, “Don’t ‘it’s okay’ it next time.”
Lloyd stares at her.
Colette’s face flushes. Her fingers tighten in the red of his shirt sleeves.
Zelos thinks he must miss something in their wordless conversation, because when Lloyd finally sighs, Colette does, too.
“Yeah,” Lloyd whispers. “Okay.”
#tales of symphonia#symphonia#lloyd irving#zelos wilder#colette brunel#genis sage#raine sage#sheena fujibayashi#fanfic: lloyd#fanfic: zelos#fanfic: colette#fanfic: raine#fanfic: genis#fanfic: sheena#a hint of zelloyd if u squint#bad things happen bingo#bth bingo#badthingshappenbingo#coughing up blood#mod krissey writes a thing
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rated: g
fandom: Tales of Zestiria
prompt: “Ferris Wheel”
requested by: @toradh
I think this is the first Fluff Bingo prompt fill we’ve posted here?? SO HEY in addition to the angst-fest of “Bad Things Happen Bingo,” the writing discord we’re part of is also doing a “Fluff Bingo!” it’s a lot of fun and there’s still some prompts available if you want to req one for some Tales chars!
THANKS SO MUCH FRAN FOR THIS REQ it was a lot of fun and yes, i am also going to do “Stargazing” for you bc.........I can’t help myself alskdjflaksdf
ENJOY THE SORMIK FLUFF
- o - o - o -
Night Ambience
[Read on AO3]
- o - o - o -
Cotton candy has always tasted strange to Mikleo with its pure, whipped sugar that melts as soon as it hits his tongue. It has always been weird to him to expect himself to consume something that is so feathery and sandy. He loves it, though; he gets a cone of it every year Sorey drags him to the annual fair. He loves everything and anything sweet.
Which is exactly why he’s here.
“Stop that. You look like you’re five.”
Sorey’s lips zip closed. The white puff of his breath mists away in front of his red nose. His shoulders bunch up under his jacket as he ducks the lower half of his face behind his scarf. “W-what?”
Mikleo smiles. He places another piece of pink, swirly sugar in his mouth and elbows Sorey’s side. “I’m joking, you dork.”
“Oh.”
Sorey scratches the back of his head. A sheepish smile spreads across his face.
Mikleo turns to look out at the twinkling polka-dot lights that glisten up and down the boardwalk. He has such a warm feeling in his chest; everything feels rather hazy. Maybe the sugar is melting into his bloodstream; maybe it’s affecting his head.
They take a step forward.
“We’re next.”
Mikleo turns forward. “It’s too much to hope that I could take this up with me, huh?”
The corner of Sorey’s mouth peeks above his scarf. “Probably.”
Mikleo fists his hand in the remainder of cotton candy in the bag and stuffs it in his mouth. Sorey laughs at the round bubble of his cheeks and Mikleo shoves the emptied clear plastic in his chest. The trash can lid at the end of the queue swings closed with a ker-clunk after Sorey tosses it.
The attendant unclips the rope. “All right. Step on up.”
Sorey makes a sound high in his throat, holding his fists at the level of his chest. His knees kick up high as he launches himself up the platform steps. “C’mon, Mikleo!”
Mikleo rolls his eyes and stuffs his sticky hands in the pockets of his jacket.
The steel guard-rail is locked to the side of their Ferris wheel cab. Sorey claps his hands as they rock before they finally, slowly, begin to move.
“Mikleo, look!”
“Sorey, didn’t the sign say to keep arms and legs inside the cab at all times?”
“C’mon! Can’t I be excited about something? Ladylake looks so beautiful from here!”
Mikleo smilingly relents. His eyes follow the long line of Sorey’s arm as it stubbornly sticks out over the safety bar. He crosses his own arms and smiles into the gentle wind toying with his bangs.
The water is dark and smooth under the night sky. Under the silvery moonlight, the mountains in the distance around the lake look like the humpbacks of slumbering giants. The city itself sparkles with tiny fairy-lights. The far-side cathedral has a round dias of painted glass illuminated from within; its tall archways yawn with dangling lanterns at their throats. Mikleo can see the Roundtable Palace from here, too, tucked further back in the higher district, with its stretching windows lit with rosy yellow.
Mikleo breathes in and let his lungs swell as big as they can. He thinks the near-spring crisp air tastes better on his tongue than any cotton candy, and far less strange, too.
“Now are you happy I dragged you to the Ferris Wheel? Or are you gonna tell me off for that, too?”
Mikleo chuckles and shakes his head. Sorey’s eyes are two pools of forest green in the night. Mikleo thinks he’s very much in love tonight, though the truth is he is always in love. He thinks he has been his entire life. “No.”
“No what? No, you’re not happy? Or no, you’re not gonna--”
“--come here, you dork.”
Mikleo laughs and cups the back of Sorey’s head. His chilled fingers dig into messy brown hair; he pulls his boyfriend’s lips down onto his. Sorey’s mouth melts into a smile and like putty, Mikleo lets Sorey push him back against the weathered plastic cushion. The Ferris cab idly swings.
Mikleo thinks neither cotton candy nor the wind of a beautiful night could compare to the taste of Sorey.
#sormik#sorey#mikleo#zestiria#tales of zestiria#fluff bingo#fanfic: sorey#fanfic: mikleo#fanfic: sormik#mod krissey writes a thing#ferris wheel#and cotton candy too#what else do u expect in a fair??#modern-day au#ladylake
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rated: g
fandom: Tales of Vesperia
prompt: “Soup for the Sick”
requested by: @kohakhearts
here we go here we go another fic for my “Bad Things Happen” Bingo card! I’m LOVING getting the chance to write for Tales of bbies again!! Coming back to Yuri & Estelle for this one was like, returning home a little bit. ;n;
if you like what you see, feel free to request any prompts not claimed from my bingo card, btw! I’ll write for Tales of Zestiria, Vesperia, or Symphonia!!
o - o - o
Remedial
[Read on AO3]
After Brave Vesperia finally tracks down Phaeroh, Yuri falls ill. Estelle only wants to help.
o - o - o
The curtain doesn’t do him the courtesy of rustling even the slightest bit in warning, which means that most likely, Yuri’s caught with a dumb look on his face as he stares up at the ceiling with one forearm laid across his brow when Estelle ducks her head into the space around his bed.
“Yuri?” she asks and her voice is sweet and so quiet that Yuri can’t even be mad. “Can I come in?”
Yuri half-wonders what’s the point of saying no. “Sure.”
Estelle smiles. Her lips are pale, pulled too thin. She steps beyond the thick curtain and sets herself down in the creaky wooden chair at his side. Yuri’s arm drops over his stomach. Whatever that broth is, steaming in the clay bowl cradled between her hands, it smells amazing.
“What’d you bring me?” Yuri rasps. He almost manages to sit upright before Estelle puts a hand against his shoulder.
“Here,” Estelle says and there’s a small clink as she sets the bowl on top of the end table. “You’ll be uncomfortable sitting against that wall there as it is.”
Yuri sighs. He curls over his lap and decidedly doesn’t fight Estelle as she grabs his pillow, fluffs it, and then props it between his bent spine and the stucco. Once satisfied, she gives a quiet and content, “There,” and eases him back.
Damn it.
It’s actually comfy, too.
“You don’t have to baby me. I’m sick, not dying.”
Estelle sits. Her hands do an odd flutter between the bowl on the end table and her lap. Then, after a moment of pause and a brave set to her jaw, she picks up the bowl again. “I-I mean, I’m not…trying to baby you.”
Yuri watches Estelle’s face.
When he doesn’t say anything, just as he thought, she begins to deflate. “Am…am I helping wrong…?”
Yuri pauses.
He looks to the soup in her lap. Chunks of carrots and celery and noodles slowly swim in the creamy broth, all mismatched and uneven, like someone with unpracticed hands had prepared them and before he knows it, another sigh has slipped free and he’s got both hands in his long hair, pulling it back. His teeth tugs loose one of his rubber bands he’s always got tucked under his Blastia bracelet.
“Hand it over,” he says once his hair is up.
Estelle looks up and blinks. After a moment, she nods and hands him the bowl.
Yuri hisses.
Quickly, Estelle takes it back before the soup can slosh out over his lap.
“It’s hot.”
“Y-you asked for it!”
“Of course I did! I’m hungry! But damn, give a guy a warning before you…” Yuri huffs and stares up at Estelle, standing over him at his bedside with soup boiling hot against her hands, something that should hurt her, and yet she doesn’t say a word. There’s no pain on her face other than the wide-eyed and flustered concern already there that’s aimed at him.
Yuri turns away. A chuckle at himself slips free.
Hesitantly, Estelle mimics him. She looks around the curtained-off space and then slowly sits back down.
“Let’s try that again,” Yuri finally says after his amusement has passed. He holds out his hand.
Estelle pulls back. “It’s hot.”
“I know that now.”
“You still want it?”
“Of course; I said I was hungry, didn’t I?”
Estelle bites her lip, but a humored smile still cracks through. She reaches for the cloth running over the end table and folds it against the bottom of the bowl. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
It’s still warm through the runner, but not scalding. Yuri carefully blows across the soup’s surface and breathes in. The savory aroma is still amazing; its heat steams and curls against his face, clearing the pounding congestion thick in his head. He breathes in once more and then slowly releases it all. Despite himself, his eyes slide closed. He’s not sure he ever wants to open them again.
“It’s a special Mantaic recipe,” Estelle murmurs. “At least, that’s what the innkeeper said. The herbs are supposed to be local, native to the oasis. He didn’t let me touch them, but I helped with everything else.”
“Estelle,” Yuri says. “Have I told you recently that you’re the best?”
Estelle giggles. “Of course you have. Many times.”
“No. I haven’t.”
Estelle doesn’t know how to respond to his calm, blatant refusal. Yuri can tell. He knows such candidness would feel almost backhanded, too, if the deprecation wasn’t aimed at himself instead of her. She stares at Yuri and Yuri stares back with a knowing, patient smile; the bowl sits warm on top of his thighs.
“Yuri--”
“--you’re not poison, Estelle.”
Estelle’s breath hitches.
“You’re helping everybody as much as you can.”
The world warps and burns before her eyes. She swallows and nods.
“Thank you, Yuri,” she whispers.
For a long moment afterward, Estelle sits with her head bowed and Yuri lets her, slowly taking sips of the soup she made him. When finally, she lifts her gaze to him again, she gives him a watery smile. Yuri sets the bowl back down on his lap. He reaches out a hand.
Without hesitation, Estelle’s fingers interlace with his.
#yuri lowell#vesperia#bad things happen bingo#bthb#badthingshappenbingo#tales of vesperia#estellise sidos heurassein#tov#fanfic: yuri#fanfic: estelle#mod krissey writes a thing#mod krissey
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Of Dancing and Laughter
Fic #4, Zestiria - AtlA AU
[Read on AO3]
After fleeing the Fire Navy ships, Sorey, Lailah and Mikleo take shelter for the night in what was once the Southern Air Temple. Though they can't stay, maybe they can bring a little more life and light to the forgotten ruins.
Also, Sorey just wants to try on Lailah's heels.
o - o - o
Lailah decided it was probably some kind of divine fortune that they managed to find the Southern Air Temple when they did. She is sure that otherwise, they would have continued flying until the Fire Nation found them or Atakk became too tired.
Sorey was the first to slide down from the dragon's saddle and onto the outdoor frontcourt of the Southern Air Temple. His booted feet hit greyscale stone; his eyes swept over the crumbling architecture. He seemed at once to be filled with as much awe as dismay.
“Isn’t this supposed to be a temple?”
Lailah slid down after Mikleo, cradling in her arms the bundle of supplies she had stuffed into Atakk’s saddlebags. A shake traveled down the dragon’s form, starting from his nose and rolling down to his tail. He flapped his wings once, then twice, and promptly sat. His nose bowed towards his flank, teeth picking and itching at where one of the buckles latched around his stomach.
Lailah made a soft sound. “Yes. And for all intents and purposes, it still is.”
“But it’s…” Mikleo’s voice drifted off. His brow pinched tightly. “…desecrated.”
Lailah’s mouth pressed to a tight line. “Yes.” She readjusted the bundle in her arms. “Ever since the airbenders fell to the Fire Nation, well…I’m afraid the temple has had no one to care for it.”
Sorey’s shoulders tensed. “That’s awful…”
“It is,” Lailah agreed. “But that also means our job to bring balance is doubly as important as it should be.”
“Y-yeah. I guess so.”
Lailah stepped forward, heels clicking against the stone. “Come with me. We’re going to set up camp.”
o - o - o
As Sorey gathered firewood from lower on the island, Mikleo located three sleeping mats, and Lailah found a few stone hall benches that she instructed the boys to drag over once they returned. In a few moments, the crumbling side entryway began to look like something livable--comfortable, even.
Lailah arranged the kindling in the center of a loose circle of stones when Sorey approached her.
“Lailah?”
“Yes, Sorey?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
Lailah hummed an absent-minded affirmative. Her fiddling finished, she snapped her fingers and lit the kindle. She rocked back to view her two charges.
Much to her amusement, Sorey looked to Mikleo at his side with a sheepish glance. Mikleo shrugged back to him, and Sorey turned to Lailah again. His cheeks were dusted an adorable red. “How, uh…how can you walk in those heels all the time? Don’t they hurt?”
“Oh!” Lailah laughed. She rose to her feet and looked down to the scarlet pair she liked to call her ‘statement’ heels. “Not at all! They’re quite comfortable, actually. Heels can be, you know, after you’ve broken them in.”
Mikleo’s eyes brightened; in the campfire light, his violet eyes were painted like a beautiful sunset. He leaned forward. “I saw you wear them back at the South Pole on the ice!”
“Well, yes. I wear them everywhere.”
“But on the ice?” Mikleo stressed. “I was surprised you didn’t fall!”
“Oh, that makes two of us!” Lailah giggled. She raised a hand to her cheek. “I kept thinking I would slip while I was there. It was rather hard to keep my balance.”
“Really?” Sorey’s eyes grew round. “But you didn’t look like you were worried about falling.”
Mikleo crossed his arms over his chest. “You made it look so easy.”
Lailah tittered with pleased laughter. She leaned back and pressed both of her hands to her cheeks and turned away. “Oh, you boys are both so sweet! Why, thank you! How flattering!”
“But really,” Mikleo hummed. He lifted an ungloved hand to his chin. “How do you do it? That’s an impressive skill.”
“It's helped me train my focus when I firebend.” Lailah smiled. “Balance is very important when controlling fire, after all.”
“Gramps used to say the same thing when he was teaching me,” Sorey breathed with big eyes. His gaze darted down to the red heels Lailah had on her feet, and then back up to her face. He bit his lip, and after a brief bout of hesitation, burst out another question with youthful and unabashed eagerness, “Would you mind if I tried…?”
“Oh! Not at all!” Lailah clapped her hands.
Mikleo balked. “Sorey, what?”
But Sorey was already taking off his heavy winter coat and boots. He shivered when his bare feet hit the chilled tiles of the Southern Air Temple, but his grin remained wide on his face. “C’mon, Mikleo! You can’t tell me you don’t want to try it! Not even a little bit?”
A pinched frown spread across Mikleo’s red face. He didn’t say a word but kept his arms resolutely crossed over his chest.
Lailah brought over a low and unbroken bench from the hall to sit on before she slid her heels off. The shoes clacked against one another when she held them out. The other firebender sat down beside her, quick to stuff his feet in them.
“They’re a little tight,” Sorey said with a wince once they were on. But he looked down at the heels and moved his feet back and forth to watch the way their red surface shined in the firelight.
“My feet are most likely a little smaller than yours,” Lailah hummed, watching his face. Her smile widened. “But as long as they fit, you should be good to try walking in them! Why don’t you give it a go?”
“He’s going to trip.”
“Oh, he’ll be all right.” Lailah stood up. Her bare feet quietly clapped against the dusty stone. She turned to Sorey and held out her hands. “Here, let me help you stand.”
Sorey took her hands with a quiet thanks. After a beat, Lailah pulled him upright. Almost immediately, Sorey wobbled.
“Whoa!” He clung tighter to her hands. “Oof! My toes!”
Lailah giggled. She didn't move as he leaned on her. “It’s a bit different, isn’t it?”
“It kinda hurts.”
“It’s probably because my shoes are a bit small for you. Do you think you can walk?”
“I--I’ll try.”
Mikleo shook his head as he watched Sorey take tentative and slow steps with Lailah’s bracing support. Together, the two began to orbit the campfire. It almost looked like they were dancing.
“If only the world could see their Avatar now,” Mikleo murmured lowly, dryly. “Felled by a pair of heels, of all things.”
“Hey…” Sorey called to him; Lailah tried not to laugh. The young man pulled away from her, one arm held out as he attempted to walk on his own around the fire. “…I actually haven’t fallen, you know.”
“Yet.”
Sorey let go of Lailah’s hand. “See? I’m doing just fine.”
“Remarkable.”
“Thank you.”
Lailah giggled. She came to a stop by her bench and clapped her hands together, watching as Sorey made another careful circle. “How do you feel?”
“My feet hurt,” he laughed. “But I think I’m getting the hang of it!”
The brunet walked around once more. Before he started his next lap, however, Sorey changed direction. His green eyes were bright and mischievous, pinned on Mikleo, and Lailah tried not to giggle as she watched him reach for the crossed arms in front of his best friend’s chest.
Mikleo’s face burned red. The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “Sorey…” he said; his voice dipped low.
“C’mon, Mikleo! I think I’m getting the hang of it!” Sorey’s grin was cheeky and warm. When Mikleo pulled back, his face turning an even brighter shade of crimson, the brunet bowed. He placed a hand to his chest and held the other out. “May I have this dance?”
Lailah clapped her hands together.
Mikleo rolled his eyes. He kept his amethyst gaze resolutely on the temple wall as he slid his hand into Sorey’s. “Yes,” he sighed with faux great effort. “I suppose you can.”
“Yes!” Sorey cheered and he squeezed hard. He leaned back, stepped once and then twice--and all of a sudden, his face paled. The heel of Lailah’s shoe caught on a crumbling edge of a tile and without stability, he lost balance, falling backward, slipping--
Lailah jerked forward, but Mikleo was faster.
He held tight to the hand Sorey already was holding and leaned forward. His arm snatched around Sorey’s waist as Sorey bent backward. Immediately, he could feel his friend’s weight fall into the curve of his embrace. With no control at all, Sorey’s left foot kicked out, pointing to the ceiling.
Mikleo stared down at the wide-eyed Sorey in his hold.
Lailah gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my…”
If it had looked like Sorey and Lailah were dancing earlier around the campfire, it seemed as if Sorey and Mikleo had been caught in an intimate tango.
“I-I’m sorry!” Sorey’s face turned beet red. He released both hands from Mikleo to cover his own face.
Mikleo stuttered, eyes wide.
And then--after a moment--his shoulders trembled. His hold on Sorey shook.
Mikleo laughed.
The sound echoed far and wide down the halls, bouncing off of broken walls and dead columns. Lailah wondered if she was half-imagining how the old desecrated temple now seemed to breathe again with new life, or if that was just an effect of the flickering firelight, licking upwards at the sky.
#tales of zestiria#zestiria#sorey#mikleo#sormik#mod krissey writes a thing#atla au#zesty atla au#gosh i can't remember if i had a tag for this thing or not#alskdjflaskjdf#fanfic: sorey#fanfic: mikleo#fanfic: sormik#fanfic: zestiria#rip#anyway here have more of this not forgotten about at all au#i have more oneshots like these stuffed in my doc#i'm gonna periodically release them into the wild#so they're free#y'know#hope u enjoy!!#mod krissey
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rated: t
fandom: Tales of Symphonia
prompt: “Go Through Me” + Zelos/Colette/Lloyd
requested by: @greecllings
more modern-day!AU shenanigans because I got this idea in my head after a particularly great line in another, diff-fandom fanfic i was reading. now this is here.
i’m sorry.
thanks Josie for the request, though i’m 95% certain this scenario wasn’t what you had in mind when you first requested “get through me” with these three, so...sorry (again)
o - o - o
Schlemiel
[Read on AO3]
o - o - o
Zelos frowns. “You’re sure he said to wait here?”
At Colette’s shrug, his frown deepens. Her thumbs fly across the screen of her cell. Zelos doesn’t know how she can see anything on that thing under the glaring light of the courtyard lamppost. “Yeah. Said he was on his way? He should be here in just a—”
“—hey, Colette!”
The voice that rings out is too loud for not being that far away.
Zelos turns and takes a good look at his theater classmate’s childhood friend. Colette talks about him a lot: the boisterous bundle of energy named Lloyd Irving who is apparently not her boyfriend. (Zelos is of the opinion that there’s a yet in those words somewhere.) Her stories she spins as they sit knee-to-knee doing warm-ups on stage are always wild, extremely silly, and very funny. To see the subject of those 4-wheeler wheelies and the self-proclaimed corn-husk king, who’s apparently a plain guy with spiky brown hair and a bright red university sweater, was almost a disappointment. Zelos had expected someone more…something.
“You must be Zelos,” Lloyd gives a breathless greeting and thrusts a hand out towards his chest. “Nice to meetcha.”
Zelos takes the proffered hand because he, unlike some of the people in front of him, was not raised in a barn. He makes a good show of flicking a long strand of red hair over his shoulder, sliding on a slow grin. “I see our sweet little Colette here has told you about me.”
Is that a smattering of pink dusting the guy’s cheeks? Geez, already? How are these two not dating yet if the mere mention of the other’s name makes them go all gooey-eyed and soft? “Yeah. I guess she has mentioned a thing or two about the funny redhead from her theater class before.”
Sharply, Zelos chokes. “Funny—?!”
Lloyd chuckles and is quick to release his hand and wrap it around one of his two ratty backpack straps. He swallows and looks over his shoulder. “Right. Well, uh, shall we head back?”
And then and all of a sudden, Colette’s head snaps up from her phone.
She stares at Lloyd with almost comically ginormous eyes. Zelos doesn’t get quite why until Colette waves for his attention and turns her phone screen to face him. Beaming in the night, surrounded by a green text message box from one heart-emoji-surrounded Lloyd (seriously?) are the white words: jhey, I think i mite be being follow.ed. just os you kno. sry.
Ah.
“Yes!” Colette says as soon as she pockets her phone. “C’mon! Yeah! Let’s, uh, let’s go to our dorms!”
The funny thing about being in a theater class with country bumpkin Colette Brunel is that the golden-headed tenderheart has the hardest time telling a convincing lie, so she’s actually very, very bad on stage—which is exactly why Zelos likes her. She is earnest and sincere and would never stab him in the back one day probably because she didn’t know which way to hold the damn knife.
Completely unlike him in every way.
Which is why when Colette says “our dorms,” Zelos immediately realizes two things: one, that Lloyd must not have the same scholarship he and Colette do because he isn’t bunking in Chosen Hall, and two, when Lloyd is asking if he can walk with them, it’s because he doesn’t feel safe heading back to his own dorms.
And all in the span of two seconds, Zelos knows what to do.
His grin widens.
“W-whoa, hey, what are you—”
“—shhh, play along,” Zelos purrs, arm snug around Lloyd’s waist as he flicks a glance over the guy’s shoulder. It was on his right Lloyd had looked earlier; there’s a figure leaning against a tree on their phone. Super casual, not anything unusual after nine on a college campus after night classes have just let out.
But Zelos remembers very well his own personal near-experiences.
With his arm around Lloyd, he turns him and guides him down the sidewalk towards his and Colette’s dorm. He sneaks another glance behind them in the form of a chaste kiss to Lloyd’s very, very red cheek.
After a beat, the stranger begins to follow.
Huh.
Colette is making strange, choked-off noises at his side and when he glances at her, he can see her face is as red as Lloyd’s sweater. Hell, she’s practically as red as Lloyd’s face. Zelos really is surrounded by the two most rural, suppressed idiots this side of the Tethe’alla-Sylverant continent divide, huh.
They aren’t even halfway to the dorms yet and the stranger tailing them still hasn’t taken a hint, so Zelos decides to do something fun.
“You trust me?” he whispers, leaning in close to Lloyd’s side. The guy’s been quiet as a mouse the entire walk, which is funny as hell because he’s known him for all of three minutes (if you don’t count Colette’s oddball stories) and he has a very good hunch his unusual silence is because he’s so far out of his element, he’s probably somewhere on Mars.
“N-no…?”
“Fair enough.”
Zelos spins him and pins him to the outer wall of the old university library. Colette squeaks. There’s an odd bump and arc to Lloyd’s figure with his backpack in the way. With one hand pressed to the brick at the level of Lloyd’s bewildered face and the other digging into the pocket of his white sweatpants, Zelos leans in.
“If you really want to ward ‘em off, you know what we should do.”
“Ex-fuckin’-scuse me?”
“Yes or no. Be quick.”
And then, Zelos has about two seconds to recognize the flash of determination set in Lloyd’s eyes for what it is before Lloyd clumsily grabs his face with both hands and pulls him in. At that moment, Zelos discovers another thing:
Lloyd’s never kissed before.
The guy’s real bad at it. Has no finesse whatsoever. Really messy with his lips and bumps his nose against Zelos’ as he tries to tilt his head at a better angle. Stinky breath; what, did he just stuff his mouth full of sour cream and onion chips during his late class or something? Disgusting. Salty. Actually, kinda addicting?
Weird.
Zelos tilts into it when Lloyd gives a tiny, hitched gasp. His nerves light up. Belatedly, he realizes that was his own fault—his fingers have curled into the skin of Lloyd’s hip, pushing up his sweatshirt until it bunches over the back of his hand.
When finally they break apart, breath hot against one another’s faces, Zelos turns his face to the side.
Whoever it was that was following Lloyd is gone.
Good. Didn’t want them to even reach our dorms, anyway.
“Zelos! Lloyd! Th-that was—”
Oh.
Zelos turns to his other side. He almost forgot Colette was there, but when he sees her, there are stars in her eyes. Like, near-legitimate stars. He’s never known blue could turn so cosmic at night, like spinning nebulas are spanning the length of her mind.
“What?” Zelos asks innocently, straightening up and pushing both hands in his sweatpants pockets, now. “You’ve seen me do that in class all the time, Colette.”
“Y-yeah, but—” Colette stutters and her face steams up again. She squeaks out, hands fisted in front of her collar, “—not with my best friend!”
Oh.
Yeah.
There was that.
“That was…” She tries again, but seems to be at a loss for words. When Colette looks to Lloyd, Lloyd looks back at her, dazed and still so, so red.
Actually, to hell with it. Red looks great on him.
“Well, it worked, so you’re welcome.” Zelos shrugs. “Successfully delivered the age-old, ‘you’ll have to go through me,’ and ‘this one’s taken,’ message across to that creep, for what it’s worth. They shouldn’t bother you again, but if they do…well, you know who to reach out to.”
“Thanks,” Lloyd murmurs.
Zelos takes a step back and bows extravagantly.
“We should, uh…” Lloyd looks around at this side of campus—probably unfamiliar to him—and scratches the back of his head. “We should keep going, right? Your guys’ dorm is further on. Colette, are you sure you’re fine if I…?”
“What? Yeah—yes. That’s fine! I still have your toothbrush from last time.”
Oh, to be young and in love and so dumb as to not even realize it.
“Do you, um—” Colette breaks off and if possible, her face is even redder. “Zelos, would you want to come with us?”
“Uh, I have to.” Zelos gives Colette a funny, patient look. “We’re in the same dorm hall, honey.”
“Oh—no—yes—of course—but I mean—”
And then it dawns on Zelos in that funny, crawling kind of way. Slowly, like the first rays of the sun as it peeks over the horizon. And then it warms him, starting from some point in the center of the top of his head and spreading down across his skin and low to his feet and he hedges out a laugh that’s as bewildered as it is—admittedly—just a bit flustered.
“You want me to crash your little slumber party?” he asks with a lifted brow. She can’t be serious.
Colette says, “You wouldn’t be crashing it!” at the same time as Lloyd finally catches on and bursts, “Hey, yeah! That’s a great idea! Colette’s got a corner room to herself and the bottom bunk’s a futon that can fold out and it’s really comfy. C’mon, Zelos. You’ll love it!”
Zelos has every idea that these two oblivious fools are going to be the death of him.
But then he finds himself somehow—incredibly—nodding—and he supposes he must be the biggest fool of all. Is he actually agreeing to this?
“Yay!” Colette cheers and claps her hands and Zelos supposes he is.
How did he get here?
#bad things happen bingo#bthb#symphonia#lloyd irving#colette brunel#zelos wilder#fanfic: lloyd#fanfic: colette#fanfic: zelos#get through me#this is supposed to be angsty but uh#i guess the tone got away from me#threat of danger but zelos is here#and i love these three v much#mod krissey#mod krissey writes a thing
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rated: g
fandom: Tales of Symphonia
prompt: “Tears of Fear” + Colette
requested by: @moominquartz
so here we are, huh. this makes #14 on my bad things happen bingo prompt fills. which means there’s on 11 more to go?? canNOT BELIEVE
anyway, i hope u enjoy my latest tragedy, also known as: “What if the mission to rescue Colette when Rodyle sics his winged dragons on you goes horribly wrong?” also left ambiguously open-ended bc i can’t ukno actually kill everyone off but i cAN make them suffer
o - o - o
Quiescent
[Read on AO3]
o - o - o
The thing
about fear
is that it bites.
With stained teeth, fear sinks into bones. There’s a reason people have voices: because time and matter thought it necessary that space should be given for sound. Screaming is supposed to save her. Isn’t that its boon? And while there is fear in being hunted, it is some other, deeper horror entirely to watch those you love become prey.
As they drew near, mere angular shadows circling high above, Presea had described the winged dragons herself in her toneless drawl: “Carnivorous. Excels at the pursuit and capture of prey. The probability of successful evasion on this small platform is one percent.”
Which meant Rodyle was right. She is a sinful Chosen. She is worthless. Completely useless.
“She can’t save the world. She can’t merge with Martel,” Rodyle had chided and his laugh rings in her ears. “She even puts her friends in danger…”
Colette knows this. She knows this.
“What a pathetic Chosen.”
She had told them not to fight. She had told them to not try. She had told them to run. Why did they not listen to her? Why are they not running?
Colette wishes they would take after Zelos, who had said he would “pass on dying, thanks,” and now hangs back, only striking out when an opportunity presents itself--a flank is left exposed or a leg is unguarded by a barbed tail--and then disengaging just as fast in an effort to avoid provoking the mother dragon. Sweat beads along his wrapped brow and Colette knows the shake in his arms is from more than just fear.
Colette has never before been so terrified and unable to do anything about it.
“You guys!” she screams from her cage of spinning light. “Please! Run!”
Regal, Lloyd, and Presea are the forerunners as they always are. As they always will be. Raine is at their backs, Genis behind her. His feet are planted into the glowing stone underneath his shoes as he throws spell after vicious spell into the fray.
The first spiraling Photon Tempest Lloyd and Raine throw at one of the babies seems to work. The dragon crashes to the rocky ground hard on his jaw and Sheena cheers, “All right!” but the dragon’s hatchmate is there just as quickly. His webbed wing smacks into Lloyd and Colette shouts and can do nothing.
She can’t move as she watches the mother’s teeth nearly pierce Presea in half. She can’t move when Regal’s arm and chest have deep rivers of crimson spilling down his white shirt from pushing the girl out of the way just in time. Raine’s voice floods over them as she casts her healing magic, but her eyes aren’t on Lloyd. Lloyd, who is foolhardy and taking on the hatchmate alone and barely fast enough to stay ahead of its claws.
All it takes is one
faltering
step.
A claw catches one of his ribbons and yanks and like a ragdoll, jerked by his neck, Lloyd spills onto his back on the stone.
Colette watches and can do nothing.
There’s a dark line of red dripping down Lloyd’s chin. He rises to his feet again, but his knees threaten to buckle.
The other baby leaps into the air, leaving underneath him the shuddering form of Regal. His leg is bent in a way it shouldn’t be; he has collapsed to the stone and still, Colette can do nothing.
“No…”
Presea dashes to cover Regal as Raine pulls up behind her, dropping to her knees. Her hands glow, the name of healing spells tumbling from her lips. The shadow of the flying dragon falls over them both, claws first.
“No!”
Colette screams; her voice overlaps Sheena’s. Sheena, who is caught on her back underneath the mother’s teeth. Her feet kick up into pink gums, lodged in the uneven valley between two yellowing fangs, as she keeps the giant mouth pried open from closing around her. Her arms are trembling. Blood trails down her sleeves.
“Stop it!” Colette wants them to understand.
Lloyd kills the hatchmate with a quick scissor of his blades. Both swords held out before him, he spins for the mother’s head, calling Sheena’s name.
Zelos is--
“--stop it!”
She needs them to understand.
The world warps and distorts. Blurs. Colette wishes she could wipe at her own face. She wishes she could palm away her tears, but her hands refuse to move. They can’t.
She can do nothing.
“Stop it!” she cries the same instant Genis does when the remaining baby leaps and kicks out his feet. Ribbons of the back of Genis’ pale blue shirt flay with specks of angry, angry red.
Colette screams. “Please! You have to stop this! You have to run!”
Zelos runs in, holding his sword out above the both of them after Genis falls.
“Why aren’t you running?!” She can’t possibly be worth their lives; not when she couldn’t even do her part to save them. “Please, stop it!”
Sheena is unconscious. Her arms are loosely curled in front of her like she had been trying to protect herself.
Lloyd stands before the giant head of the mother, swords crossed. His legs are shaking, about to give out, but his jaw is set. Blood cakes the side of his face, but still, he fights. Still, he tries and Colette can do nothing. Her cheeks are cold, cold, cold, and so, so warm. She can’t breathe beyond the tightness corked in her throat. She tastes salt on her lips, dripping down her chin. It leaves icy, wet streaks down her throat.
“Please, Lloyd! Run!”
The mother lifts her head, long scaled neck gleaming in the sun. Her shadow towers over him.
Colette screams the instant she snaps down.
She screams.
And she screams.
#bad things happen bingo#bth bingo#symphonia#colette brunel#lloyd irving#regal bryant#Genis Sage#Sheena Fujibayashi#raine sage#tears of fear#Presea Combatir#zelos wilder#fanfic: symphonia#fanfic: colette#mod krissey writes a thing#angst#do they all die??#do they all live??#who knows
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rated: m
fandom: Tales of Zestiria
prompt: “Non-Consensual Touching” + Mikleo & Zaveid
requested by: a discord friend
a good discord friend of mine req’d “non-consensual touching” with Mikeo & Zaveid. me being the person i am, i took that prompt, said “ye 2nd person POV will do” and dropped it in my modern-day au. takes place prbly within that time period where, parallel to sorey having his who-knows-how-long-nap, he studies abroad for a semester. for reasons, mikleo isn’t able to follow
tw // alchohol, non-consensual touching, vomiting
- o - o - o -
Unsober
[Read on AO3]
- o - o - o -
She wouldn’t leave you alone and that was the problem.
She saw you across the room, one lonely heart in the midst of the rest, and waltzed up with a smile and two cups in hand and you had already had plenty of lemonade and vodka, but the lie on her lips made one more not seem so bad.
You don’t remember how the cups disappeared.
You remember the twin points of thin fingers looped into the front belt loops of your jeans. You remember the way they tugged you forward and your hips were met with a warm stomach against your own, breasts pushed against your chest. Her fingers splayed over the buttons of your shirt; it tickled, almost. The warmth of her hand over cotton. You remember her hazy and breathless giggle tilted up against your jaw.
She said, “Aren’t you the…” and you don’t remember how she knew you or recognized you on campus, but she did. Or she seemed to, anyway.
You remember the rough, fabric-caught slide of her hand further down.
You don’t remember how you recognized the line of your jeans around your waist as a line in the sand, but you know the instant you decide it's too much. The alcohol, the music, the number of sweaty college students shoved into one living room, the absence of your best friend, her. You shoved her back and felt cold.
Her friends’ voices pitched as she stumbled against the arm of the couch. They pooled around her and sneered at you and you don’t remember caring.
You said something. Probably.
You hope you did.
But memory is a graceless thing so it slips, and the next thing you remember is a fan of white-green and the rim of a toilet seat before your face as bile climbs up your throat. There are many things to hate about vomiting, but you thought and still think the inability to breathe is the worst, because all you can taste and breathe is stomach acid.
“I shouldn’t have come,” you rasped.
The man at your back, lounging against the far wall, sighed. “If you’re gonna blame somebody, blame me. Wouldn’t have invited ya if I didn’t know you couldn’t hold liquor, Mickey-boy.”
You remember shaking your head and grabbing for the roll of toilet paper. You wiped off your mouth and tossed it in with the rest of your mess to flush it away. You thought, “It’s not that I’m drunk that’s the problem,” but maybe you said it, too, because you remember the way he squatted at your side, bronze hands dangling in the space between his knees.
“Yeah,” he said when he rose to his feet. “Let’s get you back to your dorm, then.”
#zestiria#mikleo#zaveid#bad things happen bingo#bthb#non-consensual touching#mod krissey writes a thing#angst#drabble#tw: alcohol#tw: non-consensual touching#tw: vomit
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rated: t
fandom: Tales of Zestiria
prompt: “Muzzled”
requested by: ....myself
so uh this BTH Bingo prompt I gave to myself, bc I have no self-control. and also, in the process of trying to put up all of my various stored Zesty AtlA AU bits, I realized this upcoming oneshot very nicely met said BTH bingo prompt
so here you have it: Zesty AtlA AU w/ “Muzzled”
enjoy
- o - o - o -
Of New Acquaintances and Trust, or
In which Sorey enters the Avatar state for the first time.
- o - o - o -
The Sparrowfeathers were interesting.
Sorey and Lailah liked them well enough. The two had their heads bowed together, stars in their eyes as they listened to the harrowing tales the Sparrowfeather’s redheaded chief spun that first night around the tavern table. She wove story after story about their passages through the backwater bandit-roads of the Earth Kingdom’s southwestern dunes.
Mikleo was more reserved. He didn’t know if he fully believed the stories. He didn’t know if he knew enough to disprove them, but there was something about these traveling merchants he wanted to keep at arm’s length.
- o - o - o -
[Read on AO3]
#zestiria#tales of zestiria#bad things happen bingo#bth bingo#badthingshappenbingo#sorey#mikleo#lailah#rose#sparrowfeathers#atla au#fanfic: sorey#fanfic: mikleo#fanfic: lailah#fanfic: rose#lunarre#fanfic: lunarre#fanfic: sormik#mod krissey writes a thing#here we are once more my friends#back into the breach....
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Got Us Minded [Ch. 1]
Tales of Vesperia
Cyberpunk AU. Fluri & Ristelle. Massive slow-burn.
[Read on AO3] / [Read on FF.net]
Yuri's just a Branded from the Lower Sector who's been arrested for breaking and entering. Again.
Estelle's just one of the two heirs to the imperial throne with an important message to deliver to one Lieutenant Flynn Scifo.
And believe it or not, the kidnapping thing is Estelle's idea.
When Flynn finally comes to a stop, it’s at the foot of the gate-point wall on the crest of the hill. His hands have placed themselves carefully flat on the smudged, seafoam plexiglass surface of two floating panels, eyes set on the sprawling jewel of the capital city just beyond in the valley below.
Yuri steps up behind him, eyes alight on the inked eye tucked back on the side of his friend’s neck. “Starin’ at Zaphias won’t change anything, you know,” he mutters.
“No,” Flynn agrees. “But I’m starting to get an idea on what might.”
Yuri turns to look at the capital city with its bountiful waterways, pearly white buildings, and it’s many security systems and floating cabs and gleaming lights and monitors bigger than his own home that display the latest styles from Fortune’s Market. The zip-up nylon sweatsuit the featured redhead was modeling would no longer be trending come morning.
He looks to Flynn and sees the light from Zaphias reflected in his eyes. “I’m listening.”
[Read on AO3] / [Read on FF.net]
#tales of vesperia#vesperia#fluri#ristelle#yuri lowell#flynn scifo#estellise sidos heurassein#Rita Mordio#fanfic#fanfic: vesperia#fanfic: flynn#fanfic: yuri#fanfic: estelle#fanfic: rita#fanfic: fluri#fanfic: ristelle#mod krissey#mod eli#mod krissey writes a thing#SO MANY TAGS HO BOY#tov cyberpunk au#that'll be our new tag i guess#aslkdjfalksjdf#HERE HAVE FUN#BECAUSE WE'RE HAVING A LOT OF FUN WRITING IT#that's all#askdflajskdfklsdf back to your normal programming....#after the Definitive Edition's release we had some ideas..............
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