#garuda will make a return... make some noise everyone!!!

[dailysasukes]

req sasuke with his hawk summon garuda c:

sasuke day 20

[biot08]

Soul

She watched the flames of her campfire dance merrily as she sat in the dark. Above her, the night sky was clear, and she could see the stars.

It had a been a long day, and now she was nearing its end, and a well-deserved bit of respite. She watched the flames dance and curl around each other in the air.

Free energy dancing, sparks playing. Wood to ash, but in between for now.

As she began to fall asleep, she imagined she could begin to see shapes in the patterns of the flames. Coalescing ideas, and memories.

~~~

She shook her head and blinked as she looked away from the fire, hearing the taunts of other children nearby. Not directed at her. She frowned as they hurled their barbs at another child who was just trying to walk by, his head low.

“Heretic!’ The taunting children yelled out. “Dragonkin!”

She did not know why they were calling him such things as he pulled up his tunic to try to cover his ears and his pace quickened, trying to get away.

Not fast enough.

The snowballs started to come in. She watched, and saw that some of them were not snow at all. One in particular landed against him with a clunk, and he crumpled to the ground, his leg giving out at the impact. It was not a bad injury, but it had hit hard, and it had obviously hurt.

The kids closed in, and their jeering intensified, as did the flurry of insults both spoken and physical.

She felt something inside of her. This was not right. She should do something.

Instead, she turned away. She would feel intense shame over that, later. She somehow knew that already.

~~~

She rushed in to defend the young child, holding one of her books in front of her face.

“Run, run!” she yelled over her shoulder at him, as snow impacted her book. Impacted her. She backed away from the children and their sharp barbs and painful snowball.

She was not fast enough. She took a nasty ice-packed snow ball to the knee, and fell into a snow drift.

She looked up and saw the other child who had started to run look back at her, his eyes wide.

She could take this. She would take this.

“Run!” she yelled at him again, and she scampered to her feet, and the two ran for it.

/This isn’t how this happened/, she thought.

/Maybe/, a thought that sounded exactly like her but wasn’t said back.

She looked around, startled, but nobody was there. Nobody at all. She was standing in the middle of an empty Ishgard, silent save for her own thoughts.

/You can reach further, you know/, that same voice that was hers-not-hers said again.

~~~

She was at the Witchdrop, as sentencing was passed. The young nobleman looked terrified, but resolute, prepared to face his judgement with as much dignity as he could muster.

She was younger than him; both teenagers, old enough for responsibility, but only just.

She looked around at all the people present.

/The Witchdrop is not a public spectacle/, she thought.

/Just watch/, she responded.

And so she did, as the young man stepped over the edge of the cliff, and vanished. There was a long silence, and then a sickening crunch noise.

He would not be returning.

She turned to her father, his face stern, but his eyes glistening with the beginning of barely-controlled tears. He reached a hand up, and wiped them clear.

“This is not justice.” she whispered at him, hotly.

He just looked down, and after a pause, nodded his head once, swiftly. It was not justice, and they both knew it.

~~~

She drew her sword, and the people around her were startled, turning to face her.

“This is not justice!” she yelled, her voice choked with barely restrained tears.

The inquisitor fixed her with a steely glare. “You would dare interfere with these proceedings?” he proclaimed, haughtily. Everyone present knew, his word was inviolate.

She just stood here, steel bared, breathing heavily, dancing on the sword’s edge, unsure of what to do next.

She raised her sword and reaped a bloody harvest, but was cut down, and fell to the snow.

She lowered her sword, and sunk into the snow. The soldiers who had accompanied the inquisitor approached her and put her in shackles. She would need to be made an example of, to discourage such outbursts in the future.

She raised her sword at the same time the inquisitor raised his hand, and a flurry of arrows ended her indignation.

She lowered her sword, and the inquisitor wrapped his arms around her, whispering reassurances to her. This was harsh, but necessary, he said. For the survival of Ishgard, and the defense of its people, and she croaked out in response, for the defense of its people, and she wept.

Her muscles rippled, her tendons tearing apart and her blood boiling as at last she reached out to the dragon song, and grabbed the gift freely offered. Not one more life, she screamed, not one more senseless death, as she grew and expanded into a draconic monstrosity, towering above the terrified crowd.

/I was never here. None of these things ever happened/, she gasped.

/They all did, every one. That such a traumatic moment should be such a fulcrum for so many of you… but we cannot stay here. You can reach further. You must reach further. I have so much to show you/, she responded to herself.

Reluctantly, she let go. There was something important here. The most important. But she knew she had to let go and move on.

Maybe she was one of the few that could.

And so, she did.

~~~

If it was going to be her or them, it was going to be her.

She held her shield up in front of her face, and planted her feet, and gritted her teeth, and said, quietly, to herself, ‘no’.

The primal roared in front of her, but she did not quail. She was not afraid.

Whether it was Ifrit or Titan or Garuda or any other, it did not matter. Whether she was defending Thanalan or La Noscea or the Shroud, it did not matter.

For the first time in her life, she felt like she could make a difference. She had the ability, she could change the outcomes, and she could weather the consequences, and she would.

Every one of her would.

Even as they all blurred together.

/Further. Reach beyond what you know/, she was urged.

~~~

She was a mercenary, that was true. A soldier. But she was more than that, she thought, as she juggled materia in her hand before driving them home in her sword. Outside the city walls roared an impossible beast, a weapon beyond compare.

It had already destroyed, and it would destroy more.

But she could get in front of it. Stall it for a time.

How many would be saved? She wondered, not caring about the answer. For the answer was more than one, and that was enough.

~~~

She held the bridge of her stolen sky ship, sitting in a plush chair, surrounded by people she trusted, loved, and knew.

In front of her, a mighty behemoth of Imperial engineering loomed, closing in.

“It’s got its paling up. It’ll be hell to break through that,” she heard muttered from her first mate.

She did not pull her eyes from the vision on the screen. “We hold the line until the evacuation is done,” she said grimly.

~~~

Alarms flashed around her and signal displays went red or black as she and her mech suit stumbled back.

She looked at a time display.

Five minutes until backup arrived.

She’d be lucky to make it four.

She coughed, and as she did so, she splattered the console with her blood.

It was almost enough to end her.

She almost keeled over.

Almost.

Instead, her hands gripped the controls tighter, and she snarled at the beast on the display in front of her.

“One more round, you bastard,” she hissed, moving her crippled machine to put herself between it and the city once more.

~~~

Her breathing was shallow, for to breath deep was to hurt.

She laid in the ditch, and felt like she would go to pieces.

She’d done all she could here, and it was not enough.

But she had stood as long as she could, and that would be enough, for her.

/Come back/, she urged herself gently.

She looked up at the sky.

There was a figure clad in gray robes wearing a mask that she had not seen there before. It reached out a hand to her.

/I have more to show you/

She reached out her arm, shakily, and took its hand, and the figure began to glow, a gentle, white light.

It poured through her and soothed a thousand hurts she hadn’t know she’d had-

The pain of an arrow, straight between the ribs-

The pain of being crushed in a hand many times her own size-

The pain of turning away, of hiding her face from suffering-

The pain of a million defeats, of a million bitter victories-

The pain of letting herself down, letting others down, rejecting her values for her comforts and it was all washed away in a flood of energy, and of love.

A deep love for herself, and for everything she was, and everyone she ever would be, and with it, a sense of calm that came with the acceptance of all things, of all possibilities, it was overwhelming, it was as though all of reality was with her, no all of realities-

The figure’s glow grew brighter and it seemed to expand to reach every horizon until it burst forth into a shower of starts that flooded to her and through her and up to the sky and every star brought with it a new memory that she had never had, but which had always existed.

She stood and stared, slack-jawed, up at the sky as the stars flowed through her and fled into the void, where they came to rest, twinkling their lights down on her.

And as she looked back down, towards the horizon of this odd night, she saw a single sun setting. It did not light up the sky as it should; the sky remained black as night, but there it was anyway, a single brilliant reddish-yellow sun that was just now gently drifting beneath the horizon.

And between her and the sun was another one of the figures, clad in gray robes, easily twice as tall as she was.

She walked towards it slowly, and as she reached it, she tentatively reached a hand out to touch its robe.

“We were as suns, you know.” the figure said. Its voice was familiar, but she could not place it.

“Our magnificence was towering, our brilliance blinding. Everywhere our light touched, we brought forth wonderful creation. Even our self destruction was, itself, an act of creation, our flames growing so powerful as to wreak such terrible havoc even as we made new horrible things.”

Fire began to fall from the sun, and meteors whipped by her across the desolate landscape where they both stood. She could feel the heat from their passing, hear the roar of their fury. And when they hit, they exploded, and in the craters, terrible beasts and creatures of nightmare arose.

“Each of us a totality of existence, in a way. Given enough time, perhaps we could have embraced eternity. Alas, it was not to be.”

The monsters and meteors all slowed and became quiet, and begun to sink into the powdery white ground, becoming statues.

“And so it was not. There are those who would have preserved us as we were. Brilliant suns, each one of us. But what of it? For even as we created, we can only shine our light so far, and as might as we were, we could only be so much. To try to preserve us as we were, and at such cost… it was a folly. We may have avoided the void, but would we have avoided stagnation? Would we become as statues?”

“I do not know. But I do know, that in every life, there was possibilities none of us, with all of the power of creation at our fingertips, could never conceive of. There were ideas we could never have. And so, I sought a different path forward, one that had been taught to me by the potential of life itself.”

“Not just you. Not just me. All life.”

The figure raised a hand to the sky, and with a wave, a million million stars flew out, and joined the ones that already existed in the sky, forming a brilliant and beautiful tapestry.

She found herself crying. She realized she had been crying for a while now. There were too many feelings fighting inside of her, and she had only one way to let them out.

“Plant a million gardens,” the figure said. And then it turned fully towards her, and it took off its mask.

The figure looked so familiar. Why could she not place it?

The figure smiled softly, and there was a sadness to it.

“You are not sundered, separated, less than,” the figure said, and its voice became more and more familiar.

“You are more than. Greater than. You are free. You are every star in your sky, and every other star besides. You are possibilities yet undiscovered, and stories yet told. You are so much vaster and greater than any of us, for while our light may shine brighter individually…”

The figure turned towards the setting sun.

“We are but one.”

The shadows grew long, and sharp, and then vanished, as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, and then it was quiet, the landscape lit only by starlight.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“You will.” The figure responded, and she thought she heard a hint of sadness to its voice.

~~~

Zoissette woke up with a start, drawing in a sharp breath, her hand reflexively going for her blade.

It had grown cold outside. The fire had died down to mere embers, and the night was quiet, for the sky was clear.

She looked around, gulping in deep, hard breaths, and brought a hand to her face, wiping away tears.

She was clammy, slick with sweat. She felt as though she had just climbed a mountain. No, she felt like she had just climbed every mountain.

She had been dreaming.

But the dream was fading from her mind fast, pouring through her fingertips, fine as sand, smooth as silk, as substantial as a breeze.

She shook her head, and took several long moments to calm herself. There were no dangers, here. It was just another night underneath the stars.

She looked around, bewildered and uncertain. She slowly, gradually settled herself down to sleep, wrapping her bed roll behind her bed to serve as a pillow, and laying on her back.

She watched the stars for a time.

[pain-somnia]

1k Followers Fic Requests

Title: “Shhh” Prompt:Professor/Student Rating: T Day’s Notes:an anon sent a request for a professor/student prompt so I decided that I really wanted to do a Hogwarts AU one-shot; SasuSaku is a total SlytherClaw couple; enjoy!

I will be taking 1-2 word prompt requests, you can find more info on that here my inbox is here

She didn’t have the space in her time table for another course. In order to become a Healer she didn’t need to take Care of Magical Creatures.

But here she was offering milk to a bowtruckle during one of her free periods.

“You should be taking this time to do work for courses you’re enrolled in Haruno.”

“I can’t leave Honeysuckle to you Professor,” Sakura teased. “He needs me.”

“You spoil him,” Professor Uchiha muttered, reaching for the bowtruckle. Honeysuckle raised its claws at him and whined before scampering to hide in Sakura’s long pink hair.

Sakura giggled, Honeysuckle’s leaf antennas tickling her neck.  At first she was insulted that the little thing had confused her with a tree but the bowtruckle was awfully sweet.

And it gave her an excuse to see Professor Uchiha more often.

. .

When the headmistress Tsunade Senju announced that Sasuke Uchiha would be taking up the post of Care of Magical Creatures professor after the former professor retired it had caused quite the scandal.

Sasuke Uchiha always had top marks and seemed to be on the path to be an auror but after graduation he had vanished only to be found months later taking care of dragons and then moving on to other projects.

It was disappointing to the general populace of Hogwarts, students and faculty, that such a promising student had returned to his alma mater to teach an elective course. They were completely blindsided.

All except for one seventh year student.

Sakura remembered Sasuke Uchiha as more than just the top mark Head Boy.

She had met him when she was just a first year, trying to send an owl to her muggle parents about how she was sorted into Ravenclaw and how the first week had gone.

There was a fifth year Slytherin student tending to an owl with a damaged wing. She had stammered her reasoning for being there and he had just pressed a single finger to his lips asking for silence. He gestured to the injured bird and shushed her.

Silently as she could, avoiding owl droppings, Sakura made her way over to him and the owl.

“Will it be okay?” She whispered.

“She’ll be fine,” he assured her with a soft a voice. “She likes the top of her head to be stroked.”

Taking the suggestion, Sakura carefully stroked the owl with her index finger. The owl cooed and shut her eyes.

“Your owl?”

“School owl.”

Sakura’s brows furrowed. Why would he go out of his way to care for an owl that wasn’t his own?

. .

Sakura saw Sasuke Uchiha often after that.

He was always with three friends, two fellow Slytherins and one Hufflepuff. His two Slytherin friends were loud and drew attention with their noise but it was the quiet Sasuke that everyone sought out.

A couple of younger students had tried to give him sweets from home and he turned them down.

“He hates candy,” his redheaded friend had whispered in passing. She had caught her eye when Sakura peered over one of her school books.

Sakura’s face flushed, embarrassed to have been caught staring.

“What are you doing messing with a first year, Karin?” The white haired boy asked.

“I’m not messing with her!” She snapped at him, face turning almost as red as her hair. “I just thought she was kind of cute. Lay off Suigetsu.”

Sasuke had turned his head to see what they were causing a commotion over. He stared at Sakura impassively and Sakura swallowed, not sure what to make of his staring.

A small pink ball of fluff poked out from his collar and he patted it back down. Sakura’s jaw dropped at the random appearance of a pygmy puff.

Sasuke just lifted his finger to his lips and gestured for her to stay silent on the matter.

. .

“Still chasing after Uchiha?”

Sakura blinked in confusion at her best friend Ino. She had been minding her own business, studying in the common room when the blonde girl flounced over to her.

“He’s a professor, Ino!” Sakura hissed, looking around the common room. No one seemed to pay any mind, already used to the way the Head Girl and her best friend behaved when together.

“Doesn’t change the fact that he’s Sasuke Uchiha and you’re Sakura Haruno the girl that had a crush on him since she was eleven.”

Ino collapsed sideways so that she was sitting on Sakura’s lap with her legs over one of the arms of the plush armchair Sakura was sitting in to get her reading done.

“And him coming back hasn’t helped a single bit.”

“He’s a professor,” Sakura reminded her, making sure her voice didn’t waver. “And I’m a student. That’s all.”

. .

Sakura bowed low, waiting for a response. The tawny hippogriff before her bowed back and she ran up and stroked it’s face near its beak.

“Hello Garuda,” she chirped. Garuda nuzzled her face the way she often saw him nuzzle Professor Uchiha’s hand.

Garuda was Professor Uchiha’s hippogriff, one that he had found injured in the wild and nursed back to health. Garuda had grown attached to him and refused to be left behind on the reserve Professor Uchiha had been working at.

“Are you going to spoil him too?”

Professor Uchiha stood in muggle clothing and a pair of galoshes at the other end of the paddock.

“Sometimes a little spoiling is needed,” Sakura grinned at him mischievously, “just to show how much you care.”

Professor Uchiha went quiet for a moment. Sakura’s grin slid from her face and she distracted herself with brushing Garuda’s fur.

Sakura reached for an apple to offer the hippogriff when a larger hand, slightly tanner than hers wrapped it’s fingers around her wrist.

“Is that your way of asking to be spoiled?”

He was close enough for her to smell the scent of mint come off of his clothes and the smell of woodsmoke.

“I would never ask that of you,” Sakura swallowed, “Professor.”

Professor Uchiha dropped his hold of her wrist and took the apple from her hand.

“You should head back to the castle. It’s almost dinner time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sakura marched back to the castle, only stopping once to look back when she reached the top of the hill.

Professor Uchiha was already staring in her direction.

. .

He was too old for her. She knew that much.

Sakura scrunched up her nose and pulled out another book from the shelf. She wasn’t going to entertain any fantasies of a seventh year being interested in a third year but she had still wanted to give him something for Valentine’s Day. Which was why there was a barn owl with a brown paper package just for him━from her━at the Slytherin table at breakfast.

Her feelings didn’t need to reciprocated but it still hurt to know that he was on the trip to Hogsmeade on this holiday.

It only made her feel a little bit better that it was thundering and raining buckets. But it also made her feel guilty for wishing poor weather on celebrating couples.

She checked out her books and told herself that she didn’t need a date, that what she needed to focus on was her studies.

Sakura was on her way back to the Ravenclaw common room when someone called out to her.

“Oi!”

It was rude and not even her name but it still made her heart race.

Sasuke was soaked to the bone, his usual feathery and disheveled hair laying flat from all of the rain. From under his cloak he pulled out a package from Honeydukes and handed them to her.

“Iced Mice?” Sakura’s brows pulled down in confusion. Then it dawned on her. “For the tomatoes?”

Sasuke’s lips twitched up at the corners. He just pressed his index finger to his lips and then turned and headed toward the dungeons.

. .

“You have been avoiding me.”

Sakura never expected Professor Uchiha to be the confrontational type. She had expected that he would just forget about her if she stopped coming around to the paddock and creature shelter.

“Did you need something, Professor?”

She tried so hard to strengthen her resolve. Tried so hard to look at the smokey gray of his eyes and not feel the ache in her chest.

“Just came to do some spoiling,” he answered, in that same soft voice that she loved so much.

He handed her a book on herbalism, one having only been printed in its original Mandarin, the native tongue of Sakura’s family.

“I was supposed to give it to you on your birthday but you never came around.”

Seventeen. The age she was trying so hard to forget. The age that made her officially an adult.

The age that gave her hope.

“This must have been hard to find. I can’t accept━”

There was only the sound of cooing owls in the tower as Sasuke pressed his lips to hers in a chaste kiss. Sakura barely had time to respond before he was pulling away, pressing a finger to his lips and asking for silence.

. .

“You’re bleeding!”

It was just a scratch, one that Sasuke could easily patch up with a spell. He deserved the scratch for not respecting the bowtruckle’s boundaries and holding it too tight.

“Here we go,” the first year Ravenclaw chirped as she patched up his hand with a muggle contraption. “I’m kind of clumsy so I always carry around bandages. Better, huh?”

He knew she was muggleborn which was odd considering her coloring. He would have assumed she was a metamorphmagus with a fondness for the color pink. Did muggles give birth to metamorphmagus witches?

“Thank you,” he muttered finding it hard to explain how unnecessary the bandage was when she looked at him expectantly with vivid jade eyes.

“Um, I was wondering,” Sakura Haruno averted her gaze, wringing the front of her school robes with her hands, “do you mind pulling out that book for me? It’s kind of high up and I’m, well, short.”

Sasuke snorted and she pouted at him. Short was putting it mildly. The first years were always small but she seemed shorter than average.

He pulled down the book she was pointing at and held it above her head out of arm’s reach.

“Hey!”

He shushed her with a finger to his lips.

“Quiet in the library,” he scolded her, pointing to his prefect’s badge.

Sakura clammed up but continued to glare at him. Done having his fun he handed her the heavy book she needed. Almost instantly the glare wiped away from her face and she gave him a wide smile.

“Thank you!” She chirped before skipping away.

What an interesting kid.

With a soft smile on his face he shook his head and looked for the book on creatures of the forests he was supposed to be looking for. His gaze dropped to the bandage on his hand and he chuckled to himself.

What a very interesting kid.