#Look there are some days when Rivers in the Desert is on loop and it bleeds in

[hulloitsdani]

DAY 14: Risk and Reward PERSONA 5 BABYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

Thank you so much for @eriisaam for the suggestion of this alt and inadvertently saying my sleeper agent phrase. Persona 5 is possibly one of my biggest artistic inspirations and generally one of my favorite things. Goro Akechi ruined my god damn life and everyday I get closer to stealing Joker's gender. I adore this game.

Back to the actual risk and reward banner— It seems to have this fairytale theme? I could be wrong and it's more of an Alice in Wonderland beat, but I noticed Cath was clearly giving Cheshire cat and I think Nina was meant to be red ridding hood? I took this as evidence enough to ask friends to list some quintessential fairytales from off the dome and Cinderella was in the top three each time. I think that already works well thematically for Kiran, but then I remembered Sumire's persona is Cendrillion, an opera of a 1698 version of the fairytale. And then I remembered the glass weapons in Awakening.

Aw yeah, it's all coming together.

This one might have taken a bit longer, but I hope it was clear how much fun I was having. This felt like such a return to form for me. Got to smack two of my obsessions together into some of the most indulgent art for me personally.

[milliesfishes]

Okay, throwing my hat into the kidnapping fic ring (there's a sentence I never thought I'd say... and probably got me put on some list somewhere) with a twist, where, in an attempt to get Billy to turn himself in, some lawmen arrest the reader, exploiting some legal loophole. And Billy comes to break her out?

୨ৎ⋆billy breaks you out of jail୨ৎ⋆ fem reader x billy the kid

The law had never been fair, despite its reputation.

You knew this better than you knew the back of your hand, better than you knew the names of every constellation freckling the sky above. Both you and Billy knew it. But what good was knowing anything you couldn't change? Sitting here now in a darkened cell, cool of the concrete beneath your thighs breaking through the skirt of your dress, you put your head in your hands. How had it all come to this?

It had been a day free of anything out of the ordinary, which was welcome. Being with a man like Billy meant embracing the mundane, growing to love it as dearly as you did him. A day like this was wrought in simple pleasures. The sun on your face as you rode into town. A ladybug that landed on your wrist, allowing you do make a quick wish before it flew away.

Meandering about in the market, you daydreamed happily about Billy coming home later that night. You'd make him something he'd be excited to eat, listen as he told you about his day. And at the end of the night, you would let him kiss you all over, lingering in certain spots as you whispered how much you loved him.

Standing on tiptoes to peer across the square, you spotted a fruit stand, lighting up. Peaches were fresh in season, and your mouth was practically watering at the sight of them. Billy would love to have such a sweet treat when he came home. You began to head in that direction, visions of peach pie and fresh cut slivers dancing through your head.

Just as they were within reach, someone grabbed your arm. Your bag was pulled roughly from your grasp, and a low voice announced that you were under arrest.

A sharp bolt of shock tore through you, eyes widening as you looked up at the men who detained you, the glint of their badges nearly blinding you. In a tone shakier than your hands, you asked, "Under what charges?"

"Cavorting with an outlaw," one growled, binding your hands with the cool metal of handcuffs. Heart beating in your ears, you stumbled forward as they pushed you, breathing heavy, tears stinging your eyes.

"I haven't done anything wrong," you protested tearfully, trying to struggle out of their hold. "Please-"

A silent glare put an end to your struggling, and they escorted you forcefully to the jail, shoving you into a cell without so much as a word. Mind racing, you scrambled for any kind of out. Any sort of solution would present itself to you soon, you were certain.

But your head was drier than the desert, empty except for the single, obvious thought that you were utterly alone. Here in the prison cell, completely shrouded from hope, there was no clear outcome. Why had they chosen now to arrest you, if what you were doing was such a crime? So many times had you been seen out with Billy, one of his arms looped around your waist, nosing a kiss into your hair. Where had the warrant for your arrest been then?

With nothing else to do in sight, you sunk your eyes into your knees, tears falling fast and steady. Everything was tipping precariously, leaning down a chasm of many things terrible. You saw a future of this, of never again seeing another person without bars between you.

It was an awful experience- imagining such things. They only pushed you further over the edge into tears. It felt as though you would never dry up, your eyes producing fresh twin rivers the second you thought it was over. You were despondent, inconsolable. Nothing within your reach could comfort you now.

When the sky grew dark, you scarcely noticed, too lost in your tears to focus on much else. Moonbeams split through the crude window, almost taunting you. To you the sky was freedom, and you didn't have any of that right now. Everything you'd wanted for your future was cracked and shattered, dangled in front of you before being snatched away. It was cruel, the way everything changed in the blink of an eye.

Closing your eyes, you tried to find a reason to sleep. It wasn't like you were going to be able to do anything else. But your tired body refused to slip under the waves of unconsciousness, stubbornly floating above them. You opened your eyes in frustration, staring into blackness. The horror of your situation hit you once more, and a fresh wave of tears soaked your cheeks. How had Billy reacted when he came home to an empty house? Did he know what had happened?

For his sake, you hoped he didn't.

Footsteps sounded nearby and you did not lift your head. There was hardly a point. It was likely another deputy there to tell you you'd be relocated in the morning. Preparing yourself for the inevitable, you sat up, smoothing your hands over your hair and leaning your head against the wall with a quiet thud.

The steps stopped, and you inhaled softly, ready for words that would inflict another torrent of tears. But the voice that spoke instead was familiar. "Sweetheart."

Your head snapped up, eyes widening when you noticed Billy there, clenching the bars as he stared at you through the darkness. Springing to your feet, you ran to him, nearly hiccupping with relief, your tears starting up for an entirely different reason. Billy grasped your face through the bars, thumbs swiping away any tears that came their way. "Oh my baby. What've they done to you?" Billy searched your eyes, seemingly checking for any sign of injury.

"I'm okay," you choked, holding his wrists. "Billy-"

"Shh, shh, sweet girl," he hushed, stroking your cheek, eyes running over your figure in a concerned way. "I'm gonna getcha out of here. Hold on-" He seemed to remember something, letting go of your face and reaching into his pocket for his knife. Bending at the lock, he fiddled with it for a moment before you heard a click, and the door swung open creakily. You flinched at the noise, sure someone would come after you, but no footsteps echoed.

Billy reached a hand into the cell, beckoning to you. "C'mon darlin'."

His hand was the symbol of freedom you had been waiting for- the candle in the darkness you sorely needed. In the pale moonlight, Billy looked every bit the knight in shining armor you had dreamt of since you were a little girl. Oh, here he was, ready to sweep you off your feet and spirit you away to a happy ending.

Stepping forward, you took his outstretched hand, letting him pull you away. The instant you were out of the cell, he slid an arm under your knees, whispering, "One set 'f footsteps is less suspicious."

You buried your face in his neck, clinging tight to him as he carried your tired body down the hallway, careful so his boots hardly made a sound. In his pursuit of the doorway, he managed a kiss to your hair, comforting you as he charted the course to your decided liberty. It was a precious thing he held in his hands.

The night air was a rush, and he tightened his arms around you, doing his best to shield your shivering body from the cold. Clarity cut your being as a sort of realization enhanced your self vision. Had this been a trap? Had they arrested you to lure him into the shadows of the jail, so he would not be able to exit?

When you opened your mouth to ask, he cut you off before you so much as said a word. "Took care of the guards already, baby. Don't worry 'bout a thing."

How had he known? Had someone told him you were incarcerated? Or had word of mouth done the trick? You didn't know, and at the present moment it was hardly important. The blue of your world an hour before was painted back into vibrancy because of Billy's rescue.

Hoisting you upon the horse, Billy climbed on behind you, tugging you snug against his chest. The utter warmth of him heated your back, and you leaned against him, smiling when he nudged a kiss into your temple. "I've gotcha sweet girl. Forever 'n ever."

Riding off into the distance with your outlaw holding you tight, you felt more secure than you had in ages. Billy protected you like a dragon guarded his treasure, and you knew his habit would increase tenfold in wake of this event.

But it was hardly to be minded. When you were finally between the sheets again as you'd dreamt of in the daylight, swaddled in his arms and covered in his kisses, he drenched you in apologies, promising this would never, ever happen again.

"We're gonna go far away from here, sweet thing," Billy murmured, softly pressing his lips to your nose. "Just you 'n me. We're gonna be okay."

Sleepily disarmed by the dart of his love, you nodded, burying your head in his chest once more. Because your Billy had never uttered something so steadfast that he didn't intend to keep.

[dujour13]

Owlcatober 13. Shadow

part 2 of The Prodigal Tiefling (on AO3)

It was only well into the following day, bruised and ragged from a night of running, that Woljif’s mind caught up with his legs—legs that ached almost as bad as his stomach.

He could outrun the gargoyle disaster but he couldn’t outrun the images cycling in his head. Sosiel snatched up in demonic talons and carried off. The Count, too. (What were they doing with them anyway? Tearing them limb from limb to feed their big ugly gargoyle chicks?) Dead crusaders littering the camp. That one paladin who almost fell right on his head, the crunching sound of armor and bones colliding at high speed with the ground.

Not to mention the chief.

Wonder if he made it, he thought morosely as he stumbled up another rise in the cliffside over the Sellen. There was something so sad about the image of the chief’s crumpled body lying among the ruins in his colorful clothes like a crushed flower, it made Woljif forget to get choked up about his own predicament for whole minutes at a time.

He should have been smarter, whispered the shadow in the back of his mind, which had been gradually inching into the front of his mind since the night of the gargoyles, so much so that he almost thought he could hear it for real now.

You made it, and that’s what matters.

He itched his ear and looked around to be sure there wasn’t really someone—or something—hanging over his shoulder. About him loomed nothing but the tortured branches of Worldwound trees against a stark sunless sky.

He was hungry, thirsty, exhausted and freezing but true enough, it bore keeping in mind that that was a sight better than being torn up and fed to gargoyle chicks.

“Well, I’m still alive, but not for long if I don’t find some sign a’ civilization soon. You don’t reckon you can conjure up some spicy pastries insteada just chatterin’?”

The shadow lapsed into sullen silence.

Clenching the Moon of the Abyss in his fist as he negotiated a tangle of underbrush he carried on muttering, his breath forming bitter clouds in the chill air. “How do you like that. Finally get my hands on my legacy and here I am, lost in the Worldwound. And unless it can conjure some breakfast this amulet’s no more use than a plea for mercy with the Prelate.”

As long as he kept talking the shadow stayed quiet, and so did certain thoughts that kept creeping up on him from a secret place in his heart he’d rather not acknowledge.

It got so bad that night that in a fit of remorse he lost a lot of time doubling back toward the Crusade camp, frantically inventing excuses.

The shadow had things to say about that. They hang deserters, you know.

The chief ain’t the hangin’ type. He’ll take me back.

No, he won’t. After the shenanigan with the necklace in his pocket, and now abandoning him to gargoyles?

It was true. The chief probably hated his guts now. Respectable sorts always got up on their high horses, when really all he ever did was try to get by on the little he’d been given in life. Yet even as he thought the words he knew they weren’t true. He and the chief had had some good laughs; Siavash wasn’t like that.

Which made his stomach hurt worse, at the image of the chief lying betrayed and dead among the smoking ruins of the Fifth Crusade. They said after a battle crows came and ate people’s eyeballs.

Coward.

On the third day, waking shivering from a restless nap, his face still wet with—admit it, tears, lodged in the gap between two tree trunks, Woljif began to worry more seriously. He’d wandered off track from the Sellen because he had to loop around some steep hills and he was pretty sure the river lay somewhere to the east, but it was hard to keep track of east in this cursed forest.

Desperate with thirst he stumbled down a steep slope to the bank of a creek. Like a dog he drank from it on his hands and knees, splashed his face and then sat back on his haunches with water streaming down his front.

If he were to stick to the plan of just following the Sellen downstream he’d have to cross this tributary. It didn’t look over his head but if he tripped and the current caught him—well, Woljif’s only relationship with deep water was staying out of it, literally and figuratively.

So it took him most of the remaining daylight hours to find a fallen tree he could shimmy across to the other side, and once he made it and started trudging downstream again soaked to the bone and shivering so hard it made his skin hurt, he suddenly stopped and stared around at the sun setting behind the trees to his left.

Wait.

He was meant to be heading south. And how’d he get this far from the Sellen, anyway?

By the fourth day he was engaged in a bitter debate with his inner Lann about the nutritious benefits of lichen.

Lann won. The lichen offered little besides a sour dirt flavor, and was too tough and dry to choke down even if he wanted to. How’d a big guy like Lann survive on this anyway?

Oh yeah, Lann was a hunter.

Not exactly Woljif’s skill set. Besides, he hadn’t seen one animal out here. He glanced around as if there would be a few nice, plump ones just standing there, should he bother to look.

It couldn’t be that hard, if a one-horned cave-lizard could do it. I could stun one and then run up and stab it. Nah, too much blood to muck around in. Better to zap it. And then just slice off a nice steak and barbecue it over a magical fire, easy as toast.

Now if he could just find an animal that wasn’t too scary.

He trudged on, trying to remember the words to a song to keep his mind off his cramping stomach and failing legs, but that reminded him of the chief and made everything worse, which in turn made the shadow impatient.

Quit sniffling, it hissed.

No animals turned up, but he did find a snail. People ate those, didn’t they sometimes? With a dubious frown he picked it up and inspected it. It tucked into its shell, leaving a sheen of slime around the edges. How hungry am I?

No. He’d need to be closer to death than this.

Tossing the snail over his shoulder he plodded on his weary way through the brush, changed his mind and went back and found the snail and put it in his pocket, just in case.

And all the while, as if hovering just behind the back of his skull, the shadow continued to whisper.

They would have done the same.

Woljif stopped in the middle of a frosty clearing and looked around in despair. He had no idea which way was east.

Surrounded by nothing but barren trees, lost and starving. Some kinda survivor. He hugged himself around his aching middle.

I’m gonna die alone out here.

[naoa-ao3]

Long Black Ribbon

He's been on the road longer than he can ever recall. Years and years have passed and that long winding road still stretches out in front of him. Twisting on out into the horizon. A single gold band running down it's middle. He follows that road on foot and on bike. Towns come and go as the years pass by. More years than he can count and more miles than he can ever know.

He passes trees and forests and deserts and rivers. Sleeping where he can and when he can. He's going home. Going home to rest.

That long back ribbon with it's band of gold stretching on for miles. Laid down by men long gone. Men who came and went in his lifetime. By all rights he should be gone now too but he's not. He's still here and if nothing else is so is the road. The endless highway of hard black asphalt. He rides his bike down the road, hardly looking from side to side and not thinking much. He's an old man and the world's changed. There's nothing he wants to look at as he drives. He's just looking for that home at the end of the road. Houses pass, small and scarred from the years. He doesn't know what's happened in them over the years. He doesn't know their stories but they're like him. They've been on that road for years and when the people in them go they'll still be there. Just like him.

He drives through the towns and sees the people go about their days. He was there before them and he'll be there after them. Some of them eye him distrustfully. Not many people go through the towns and they're dying. The interstate took their gas stations and the visitors who once bought from their stores. Hard faced old men lean in door ways and watch him pass. If they're lucky they'll pass before they see their town die.

He never takes the interstate. It's too fast and has too man people. Too many people all in a hurry, never looking to their left or right. They miss the world the old highways can show them. They miss the people.

He stops and pumps gas at a small station in a small town. A little old man stands with his thumbs in his belt loops, his face is lined and hard. He squints and gives a one fingered wave. He spits into the dust. When he was a boy he pumped gas for his father. His grandfather opened the station when cars first began showing up on the high way but his son won't pump gas and neither will his grand son. His son left and went to school far away and never came back. He doesn't understand all of the big words his son uses now and sometimes he thinks his son talks to fast and he doesn't understand the things his grandson talks about.

Wolverine nods back to the old man and quite suddenly the old man's eyes go wide and he senses something that stands his hair on end. The strange little man who calls himself Wolverine is something like him. Something different from the fast new world and he can feel it, even if he doesn't understand it. His heart beast fast for the first time in years. And then the little man swings his leg back over his bike and is revving up the engine and just as soon is driving off back down the road and the old man is left standing, puzzled and a little disturbed. He goes back inside and has a coke. He needs to sit in the shade for a little while.

And Wolverine heads on down the highway. He feels a little funny himself. He stops for dinner a few towns down in a little diner. A woman with a face older than she is serves him. She watches him out of the corner of her eye because it's been a long time since anyone from out of town stopped by. They all go to the Mcdonald's in the next town over. It's putting her out of business. She'll be shut down by the end of next year. She wishes she'd gone to school longer, if she had she wouldn't be so worried. She watched the stranger eat with a kind of hunger herself. She craves affection. She's divorced and can't find anyone worth it in her small town. She's been lonely for so long.

Eventually he's the only person left in the dinner. It's late. She wonders where he's going to stay. She wonders over to his table where he sits finishing a piece of pie. She thinks it was kindness that made him order it.

She says something vague and he responds and they meet eyes and she feels a pain of hunger. She spends the night with him and it's just what she's always fantasized about. Animal and rough and yet gentle and kind. It's the first time she's had sex in the seven years since her divorce and it gets her thinking about her ex. He wasn't a bad man, they just hadn't been good together and she tells her friends she hates him and pretends he did her wrong but it wasn't like that. Not really. They just stopped loving each other and were strong enough to go their separate ways. Her friends wouldn't understand that. This man now lying next to her didn't ask about it and for the first time she weeps to herself because she doesn't have someone to lie next to each night and there are no children in her home. She lies next to him and he can smell her tears and at first he worries but soon he realizes they aren't for him and he puts an arm around her, not speaking or asking what's wrong but giving her a night of what she's missed and soon her tears dry and they do it again and she thinks she'll go mad once he leaves. Seven years dry she could handle but seven years and then a drop of water splashed in her mouth and no more after that is a kind of hell she never thought about.

She finds him in the garden the next day, he's getting ready to leave but she convinces him to stay for breakfast and she knows he feels sorry for her and that's why he stays but she pretends it's not. They don't talk much but he tells her his name is Logan and she smiles because it's all so unreal. He smiles at her because even though she isn't young or even that pretty and her face is lined with an age she hasn't yet reached he thinks there's something lovely about her.

They have sex one last time and he leaves not long after that and she doesn't feel bad seeing him go.

The road stretches out in front of him again. A long black tongue stuck out at the world. He's closer to home now but he's not there. He's got miles to go before he gets there and miles to go before he dies.

He heads through the mountains. Through coal country. Through small mining towns. A few children watch him from front porches. They're not in school. He guesses that it's Saturday. They watch him with big eyes. One little boy waves and his sister hides her face in her doll's stomach. He waves back. The boy grins. He wants a motorcycle but he's only seven and only has his older brother's bike. He'll tell his mother about the man on the motorcycle over supper.

Coal Country starts to slip away as he passes through the hills and hollows, the kudzu lying flat and green against the ground. He sleeps out under the stars, gazing up at yet another thing that's been there since before his time. The moon and the stars. The moon, stars and highway and him. He smokes his cigars and stares up at the sky. He can still taste the lips of the woman in his mouth and it's a pleasant taste. He'll never see her again but he hopes she'll do alright. He knows her dinner will go under. Just like the old man's gas station will when the old man passes.

He lays down and blows smoke at the stars, he can hear animals near by. He can smell deer but they know he's not hungry and on some primal level they know they don't have to be scared of him. Even though he's the most dangerous thing in the woods that night. Funny, he thinks. He's a predator. Some have even accused him of pretending to be a man but tonight he feels at ease. He's by himself and can relax. He can sit quietly and feel the years wash over him. His old bones can settle in him and he can appreciate the night.

Too many of his nights are fraught with blood and death. It's good to lie in peace. He's close to home. Home is good too. He's been gone for a long time. He wonders what things have changed. He'll find out soon.

At just before Dawn he rises and in the gray light for morning stalks to the edge of the woods, he can still see his bike on the edge of the road. He moves to relieve himself but stops. There's a fawn standing only a few feet away. It's frozen still and wide eyed. He watches it and a kind of understanding passes between them. He's the most dangerous thing in the forest and it's one of the most fragile but it knows he won't hurt it and he tells it that without speaking. It blinks and twitches it's tail and then gallops off. He spots it's mother and gives her a sort of nod before going back to his business.

Ten minutes later he's on the rad again. That long black snake twisting out ahead of him. He drives at a slow pace, enjoying the solitude. Enjoying the quiet. Enjoying how his motorcycle is the only noise for miles. Soon he starts to see farm houses and barns. He's heading back to civilization and a piece of him aches because of it. Part of him longs to remain up in the mountains and hollers. To remain by himself in that silent isolation.

He pushes through that and stops for lunch. Almost home. He smiles to himself, thinking maybe he'll take a detour and see the ocean but then he thinks that he's already been away for too long. Maybe next time he'll head up the coast.

All thoughts aside, he heads home, following that long black ribbon. He's close now and a sense of regret fills him. It's the kind found after a long journey. When you're too tired to really keep going but every part of you begs not to stop. He's felt that many times before. He smiles to himself and he follows that long back road all the way to the mansion and through the doors to where a beautiful woman with fiery red hair lives. She's not his and she never will be but sometimes it's almost enough for him to just see her. There's a kid there who's always happy to see him. That's good. Both of those things are good. And he hopes when he finally reaches the end of that road those people will be waiting for him and it will be a good death. Because that's what the end of the road is, it's death and the only thing a man like Logan can pray for is a good death. But until then he'll keep on down that long black ribbon.

[rosaliachristian]

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Bishop Robert Barron

Cycle C

Christmas

Christmas Time

Daily Reading

First Reading

1 John 4:7-10

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

Psalm

Psalm 72:1-2, 3-4, 7-8

R. (see 11)  Lord, every nation on earth will adore you. O God, with your judgment endow the king, and with your justice, the king’s son; He shall govern your people with justice and your afflicted ones with judgment. R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you. The mountains shall yield peace for the people, and the hills justice. He shall defend the afflicted among the people, save the children of the poor. R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you. Justice shall flower in his days, and profound peace, till the moon be no more. May he rule from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.

Gospel Reading

Mark 6:34-44

When Jesus saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. By now it was already late and his disciples approached him and said, “This is a deserted place and it is already very late. Dismiss them so that they can go to the surrounding farms and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” He said to them in reply, “Give them some food yourselves.” But they said to him, “Are we to buy two hundred days’ wages worth of food and give it to them to eat?” He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?  Go and see.” And when they had found out they said, “Five loaves and two fish.” So he gave orders to have them sit down in groups on the green grass. The people took their places in rows by hundreds and by fifties. Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; he also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied. And they picked up twelve wicker baskets full of fragments and what was left of the fish. Those who ate of the loaves were five thousand men.

Reflection

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus feeds the five thousand.

There is no better exemplification in the Scriptures of what I have called the loop of grace. God offers, as a sheer grace, the gift of being, but if we try to cling to that gift and make it our own, we lose it.

The hungry people who gather around Jesus in this scene are symbolic of the hungry human race, starving from the time of Adam and Eve for what will satisfy. In imitation of our first parents, we have tried to fill up the emptiness with wealth, pleasure, power, honor, the sheer love of domination—but none of it works, precisely because we have all been wired for God and God is nothing but love.

It is only when we conform ourselves to the way of love that we are filled. Thus, the five loaves and two fish symbolize that which has been given to us, all that we have received as a grace from God. If we appropriate it, we lose it. But if we turn it over to Christ, then we will find it transfigured and multiplied, even unto the feeding of the world.

[pinkpearlwaterpark1]

Best Water Parks in Rajasthan: Explore the Thrills and Splash!

Are you searching for the perfect getaway to beat the scorching heat of Rajasthan? Look no further! There are some of the top water parks in India, so Rajasthan is not just about pricey forts and palaces.In this article, we'll give you a virtual tour of Rajasthan's most exhilarating water parks while concentrating on the biggest water park in Jaipur. Get ready to dive into a world of adventure, laughter, and cool splashes!

The Magic of Water Parks Near You

Imagine a place where you can escape the sweltering heat and indulge in thrilling water rides. Since they offer the appropriate balance of entertainment and relaxation, water parks make for the perfect vacation spot for groups of friends, family, and adventurers. With a range of exhilarating water slides, lazy rivers, wave pools, and more, these parks guarantee an unforgettable experience.

Exploring Rajasthan's Best Water Park

When it comes to water parks in Rajasthan, the Pink City, Jaipur, stands out with its magnificent offerings. For those wanting an adrenaline rush, the Jaipur Famous Water Park, noted for its splendour and exhilarating activities, is a must-visit. This water park offers a wide array of rides and slides suitable for visitors of all ages.

The Best Water Park in Rajasthan boasts a variety of attractions, including the towering Aqua Loop, where you can experience the thrill of free-falling through a looping water slide. For those who prefer a more relaxed pace, the Lazy River offers a tranquil ride amidst lush greenery. The Wave Pool, with its artificial waves, is perfect for those seeking a taste of the beach in the heart of the desert.

Water Park Ticket Price: Affordable Fun for Everyone

Now, you might be wondering about the water park ticket price. The good news is that the Jaipur Famous Water Park offers affordable ticket options, ensuring that everyone can enjoy a day of aquatic adventure. Depending on the age group and the time of the visit, the charges will vary, but you can be sure that the fun activities are well worth the expense.

Conclusion

Escape the scorching heat of Rajasthan and dive into a world of fun and excitement at the best Resort with Water Park in the state. The Jaipur Famous Water Park, with its thrilling rides and attractions, promises an unforgettable experience for visitors of all ages. So gather your loved ones, pack your swimsuit, and get ready to splash around in Rajasthan's world-class water parks.

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

Bran Stark's Journey

Today I've decided to talk about Bran. He may not be the most beloved character, or the most exciting, but to me at least, he is a very interesting character and his path is very interesting. One revelation the show gave us (that was later confirmed) is that by the end of ASOIAF, he will be King. So today I wanted to talk about his arc, possible paths to kingship, and also about his abilities and what he might be able to do in the future.

Summer to Winter

A large theme in Bran's story is fear. In his first chapter (the first chapter in the entire series, not counting the prologue), Bran asks if a man can be brave when he is afraid, after Jon and Robb argue about the deserter's death, to which ned famously replies "that is the only time a man can be afraid". Later, during his coma dream, he becomes afraid to look down as he falls, crying, until the three eyed crow convinces him to look down at the world below him, and into the heart of winter.

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live. "Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling. Because winter is coming.

Upon waking from that dream, Bran wakes up and names his wolf Summer. Later, Bran listens to a story about the Long Night from Old Nan, telling her that his favourite stories are the scary ones. The dream has is rich in symbolic visions, but I think the most important take away from both that and the story Old Nan tells him is that Bran will need to overcome fear and take on the monsters and villains of those scary stories to help end the Long Night. His direwolf's name Summer also fits with this.

A literal summer child, Bran has never experienced winter and the horrors that come with it. Soon he begins to live out the stories he was told, traveling beyond the Wall in search of the elusive three eyed crow, dealing with wights along the way. In a way, the story of the last hero does work as foreshadowing for Bran's journey to the far north. When he joins Bloodraven, he is given advice for the future, that once again touches upon the theme of fear.

"Never fear the darkness, Bran." The lord's words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. "The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk. Darkness will make you strong."

Bloodraven is a man who has a very storied past, acting as Hand to several Targaryen kings, being an effective administrator (although he had some flaws when it came to dealing with the Blackfyres), and eventually rising to the level of Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. He sometimes did have to do dark things for the greater good, and he's teaching that same principle to Bran. Of course, going back to the theme of fear, he is also telling Bran to overcome his fear in order to do things that will help the world around him.

That is where we end with Bran as of ADWD, but thanks to both the show and GRRM, we have some idea of what happens with Bran next. One of the more shocking moments in Game of Thrones came in season 6 when it was revealed that Bran caused Hodor's disability in the first place by skinchanging him in the past, thus creating a time loop and sealing his fate as he holds the back door of the cave against the wights so he can escape. For Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, a book about the production of the TV series by James Hibberd, GRRM expanded on what that meant and how it will play out in TWOW.

"It's an obscenity to go into somebody's mind. So Bran may be responsible for Hodor's simplicity, due to going into his mind so powerfully that it rippled back through time. The explanation of Bran's powers, the whole questions of time and causality - can we affect the past? Is time a river you can only sail one way or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop into it? These are issues I want to explore in the book, but it's harder to explain in a show." Martin said the 'hold the door' scene in a forthcoming book will play out a bit differently than in the show. "I thought they executed it very well, but there are going to be differences in the book. They did it very physical - 'hold the door' with Hodor's strength. In the book, Hodor has stolen one of the old swords from the crypt. Bran has been warging into Hodor and practicing with his body, because Bran had been trained in swordplay. So telling Hodor to 'hold the door' is more like 'hold this pass' - defend it when enemies are coming - and Hodor is fighting and killing them. A little different, but same idea."

Varamyr's prologue in ADWD touches upon the various concepts of skinchanging, and how certain acts are considered abominations, including; eating the flesh of a person, mating in the skin of a beast, and entering another person's mind. While I don't necessarily think that Bran will commit the second one, it makes sense for there to be consequences for Bran's disregard for the rules. He may be only a child and not fully understand what is happening around him or how his actions effect his surroundings, but if he is becoming extremely powerful, he needs to learn to use it effectively while not becoming completely ignorant of how his actions effect people.

So, this as a consequence of his breaking of the rules of skinchanging makes perfect sense. What I think this isn't, however, is Bran becoming a villain, or Bran heading down a dark path that he won't come out of. If anything, this might actually have the opposite effect, and set him on a path to try to fix the sins he committed. Personally, I think that after this is when Bran will once again have doubts, this time in his ability to use his powers effectively. After all, he's a child, he's going to have strong emotions about this.

It makes perfect sense for him to suddenly fear his powers, realize what he's done, and try to reject that part of him out of fear of what he might do. But ultimately, it's part of a learning process, and something or someone will once again convince him to embrace his powers and use them for good, this time with his past mistakes now influencing better decision making. After that, he must face the true horrors of reality, the creatures from those nightmarish tales he loved hearing about, when the Long Night falls again. He must confront fear itself.

Greenseeing Powers

The show had Bran as someone who only used his powers to look far away and in the past, but greenseers in the books are much more than people sitting in a tree watching. They had all sorts of abilities, and Bran has demonstrated some of them. Others we learn from stories of the past. As a greenseer, Bran is a skinchanger, and an incredibly strong one at that, able to enter Hodor's mind on a whim. He can enter into ravens hundreds of miles south of the Wall, as demonstrated by the curious ravens cawing Theon's name in the TWOW sample chapter.

He can also enter and look through the weirwoods, and back at the past. Apparently, his seeing won't be restricted to the trees and eventually he can look even further without the need for them.

"Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one. Nor will your sight be limited to your godswood. The singers carved eyes into their heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use … but in time you will see well beyond the trees themselves."

And despite Bloodraven's insistence that Bran cannot change the past, it's very clear that is wrong. Bran speaks to Ned when he sees him and Ned visibly responds. Not to mention "hold the door" and going back in past Hodor's mind. Speaking of, Bran can seemingly communicate with the trees, and he has done so with Theon at the Winterfell godswood. First, during the night of the Pink Wedding, Theon hears something calling to him but finds nobody around. True, might be he's been driven psychotic by the torture at Ramsay's hands, but it becomes a bit more real later on.

The night was windless, the snow drifting straight down out of a cold black sky, yet the leaves of the heart tree were rustling his name. "Theon," they seemed to whisper, "Theon." The old gods, he thought. They know me. They know my name. I was Theon of House Greyjoy. I was a ward of Eddard Stark, a friend and brother to his children. "Please." He fell to his knees. "A sword, that's all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek." Tears trickled down his cheeks, impossibly warm. "I was ironborn. A son … a son of Pyke, of the islands." A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool. It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. "… Bran," the tree murmured. They know. The gods know. They saw what I did. And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran's face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad. Bran's ghost, he thought, but that was madness. Why should Bran want to haunt him? He had been fond of the boy, had never done him any harm.

Bran also seems to have the ability to awaken others skinchanging powers, even when he was not entirely aware of it. Take the wolf dream Jon has while in the Frostfangs.

When he closed his eyes, he dreamed of direwolves. There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others. He felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. The forest was vast and cold, and they were so small, so lost. His brothers were out there somewhere, and his sister, but he had lost their scent. He sat on his haunches and lifted his head to the darkening sky, and his cry echoed through the forest, a long lonely mournful sound. As it died away, he pricked up his ears, listening for an answer, but the only sound was the sigh of blowing snow. Jon? The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only . . . A weirwood. It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes? Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow. He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs. Don't be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him. And suddenly he was back in the mountains, his paws sunk deep in a drift of snow as he stood upon the edge of a great precipice. Before him the Skirling Pass opened up into airy emptiness, and a long vee-shaped valley lay spread beneath him like a quilt, awash in all the colors of an autumn afternoon.

And we know that this was real because later...

Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon. Though maybe he had only dreamed that.

Nope, not a dream. That was real. It's almost scary to imagine how powerful he is if he awakened Jon's abilities unconsciously from so far away. Of course, greenseers can also have prophetic dreams of the future, in addition to visions of the past. Greenseers seem to have no limit on what animals they can enter, too.

"The greenseers were more than that. They were wargs as well, as you are, and the greatest of them could wear the skins of any beast that flies or swims or crawls, and could look through the eyes of the weirwoods as well, and see the truth that lies beneath the world."

The hunters among the children—their wood dancers—became their warriors as well, but for all their secret arts of tree and leaf, they could only slow the First Men in their advance. The greenseers employed their arts, and tales say that they could call the beasts of marsh, forest, and air to fight on their behalf: direwolves and monstrous snowbears, cave lions and eagles, mammoths and serpents, and more.

We must also talk about Coldhands, a very curious person indeed. He is a wight, but he can speak and do as he pleases himself, lacks the blue eyes of ice wights, and has lots of ravens following him. Personally, I believe Coldhands was one a member of the Raven's Teeth, Bloodraven's personal escort who joined him on the Wall. Is Bloodraven now using the body of a dead man for his own purposes? Is he skinchanging into a corpse and it's actually Bloodraven speaking through him?

We don't exactly know how the Others are controlling the wights, but it makes sense for them to be in some way related to skinchangers and greenseers. if that is the case, does that mean greenseers hold this power too, albeit in a different way? There is also this interesting tidbit from Asha.

She thought back to a tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.

The trees to warriors? Who knows what that means. Although I think it is time to consider exactly how the use of greenseeing and weirwoods could effect Bran. Unlike most gods, it seems the old gods are indeed real... but they aren't exactly literal gods.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood."

Bloodraven doesn't seem to be entirely all there at the end either. We know there is a consequence of skinchanging too much, becoming more beast than man. Entering the weirwoods could have its own unique, but similar effect. The more you enter, the more you might mingle with the spirits inside the trees.

Let's look back at an early novella GRRM wrote, called A Song for Lya. In the novella, two telepaths, Robb and Lyanna (yup) travel to the planet of Shkea and learn about the inhabitant aliens, the Shkeen, worshipping a giant parasite called the Greeshka, which is an amalgamation of different peoples consciousnesses mixed together as some sort of afterlife.

Robb and Lyanna are a couple, and despite their telepathy allowing them to be closer to one another, Lyanna still feels lonely. When contacting the minds within the Greeshka, she learns that many people have found their loneliness vanished upon joining the Greeshka. After a fight with Robb, Lyanna allows herself to be consumed by the Greeshka before contacting Robb as he dreams and telling him to join her, only for him to reject.

There are quite a bit of similarities between this and how the weirwood afterlife functions. While the thematics of the two stories are rather different, Bran is a telepath, and he is entering into what is essentially the afterlife with many different consciousnesses inside of it. The idea that he becomes a little less Bran and a little more absorbed into this afterlife hivemind makes sense, although I don't think that we will see it quite the same way the show portrayed.

King Bran the Rebuilder

"Archmaester Rigney once wrote that history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again, he said."

ASOIAF has a lot of events in the main series that parallel those in-world historical events, and those historical events might even be foreshadowing for the future. So it might not come as big of a surprise that Bran becoming king at the end sort of acts as a parallel to Bran the Builder. Bran the Builder was supposedly the first Stark King of Winter who emerged after the Long Night, built the Wall, Winterfell, and supposedly Storm's End and the Hightower. Likewise, Bran is the first new king emerging after the Long Night, and given how broken the realm will be at the end of the series, it will be his prerogative to try to rebuild it and make it function again. So, Bran the Rebuilder.

But again, the circumstances are a bit different. Bran the Builder became a King of Winter, but apparently Bran is going to end up as King of Westeros. Isaac Hempstead-Wright said:

"David and Dan told me there were two things George R.R. Martin had planned for Bran, and that was the Hodor revelation, and that he would be king."

And in Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, GRRM says:

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: It wasn’t easy for me. I didn’t want to give away my books. It’s not easy to talk about the end of my books. Every character has a different end. I told them who would be on the Iron Throne, and I told them some big twists like Hodor and “hold the door,” and Stannis’s decision to burn his daughter. We didn’t get to everybody by any means. Especially the minor characters, who may have very different endings.

This does come as quite a shock, and it is admittedly difficult to see how this will happen. However, while the show was extremely disappointing, I am willing to give GRRM a chance to show us how we get there. Narratively, it does make a certain amount of sense, since Bran was the first character George created and the first POV character whose chapter we get, so for it to end with him is a good circle.

Thematically, I think there is a certain view of why this ending for Bran fits. For starters, I don't think magic is going to go away like a lot of people predict, but come to stay. In contrast to the way The Lord of Rings ended, King Bran seems to suggest some sort of more magical world. Not to say it will be super high fantasy, but magic will be more common. A magical kingdom, a magical king. What better way to usher in a new era in Westeros?

Bran also has a deep connection to the weirwoods. If the First Men cutting down the weirwoods was a metaphor for humanity's current destruction of the environment and climate, then Bran being king might be a metaphor for humanity coexisting with nature. Admittedly, I'm not saying that is 100% what King Bran means, I'm mainly just suggesting ideas on what it could mean, given we have no real context behind it other than what were were told and the last two books have yet to be released.

I dislike the reading that Bran as king is dystopian and that he would be enforcing a "police state" and that only a "god-king" could be a good leader. Or even further, that Dany and Bran's endings mean "revolution bad, big brother king good". Disregarding what Dany's ending means being, in my opinion, irrelevant to her status as a revolutionary, these takes always presume that King Bran has to be one way and has to be evil. That Bran having such immense power means that it's going to be the worst case scenario. Why can't it be more hopeful? The series isn't ending nihilistically, it's ending bittersweet.

Bran can look into the past, he could learn about the past mistakes people have made, and learn from it to make better decisions in the future. Sure, he could spy on people far away, but I don't think it's really Big Brother-esque. When you live in a world not so technologically advanced, it might help to learn info from far away much quicker.

That said, how Bran's ascension occurs is a mystery. The show hand-waved it away as just "he has a good story and that will unite people", which is... weak to say the least. Also there is the fact that he is effectively proof of the old gods, and a wizard with immense powers, which might alienate people in the south, or just outright scare people because he's capable of so much and they don't understand and find it scary. He's also going to be a kid, and he has no claim to the Iron Throne.

I will end this post with some suggestions for how this could happen. Nothing concrete, but some ideas of how we might get there. For starters, Bran has to amount to something, unlike the show. He did practically nothing but act as bait. But GRRM is not shy about showing magic, so the magical components of his story are definitely going to play a larger role. Since there is set up for it, Bran having a large role in ending the Long Night could indeed make him a hero of sorts to people, and make him be respected. As a disabled person in a very ableist society, people won't inherently trust or like him.

It's also possible that if Daenerys ends up dead and Jon is exiled, that through some technicality, Bran could be viewed as a sort of heir. Jon is both Targaryen and Stark. With the other Targaryens all but gone, the closest relatives to the final living Targaryen being Starks might give Bran a chance to be selected as king. We could also see Sansa or someone else trying to maneuver events politically to help Bran gain the throne, especially if she sees him as the best option for Westeros in the long run. A Great Council being called makes sense too (not the laughable "council" in the show).

But these are all just ideas I'm throwing at a wall. It's important to keep in mind that a lot of what I'm proposing is mainly just my own interpretation of the text. I'm flawed, I might not always make sense. It doesn't help that we don't have the last two books yet, and the show was a badly pasted together cliff-notes version, so we are left in the dark about a lot.

[gaangadventures]

Hi! I’ve just found your blog and will you marry me?!? AANG CONTENT?!?? ! I saw the requests open and if you’re still open for them could I request a Zuko x reader? Zukos been awed by readers sheer power over and over cus he’s a sucker for strong women. And when he joins the gaang he is soo smitten with the reader and every one sees it but the oblivious reader. And he enventually asks for everyone’s help but during the ember island play she finds out cause they over dramatize his big crush?

Awww! We should probably meet before getting married lol  Sorry for taking so long with the request, life has been kicking my butt. Here you go! c: 

As a former citizen of a small village in the Earth Kingdom, you always longed for adventure and there weren’t many ways to leave your family farm. Or at least not without having to take something from them, and you had refused to. You knew they had little enough already.

But it was different one day, after meeting the avatar himself and his friends. As an earthbender, you weren’t sure where you could go but you wanted to go everywhere. And if you could beat up some Fire Nation soldiers, then you would be having the time of your life.

You had gone into the market for some feed for the lone ostrich horse, and a few of the Fire Nation soldiers had caught wind of the avatar. You were sure that he could actually take them down himself, but you weren’t exactly going to test that theory, and you trapped them in pillars of earth before helping the group out of the market and towards your family farm.

That was how you had met them anyway, and you had asked to join them that day. You hadn’t exactly expected them to say yes either, but they had, and you were overjoyed. So were they, but you assumed that Katara was more or less just glad to not be the only girl there.

Shortly after you joined however, the adventure you always wanted seemed to be a bit much at times.

First, there was the general that actively tried to get Aang into the avatar state and had put all of you in danger for it. Then there were the nomads that you had wanted to leave in the tunnels, you couldn’t believe how carefree they could be in the middle of a war. Even after all that your group had done to get into Omashu, you all found out that the Fire Nation had overtaken it and that Aang had to find an earthbending teacher himself. You offered, but you still had much to learn for it yourself.

And your least favorite place happened to be the swamp. Everyone there had visions of some person they already met and lost or in Aang’s case, were going to meet. You however, had a vision of your family. You had left them, and who knows if you would see them again, but you kept reminding yourself that it was okay, and they understood why you did.

The next place was some odd avatar-hating village, and Aang got arrested. But it was okay, because the day had ended with him out of prison, you beating up some soldiers, and some weird dough-like thing that you immediately spat out after tasting.

 In another Earth Kingdom town, your group had gone to an underground earthbending tournament which you had a blast watching. You had wanted to participate as well, but ended up following the rest of them as they looked for the Blind Bandit. The day went well, considering Aang had managed to get an earthbending teacher and so had you, despite her parents originally saying no. You had assumed that her parents never changed her mind like she said, having done the same thing with your own.

After Toph had joined, there was a strange metal contraption constantly following them by way of Appa’s fur trail. It had turned out to be the Fire Nation princess herself, and her two nonbending but still dangerous friends. You had helped Sokka and Katara with the other two that you had yet to learn the names of, while Aang was dealing with the last one. There was a fight because of course there was, you were starting to wonder just how many more fights you would have to go through in this. That was not to say you didn’t like to fight. You excelled at it.

That had also been the first time you had actually met the Prince Zuko that had literally followed them around the nations, and the first thing you wanted to know was where his ponytail had gone. Sokka had made sure to tell you all about it, but had left out the fact that he could actually be considered attractive, not that you would say that part out loud, and especially not when he was your enemy as well.

You had definitely been thrown for a loop when Azula had shot Iroh with lightning, only for Zuko to refuse help from any of you, even though Katara would have been the only one able to actually help.

Your second least favorite place was the desert, even though you thought the library had been amazing, apart from Wan Shi Tong getting upset that you guys had actually only come to learn how to defeat the Fire Nation. But Appa had gone missing, and you were absolutely convinced none of that was Toph’s fault. Another part of the desert that you didn’t like much were the buzzard wasps, but at least you had begun learning how to bend sand, which was definitely odd.

On your way to Ba Sing Se, they ended up meeting a few old friends of theirs, the Kyoshi Warriors and you had been quick to introduce yourself as well. Mostly since you had grown up hearing about them, and how amazing they would be, you really aspired to be more like them. 

Of course, the ticket lady wouldn’t let any of you get onto the ferry without passports, and Toph had managed to get all of you, only for the group to go the other route to Ba Sing Se when a pregnant lady and her husband had mentioned that their things were stolen. The Serpent’s Pass, you thought was aptly named when going through it. The serpent was terrifying, and you severely hoped that you wouldn’t have to go that way again. 

But at least you had made it through before Ying had her baby, which you thought was surprising considering she was quite far along. She asked you if you wanted to hold her, and you declined, having held more babies in your life than you probably would have liked, not to mention you hadn’t particularly wanted to hold any more. At least for now.

The new family had separated from you and your own group when you finally reached Ba Sing Se, only to find out that the Fire Nation trio was back again and they were trying to take down the wall with another metal thing. You had been helping Toph and Katara bend the awful rock and water combination and successfully kept a few of them back that way.

Ba Sing Se was a horrible city in your opinion, the Dai Li only being a part of it, but you were having a big issue with how the poor had less opportunities and the like.

You were partially glad when you left with the group, but heavily concerned for the avatar you’d come to think of as a younger brother. He had been shot with lightning and actually died, it was a miracle when Katara had healed him.

The weeks passing seemed to grow longer and longer, and nobody said it but everyone could tell that there was a lot of concern and worry for Aang when he hadn’t woke up. You spent your days learning how to bend metal like Toph, and it had taken you a while to even start.

Once he was awake however, you had to leave the boats you’d grown somewhat accustomed to and wait for the solar eclipse to grow nearer.

Unfortunately where you had to wait happened to be in the Fire Nation itself, and you hadn’t exactly wanted for more red in your wardrobe but it couldn’t be helped.

The next month or so, you weren’t sure how long it actually had been and couldn’t be bothered to remember, Katara had helped a coast village with its sick by posing as a river spirit and had even blown up a Fire Nation factory with Aang and finally scared the soldiers away from the town by continuing the ruse. Sokka had acquired a master of his own and made his own sword out of a piece of rock that fell from the sky. Toph had been scamming people in town, occasionally with your help but you ended up stopping when you thought that it would be too obvious. Katara had ended up finding another Southern Water Tribe bender, but unfortunately due to decades of being in prison had gone mad and had been kidnapping innocent people and trapping them under a mountain.

Hama had actually terrified you more than anything else had, but you couldn’t help but pity her at first. Your empathy had been shut off when you saw how Katara had to bloodbend her that night, and how upset she was.

The day of the invasion had been off to a good start, but it had been cut short when everyone learned that the Fire Nation already knew of the solar eclipse and had planned for it.

All of you had regrouped, apart from the adults that had gotten arrested for being a part of the invasion, and had gone to the Western Air Temple. Having never gone to any of the air temples yourself, you had quite a bit of fun exploring this one.

When the prince himself appeared and offered to be Aang’s firebending teacher, you wanted to throw a rock in his face and probably would’ve, had anyone else started a fight. It had been his choice to join his sister in Ba Sing Se, and now he wanted to join the group that he’d been chasing this entire time? Needless to say, you held a grudge against him, and you wouldn’t hesitate to earthbend him to the edge of the cliff if he tried anything.

The next day however, Toph returned with burned feet and Zuko had come back yet again. After his apologies, Aang had accepted him as his firebending teacher shortly after that.

It seemed like everyone but the ones that could earthbend had gone on a field trip with him, oddly enough, when Aang and Zuko had gone to learn real firebending, then it was Sokka and Zuko apparently breaking Hakoda and Suki out of prison but they also brought back a prisoner named Chit Sang too. Then it was Katara’s turn, and she went with him to confront the man who killed her mother. Thankfully, she hadn’t killed him.

Instead of camping out, Zuko had offered up a new place to sleep at, and it was a house that apparently no one goes anymore. You were a little weirded out at the thought of it, and Katara thought so too.

“Doesn’t it seem weird that we’re living in the Fire Lord’s own house?

“I told you, my father hasn’t come here since our family was actually happy. And that was a long time ago. It’s the last place anyone would think to look for us.”

“True, but still weird.” You piped up, doing your own stretches as the two firebenders had finished with their training.

“You guys are not gonna believe this. There’s a play about us.” Sokka said, walking out onto the courtyard with Suki, holding a rolled up poster, looking awfully smug.

“We were just in town, and we found this poster.” Suki continued, while Sokka rolled out the poster and held it up so all of you could see it.

“What? How is that possible?”

“Listen to this.” Sokka started, before beginning to read off the poster itself. “The boy in the iceberg is a new production from acclaimed playwright Puan Tin who scoured the globe, gathering information on the avatar from the icy South Pole to the heart of Ba Sing Se. His sources include singing nomads, pirates, prisoners of war, and a surprisingly knowledgeable merchant of cabbage.”

“Brought to you by the critically acclaimed Ember Island players.” Suki finished, before Zuko began to groan.

“Ugh. My mother used to take us to see them. They butchered “Love Amongst the Dragons” every year.”

“Sokka, do you really think it’s a good idea for us to attend a play about ourselves?”

“Come on, a day at the theater? This is the kind of wacky, time-wasting nonsense I;ve been missing.” And with that answer, you all headed out to the theater to see whatever play this would end up being.

Upon arriving, you all settled down into the seats, Katara sitting next to Toph and you sitting next to her, much to Aang’s disappointment, you were sure. You expected Aang to just sit down next to you, but no, Zuko had.

“Why are we sitting in the nosebleed section? My feet can’t see a thing from up here.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell your feet what’s happening.” Katara answered to Toph, while your gaze was awaiting on the curtains.

They opened to show what was supposed to Katara and Sokka on a boat in the sea, back in the South Pole you assumed. You almost laughed at Sokka’s excitement to notice the two when he grabbed his sister’s shoulder and pointed from each other back and forth.

“Sokka, my only brother.” The fake Katara let out a sigh, dramatically gesturing to the painted “ice glaciers” on her side. “We constantly roam these icy south pole seas, and yet, never do we find anything fulfilling.”

“All I want is a full feeling in my stomach. I’m starving.” ‘Sokka’ responded, making the real Katara and Sokka give each other a look as the audience burst into laughter.

“Is food the only thing that’s on your mind?”

“Well, I’m trying to get it out of my mind and in my mouth. I’m starving.”

“Is that all that guy says?” You grimaced, starting to dread when your character showed up.

“This is pathetic. My jokes are way funnier than this.” Sokka exclaimed, while Toph laughed at him.

“I think he’s got you pegged.” With that, the rest of you turned back to the play.

“Every day, the world awaits a beacon to guide us, yet none appears. Still, we cannot give up hope, for hope is all we have and we must never relinquish it, even. . . Even to our dying breath.” Fake Katara began to sob, and you drew in a breath through your teeth when Katara crossed her arms.

“Well, that’s just silly. I don’t sound like that.”

“You have your moments.” You admitted, but even you would agree that this was an exaggeration for sure.

“Oh man, this writer’s a genius.” At least Toph was having fun.

“It appears to be someone frozen in ice, perhaps for 100 years.” ‘Katara’ said, when a light shone down onto a floating iceberg.

“But who? Who is the boy in the iceberg?” Fake Sokka asked, the two climbing up the iceberg.

“Waterbend, hi-ya!” Fake Katara cried out, drawing her hand down as if to actually crack the ‘iceberg’ herself, only for it to break and reveal fake Aang, whose actor was a girl apparently.

“Who are you, frozen boy?

“I’m the avatar, silly, here to spread joy and fun.” ‘Aang’ giggled, and you looked to the avatar himself, only to see him frowning deeply.

“Wait, is that a woman playing me?” He asked, right as a fake Appa showed up and went around the iceberg in a circle while fake Katara gasped.

“An airbender. My heart is so full of hope that it’s making me tear-bend.” She began to fake sob, falling to her knees and grabbing onto fake Aang’s leg. 

“My stomach is so empty that it’s making me tear-bend.” Fake Sokka cried out, falling to his knees as well and grabbing onto ‘Aang’s’ other leg. “I need meat.” With that, you really couldn’t help but laugh, even when both Katara and Sokka were beginning to glare at you.

“But wait! Is that a platter of meaty dumplings?” The actress for Aang mentioned, pointing up at nothing in particular.

“Ooh, where, where?” ‘Sokka’ quickly asked, only for ‘Aang’ to start laughing.

“Did I mention that I’m an incurable prankster?”

“I don’t do that. That’s not what i’m like. And I’m not a woman.”

“Oh they nailed you, Twinkletoes.” Toph joked, laughing at the play as she basically had been this entire time.

A new boat showed up on the stage, this time carrying Zuko and his uncle.

“Prince Zuko, you must try this cake.” ‘Iroh’ offered, while fake Zuko was looking out at sea with a telescope.

“I don’t have time to stuff my face. I must capture the avatar to regain my honor.”

“Well, while you do that, maybe I’ll capture another slice.” Fake Iroh said, before literally shoving the cake into his face and eating.

“You sicken me.” ‘Zuko’ said, with a disgusted look on his face, and you let out a laugh.

“They make me look totally stiff and humorless.”

“Actually, I think that actor’s pretty spot-on.” Katara joked, and Zuko had been quick to turn to her.

“How could you say that?

“Let’s forget about the avatar and get massages.” 

“How could you say that?” Fake Zuko cried out at Iroh’s suggestion, only for you to laugh when you saw the look on Zuko’s face.

The scene panned out to show Aang the actress at the Southern Air Temple, with a tail sticking out of the fake bushes.

“Hey, look! I think I found something.” Fake Aang kept digging into the bushes, only to come back out with a fake puppet of Momo on his shoulder and a fake arm hanging from his side. “A flying rabbit-monkey! I think I’ll name him Momo.” He laughed, before moving the puppet so it would look like it was talking.

“Hi, everybody. I love you.” At the sight of it, both you and Aang let out a low groan. Momo did not deserve this slander.

With another scene, it showed a Kyoshi Warrior, which you assumed was supposed to be Suki before ‘Sokka’ came out, dressed in the same Kyoshi Warrior ensemble.

“Does this dress make my butt look fat?” He said, making the real Suki laugh, as you turned to look at the couple.

“So nobody told me you were a Kyoshi Warrior? I do have a question though. Did you look as good as Suki does?” You couldn’t help but tease him, although this was definitely bringing up some topics that you had missed out on.

The scene changed yet again, but this time was showing what was supposed to be King Bumi. Was he really that buff?

“Riddles and challenges must you face if you are ever to leave this place.” It showed fake Aang pushing a boulder, fake Sokka running from a gorilla rabbit, and fake Katara groaning as she was trapped in crystals.

It cut to a different part of the play, showing a pirate boat and pirates began to surround the trio. The pirates continued to fight each other as the trio actually got out quite safely.

“Why did you have to steal that waterbending scroll?” Fake Sokka asked as they crept away from the pirates.

“It just gave me so much hope.” Fake Katara answered, sobbing yet again.

“I really hope my character isn’t as bad.” You added, wearing a grimace, since you knew Katara didn’t cry nearly as many times as this one made her out to be like.

“The avatar is mine!” Fake Zuko cried out, while fake Aang was chained to a wall with soldiers surrounding him. “Wait, who’s coming?” He pointed to a different part of the stage where a person with a large blue demon-like mask held dao swords.

“I am the blue spirit, the scourge of the Fire Nation, here to save the avatar.” He exclaimed, before the soldiers began to drop to the ground dramatically and he somehow defeated fake Zuko as well as simultaneously untying fake Aang.

“My hero.” ‘Aang’ said, before leaving the stage with the blue spirit.

The scene changed, and it showed a sobbing ‘Katara’ with a fake Jet, hanging from a rope.

“Don’t cry, baby. Jet will wipe out that nasty town for you.” 

“Oh, Jet. You’re so bad.” Toph laughed, while Katara tried to hide her face, and you just lightly patted her shoulder with a slight look of pity.

“Look! It’s the Great Divide. The biggest canyon in the Earth Kingdom.” Aang mentioned, standing atop fake Appa.

“Eh, let’s keep flying.” Fake Sokka shrugged, while you only leaned back into your seat.

“Don’t go, Yue. You’re the only woman who’s ever taken my mind off of food.” The two actors dramatically kiss, before fake Sokka turns away with a gag. “Wait, did you have pickled fish for dinner?”

“Goodbye, Sokka. I have important moon duties to take care of. And yes, I did have pickled fish.” Fake Yue said, going up into the sky with the moon.

“You never told me you made out with the moon spirit.” Suki chuckled, and you glanced at the couple to see tears in Sokka’s eyes as he shushed her.

“Shh, I’m trying to watch.” Turning back to look at the stage, you saw the actress for Aang in a fish spirit costume, crushing fake fire Nation ships.

“The avatar is back to save the day! Yay!” He said, kicking and stomping on the rest of the fake ships before falling onto the floor as the curtains closed.

“So far, this intermission is the best part of the play.” Zuko mentioned when all of you sat on the steps outside of the theater.

“Apparently, the playwright thinks I’m an idiot who tells bad jokes about meat all the time.” Sokka angrily shoved jerky into his mouth, as Suki teased him.

“Yeah, you tell bad jokes about plenty of other topics.”

“I know!”

“At least the Sokka actor kind of looks like you. That woman playing the avatar doesn’t resemble at all.” Aang lamented, putting his hands over his head, as Toph shrugged.

“I don’t know. You are more in touch with your feminine side than most guys.” With that, Aang groaned and Katara interrupted when he stood up.

“Relax, Aang. They’re not accurate portrayals. It’s not like I’m a preachy crybaby who can’t resist giving over-emotional speeches about hope all the time.” Everyone had clearly been looking at her but nobody said a word, until she asked. “What?”

“Yeah, that’s not you at all.” Aang backed her up, sitting back down and rubbing the back of his neck.

“Listen, friends. It’s obvious that the playwright did his research. I know it must hurt, but what you’re seeing up there on that stage is the truth.” Toph offered, and you tilted your head.

“Not quite I don’t think, this is definitely exaggerated.”

As the group went back into the theater, the scene was apparently when you had met the group, seeing as it looked like your hometown.

“Well, here we are in the Earth Kingdom.” 

“I’d better have a look around to see if I can find an earthbending teacher.”

“Hey, is that the avatar? Get him!” A Fire Nation soldier exclaimed, pointing at fake Aang, when fake you appeared on the stage.

“No, don’t take him! I need to leave this town and abandon my family forever!” ‘You’ cried out, fake earthbending the soldiers out before running with the group. “I don’t want to live on this farm anymore! I want to beat up people!”

You grimaced at their portrayal of you, but at least the actress looked somewhat like you, even if the personality was quite a bit off.

“That’s not. . Quite true.” You added, seeing fake you leave with the rest of them. 

The scene was changed into another Earth Kingdom town, and you assumed this was where Toph showed up.

“Well, here we are in the Earth Kingdom again. So we can find an actual earthbending teacher.” Fake Katara repeated, the four of them standing next to a suspiciously large rock.

“This must be where I come in.” Toph whispered as fake Aang ‘flew’ around the audience with a rope.

“I flew all over town, but I couldn’t find a single earthbending master.”

“Here it comes.” Toph said, leaning forward in her seat.

“You can’t find an earthbending master in the sky. You have to look underground.” Fake Toph was apparently a very large and buff man, throwing the fake rock off stage. Which only caused everyone but Toph to start laughing, yourself included.

“Who are you?” Fake Aang asked, as fake Toph spat away from him, before proudly pointing to himself before beginning to flex his arms.

“My name’s Toph, because it sounds like tough, and that’s just what I am.”

“Wait a minute. I sound like a guy. A really buff guy.” Toph said, already starting to smile when Katara turned to her.

“Well Toph, what you hear up there is the truth. It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t have cast it any other way. At least it’s not a flying bald lady.” Toph answered, making Aang frown as you bit back a snicker.

“So you’re blind?” ‘Aang’ asked, waving his hand in front of ‘Toph’.

“I can see you doing that. I see everything that you see, except I don’t see like you do. I release a sonic wave from my mouth.” Fake Toph explained before beginning to scream, causing everyone in the audience to flinch, apart from the actual Toph of course, who only grinned. “There. I got a pretty good look at you.”

The scene changed to show Iroh and Zuko who apparently had long hair now.

“Zuko, it’s time we had a talk about your hair. It’s gone too far.”

“Maybe it’s best if we split up.” Fake Zuko dramatically flipped his long hair as the two actors walked off the stage, only for everyone to come back with fake Azula as well.

“Azula, my sister, what are you doing here?”

“You caught me. Wait, what’s that? I think it’s your honor.” She said, pointing up and everyone in the cast looked away from her as she slipped away.

“Where?”

“She escaped. But how?” Fake Katara asked, and it switched to show Azula and Aang at the wall of Ba Sing Se with the drill.

“If she continues drilling, this wall will come down for sure.” Fake Aang said, throwing a fake rock at her.

“Yes, continue drilling. The city of Ba Sing Se can hide no longer.” Fake Azula said as ‘Aang’ continued throwing rocks, but it never showed how it ended as the scene changed to show a mind-controlled Jet.

“No, Jet, what did they do to you? Fake Aang cried out, dodging as fake Jet swung out with his hooks.

“Must serve Earth King. Must destroy!” He exclaimed as a fake rock fell onto him, before curling up underneath it so his body wouldn’t be showing.

“Did Jet just die?” Zuko asked, as Sokka answered, gesturing with his hands.

“You know, it was really unclear.” 

“I have to admit, Prince Zuko, I really find you attractive.” Fake Katara said, now seemingly in the crystal caves of Ba Sing Se as fake you was looking for a way out, hardly paying any attention to the two.

“You don’t have to make fun of me.” The actor said, turning away and then turning back when fake Katara sat down onto the same rock as him.

“But I mean it. I’ve had eyes for you since the day you first captured me.” With that, you noticed the real Zuko and Katara briefly glance at each other with mildly disgusted looks as Aang frowned at the stage.

“Wait. I thought you were the avatar’s girl. And besides I’m in love with someone else.” Fake Zuko then said, beginning to walk away and very obviously looked towards fake you. ‘Katara’ laughed, before starting to say.

“The avatar? Why, he’s like a little brother to me. I certainly don’t think of him in a romantic way. Besides, how could he ever find out about this?” She hugged him, and you looked at the stage in confusion.

“There’s no way you two would do that.” You said, knowing for a fact that Katara was crushing on Aang, and she had already divulged that he kissed her the day of the invasion. “But what I don’t get is why the actor looks at me when he says he’s in love with someone else. What’s up with that?” You questioned, only to get radio silence from everyone there. You shrugged, figuring that you would weasel the answer out of someone later.

“Oh, you’re getting up? Can you get me some fire flakes?” Sokka asked Aang when he walked out of the theater after that debacle. “Oh, and fire gummies.”

“Well, my brother, what’s it going to be? Your nation or a life of treachery?” Fake Azula said, only for fake Zuko to contemplate things.

“Choose treachery. It’s more fun.” Fake Iroh said, drinking some tea as ‘Zuko’ walked over to him and paused.

“No way!” ‘Azula’ yelled before he pushed ‘Iroh’ over onto the ground and headed towards his sister’s side.

“I hate you, Uncle. You smell, and I hate you for all time!” As he left the stage with ‘Azula’, the Earth Kingdom flag fell onto the actor for Iroh.

“You didn’t really say that, did you?” Katara asked, and you frowned when Zuko answered.

“I might as well have.”

The next scene was Ty Lee and Mai taking over Ba Sing Se, only for Aang to appear out from behind the throne.

“Avatar state, yip-yip!” Fake Aang proceeded to be brought up from the stage by a rope as fake Azula appeared.

“Not if my lightning can help it.” A ribbon was thrown at the fake avatar who pretended to be electrocuted and fell to the floor. “The avatar is no more.” At that, the whole audience seemed to cheer, apart from your group.

You stretched during the intermission, thankful to be out of the seat.

“It seems like every time there’s a big battle, you guys barely make it out alive. I mean, you guys lose a lot.” Suki mentioned, only for her boyfriend to quickly respond.

“You’re one to talk, Suki, didn’t Azula take you captive? That’s right, she did.”

“Are you trying to get on my bad side?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Does anyone know where Aang is?” Katara interrupted the couple, and you hoped that the two might finally talk about how they feel.

“He left to get me fire gummies like ten minutes ago, and I’m still waiting.” Sokka complained, only for his sister to turn away from him.

“I’m gonna check outside.” She said, walking out of the theater, as a child dressed up as Aang pretended to fly around.

“Suki, what are the chances you can get me backstage? I got some jokes I want to give to the actor me.”

“I’m an elite warrior who’s trained for many years in the art of stealth. I think I could get you backstage.” And the two walk off, leaving you with Zuko and Toph.

“Well, I think I’m going to go check out how bad Sokka’s jokes are. Maybe you can tell her now.” Toph suggested, before following Suki and Sokka.

“Wait-” But you had cut Zuko off before he could continue.

“Tell me what?” Would someone finally tell you about why fake Zuko looked at you when he said he was in love with someone else?

“I-uh.. The actor wasn’t entirely wrong.” He partially confessed, only leaving you with more questions.

“Wrong about which part?” You simply couldn’t understand any bit of it.

“I’ve kind of been in love with you for a while.” He quickly answered, glancing at you to see your reaction before looking away.

“Wait what-” You said, only momentarily confused before shaking your head. You didn’t exactly understand why, and that’s exactly what you said. “Why? I don’t get it. There’s nothing special or anything about me.”

“You are far from ordinary, Y/N. You’re so strong and-”

“So what you’re telling me, you’re attracted to strong women?” You teased, oddly satisfied upon seeing the light pink of his cheeks as he groaned before letting out a sigh.

“Yeah.” He admitted, before continuing. “I even asked everyone for help with this.”

“Wait, is that why you had told me I was pretty the other day? And why I found flowers in front of my door the next morning?”

“Yeah.” 

“Well, I thought you were hot when we first met, so we’re even.” You shrugged, looking at him from the corner of your eye.

“Do you still think that?”

“What do you think?” You answered his question with a question, leaning closer to him until your faces were merely inches apart. “Y’know, I started training to get my mind off you.”

Just as your lips were almost touching, you had closed your eyes only to quickly open them and pull away when you heard a wolf-whistle.

“It’s about time!”

[thiswasinevitableid]

for the mermay fills: indruck, 25, any rating

Here you go! I went with SFW for this one.

The thing no one tells you about journeys of self-discovery is that they’re really fucking boring.

Duck’s been on this highway for days, and another highway for the days before that. He wanted to see the desert in the spring, but it’s involved fewer super-blooms and more butterflies dying on his windshield than he hoped.

Now he’s on some two lane strip of barely paved road in the vast expanse between Las Vegas and Reno. Green catches his eye to his left; a ribbon of well-watered trees shines in the distance. Closer to the road are dueling picket signs shoved into the ground, some demanding the preservation of the tiny pocket of wetlands and others proclaiming this the site of the Hungry Man Casino expansion. The signs continue all the way to the tiny town of Kepler, where he pulls into a gas station in front of Tarkesian’s General Store.

After filling the tank and chatting with the owner and his incongruous New York accent, Duck decides to stop in Kepler for the night. The road north is mostly open range, and he’s already had one near miss with a cow on a pitch black stretch of asphalt. The lone place to rest is the Reconciliation Motel Court and Casino. He gets his key, pulls up to the chipped door, and flops onto the burnt orange bedspread for a nap.

He doesn’t wake up until eight at night, wondering what the hell is wrong with the other guests that they’re all playing music loud enough for him to hear. He counts at least six separate voices, their overlap meaning the lyrics turn to gibberish. It’s still hot and stuffy in the room, and maybe outside will be quiet. He pulls on his swim trunks and rash guard; a peek out the window at the pool shows it’s empty and that, plus the general sparseness of the parking lot, makes him confident enough that he won’t bump into anyone and try to make up some lie about being shy or mormon or whatever the hell else would explain a dude keeping a top on to swim.

But, just his luck, when he latches the pool gate shut, he discovers he’s not alone. A man with silver hair floats in the pool, eyes closed. When Duck sets a towel on the chair, his eyes fly open and he dives under the water, giving Duck twin shocks: glowing red eyes and a long, jet black tail.

“What the fuck?” He says aloud in case someone else is watching and can explain why there’s a fucking mermaid in the pool.

The merman resurfaces, blinking at him, “How in the world did you get in here?”

“Uhhhh…” Duck points to the gate.

“You...you see the pool? Do you see the motel as well?”

Duck turns, wondering if this is some kind of prank, “yeah?”

“Apologies” the merman swims to the edge of the pool nearest him, “it was such an unlikely future I am having a hard time processing it.”

“You’re havin a hard time”

“Oh, oh of course, this is all very confusing to you. Here, have a seat.” He gestures to one of the pool chairs. Not knowing what else to do, Duck sits.

“Now, have you heard singing while you have been here?”

“Yep. Thought it was the other guests.”

The merman shakes his head, “They are sirens. As am I. We are the descendants of sirens who lived here in the days when there was far more water in this area. As the water dwindled, we made our home in that river and wetlands” he points towards the south end of town, “and then the founders of this fine establishment decided to catch us and use us to lure people to their rundown casino. Since you are about to ask, a siren song shows you what you want; turns out many people want the promise of easy money, food, or sex. But you...somehow you do not seem to respond to it.”

Duck shrugs, “Guess not.”

“I wonder...hmm, perhaps you do not want anything?”

“Don’t think that’s it. Been drivin up and down the country lookin for somethin I want but can’t name.”

The merman rests his arms on the concrete, “You must tell me everything about your travels.”

“I mean, uh, they ain’t all that excitin-”

“I have been stuck in this pool for three years.”

“Okay yeah, more excitin than that. Also, what the fuck?”

“There are ones like it in almost all the lower level rooms. I get stuck out here because I will not sing, but due to having future sight I am too valuable to do away with.”

“This ain’t gettin less fucked up.”

The merman laughs, “Perhaps that is why you don’t fall prey to our song; you are just very honest.”

“That a nice way of sayin I can’t lie for shit?”

“I suppose so.” He grins, sharp teeth glinting in the yellow streetlights, “regardless, I am glad you are not susceptible. I haven’t spoken to anyone aside from the owners in months. They even keep me from my own kind.” His tone is breezy, but Duck sees the flash of pain in his eyes.

“What’s your name?”

“Indrid. Yours?”

“Can’t you see it comin?” He teases.

“Yes, but I want to hear you say it. I get ahead of others often enough as it is.”

“Duck. It’s a nickname.”

Indrid flips his tail once, “Care to join me for an evening swim, Duck.”

“You ain’t gonna eat me or anythin, right?”

“I only taste humans when offered” His tail undulates hypnotically as he pushes into deeper water. Then he pauses, “that was meant as flirtation and not as a threat.”

Duck slides into the water, smiling when he meets Indrid’s nervous gaze “Yeah, I got that.”

--------------------------------------------------------------

“See, you can tell it’s a saguaro because--fuck” the camera slips from Duck’s hand, only for Indrid’s to shoot out and catch it before it hits the water.

“Thanks, ‘Drid, startin’ to wonder what I’d do without you.”

The mer, cheek resting on the warm concrete, shifts sideways so he can bump Duck’s knee with his forehead, “The feeling is mutual.”

For the last two weeks Duck’s stayed at the motel, watching his fellow occupants walk zombie-like through doors or stagger from them in a daze when their money runs out and the owners kick them to the curb to make way for new targets. Following Indrid’s instructions, he delivers messages between the trapped sirens, the kind they dare not sing aloud, brings them things they’re missing, like favorite foods or things to do, when he can manage it.

He’s also careful to spend time in town, away from any lingering influence of the siren songs. Leo Tarkesian gives him a job in the store, and he strikes up a friendship with a woman going by the name of Mama, who comes in once a week with beautiful wood carvings for Leo to set out for sale. It turns out her family used to own the motel before Reconciliation swooped in and stole it in what Mama insists was an illegal move.

“Worst part is, they crowed about creatin jobs, bringin’ in more tourists. But they won’t let no one outside their inner circle work there, and folks who stop never leave and visit the rest of town. Now they’re gunnin for the state park. But they ain’t gonna get away with it this time.”

More than anything, Duck spends his time with Indrid. The siren tells him stories about life in the wetlands and river, Duck tells him about his travels, about his home, talks with him until the stars come out, would stay until they go away again except the mer tells him he needs his sleep.

Indrid is a very encouraging conversation partner, disdain and aloofness only appearing when he has to speak to the owners of the motel. He’s also very affectionate, resting his head in Duck’s lap or winding his tail around him whenever he stands in the water. Which is why, when he asks Duck if he’s made up his mind about what to do come fall, his fingers are stroking the humans back and his tail is lazily petting his legs.

“I dunno. I could go back and finish my degree, become a ranger and all that. But what if I’m only doin that because I feel like it’s what I’m supposed to do?”

Indrid brushes Duck’s hair from his forehead, “When you think of the future where you meet that goal, how do you feel.”

“Happy. Content. Like, like there’s a thing I can do to keep the world healthy and whole. Sometimes I feel like I’m supposed to be out there savin the world, solvin every problem, makin everythin better. And that’s too damn much. But when I think about havin some forest or park or somethin where part of my job is to care for it, help it grow...yeah, think I could do that.” He smiles at the image of his future self those words conjure.

Indrid smiles at the current him, brushes their noses together, “It seems to me that you have your answer.”

Duck loops his arms around Indrid’s waist, “Then again, could just stay here, look after you and the other sirens forever.”

Chlorine stings his eyes as Indrid zips backwards, looking as if he’s been slapped.

“‘Drid? What’s wrong?”

“You cannot stay here any longer.”

“What do you mean? I wanna stay. I wanna be with you.”

“No! Don’t you see? This is how the song gets you. It is making you think that your greatest wish is to stay in this crumbling motel, looking after a siren who has seen better days.”

“Hold the fuck on” Duck tries to swim to him, only for Indrid to swim further out of reach, “‘Drid, it’s real fuckin insultin to tell a fella that the only reason he feels how he feels is because of a magic song. Maybe I am startin to feel the effects, but I know that when I think about you, no matter how near or far to this fuckin pool I am, I wanna be with you. I’ve fallen in love before, I can recognize the feelin from a mile away. And it’s what I’m feelin now.” He crosses his arms, daring Indrid to argue.

The siren swims to him, cups his face in cool hands, “It’s what I feel too. Why do you think I cannot ask you to stay? I am a prisoner here, Duck. If you remain for my sake, you will be one as well. I cannot do that to you. I know the agony of being cut off from the world you love, and you have so much love yet to give it I cannot, will not, rob you of the chance to do so.”

“I…” Duck he mirrors Indrid’s touch, runs his thumbs along his cheeks.

“Please” Indrid kisses him once, softly, “please, if you love me, don’t stay here and make me watch you decay.”

Duck pulls Indrid as close as he can, kisses him until his lips ache and the siren is pliant and purring in his arms.

“I’ll go. I fuckin hate the idea of leavin you here, but I’ll go.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s just one thing you gotta let me do first. Will you let me introduce you to another human? She’s got almost as much cause to hate Reconciliation as you do, and I got a hunch you two might be able to help each other out.”

Indrid cocks his head, then nods, “Of course, my love. Just tell her to wear earplugs and bring something to write on.”

-------------------------------------------------------

The cottonwoods rustle in the summer breeze as Indrid floats lazily down the river on his back. A family is picnicking outside the visitor center, but only the youngest member of it sees him. She waves. He raises his tail in reply, smiling when she spills her drink in delight.

Most sirens give the heavily trafficked parts of the park a wide berth, still wary of interactions with humans. Indrid doesn’t blame them; Reconciliation was chased out ten years ago, but their memory lingers like smog. He himself stays clear of unfamiliar groups of humans whenever possible.

But today, the futures show him the park is welcoming a new ranger. And so he swims back and forth, hoping the recent arrival will see him. Hoping he remembers.

“I’m sorry sir, but swimmin ain’t allowed in this chunk of the river.” A teasing drawl drifts over his shoulder.

He spins in what he hopes is an elegant way, accidentally splashing the figure on the bank behind him.

“Of course.” He grins, swimming over and resting his arms on the bank and batting his eyelashes as the ranger crouches down to meet him, “how very rude of me. I am terribly sorry.”

Duck’s smile is brimming with years of stored up affection, the lines on his face hinting at stories Indrid cannot wait to hear, “S’okay. For my favorite roadside siren, I’m happy to make an exception.”

[feferipeixes]

The Good Lines (1/3)

Trapped in an unfamiliar world, Alcor finds that he doesn’t mind the loneliness. He doesn’t care about finding a way out. He doesn’t even care about Mizar. All he cares about is solving puzzles, and drawing the good lines.

(or: I Think Dipper Should Play The Witness)

Chapter 1: Tutorial (link to chapter 2) (3)

I promised this a year ago and it’s finally happening! No knowledge about The Witness necessary -- this is basically a TAU fic. Thanks @toothpastecanyon for beta reading it!

(See the most updated version on AO3!)

===

One of the first signs that something was wrong was the silence.

Alcor didn't know when it had happened, but at some point he realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd heard a living thing. Sure, he could hear the grass crunch beneath his shoes, and the babble of the river cascading down the mountainside. When the silence got to be too much, he’d listen to those things as closely as he could.

He never heard a cicada screech, though, never heard a squirrel chitter, never heard a wolf howl. One time, he wandered through the forest and was assaulted by the chirping of birds, but when he looked closer he noticed that there were speakers hidden in the trees. That confused him even more, because who decided a forest needed assistance in creating an ambiance? Would the speakers switch from birds to crickets when it got dark out?

The next thing he noticed was that it never got dark out either.

Another strange thing: his magic wasn't working. He walked upon the ground instead of floating above it. He saw the physical shape of things instead of the shape of the ideas they embodied. And his hand didn't alight in flame when he snapped his fingers. He was still a demon -- he could see it in the pitch black reflection of his eyes when he looked in the ocean -- but it seemed less relevant right now. Which was without a doubt extremely odd.

However curious these things were though, he didn't have much of a chance to dwell on them. He was too busy drawing the good lines.

The panels were everywhere on the island. They were all sorts of materials -- some made of metal with a plastic border, some made of glass so he could see the scenery as he drew, and some were just embedded into the concrete he walked on. Many of them were connected with thick wires. They all had a grid of some sort on them, sometimes containing fanciful shapes and dots. All had one or more bulbous circles somewhere on the grid, as well as one or more rounded off ends. Some of them were pretty to look at, but he knew they weren't just for show. They were puzzles.

He couldn't remember when he'd discovered it. Maybe someone had told him (who? He was all alone). Maybe there were instructions on one of the panels (but he'd never seen any text on the island). Or maybe it was just instinct that led him to reach out and touch a panel, right on one of the large circles. It made a little popping noise, letting him know this was okay to do, and to keep going. So he dragged his claw across the grid, and as he did so, he drew a line. It was simple, it was effortless, it was satisfying. He drew the line around intersections in the grid to one of the rounded off bits and lifted his finger. The panel flashed angrily and highlighted some of the symbols on the grid.

Oh no. That was a Bad Line.

Frowning, he tried again; touching the circle, dragging his claw through the grid in a different pattern this time, and letting go at an end. The panel made a squeaky little beep, and the wire leading out of it lit up.

Alcor smiled. That was a Good Line.

---

There was a mountain at one end of the island. Well, it looked like a mountain, and the climate at the top was dramatically different from that at the bottom, but there was no way it was tall enough to really be considered a mountain. It only took a few minutes for Alcor to follow the path to the top, and he wasn’t even using any kind of demonic superspeed.

The summit was covered in weird stuff, but at this point Alcor would’ve been surprised if such a significant-looking location on this weird island wasn’t covered in weird stuff. Still, he wouldn’t have guessed that it would be covered in random statues of humans. There was an old man speaking at a podium, a figure in a trenchcoat using a camera on a tripod, a librarian gesturing angrily, and so on.

There were two statues at the center under three parabolic arches. One was a young man with a strange ladle-shaped mark etched onto his forehead, struggling to carry a large yellow box covered in images of eyes and which had a thick cable coming out of it. The other was a young woman in a sweater, holding the box’s cable taut and seemingly trying to pull the first statue back. All of the statues seemed vaguely familiar -- especially the two in the middle -- but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He eventually decided it was just because humans all look the same.

There was another thing he found while observing the statues: a tape recorder, sitting on a rock near the statue with the tripod. It looked positively archaic in design, and only had one button on it. When he pressed the button, the voice that came out was so clear that it was almost as if the words were being transmitted directly into his brain.

“Up there you go around every hour and a half, time after time after time.”

He frowned at the odd device and cocked his head. It was nice to hear a voice for the first time in what seemed like forever, but he had no idea what it was talking about. He pressed the button again to no effect. The voice just kept talking.

“And you realize that in one glance that what you’re seeing is what was the whole history of man for years.”

Whatever. He decided to ignore it and take in the lovely view instead. He could see almost the whole island from up there, from the desert to the quarry to the forest to the swamp. There was something stunning about the diversity of landscape he could see from one spot. And yet, it wasn’t quite the beauty of the sights before him that made him marvel. It was the thought of all of the unsolved puzzles he was yet to find.

“You finally come up across the coast of California and look for those friendly things.”

There only seemed to be one panel at the mountain’s summit, and it was hardly a puzzle -- just a single zigzagging line. Quick as a whistle, he tapped the starting node, dragged his finger up, and released. It made all of the same sounds the other panels did, but it was kind of disappointing. There was no challenge in it, nothing to occupy his mind or give him a sense of accomplishment. It wasn’t a Good Line or a Bad Line, it was just… a line.

Huh.

“And you do it again and again and again. You look forward to that, you anticipate it. And there it is. That whole process begins to shift of what it is you identify with.”

He set off down the mountain again, and headed toward the greenhouse he’d noticed on his way up. Just as he expected, it was full of puzzles. Surrounded by colorful flowers, he stared at a panel and thought, and thought, and thought.

Hours passed. He solved two more.

“You look down there and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you crossed again and again and again. And you don’t even see ‘em. All of history and music and poetry and art and war and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it is on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb.”

Alcor bounced between areas on the island when he got stuck, always breezing past the scenery without a second glance because there were more important things to attend to. Across the island and toward the desert. Across the island to climb through a treehouse. Across the island to get lost in a boat. He waited for it to blur together but it never did.

“And you realize with that perspective that you’ve changed. That there’s something new there. That relationship is no longer what it was.”

It was peculiar, if he did let himself think about it. He didn’t want to -- didn’t want to give the voice that kind of victory -- but in between panels he sometimes needed a little break and there were only a limited number of things to put his attention to in this place. So, occasionally, he let himself wonder why he was alone.

This was not an unfamiliar question for him. He could come up with a million reasons for it right off the top of his head. He was immortal, so maybe everyone else in the universe was just dead. He was a monster, so maybe everyone else in the universe was just scared of him. He was a dream demon, so maybe he was just buried so deep in the Mindscape that he couldn’t find his way out.

Somehow, none of those reasons felt like the truth. If they were, he’d probably be sadder.

“And you think about what you’re experiencing and why. Do you deserve this? This fantastic experience? Have you earned this in some way? Are you separated out to be touched by God to have some special experience here that other men cannot have? You know the answer to that is No. There’s nothing that you’ve done that deserves that, that earned that.”

Besides, there wasn’t anything to be sad about, if he really really thought about it over and over again until words lost all meaning. He was Alcor the Dreambender, after all! He was the most powerful entity in the universe. Feared like a demon by the masses, revered like a deity by the foolish. All because he’d had the great fortune to rid the world of a villainous creature of destructive chaos.

He did deserve it. He was special. He spent a day lying face up on a rooftop in the town, thinking these things to himself on loop.

“When you come back, there’s a difference in that world now, there’s a difference in that relationship between you and that planet, and you and all those other forms of life on that planet, because you’ve had that kind of experience.”

Past the town there was a little peninsula with some sort of old building on it. Alcor made his way over, but when he got there he was dismayed to find not a single puzzle in sight. There was, however, a statue of a man kneeling on the floor. Alcor jumped when he saw it out of the corner of his eye, reaching for him with a crazed look on its face, but relaxed when he realized it wasn’t alive.

It was an odd sight, to be sure. Alcor followed its gaze to a glass shelf behind him, on which sat a chalice of some sort. He reached up to grab it -- almost knocking the shelf over as he did -- and cautiously stuck his tongue in.

Whatever was in the cup, he thought as he walked away from the building, it was delicious.

“And all through this I’ve used the word ‘you’ because it’s not me, it’s you. It’s us. It’s we. It’s life. And it’s not just my problem to integrate, it’s not my challenge to integrate, my joy to integrate -- it’s yours, it’s everybody’s.”

There was a long pause, and Alcor thought the recording might finally be over. He took a sip of his drink and smiled. Back to thinking about the current puzzle. It was a tough one -- three different colors of symbols on it -- and he was glad that the voice wasn’t distracting him from it anymore.

And then:

”Please come back, Dipper.”

Alcor did a spit take at the sound of his true name. The panel he was working on made a sizzling noise and deactivated.

“Did that work? Can you hear me?”

He shot to his feet and looked around in all directions. No one. He was still as alone as ever.

“You’re not responding so I don’t know if what you’re doing is just a coincidence.”

“What? Hello?” he yelled.

“Oh, thank the stars, it worked! Dipper you have to get out of here.”

“What are you talking about?” he sputtered. “Who are you?”

There was the sound of a deep breath, inexplicably broadcast from the sky. “I’m your sister, S- I mean, uh. Mizar. I’m Mizar.”

Alcor’s eyes widened. “Mizar?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to contact you for so long. I can’t believe it finally worked.”

“I don’t understand. What finally worked?”

“You need to listen to me. This isn’t the real world. You’re in a virtual reality game.”

“I’m what?” Alcor said. He backed up, accidentally leading himself to the edge of the platform he was standing on, but instead of falling off, his back hit a wall. He spun around to see what had happened, but there was nothing there. “Mizar? I’m- I’m so confused.”

Mizar sighed. “I told you. None of this is real. It’s a computer program. Haven’t you noticed that things aren’t quite right?”

“Well, yeah,” Alcor replied. He flapped his wings, but stayed firmly glued to the ground. “My demon powers don’t work. Honestly though that’s fine with me. I’m just having fun drawing the good lines.”

“The what?” Mizar demanded, incredulous.

“The good lines!” Alcor squeaked, and waved at the puzzles behind him. “I don’t know what they’re for or what they do, but I’ve been so busy solving all these puzzles that I’ve barely thought about… why… things are… off…”

He trailed off, and Mizar sniffed.

“That’s the point. They’re there to keep you occupied.”

Alcor frowned. “Why though? Who’d go to so much effort to make all of this for me?”

There was no response.

---

Alcor continued to solve puzzles. He didn’t know why Mizar’s voice had stopped, but he was glad it had -- she was the true distraction, not the puzzles. And yet every once in a while, he’d be staring at a particularly difficult panel with one of those Y-shaped symbols on it that made no sense to him, and his mind would begin to wander.

And when it did, he’d notice another one of those tape recorders nearby. There were a lot of them on the island, and they all had boring quotes from philosophers or whatever on them. But then Mizar’s voice would cut in, with a note of glee like she’d thought he’d never speak to her again. Every time she sounded more and more desperate for him to leave. And every time it made him feel more and more frustrated.

“Okay, so,” Alcor said as Mizar's voice faded in for the 20th or so time, “you said last time you might’ve figured out who made this island.” He didn't look up or take his finger off the panel in front of him.

There was a rustling noise, and then a loud pop. “Sorry, had to plug in my headphones. That’s right, though. I’ve done some more research since then and I’m sure of it now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“It was an advanced artificial intelligence,” Mizar replied. “I think you might be familiar with it. It’s called ‘the Alcor Virus’.”

“Oh.” Alcor paused for a moment. “Yeah, I wrote him to mess with fanfic writers. Why do you think he made the island?”

“I don’t think,” Mizar said. “It definitely did. There’s traces of it all over the computer network in this building.”

“There’s traces of him all over every device with a processor in the whole world,” Alcor countered. “He’s a really good virus. I’m very proud of him.”

Mizar groaned. “I also found its executable embedded in the binary for this game. Also a few summoning circles, and a big ASCII art picture of it giving me the middle finger.”

“Okay, maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “Why, though?”

“How should I know?” Mizar said, with more than a note of irritation in her voice. “I’m not a psychologist and I’m definitely not a computer scientist. Also why does it matter ‘why’ it’s doing this? Isn’t it time to get out of there already? I’ve already asked you like a million times!”

“No!” Alcor exclaimed, throwing his hands up. He walked out of the structure he’d been standing in and headed toward an area with some shady trees in which he’d noticed puzzles he hadn’t solved yet. “I like it here. It’s fun for me. And I deserve a vacation from all the people who bother me all the time. Why would I leave?”

“Because you can’t just run away from your problems!” Mizar shot back. “You think this is healthy? Literally living in a virtual reality world so you don’t have to talk to anyone anymore? How do you think I feel?”

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Horrible! I thought you cared about me, Dipper, but all you care about are those stupid puzzles! Stars, sometimes you act like such a demon!”

Alcor frowned. “You know that I -”

“Yes, I get it, you ARE a demon and you can’t help it that you’re a selfish piece of shit. I GET it. Is this how it’s really going to end? You’re just going to turn me down after I’ve spent all this time trying to get you out?”

Alcor’s ears turned red as he felt Mizar’s furious, extraplanar glare land on him. “It really means that much to you that I leave?”

He heard Mizar smack herself in the face. “Yes, yes, a hundred times yes! It kills me that you’re not in my life anymore! You probably thought I could get along just fine without you and no one would be affected by you staying forever on your fantasy puzzle island vacation, huh? Why do you think I keep asking you? I’m starting to get sick of it!”

Alcor felt every muscle in his body tense up at that. He squeezed his eyes shut as Mizar continued to shout, tried to fend off the words violently striking at his ego, and only opened them again when she cut off mid-word. The light on the tape recorder had turned off.

He tried to let himself relax again but he couldn’t. It felt like his chest had become a black hole and it was taking all he had not to shrink up into a tiny little dot and vanish. He hated being yelled at. Hated it.

Maybe Mizar was right, though. Maybe he was just being a selfish jerk. He'd done it before. Countless times, to countless Mizars, his self-serving actions had caused harm to mortals and it was always his fault because he couldn't put himself in their shoes. Maybe he was a monster after all. It was just like a monster to have wants and needs that inevitably end up hurting people.

Alcor exhaled, long and heavy, and pressed the button on the tape again. When the pre-recorded message ended and Mizar’s shouts returned, he interrupted her.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

[m-oana-archive]

Monsters Among Us (Remus x Reader)

Summary: After a year of dating Remus, noticing he disappears every month, and only getting lies when you ask why, you begin to suspect he has been cheating on you.

Words: 2,432 | read on AO3 | Masterlist

It began as an odd reoccurrence, a pattern of leaving that was covered up by excuse after excuse. Ones you believed, like when James told you, “he’s feeling terrible, Y/N,” or Peter said, “there are some family issues that he has to attend to,” or when Sirius would wave his hand in the air and say, “you’re making a fuss over nothing”, because there was no reason to doubt them. Or, really, no reason to doubt Remus. Remus who drank hot chocolate and wore sweaters too big for his torso and smiled shyly and sweetly. Remus who had asked you out a year ago, a scalding red hue streaked across his freckled face, and was never late to a date or raised his voice around you or told any of the abundance of secrets you had shared with him. Remus, who you trusted with every bone in your body and every pound of your heartbeat ever since meeting him, and never did anything worthy enough to break it.

But maybe, the very parts of Remus that made him seem faithful could have spelled demise from the beginning. Because it had been another repetition of three days where Remus had just mysteriously disappeared, and after a year’s worth of excuses, the other three boys were running out of lies to tell you. Lies that you never knew were lies until, at breakfast one morning, they looked around at one another, mouths agape, waiting for each other to say where Remus was, but none of them actually answering.

You glanced at the three of them like they looked at one another. “What?” you asked, not bothering to smother your annoyance over with something sweeter. “It’s not a difficult question.”

Sirius cleared his throat. “Moony is, uh, requesting to be left alone in our dorm. A relative, a Great Uncle, if I’m correct, right guys”—you watched as Peter and James nodded their heads as unconvincingly as Sirius spoke— “passed away last night. He’s fairly torn up about it.”

A cold smile crawled up your lips. “A Great Uncle, really?” you inquired, causing Sirius to nod with a mouthful of Cornish pasty in his mouth. “This wouldn’t be the same Great Uncle that died, say, three months ago, when Remus went missing just like this?”

Suddenly, the bite of Cornish pasty flew out of Sirius’ mouth, landing in an unappealing splat on Sirius’ filled plate. “Listen… Y/N… you’ve got to understand…”

“Understand what?” you spat. “I’m his girlfriend, and for some reason, he keeps disappearing for a few days every month. You guys won’t tell me why, he won’t tell me why, so I suspect he’s up to something he wants to keep a secret from me. Another girl, perhaps?”

You didn’t mean to let it slip out of your mouth, the fear of someone else, though it had been plaguing your mind incessantly, keeping you from sleeping and eating and paying attention in lessons. Every thought you had somehow looped back to this mysterious mistress you had convinced yourself Remus had. In your mind, she had a voice like honey and hair of that same shade and a body that curved in all the right spots. In your mind, she was witty and well-read and knew how to speak in at least five languages. In your mind, Remus loved her more, loved her in a dangerously seductive kind of way that made your stomach lurch and your heart feel like someone set it on fire.

As soon as it came out, like a river that rushed through a broken dam, Sirius and James and Peter were all over you and one another’s sentences. They promised you it was an exaggeration, that Remus loved you far too much to ever cheat. But you shook your head at them. “I can’t be over exaggerating if it’s so bad none of you guys will tell me what’s going on. So I’ll be on my way to your dorm to disturb his,”—you put your hands up in air-quotes— “‘mourning’.”

Peter grabbed your wrist, pulling you back in so fast your head got foggy. “Please, no, Y/N. Let him be.”

“Sorry,” you chuckled, prying your hand away right before his other one flew by in an attempt to latch on. “But I’m done being lied to. I deserve more than this.”

You could feel their eyes stiff on you as you sprinted out of the Great Hall, never reaching a steady pace, only getting faster and faster as you got closer. So you paused, breathless, right at the dorm door. Behind your staggered exhales, you could hear the creaking of a bed, the sharp intake of breath from inside the room. In a moment of helplessness you fell, palms-first, against the hallway wall, reluctant to open the door and ruin the best relationship of your life. But was it the best if he had been cheating on you for an entire year? Was it the best if he convinced all of his friends to lie about it to your face? Was it the best if every sweet word he ever said, every tender moonlit kiss and brushing back of hair behind ears was done imagining, wishing, your face was someone else’s?

The door was open before you even realized you had moved, that your hand was on the knob. You didn’t mean it to slam, but the wood hit the plaster on the wall and Remus jumped up from his bed as a response. He was shirtless: a bad sign. His hair was awry: a bad sign. Fresh scars graced his skin, as if someone was scraping up and down his back while they were…

He was full of bad signs. It didn’t help when he grabbed a blanket from his bed, covering his torso with it.

“You have to leave right now,” he demanded. That only caused you to step into his room further.

You cocked an eyebrow at him, knowing, regardless of the darkness brought by the curtained windows, he could see it. He could feel it. “Why?” you asked. “So you can keep screwing the girl you’ve been cheating on me with?”

Remus’ eyebrows scrunched up in confusion, his lips pursing slightly. “What are you talking about? I’m not—”

“Really?” you interrupted while approaching his bed. “So, if I come over here, I won’t see a girl…” Your sentence trailed off because you didn’t see one. Even after searching under pillows and quilts and peeking your head to see beneath the bed. Rapidly, you turned to Remus, who had the audacity to be smirking. “What? You think it’s amusing that you’ve been treating me so badly I think you’re cheating on me?”

His face fell. “No.”

Like a wildfire you jumped over to him, blazing with red anger and incessant ferocity. “I mean, look at your skin, Remus. Your hair. Your lips. They’re swollen. Even if she’s not here, she was. And you let her touch you and kiss you and you did that back.” You shoved him backward, reveling in how he stumbled.

He held his hands out in front of his body, alongside the blanket, as if it were some force-field. “I swear I’m not cheating on you. Why the hell would I do that?”

“Beats me.” You were approaching his space again, backing him up across the carpet, and soon he’d be pinned against the wall. Your stomach dropped at the thought of him already having his back pressed against it early in a much different tone. The sadness didn’t echo in your voice, luckily, as you continued, “but unless you give me proof you aren’t, I’m breaking up with you, right here, right now.”

“Please don’t.” It was broken and vulnerable and manipulatively so, you decided. “I promise I’m not cheating on you.”

“Then why are you gone all the time? Then why, the one time I find you when you’re missing, do you look like this?”

Suddenly, Remus’ focus was on the ground, his voice as uncertain as his posture. “I… I can’t tell you.”

“You don’t have a choice, Remus. You tell me or I’m walking out of that door and never dating you again.” He was silent, still looking at the floor as if trying to act invisible, and it only spurred you on more. “For the love of God, Remus, say something!” you screamed. “Tell me what’s going on! I want an answer, goddamnit!”

Your hands were on his shoulders again, shaking them violently, when he looked up at you. There was a fire in his eyes, but not one belonging to a hearth, producing the kind of warm hominess Remus usually emitted. This was dark and amber and distant and caused your throat to choke up. “This is my business,” he grumbled. Though it was said quietly, there was a sternness in the delivery that made it so Remus’ sentence didn’t have to be a scream to cause a shiver to run up your spine. “What happens once a month only concerns me and, if you don’t trust me enough to shut up about it, maybe we should break up.”

The air was tense with silence. Unwillingness to move as you both stood there, considering one another, waiting for something. Anything. You couldn’t break up with Remus, leave his laughter, abandon his empathy, desert his devotion. But you couldn’t stay like this, trapped on some kind of mad carnival ride that shot you down to your demise once a month without warning.

“Do you really mean that?” you asked, looking up at him, hating yourself for wanting to rub a new scar off of his cheek with your thumb.

Remus faltered momentarily. “Do you?” There was a tenderness to it, so thick it was tangible, so earnest it made tears build up in your eyes and you nodded in response, afraid your mouth might say something too impulsive if you let it answer instead.

It took a breath, or two, or three, for you to feel settled enough to speak. “I can’t be with someone who keeps doing this to me. It’s not fair.”

Remus snickered. “Life isn’t fair. Get used to it.”

“Well, you know, there are a lot of things people can’t control that are unfair and they have to live with that and it sucks. But if the person I date goes missing for four days every month and comes back looking like they slept with someone else and won’t tell me why they ware missing, that’s a situation I can control, that I can get out of. In fact, that is a situation I am going to get out of.”

You stormed to the door harshly, as if trying to punch holes in the ground with your feet. It stung through your shoes but nothing compared to the slow shredding of your heart by Remus’ words, so you kept on, almost reaching the door before Remus grabbed your wrist and flipped you around.

“Want to talk about things people can’t control that are unfair and they have to live with?” he asked in a way that didn’t warrant a response. “I’m a werewolf. And I have been since I was five. I leave every month because that’s when I transform, and I can’t risk hurting anyone. Especially you. And I can’t do anything, because when I don’t tell people, they think I’m being a shitty human being. And when I do tell them, they treat me like some bomb about to explode. So I have the lads lie about it because they are the only three people who have stayed. And I had the lads lie to you about it because I was hoping you would want to stay, too. And maybe if you stayed long enough you would realize I’m not some monster. You wouldn’t be afraid.”

Somewhere along the line, the blanket had been forgotten about, either fallen out of hands or knowingly discarded from them. So, as you absorbed Remus’ words, you were simultaneously consumed with the scars and bruises and bumps that covered all over his torso and chest and neck, following the trail of them up to his eyes. “I’ve never been scared of you,” you promised. “Just scared of a made-up girl I thought you loved more than me.”

A laugh left Remus’ lips. It was airy and had a sugary-sweetness about it that began softening the air in the room, disassembling the tension it held. “I literally couldn’t love anyone more than I love you,” he said. And he was smiling; it shone like a gem in the dim daylight.

You weren’t sure how or when the repositioning occured, but suddenly you were facing Remus entirely, his hands in yours, yours in his, fingers sliding through one another’s lazily. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. That you had to tell me something so personal out of a threat to break up.” Your face fell at the admission of guilt.

“Hey,” Remus said, letting go of your hand for only a moment to lift your chin up with the calloused pads of his fingers. “I gave you the same threat and distrusted you the same amount. We both really screwed up. But we’re okay now, right?”

You looked at Remus. Remus who drank hot chocolate, was never late to a date or told any of the abundance of secrets you had shared with him. Remus, who you trusted with every bone in your body and every pound of your heartbeat ever since meeting him, and never did anything worthy enough to break it. Not even this.

“Of course,” you smiled, feeling your heart alongside the edges of your lips.

With his fingers still on your chin, Remus pulled your mouth onto his, gently, coaxing lips apart, leaving you feeling like flowers were growing through your ribs from the bottom of your stomach. The petals kept opening, tickling ribs, leaving a fluttering sensation behind.

Remus pulled back and then you pulled back further, stepping backwards just slightly. With great intention you looked up and down at his skin, letting your knuckles brush lightly against his scars, amazed and agonized at the stories they told. “You’re not a monster,” you reassured while brushing, brushing, brushing. “You’re just a guy with… with a small issue.”

His smile was so bright it radiated onto your skin. “The lads call it my ‘furry little problem’,” he said, and you both laughed, together, harmony and melody.

“Furry little problem,” you repeated. “I like that. I like it a lot.”

[reinathane]

SELF PARA / WITH THE CURRENT LOCATION: Some road in Olympus thx TRIGGERS: Murder, guns, car accident, potential drowning, almost death, like many things tbh

It takes all of two days for Reina to find out exactly who Caine’s mystery date is. It wasn’t all that easy — she’s not exactly well connected at the Watering Hole, which happens to the place she’d eventually managed to find out they went from her sister, despite Rowan’s insistence on being difficult about it. She’d bribed the hostess who unfortunately didn’t know the blonde that’d been with Caine, but apparently her server friend had recognized her as the city attorney, though the woman didn’t know her name. From there, it was cake — all she needed to do was a quick Google search and the name Anastasia Ames had popped right up. With a name, Reina could easily find out the rest; her phone number, address, and office building falling right into the woman’s lap. She’d inconspicuously followed the blonde to work twice, stalking her route, drive times, and the fact that she had to take a road along the river’s edge to get there.

Just as quickly as she finds all of this out, Reina cultivates a plan.

It’s a simple one, something that’s either going to land them both in the hospital or have Caine’s dumb blonde bitch exiting Olympus in a body bag. Either way, Reina’s willing to put her life on the line if it gets her revenge. Caine may not technically be hers to be possessive over anymore, but he is still hers and poor Anastasia is just another victim of her unchecked rage.

Truthfully, this isn’t the first time Reina’s gone on a murderous rampage in a fit of jealousy. The first time she’d found out Jason cheated on her with a prostitute, she’d stalked the woman all the way to a bus stop in the desert just to plow her over with her SUV. The woman hadn’t survived the incident, but she’d lived long enough that when Reina hopped out of the car to make sure her job was done, she’d been able to look the whore dead in the eyes while she took her last breath.

It doesn’t haunt her, if anything it’d been exhilarating and she hadn’t been able to stop. It had almost become a game — every time she’d hear about a woman that slept with her husband, she’d hunt them down and make their lives hell. Be it through financial ruin, physical harm, mental exploitation — anything she could do to torture these women, Reina would find a way with ease. She’d once even barged in on Jason in the midst of fucking a random siren in the clubhouse, and she hadn’t hesitated to put a bullet through the woman’s brain the second she walked through the door.

Part of her knows it’s all very fucked up. If a psychiatrist had just a minute to inspect the inside of her brain, she’d be shipped off to solitary confinement in three seconds flat. But most of Reina doesn’t give two fucks about these women who had unfortunately decided to sleep with the wrong man, and she honestly doesn’t think she ever will.

Now that Jason’s dead, it only makes sense that her jealousy is turned towards Caine. There’s been glimpses before, when she would make a big deal about him simply talking to another woman at a party, or when he’d made the mistake of telling her he wanted to hire a secretary — but nothing like this. Nothing this extreme.

Once she’s certain it’ll work, Reina gets into her car the next morning and loops around the opposite direction of the blonde woman from Caine’s apparent wet dreams. It’d be just her luck for Anastasia to go to work earlier or later today, or to take another route or do literally anything to fuck up Reina’s plan. She’s thankful that it’s early enough and the road isn’t used much, there’s only a car at a steady distance in front of her and a few that have passed her, and it gives her plenty of notice when Anastasia’s vehicle finally comes into view in the distance. Her timing needs to be perfect, she’s only got a few moments to catch the other woman off guard, and once she’s close enough Reina starts swerving back and forth on the road before pushing across the double yellow lines into the left lane right at the last second. She’s almost expecting a head on collision, thinking maybe she’d fucked up and waited too long, that she hadn’t given the blonde enough of a reaction time — but sure enough, Anastasia swerves, her car sliding down the bank.

Adrenaline is the only thing that keeps Reina from slamming on the breaks, her heart pounding and a grin spreading across her features once she realizes the full extent of what she’s done. She doesn’t look back, doesn’t wait to see if the woman manages to escape her sinking vehicle. Instead her black SUV speeds off into the distance as if she’d never been there at all, allowing fate to take its course. Her job is done.

[alottanothing]

Left to Ruin: Chapter Twenty-Three

Summary: Ahkmenrah wakes to find chaos befallen his great city.

Previous Chapters

Word Count: 3212

Warnings: A N G S T 

Tag List: @xmxisxforxmaybe, @r-ahh-mi, @hah0106, @rami-malek-trash, @diasimar, @sherlollydramoine​, @flipper-kisses​, @ivy-miranda-2390​, @txmel​, @sunkissedmikky​, @concentratedsassandcandy​, @edteche2​

(Let me know if I missed you, or if you would like to be added to the tag list)

A/N:  I don’t have much to say this week, just thank you for giving the previous chapter love, and I hope you can forgive me for this chapter, and the next. Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Again, as a disclaimer, I am not an ancient Egyptian expert and google only knows so much. So yeah, I took so historical liberties while writing this to make my life easier, but tried to keep it as “authentic” as possible

The walk back to the palace after a night along the shores of the Nile felt like a shorter journey than the same path they strode only hours before. Nevertheless, Ahkmenrah was wholly at peace, enveloped in the warmth that true love kindled. Hope swelled in his breast too, a dull ember of blissful bright light, stoked to a flame by the news of his unborn child. The thought and the threats of war were far out of his mind, lost in the tranquility Nouke showed him on the beach of the mighty river. And the pharaoh hoped, beyond all reason, that terrible dread would stay lost.

When their feet led them home, the king and queen took their time placing the stones back into their respective places—a puzzle that had become second nature after dozens of trips—and they left a single brick askew with the promise of another trip beyond their cage. They stood for a long moment, marveling at the majesty of their garden under Khonsu’s glow. The picturesque sight pulsed with a blissful aura, the familiar fragrances and sounds forever adhered to their happiest memories. With a content sigh, Nouke wrapped around Ahk’s strong arm, their fingers intertwined as she rested her head against his shoulder with a soft smile on her features.

Ahkmenrah’s expression was a mirror of hers, the muscles of his face upturned with an air of whimsy as he recalled visions of he and Nouke running and laughing amid the lush green. He watched as his younger self chased his best friend in loops around the fountain before she playfully shoved him into the crystal clear waters, laughing. All too quickly those phantoms of his past faded to a far superior scene. This time he envisioned his children running and playing the same games, laughing and screaming gleefully while he and his beautiful queen lounged nearby, watching merrily.

Ahkmenrah would always fight for that future; whatever it took.

When those illusions faded too, they made their way through the quiet halls, stopping just shy of their bed-chamber doors. Ahk turned and met his guardian with a smile.

“Have I ever thanked you for never telling anyone about our secret passage?”

A kindhearted smile ghosted over Kamuzu’s lips, “There’s no need, my King.”

Ahk’s smile grew as he thought of every venture he’d ever taken through that crumbled wall; Kamuzu was always there, and never had he tried to keep him in his royal cage or told a soul where he had gone. It made the pharaoh profoundly glad.

“Rest well, my friend.”

“And you, my king.” Kamuzu bowed his head to each of them. “My queen.”

“Goodnight, Kamuzu,” Nouke said with a sweet smile.

Ahkmenrah watched his Medjay protector go, the tendrils of his love-filled heart reaching out to the man who had kept him safe his entire life.

It wasn’t until Nouke gave his fingers a squeeze and his arm a gentle tug that he turned his attention back to her as she coaxed him to follow. The glow of the torches was both inviting and whimsical as he watched the flickering luminescence dance across his wife’s figure, making her seem even more ethereal than he already thought her to be. A yawn broke his concentration; the dull light soothing enough to also remind him of the weight of his day; sleep was a pleasure he longed to partake in.

Nouke surrendered his hand as she politely excused the maidservants and the guards with a wave, and the pharaoh thanked them for their service as they left. When the heavy thud of the doors falling shut echoed in the vast room, Ahkmenrah turned his sights to where his wife stood near their son’s cradle. The way she swayed gently—like reeds in the desert breeze—as she hummed a lullaby, was spellbinding to behold. She smiled down at the sleeping boy, her open palm caressing the tiny swell of her belly. Ahk’s heart fluttered, and he sighed as he fixated the picture in his memory.

Ahkmenrah’s bare feet barely made a sound as they crossed the room to wind himself around Nouke’s strong frame, pressing against her back, his chin resting on her shoulder.

“I hope we have a girl,” Ahk mused, dreamily fanning his palm over the slight bump of his wife’s abdomen. “A little princess as beautiful as her mother.”

Nouke hummed agreeably, and he could hear her soft smile.

“Whichever the gods see fit to give us will be a blessing.” She kept her hand over his and added, “Prince or princess.” 

“You are right, of course.” Ahk laid a delicate kiss to the exposed skin of her shoulder, over a mark he’d suckled into formation as they made love on the banks of the Nile hours before. “But a king can hope.”

Nouke spun lithely in his arms and combed her fingers through his hair as her arms circled his neck. “Yes...a king can hope. But now the king must rest. Dawn will come early, and there is much to do.”

She kissed him before his lips could twist into a frown with the unpleasant reminder of duty, but she deftly chased it away. Nouke bled into all of his senses as he pulled her close: the texture of her lips and the nectary taste that coupled with every sweep against his. Every soft swell and curve of her body pressing against him as the floral scent of her perfume filled his lungs. Its sweetness was dull under the unique musk of sand and reeds: a fragrant remnant of their excursion on the shore.

Nouke was savoring him too; the pull of her mouth was a slow and sensuous expression of worship that made Ahk crave more than sleep.

When their kiss parted, his queen stayed close, circling the tip of his nose with hers before giving him a chaste peck, then led him to bed. Nouke curled against his side, and sleep found them both quickly.

The peaceful void of dreamless slumber had been elusive for the pharaoh of late, despite the joy in his life. His mind was overrun with concern and the well-being of those he loved, even without the threat of war. Some nights he would pace and ponder until his head hurt, or until Nouke coaxed him back to bed. She would lay his head against her chest, her fingers gently sweeping through his hair as she lulled his frazzled mind into submission—allowing sleep to, at last, claim him. Other nights he just laid with his eyes locked on the ceiling until the night sky was swallowed by the sun.

He hated those nights the most.

However, that night, the thoughts in his head were quiet and hopeful despite the threat they faced. For hours, or perhaps only minutes, the pharaoh found sleep restful nestled with the woman he loved until a strange commotion slowly pulled him from that dreamless void.

Ahkmenrah tired to ignore the somehow distant, but close, ruckus; clinging to sleep with a mighty grip. But when the sound of a shout mixed with the sound of the clamor, Ahk’s eyes fluttered open. It only took a moment for them to adjust to the darkness, his focus getting lost for a second in the peaceful sight of Nouke sleeping next to him.

The pharaoh smiled and carefully pulled free, standing to stretch his limbs as a yawn overtook his features. With a few lazy strides, he wandered to his son’s bedside; the upward curl of his lips growing as he looked at the sleeping boy.

There was where he lingered, watching Sekmen sleep—the strange commotion momentarily forgot—as he let his mind think more on the future awaiting him: evenings in his beloved West Garden with two children to play with. The notion filled his stomach with eager butterflies, his smile growing impossibly wider until that peculiar clamor hindered it.

All at once, the flitting butterflies in his belly lost their whimsy, quickly metamorphosing into sick, twisting knots. Smoke was drifting into the chamber from the open balcony much too thick to be from simple torchlight. Frightened screams registered next, rendering the pharaoh frozen as he turned his ear to listen.

More cries haunted the air, the sounds making his heart hammer and his skin coat with nervous sweat. Fear and curiosity coupled to urge him to investigate the billowing smoke and the refrain of laments as his breaths slowed.

Ahk could smell the fire—see the floating pieces of ash in the air—he could hear clearly the screams as he stepped onto his balcony. The pharaoh leaned over the rail, fear a curiosity writhing in his gut, and the devastation he found made his eyes grow impossibly wide, his mouth dry and his heart heavy with dread. Before he could take in the horror below, he hastily stumbled out of range, narrowly missing the strike of an arrow as if flew past his face.  He gasped as he careened backward, falling to the ground, the pain of the impact dull as panic consumed his every sense.

Quickly, the pharaoh staggered back to his feet and once more took to the wall of the railing, peering at the mayhem below.

And suddenly, Ahkmenrah felt ill.

Men were scaling the palace walls, setting alight anything that would burn: wood, idols, plants, people. The metallic clang of weapon on weapon split the air like thunder between horrified screams. Soldiers, guards, and Medjay laid dead or dying while their comrades fought the slew of invaders trickling over the high walls.

It was a sight Ahkmenrah never dreamed of seeing, and never would he forget it. Fear spread through him, ripping like icy claws. Kahmunrah had been right; it was too late to negotiate. War had come to them, and Egypt was not prepared.

A chill shook the pharaoh as he fought to quell the flooding of tears in his eyes; every one of his senses working at an impossible pace to comprehend the chaos. He needed to be strong, and to stay calm; if he allowed fear to settle too deep, he would surely seal his fate.

With a deep inhale Ahk attempted to push through the pandemonium of his emotions only to choke on the tainted air. He coughed and gasped and tried again, filling his lungs swiftly—like a man drowning and wheezed once more.

With the crook of his elbow to shield his breaths from the ash and smoke, Ahkmenrah slowly backed away, unable to tear his sight from the siege of his grand palace until it became too much. In an instant, his fumbling feet spun and broke into a run, his heart pounding in his throat, the mist in his eyes a cumulation of fear and the burning sting of the smoke-filled air.

His voice was raspy when he woke his wife as softly as he could, not wanting to cause her any more panic than he could spare. 

“Nouke.” Ahk shook her shoulder gently, but with enough force to pull her from sleeps grasp.

She threw him a look of irritated confusion, her heavy eyelids blinking slow.

“Get Sekmen,” the pharaoh ordered lightly. “We must find safety...now.”

Nouke shook her head slowly, still trying to fight off slumber’s laden trance, “Wha—”

A scream echoed through the chamber from outside, and the queen sat up straight, eyes blown wide. 

“What’s going on?” she asked, fear in her tone as she threw on the nearest article of clothing she could find.

Ahkmenrah did the same and chanced another glimpse from the balcony to gauge the severity of their situation—a foolish hope of finding peace, gone. Mere minutes had passed, and everything was worse. Men poured over the walls like water from a pitcher, their weapons glowing a fiendish orange as the surrounding flames reflected from the sharpened surface. Each of them was poised and ready to strike, militant men who knew war and had mastered it, unlike the pharaoh they sought to destroy.

“How could it have come to this?” Ahk said to himself in quiet disbelief as he watched his home fall to ruin. 

“What’s happening?” Nouke asked again from inside their chamber.

“We are being ambushed,” he finally told her, unsure of how to break the news without panic twisting onto her face.

Ahkmenrah crossed the room with purpose and retrieved the mounted khopesh on the wall nearest the door. 

For years the weapon served as no more than a decoration—a gift given to him by his father for completing his lessons in the training yards all those years age—that until then, the pharaoh had forgotten about. 

The moment it’s cumbersome weight was in his grasp, his memory flooded with visions of the summer his father taught him how to swing a blade. Even as a boy he’d never come close to mastering it—he should have tried harder.

Those few hours in the training yard, sparring with boys his own age, were lessons Ahkmenrah had allowed himself to forget. Those boys were always better than him, and it was those boys who became his soldiers, soldiers who were fighting and dying to protect a man who could not protect them.

Ahk’s stomach churned at the thought; they were fighting and dying—skilled men—what chance had he?

All at once, the pharaoh was too weak to wield his blade properly. Every ounce of strength he had he used to watch Nouke gingerly gather their son into her arms as he stood frozen. When her amber eyes locked with his, fear was hidden under her tightly bound composure. But Ahk could feel it.

“What do we do?” she asked, her voice impossibly calm.

“We need to find my brother.” Ahk knew she wouldn’t want to go to Kah, but the pharaoh could think of no better idea. Kahmunrah knew how to stay alive. “He will know what is best to do, and where to go.”

Nouke swallowed her prejudice and nodded, letting all her trust fall on his shoulders. “Okay.”

Ahkmenrah swallowed twice to fight the lump forming in his throat, suddenly more afraid than ever—he could not allow himself to let her down.

“Maybe they aren’t in the palace yet,” Nouke said, glancing towards the door.

Ahk turned his ear to listen; chaos rang, but it was impossible to discern where the clamor came from. Every scream that colored the air with shadow made the tension more palpable, forging a dreadfully crushing atmosphere. It stuck to the sweat covering Ahkmenrah’s skin; every bead at his temple feeling a thousand pounds.

When Sekmenrah began to fuss, the pharaoh wondered if his son could sense it too. His face was crinkled in fright, his tiny whimpers shaking his entire form as he clunk to his mother helplessly. The sight was like a knife in the pharaoh’s heart.

“Hush, my little prince,” Nouke murmured gently, rocking the boy to soothe him.

The sound of his mother’s voice and lulling gestures seemed to settle him until a loud bang hammered against the chamber door, causing them all to jump.

Instinctively, Nouke’s free hand gripped tightly at her husband’s bicep as she moved closer. “Ahk...” her voice was pleading and scared.

“Behind me,” he urged, quickly.

Another knock pierced the air, and Ahkmenrah stood with his shoulders squared, feet firmly planted, shielding his family as best he knew how. Adrenaline was beginning to eat up his fear allowing his focus to hone. Silently he prayed to any of the gods still listening to send him the strength to protect those he loved. Ahkmenrah could not lose them, he simply could not.

One more loud bang echoed, rattling his bones and some of his fear rekindled when the doors burst open like the sound of an explosion.

Medjay flooded into the pharaoh’s bed-chamber, their eyes lit with fire, blood on their weapons. Several barricaded the doors with only their joined strength, pushing against the entry with all their might.

Kamuzu was at their lead, shouting orders, his weapon stained red. The king was never more happy to see his dutiful protector. Kamuzu’s muscled arm was wrapped protectively around a young woman who was sobbing loud enough to muffle the clamor. 

“Set?” Ahk squinted through the haze.

“Ahkmen!” 

Setshepsut tore out of the Medjay’s grip and sprinted into his arms and he secured his footing so as not to fall as she collided against him. The abrupt onslaught of relief of knowing his sister was still alive crashed against the pharaoh with enough force he almost tumbled backward anyway.

“Set!” His own tone matched hers: glad but overrun with sorrow.

Setshepsut clung to him like a frightened child to her mother, sobbing into his chest as he held her. Nouke hugged around her too, as best she could, keeping her hand on Ahk’s arm.

A question pulled at Ahkmenrah’s brows, one that Kamuzu answered before the pharaoh even truly knew what it was he wanted to ask. 

“Her husband was found dead at his post. Not two minutes later, this started.”

“Satauhotep?” Ahk pulled his sister a little snugger as he fought back the lump in his throat. “He’s dead?”

Kamuzu nodded. 

The adrenaline vanished and suddenly, Ahk could feel his grasp on everything slipping. Each of his senses felt cold and emptied, as though his spirit was falling into a nightmarish black void. Nouke and Set clinging to him were the only tethers that held him within his crumbling reality.

He held all the power in the empire, and yet, the pharaoh had never felt more powerless.

“How did the Nehesyw and their allies get into the city?” Ahk asked, turning his gaze to Kamuzu.

His guardian pursed his lips as a strange somberness settled over his features that made Ahkmenrah’s stomach feel sick.

“No, my king. This is not the Nehesyw.”

“Who?” Ahk asked, his voice low.

Kamuzu hesitated, eyes drifting to the floor as he gathered his words, then he looked back to the pharaoh as though he was trying to save him from the truth by stalling.

“Kamuzu...” Ahkmenrah pleaded. “Who?”

The king’s Medjay protector sighed and shook his head apologetically. “It is your brother’s men who have lain siege to the palace.”

That bottomless black void returned, seeking to devour him, but this time, fire surged through Ahk’s blood, combating the lingering dread. 

“Kahmunrah is behind this?” His voice was scarily calm despite the anger writhing inside of him.

Kamuzu nodded, “The men he collected—they fight for him; against your guard, against your Medjay.”

“And my soldiers?”

“Some fight for you, others, against you,” Kamuzu confessed. “Tahut-Mut leads his garrison against you.”

Of course, Ahk thought. How could I not have seen that?

The siege Ahkmenrah had caught Kah and Tahut discussing was underway, and Ahk would never forgive himself for missing that clue.

More unsettling, however, was the blatant fear smoldering in Kamuzu’s eyes. In twenty-five years, Ahkmenrah had never seen a look of such distress on his guardian's face. And when Kamuzu finally spoke, his voice was gruff and soft—mournfully broken—the timbre of a man who was completely blindsided.

“You are in danger, my king.”

And Ahkmenrah knew then, the odds were against them.

[seasidewriter1-writes]

The Mummy!Balance/Obi-Lara AU

A big thanks to @rjnorth-writes​ who helped me flesh this out! And a shout out to @ban-joey​ who asked to hear some headcanons!

Kinda like the Moulin Rouge! hcs, I’m gonna do some basic ones, but if y’all want ones that, like... follow the plot of The Mummy in more detail, or want a particular scene expanded on, lemme know!

So let’s start with a little dramatis personae:

Elara Skywalkers works as a librarian at the Cairo Museum of Antiquities. In the grand scheme of things, she’d love to work in the field, or in some more substantial role at the museum. But because it’s 1926, it doesn’t matter if she’s good at what she does––and she is good at what she does, you should see the stack of note filled journals she’s got––she’s relegated to librarian. And though it’s not what she wants to do, she does still enjoy it. Being around books all day is a joy; especially when she gets a chance to sit down and read a couple.

Then there’s Anakin. He’s the cocky little brother who manages to get a job as an assistant archeologist. He gripes about the fact that she’s not out there with him, and that she’d be able to identify things twice as fast as the white-bearded men that strutted around the sites. His a mischief maker, loves to bother Elara at work. Sometimes he’ll accidentally mess up her organizing, and as punishment she’ll make him assist her in putting the books away.

And last, but certainly not least––Obi-Wan Kenobi. A good, honorable, loyal soldier. Followed his troop into the desert on a goddamn rumor, because he wasn’t about to let them go without him. Betrayed by his comrade Hondo, he was left stranded in the desert, wandering until he made it to Cairo. Such events left his trust fractured, his exterior a little rough, and he’s more guarded than he’s ever been. What was once easy going charm, is now apathetic snark. He’s quick to action, slow to trust.

So it all starts when Anakin lifts a strange artifact off a stranger at the kasbah

He doesn’t steal, not usually. But this thing... this golden box with hieroglyphics on its sides... something about it is different. The man in possession of it seemed like a drunk, all scruffy hair and wild beard, sweat-stained clothes with sand in its creases

So he just... lifts it out of the guy’s pocket, puts it in his own, spares some money to buy the guy another drink, and then slips off into the night

Elara is more than intrigued with the thing, especially when she and Anakin figure out how to open it and discover the map inside––the map to the fabled Hamunaptra

Curator Windu (somehow, it works for him to the the curator, amIright?) discourages them from researching the matter further, or trying to follow the map

And Padmé, an American ambassador to the museum agrees with said notion

So when it comes out that Anakin stole the map and was not allowed to borrow it for ‘research purposes,’ Elara gives him the most long suffering look, and them whaps him with a pocket-sized book on ancient Egyptian history

After doing some good old-fashioned snooping around, Elara and Anakin discover that the man he robbed was arrested for brawling (and probably other charges he’s been avoiding)

At the jail they meet the jailer––Watto. What fun.

They’re brought to a cell, where the man they requested to meet is brought... and he is apathetic to say the least

He’s scruffy looking, with a bushy bead, stringy hair down to his shoulders, and sweat stained clothes

He clocks Anakin once he recognizes him and realizes what he did

Is very snide about the fact they want to know about the map (”I’m afraid you think me dumb. It’s obvious you’re in search of Hamunaptra.”)

When Elara steps forward to take the reigns of the conversation, apathy turns to roguish charm; which leads to his getting her close enough to the bars to kiss her through them, demanding that she get him out of there if she wants his help

And Elara is reeling from that kiss because it’s quick and rough and lingering, and nothing like that has ever happened to her before

One he’s saved from execution, he founds himself duty bound to help out the pretty lady and her snarky brother. So arrangements are made to help them journey out into the goddamn desert––‘cause that went well last time

Needless to say when the previously very scruffy Obi-Wan Kenobi is perfectly clean cut, Elara is thrown for a loop

 Because now his hair is cut and clean and swept into a perfect side-sweep. He’s clean shaven. And his clothes are crisp and clean... he is, perhaps, the most handsome man that she’s ever seen, and she is visibly struck by that

And yet she is reminded of his sharp, snide attitude and that has her more than a little hesitant. After all, the devil has a beautiful face...

Obi-Wan re-encounters Obi-Wan on the river boat, much to his chagrin; and even worse, Hondo’s taken to flirting with Elara, which gets him strangely riled up

And so he throws Hondo into the River Nile... but not while Elara is watching. Not that it would matter if she’d been there, because he didn’t care what her opinion of him was. Nope, he couldn’t care less that her opinion of him was at ground level...

By the time they make it to Hamunaptra, it’s become clear that Obi-Wan’s got a soft spot for Elara, who’s been happily rattling off facts about the lost city, the desert, ancient Egyptian culture... it’s endearing how excited she gets when discussing such things. And he’s happy to listen. Quietly, of course

And Elara realizes that he isn’t too bad––despite throwing her into the Nile, having a snarky comment for every situation, and being an over-all rogue. There’s a charm about him, something warm hidden beneath the exterior of a man who had been through and seen much

Dooku and Wyle are part of Hondo’s expedition crew

And it is through working their way through the tombs that the roguish Obi-Wan Kenboi finds himself being softer and softer towards the bookish, beautiful Elara Skywalker; and her brother’s growing on him, but he’s still a cocky bastard. And that Elara finds herself particularly drawn to this roguish man that seems to have a hidden soft side

And Anakin is watching it all happen, not sure whether he should egg them on, or be completely disgusted by it

Over drinks under a cloudless, nighttime desert sky, Elara asks Obi-Wan to teach her how to fight; and he agrees, and is pleasantly surprised that, even drunk, she’s a natural

They almost kiss again... but just as Elara goes in for it, Obi-Wan stops her and urges her to get some sleep... which comes sooner rather than later, given as she passes out shortly afterwards

The action and adventure only drives them closer together; the Mummy seems to have taken an interest in Elara, which neither Anakin or Obi-Wan are a fan of––and she really isn’t a fan of––and that drives them all back to Cairo

Obi-Wan and Elara get into it when he insists the best thing to do is flee, and she thinks it’s best to stay and fix the mess they’d made. She thinks they should stand their ground, and he fires back with the fact that this was not what he’d been contracted to do, and he didn’t start anything

So they part ways on bad terms, leaving Elara and Anakin scrambling to figure out how to fix this mess; and she’s initially enthusiastic when Obi-Wan makes his harried return, spewing something about the fact the Mummy and all its plagues were coming to Cairo for revenge

Elara, true to form, ends up being self-sacrificing and agrees to go off with Hondo and the Mummy, much to Anakin and Obi-Wan’s horror; but she knows that if there’s anyone that’ll fight through hell to get to her, it’s Anakin...

And she’s got a feeling Obi-Wan might just do so, too

And by the end of it all, that assumption is proved correct. He fights like hell to save her, even though she’s held up damn well on her own

The funny thing, both of them find, is how these situations can drag the right people together. How the danger makes you both re-evaluate and evaluate what matters. It reinforced just how dear Anakin and Elara are to one another. It revealed that, despite the circumstances of their meeting, Anakin and Obi-Wan are a good team. And it showed how a rogue and a librarian might just be perfect for one another.

[notes-from-sarah]

Reflections of the Sun and Moon

Link on Archive of Our Own

Link on Fanfiction.net

Rating: G/K

Summary: “In the firelord’s house approval was a zero sum game.”

When hunting for food with Sokka, Katara and their father, Zuko comes to realize that their families, while similar in many ways, are nothing alike. There’s only one person who has really ever treated Zuko like family, and the biggest regret of his life was driving that person away. Set after “The Boiling Rock” episodes. One-shot. Canon compliant.

“You mean you didn’t bring any food?” Toph said accusingly.

“Well-” Sokka began.

Toph’s stomach grumbled loudly. “This is still a problem,” she said, pointing at her gut. “You guys were supposed to fix it."

Zuko picked up his swords, “I’ll go get something, I think there’s a river not too far from here.”

“That’s more like it,” Toph said in an approving tone.

“It’ll go faster if we go as a group,” said Hokoda. “I’ll go with you. Katara, Sokka, do you want to come?”

“Of course!” said Katara as she jumped to her feet. “I’m the best fisher here anyway.”

“She really is,” Sokka chimed in, “she’s the big fish at fishing.”

Zuko glanced at him, Sokka had complimented his sister in front of their father for no reason. How weird, he thought.

*****

The little group set off towards the nearby river. Katara and Sokka were practically clinging to their father. Katara had looped her arm around his, and Sokka was talking a mile a minute, recounting all their adventures to this point, breathlessly jumping from one story to the next as Katara chipped in little comments. Zuko walked a few paces behind them, he could never remember hanging onto his father like that, even when he was very young. For that matter he couldn’t even imagine himself and Azula ever even sharing a second of their father’s attention. In the firelord’s house approval was a zero sum game.

They came to the river just as the sun was dipping below the skyline. “We have to work quickly,” said Katara.

“Let’s do the whirlpool,” said Sokka. “That’s always super fast.”

“We usually do it with Aang.” Katara looked Zuko up and down with a small frown, “I suppose you’ll have to do.”

“What’s this whirlpool?” Hakoda asked. “Can I help?”

“It’s a method of fishing I developed using beding,” Katara said as she waded into the stream. “Sokka and Zuko know how it goes, we’ll toss the fish to the shore and you can kill them.”

Sokka splashed into the water too. “Yeah, this will be over before you know it.”

The siblings looked expectantly at Zuko who was still standing on the shore. While he had seen Katara’s whirlpool before he’d never helped her with it. “Fine,” he sighed drawing one of his swords and sloshing into the riverbed. Standing opposite Sokka, about five feet apart, Zuko glanced at Hakoda who stood on the shore watching his daughter keenly.

“Ready boys?” Katara asked as she raised her hands. Zuko and Sokka nodded. Katara began to push the water, slowly at at first, then gaining speed the water began to swirl in a counterclockwise direction between the two boys. A moment or two passed as Katara span the water faster, her eyes closed in concentration. Zuko readied himself, this part took timing.

Fish began to collect in the whirlpool, at first just one or two would slip into the moving stream, but as Katara pushed and pulled the water to move faster more fish got caught in the current. Using his sword Sokka dipped the blade into the flowing water and expertly flicked it, catching a fish and sending it sailing through the air to land on the shore where Hakoda quickly grabbed it and finished it off.

Zuko tried to follow Sokka's lead, but he was not much better at fishing than he had been when he and Iroh had deserted the Fire nation after the battle of the North Pole. Zuko dipped his sword in the water and splashed wildly in an effort to dislodge a fish from the whirlpool.

"Get out of the water you, you, fish!" Zuko splashed more violently and actually managed to clip a fish with the flat of his blade tossing it out of the water and into the air. Gracefully the fish arced through the sky, it’s scales shimmering in the twilight as it flopped back and forth before landing with a loud SMACK on Sokka's head and then bouncing off and falling back into the river with a splash.

Sokka glared at Zuko as the sound of laughter from Katara and Hakoda filled the air. He jabbed a finger toward the shore. "The fish go that way."

"Sorry," Zuko said sheepishly. Glancing at how Sokka was holding his sword, Zuko copied him making sure to hold his blade more parallel to the shore. He began batting at the fish once more, and while not as fast as Sokka, he did manage to toss a fair number of fish out of the river.

“That’s more like it,” said Sokka as he swung his own sword rhythmically. “Nice and easy does it.”

“You three are doing a great job,” Hakoda said approvingly. “Katara, did you come up with this all by yourself?”

Katara beamed. “I did, we’ve done a lot of fishing since we left the South Pole so we needed a way to get a lot really quick.”

“I’m so proud of you.” Hakoda looked up from the fish he was cleaning. “This is such a great idea.”

Katara’s eyes didn’t leave the whirlpool, but Zuko could see her smile in the dim light. There was a time when he would have killed, maybe even literally, to hear praise like this from his father.

Katara began to slow the churning of the whirlpool. “Ready for the big finish?” She didn’t wait for an aswer. Jumping forward she pushed the whirlpool and the remaining fish in it into the air where she deposited them on the shore in a small wave. The water ran back into the stream leaving a dozen fish flopping on the wet bank.

The three teens slogged out of the river. "Now comes the stinky part." Sokka unsheathed his knife and began gutting the remaining fish. Katara joined him, her knife flashing as she worked quickly.

Hakoda glanced over at his son as he descaled his fish. “Hey, Sokka," he said, "how do fish always know how much they weigh?"

Katara rolled her eyes as Sokka pondered the question for a minute. "I don't know, Dad, how do they know?"

Hakoda held up a fish. "Because they have their own scales." Sokka and Hakoda burst out laughing.

Zuko stood to the side somewhat uselessly as the water tribe family finished cleaning the fish. He pondered the joke for a long moment. He honestly couldn’t remember his father ever telling him a joke

“Is that all of them?” asked Katara, looking around the shoreline. Sokka and Hakoda nodded, heaving the fish into bags. Shouldering a bag each, the small party set off back to the camp.

Zuko took the lead holding a small flame aloft in his palm to light the way. He strained to hear the conversation of the water tribe family, all the while having a realization of his own. It struck him that in a lot of ways Sokka and Katara’s family was similar to his. A leader father, older son and a prodigy younger sister. Missing mothers. A collision course with destiny because of the Avatar. A shiver ran down his spine. Of course, he thought, that’s where the similarities stop. Hakoda actually liked his children. Not something that could be said for the fire lord, probably for many generations.

“How do you plan on cooking these fish?” Hakoda asked, hefting his bag a little. “There’s a lot of them here.”

“Usually we roast them,” said Sokka. “Maybe stuff them with herbs if there are any available.”

“We have a lot,” Katara joined in. “I think we should dry as much as we can so we have plenty of food for the coming days.”

Hakoda patted his daughter’s shoulder approvingly. “That’s a really smart idea, I’m sure you’ll need it. You and your brother have become brilliant strategists. The both of you make me so proud.”

Zuko blinked hard for a moment, unexpectedly moved. Sokka and Katara, they were a team. They worked together. They didn't compete for their father's affection, they didn't have too. Hakoda loved them, both of them. He didn't demand greatness from them, yet they performed feats of greatness anyway. Zuko remembered his family being happy, once. A long time ago. Had it really been as happy as he remembered? Why had his parents abandoned that so quickly? He didn't think Hakoda could ever do to Sokka what Ozai had done to him. What had made his father that way?

His train of thought was derailed before he could begin to fathom an answer as they stumbled out of the forest an into view of the Western Air Temple. They made their way into the building where a small fire greeted them.

“There you are!” Toph jumped to her feet. “I was getting worried that you’d decided to go on another rescue mission an just skip getting dinner altogether.”

“We have plenty of fish, they’ll be ready soon.” Katara knelt before the fire and began unloading her bag. “Zuko, Sokka, can you two go to the woods and get me some skewers? Maybe seven or eight? It’ll make this go a lot faster.”

“No problem.” Sokka unsheathed his sword. “Come on fire boy, I need your light.”

Zuko followed Sokka out of the temple to the treeline holding up a small flame for him to see by. Sokka set about slicing small branches from the nearest saplings.

“So, you’ve been quiet this evening,” Sokka said. “Whatcha thinking about?”

Zuko looked from Sokka, then back to the temple where Katara and Hakoda were undoubtedly preparing fish, then back again to Sokka. “We caught a lot of fish today.”

Sokka paused his slicing to look over at Zuko. "Okay." After a moment's pause. "Is there anything else?"

Zuko glanced to the ground. "No. It's nothing." Sokka raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Well," Zuko finally said, "your family is so nice."

Sokka quirked his eyebrow higher. "And that's a problem?"

"No. I think it's nice. It's really nice that your family is so nice."

“I’m confused.” Sokka began chopping again.

Zuko felt a bit silly saying it out loud. "I, I just never really thought about what it would be like to have a nice family before. In some ways you and me are a lot alike." Sokka opened his mouth to object, but Zuko didn't stop there. "But I can't even imagine what would be like to have a family who loves each other and takes care of each other like yours does."

Sokka closed his mouth for a long moment, then after a moment’s thought opened it again. “I wish I could say that maybe your family really loves you, deep, deep, deep down.” It was Zuko’s turn to look skeptical. “But after fighting your sister at the boiling rock I think that maybe your family is just kind of terrible.” Sokka paused to gather the wands he had cut. “I also know that family is hard work, like really really hard work. And if every single person in a family doesn’t fight for it every day, you lose it.”

“I guess my family thought it was better to fight each other than fight for each other.” Zuko rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

Sokka sheathed his sword and patted Zuko’s shoulder sympathetically. “Family are the people you fight for, not always the people you’re related to.”

Instantly, Zuko thought of his uncle. Uncle Iroh fought for him, he was the only one who ever had. At every step of the way his uncle had been there. At least, until he drove him away, refused his help and demanded to do it all alone. Zuko felt a deep sorrow settle into his stomach. Uncle Iroh had fought for him, but he’d never fought for Uncle Iroh. Zuko didn’t know if or when he would ever see his uncle again, but now he knew that he was sorry.

Sokka clapped Zuko on the back. “Why don’t we take these back to the others. I could sure use a good fish dinner.”

Zuko caught Sokka’s eye and gave a small smile. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

[fire-angel]

DRAGON HEART

Hey guys, so the prologue is in my profile, below this part 1. (I'm still learning how to add the link and stuff so bear with me please haha)

PART ONE

Part 1

We're now sitting around a camp fire while we rest for a bit.

"I'm a deciple of a man. More than a man really, he's a myth to others, but he's real, a living legend, Jeong Jeong, Jeong Jeong the Deserter is what they call him. He was a Fire Nation general, or wait, was he an admiral?"

"He was very highly ranked, we get it." Sokka cuts in.

"Yeah! Way up there! But he couldn't take the madness any more. He's the first person ever to leave the army - and live. Jeong Jeong's a firebending genius. Some say he's mad - but he's not! He's enlightened" i say (while doing the hand motion of "imagination" from sponge bob)

"You mean there's a firebender out here who's not with the Fire Lord?" Aang says standing up "We've gotta go see him! He can train me! " says with a hopeful look in his eyes.

"We're not gonna go find some crazy firebender! " said Sokka

Crazy? I stand up "He's not crazy! He's a genius! And he's the perfect person to train the Avatar! That's why I helped you escape at the festival. "

Sokka stands up "Look, thanks for the help, but we're leaving for the north pole in the morning. "

"Sokka, this could be my only chance to meet a firebending master who would actually be willing to teach me." replied the boy.

Katara standing up as well "It can't hurt just to talk to him.

"That's what you said about going to the festival! Why doesn't anyone ever listen to me!? "

As Sokka turns to walk away from the group, he almost runs right into a spear. In a flash, we are surrounded by men wearing straw hats and armor and wielding spears.

"Don't move!" says one of the men.

"Y/N Jeong Jeong told you not to go to that festival" says Lin Yi.

Sokka looks at us all confused "Hold on, you know these guys!? "

"Oh yeah! Lin Yi's like an uncle! Right Lin Yi?

Lin Yi lowers his spear "Quiet. Keep moving."

I just roll my eyes and follow.

We continue walking, Down the hill, we spot the little hut.

"Go on. He sees you only. " Lin Yi pushes me towards the shack.

I try to hold my ground "Oh that's okay, we can chat later."

"Is that where Jeong Jeong is? I need to talk to him right away. " Aang asks.

Aang begins to move forward, but it stopped by a spear shaft across his path.

"No! You wait" Lin says as he keeps me in "Go now! "

"Okay okay! Don't worry! Everything'll be fine. He's a great man, great man!" I assure them.

I walk into the tent getting ready for the wrath of Master Jeong Jeong.

"Oh hey there Master, hows it going?"

"You disobey my orders and run off into town and for what!?" the flames from his candles gain more flames.

"I just wanted to see what it was like...-"

"And now you bring the Avatar, you know I never wanted anything to do with the boy, he's not ready. He should leave immediately"

"but Master he was in trouble and I knew he would have been safer with us. He's just a boy. Can't you at least see him? He really needs to talk to you. He really thinks you can teach him firebending and so do I"

Jeong Jeong just huffs and turns away.

I head out if the shack to be faced with Aangs hopeful eyes.

"What happened? Can I see Jeong Jeong now? "

I sit down and shake my head. "He won't see you. He's very angry that I brought you here. He wants you to leave immediately. "

"Finally! Let's hit the road." Sokka says as he stretches out his back.

"Why won't he see me? "

"He says you're not ready. Says you haven't mastered waterbending and earthbending yet" I explain.

"Wait, how does he know that?" Aang replied with a surprised look.

"He saw the way you walked into camp. He can tell."

"I'm going in anyway!" Aand starts to walk away towards the shack

I try to reach out "Wait maybe you sho- and he's gone. Hey Sokka, Katara, follow me. I'll take you to your shack. You can rest here for tonight."

----------------------------------------------------

The next morning I go out and I see master Jeong Jeong training Aang. I guess he decided to train him after all.

"Widen your stance. Wider! Bend your knees. Now, concentrate." Jeong Jeong demands. (Aang takes on an expression of concentration) "Good, good! "

Wait! What do I do now? asks the boy.

"Silence! Talking is not concentrating! Look at your friend, is she talking?" (Then, pointing to Sokka) "Even that oaf knows to concentrate on what he's doing!"

Sokka from a far shouts a " Hey! "

"But what am I concentrating on?" Aang asks in confusion.

As I'm watching from the side, I decide to chip in. "Feel the heat of the sun. It is the greatest source of fire. Yet, it is in complete balance with nature."

Aang looks at the sun then turning back to Jeong Jeong, a large smile on his face "So when do I get to make some fire?"

"Concentrate!" Master shouts.

I can't help but giggle. That's Jeong Jeong for you.

-----------------------------------------------

Later in the day Jeong Jeong calls me to his hut. I enter and sit down.

"Y/N I'm afraid our time together will be cut short." He says still facing away.

"What? Why? Suddenly?"

"I knew this day would come. For you to join the Avatar and his friends on his travels to restore order to the world. That is why I resisted to meet the boy. I did not want to let you go"

"Master, I'm not ready to leave you. There is so much I have to learn........Have you given up? Just like my teachers when I was young. I know my bending is a bit different and I still need to learn how to control-"

"No of course I haven't given up on you. My child you are more powerful than you think. For this is the reason I have to let you go with them. With time you will see the wonders of your power, not only through bending but through your spirit as well"

I start to tear up when suddenly Aang enters the hut.

"What are you doing here!? I did not tell you to stop!" said Jeong Jeong

"I've been breathing for hours. " Aang replied.

"You want to stop breathing? " Said Jeong

Honestly i kinda wanted to laugh at the moment but Aang seemed so serious that I held it in.

Angrily throwing his hands wide in a gesture of frustration "I want you to stop wasting my time! I already know how to squat and breathe and feel the sun.I want to know how to shoot fire out of my fingertips! "

Jeong Jeong lowering his head "Ughhhh. I had a pupil once who had no interest in learning discipline."

I put my head down as I remember of the stories he told me about this pupil.

"-He was only concerned with the power of fire ,how he could use it to destroy his opponents and wipe out the obstacles in his path., but fire is a horrible burden to bear. Its nature is to consume and without control it destroys everything around it. Learn restraint, or risk destroying yourself and everything you love"

Aang then leaves the tent and I follow him out.

"Look Aang, Master can be hard on you but he has his reasons for teaching you this way. He really believes in you and just wants to make sure you know what's at stake when you fire bend." I put a hand on his shoulder and give him a small smile "I'm going to go find some wood and fruit for later, see ya"

---------------------------------------------------

Walking along the river side I see some Fire Nation ships aproaching. This is bad news. I let go of whatever was in my hands and darted towards the huts, I find Master with Aang.

"Master! There is trouble. " I say almost out of breath

"What's going on?" Aang asks with a worried look.

"Concentrate on your leaf. Y/N stay here and watch him" says Jeong Jeong as he leaves.

"This is the worst firebending instruction ever. All he does is leave me alone for hours to concentrate or breathe." Aang tells Katara who is on the river's edge near us.

"I'm sure there's a good reason." She reassured.

"But I'm ready to do so much more." Aang continued.

Suddenly Aang's face lights up. He widens his stance and he begins to breathe. He still holds the leaf, which begins to smoke. Suddenly, the leaf bursts into flame and disintegrates. Aang is now holding a fireball in his hand.

"I did it! I made fire!" He exclaimed.

Katara coming closer " Aang, that's great, but you should take it slow."

Aang's expression gets annoyed at this comment, and the flame instantly gets bigger. He and Katara are surprised

"You should be careful!" I tell the boy.

Aang retains control and reduces the flame to its former size, but not before almost falling into the river

"Now that's firebending! " he says with a smile.

Aang then shoots a whip of flame and then begins to juggle his ball of flame happily

"Aang, you'll hurt yourself! You're still new at this" I try to explain.

Aang continuing to play "Wonder how that juggler did it?"

Aang loops the ball around him. It begins a complete circle around him and he pushes it outward. I was able to extinguish the fire headed towards me. Before I knew it the rest of Aangs flame engulfs Katara and burns her hands which she has raised to protect her face. She cries out in pain. Katara crumples to her knees.

"Katara! " Aang shouts. He hops over to her as she cries "I'm so sorry!"

I head over to Katara and Sokka appears by my side.

"Katara, what's wrong!?" He asks. Now looking at Aang angrily "What did you do? "

"iiiit was an accident! I was... Katara, I'm so - " He says as his voice starts to shake.

Sokka cuts him off as he grabs Aang and tackles him to the ground just as Aang tried to put a hand on Katara's shoulder

"I told you we shouldn't mess around with this! Look what you did! You burned my sister!"

Katara gets up and runs away. Aang who looks on, stunned, as she exits.

I wake up from my state of being in shock and grab Sokka from his collar to lift him off Aang. "Listen here Sokka, we get it that it was his fault but it was his first try" I look at Aang sadly. "I know what it's like to not have control over your power and believe me, he feels very sorry for what happened"

Jeong Jeong comes back right on time but Sokka turns to him and blames him for what happened. Did he just ignore me!? I start to feel my skin getting hot but Jeong Jeong appears and gently grabs my arm, wincing a bit as he does. Sokka takes notice. I try to do my breathing technique to calm down and count to 3 in my head.

"I'm sorry, I didn't...-" Sokka walks away "-I'm sorry!"

Jeong Jeong walks away to find Katara.

-------------------------------------

Moments later Katara comes back

"Katara! Are you all right? " Sokka and I ask.

"I'm fine, we've got to get out of here. Where's Aang?"

Sokka thumbs in the direction of the hut. Katara runs down the hill path to Jeong Jeong's hut to talk to Aang

------------------------------------

Aang and I head out to find Jeong Jeong and we see him with someone from the Fire Nation.

"Look at you. You were once so great. I can't believe my former master has become nothing more than a simple savage."

How dare he!

"It is you who have embraced savagery, Zhao." replied JeongJeong

Zhao!? He's that pupil Jeong Jeong always talked about.

"It's Admiral Zhao, now. "

more like Admiral of Side Burns

"That title will not help you against the Avatar. Do not try to fight him! You are no match!"

Zhao starts to laugh "I think I can handle a child."

"I have never seen such raw power. " He replies

"Jeong Jeong! " Aang shouts and I aproach

"We'll see. Men! Take the deserter! "

Jeong Jeong gets surrounded by five of Jeong Jeong's spearmen. Aang tops short in horror as they close in. Jeong Jeong smiles at me and wraps himself in a massive ball of flame. When it dissipates, he is gone.

Zhao angrily shouts "It's a trick! He's run off into the woods. Find him!" Turning to Us . "Let's find out what my old master has taught you kids"

"YOU were Jeong Jeong's student?" Aang says with a surprise

"Until I got bored." Zhao says with a smug.

He launches a fireball at Aang, who dodges that and another and sends some towards me and I quickly make it disappear

"I see he taught you how to duck and run like a coward. But I doubt he showed you what a firebender is truly capable of!"

"Aang, remember what Jeong Jeong said, he has no restraint, lets use that to our advantage, follow my lead" I whisper

He launches another fireball at Aang. It flies over Aang's head as the Avatar produces a flat, spinning whirlwind of air underneath him and balances himself on top of it with one finger.

He fires several more which Aang either dodges or breaks with airbending. Zhao's blasts have torched much of the surrounding forest and the sky fills with smoke.

"Stand and fight!" Zhao demands.

"Oh, were we fighting? I thought you were just getting warmed up." I say with a smirk.

"I was!" He says. He fires many more all of which miss.

Is that all you got? Man, they'll make anyone an admiral these days! " Aang taunts

"Yeah totally, I've seen kids do better"

Zhao launches another errant fire blast with a dreadful noise of frustration. I use my firebending to launch myself up to one of the ships and Aang airbends himself up.

After several failed attempts at attacking us and lots of damage to our surroundings.

"You've lost this battle. " Aang says

"Are you crazy? You haven't thrown a single blow! "

Motioning to my left "No, but you have. " I smile.

Zhao looks to his left and grimaces. Three ships on fire. The first is now sinking fast into the river.

"Jeong Jeong said you had no restraint. " I tell him.

We get off the ship

"Have a nice walk home! " says Aang.

"Aang, come on! " Sokka calls over. Him and Katara on Appa's back.

We run over and hop on.

"Wait! Where's Jeong Jeong?" Aang asked

"He disappeared. They all did. " Sokka replied

"Aang, you're burned. " Katara tells Aang.

He looks down in wonder to see that she is right. His sleeves are torn open and there are burn marks.

"Let me help you. " She says.

She opens her water bottle and wraps some water around her hand. It glows white again. She places it over the burned area , breathes and concentrates. When she lets go the wound is healed. Wow, I've heard stories but never seen a water bender heal up close.

" Wow! That's good water." Aang says amused

"When did you learn how to do that? "

Katara shrugged "I guess I always knew. "

"Oh... well then thanks for all the first aid over the years. Like when I fell into the grease briar bramble and that time I had two fish hooks in my thumb! "

Appa keeps flying us through the late afternoon sky. Sokka continues.

"-Oh, and the time that big snake bit me! Thanks for healing that up. That was great. Really helpful. "

I sit quietly looking back and whisper

" I hope I get to see you again....

grandpa"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sorry if this was kind of long, but I hope you enjoyed it.

Oh!! And if you guys want any one shot blurbs for ATLA, feel free to dm. Hope you all have a good day (or night)