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eggtoasties · 3 years

Text

Pairing: Uchiha Sasuke/Haruno Sakura

Rating + Notes: M for mentions/implied references of sexual assault

Word Count: 4.6k

Summary: Selfishly, he thinks that if he could shoulder the burden of her suffering and sync his heart with hers, he would.

“Tch. You’re a shinobi, why are you so soft? Sasuke scoffed.

Sakura whipped her head up towards him from her hunched position.

“You have no idea what I have been through,” she seethed. Clenching her fists tightly, she said, “Despite everything. I have chosen to stay soft,” she spat. She closed her eyes, trying to even out her breathing while fine tremors wracked her body. Light tendrils of electricity seemed to dance across the surface of her skin, her hair rising with static shock. Her chakra was volatile and seeping from every pore—she radiated with energy and tightly controlled killing intent.

“Woah, woah, Sakura-chan,” Naruto said placatingly, raising two hands up. “Teme didn’t mean anything by it—"

“You don’t even know what I’m talking about,” she glared.

Kakashi leaned forward on his haunches. He knew tensions were bound to rise at some point; he was just surprised that it was Sakura. He glanced at her. She was hunched over, knees drawn up to her chin, arms cradling her body towards the warmth of the fire. Kakashi watched as the flames drew shadows across her tanned skin, watched as the reflection danced in her eyes.

Sasuke was standing over her to her left, hand cocked on his hip glaring at a dirt patch next to Sakura and Naruto was sitting in front of her across the fire. They had been reinstated as a team for the past two months and while she was always professional, they didn’t fit together like they once did.

After the Great Shinobi War, there was a renaissance period during the unprecedented peace time. Art, music, technology, and trade flourished with the lull in military activity. Earth country in particular grew wealthy with the advancements in technology. Already prosperous due to its multitude of gold and silver mines, with the electronic boom, copper, lithium, and palladium’s demand exponentially skyrocketed as technology for everyday use—not just military use—became the norm.

“Your mission is to assassinate a lord in a remote estate in the Land of Earth,” Tsunade explained to Team 7.

Team 7 stood in front of their Hokage’s heavy wood desk. Kakashi was hunched over as usual, lackadaisically taking in the mission details while absentmindedly watching the rest of his team. Naruto was, as always, excited to be sent on a mission although his optimism had tempered a bit after the war. To Naruto’s left stood Sasuke. Standing stiffly, he scowled lightly at his blonde teammate’s excited chatter and puffed a sigh as his and Tsunade’s glares did nothing to silence his ramblings. Off to the side stood Sakura. She held her left elbow with her right hand and stared ahead at Tsunade, ignoring her two teammate’s bickering. She watched her mentor valiantly try and explain the rest of the mission and hardly cracked a smile when Tsunade sent a paperweight hurtling Naruto’s way.

Once regaining everyone’s attention, Tsunade continued with the mission details.

“Using the natural resources on his estate, the lord used the profits to create his own tech company. With the raw materials at his disposal, he bought machinery and vertically integrated his company—” she narrowed her eyes at Naruto who started to stare out the window.

"Oi, brat! You better take notes!” she shouted, breaking him out of his daydreams. He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck as Tsunade continued.

“Basically,” she said, rolling her eyes, “he owns the natural resources, the machinery, and the man power for every step of the manufacturing process and has a bunch of legal whatever to his product so he’s become richer than ever,” the Hokage waved her hands absentmindedly.

Although the post war boom was financially beneficial for the Five Great Nations, smaller nations had not seen much of a difference in their standards of living. The major nations focused on establishing open trade routes and flows of information between themselves and failed to include smaller countries at the discussion table. Thus, a great migration took place. While civilians and shinobi alike travelled the elemental nations more freely due to the decrease in tensions with the airs of truce and allyship, many single women from smaller villages migrated to the great nations for work and better opportunities.

Many of whom ended up on the Earth lord’s estate, working along the assembly line. The position seemed generous enough: lodging was provided in dormitory like-housing and food was also provided in a mess hall. The hours were long, but they worked five days a week.

Tsunade unfurled a detailed map on her desk and Team 7 gathered around, committing the details to memory. The estate was strategically built with a mountain as a protective shield at the rear while a wide expanse of rolling green fields surrounding the estate ensured that potential enemies had no place to hide. It was as expansive as it was beautiful.

Boasting acres of greenery, Sakura imagined the smell of wild grass and flowers mingling with fertile soil. The fertility of the region would mean the grounds were likely lush with hearty wildflowers and medicinal herbs. The meadows at the base of the mountain would be plentiful and the mountain breeze would circulate cool, crisp air. Especially for those seeking a quiet life away from busy cityscapes, Sakura could imagine that the lord’s estate seemed to provide a quiet haven with an idyllic backdrop.

Continuing on with the report, Tsunade relayed that the Tsuchikage had received several reports from the workers’ family and friends that something was amiss. Listening to witness accounts and poring over letters, Earth’s intelligence confirmed suspicions although the letters never disclosed specifics.

The Tsuchikage had sent a discreet reconnaissance force to infiltrate and observe the ongoings of the estate. Despite the beautiful scenery, life at the estate was anything but. The mission report detailed that the lord took advantage of many of the women and held them hostage by threatening to blacklist them and their families. Guards patrolled the area constantly, on high alert for any worker who might slip out into the night to disclose company secrets. The report noted only women from outside Earth were permitted as workers to decrease the likelihood of suspicious family or friends coming to the estate and to lower the success of an unlikely escape.

Imploring the Hokage, the Tsuchikage asked that the assassination of the lord be kept discreet. Making his death appear as an accident was of the utmost importance—and Sakura’s primary duty. Following the lord’s death, the estate and its holdings would be turned over to the state as the lord had no next of kin. The mission would be lucrative for the Tsuchikage, and the women would be free to go if they wished.

What went unsaid was that the mission would ensure that the state would not be held accountable for providing mental or physical aid to the victims of the lord. When Earth shinobi arrive and explain that the guards and workers will be reevaluated, some women, the Tsuchikage reasoned, would expose the lord and guards who abused their powers. The state would clean up the guards, instate new ones and gain the thanks and appreciation of the women workers.

It made Sakura sick.

A year after the war and the new increase in trade, information, and people were normal aspects of daily life. Shinobi immediately began rehabilitation post-war and the program, headed by Sakura, reported positive effects. Post-war life was hard for shinobi who had become accustomed to a state of hyper-awareness during combat—settling into the monotony of peacetime, especially for strictly combative shinobi, had been difficult. For the past year Naruto and Sasuke had found their rhythm again, falling into easy friendship that was built on a foundation of begrudging respect although it was masked with bickering, sparring, and petty annoyances. Kakashi easily meshed back into their dynamic.

Immediately following the war, Sakura was extremely busy with the administrative and legal overhaul of the shinobi system. Reviewing outdated protocols, researching alternatives, and creating new proposals, she had not rekindled her bonds with Team 7 as the others did. What little free time she had, she spent it quietly with Sai and the rest of her graduating class.

Team 7 had been reinstated a few months prior to the one year war anniversary. They were designated as a specialty unit—their collective powers largely unneeded due to the peacetime and the necessity of Sakura’s medical and legal acumen in village proceedings—but Naruto and Kakashi insisted. While suspicions around Sasuke’s loyalty lingered, the rest of Team 7 acted as a power and emotional safeguard.

During missions, Naruto seemed to fall back to their genin days. He would purposefully annoy Sasuke and Sasuke would pretend to be irritated back. They would bicker and banter with Kakashi feigning tiredness, but the crinkle in his eyes said otherwise. Sakura would be quiet. Naruto would try and rope her in with banter and shenanigans, but remained aloof, side stepping his attempts.

For her, it wasn’t like being placed on a temporary assignment with an established team where their deep trust reflected in the easiness of their movements. With Team 7, she felt perpetually on edge. She trusted their power and their commitment to each other, but she felt weary of Sasuke. She felt a lingering bitterness towards Kakashi. Naruto hurt to look at sometimes.

Sasuke noticed. For someone who was constantly observing, hyper aware of every flinch and averted eye he had inspired throughout the years, it was hard not to. Providing her comfort the only way he knew how, he gave her space. From the years as a missing-nin, the crimes he had committed, and the genjutsu he had put her under at the end of the war left her understandably weary.

As the team was reinstated, he tried talking. As much as he was able to. He would nod to her when she healed him, smirk at her when she pulverized an enemy, and raise an eyebrow when she flirted information out of a target. He’d order tempura at restaurants so she could have it as a side and he’d give her the last dango off his skewer saying he didn’t like sweets.

She had changed a lot from the memory he had of her before leaving the village. The war, he figured, changed a lot of people. She was always so loud and earnest in her feelings for him—for anyone really. And while she still had fire within her—from the way she’d chastise Naruto for still utilizing his sexy-no-jutsu or slap the back of their heads when they got unnecessarily injured and tried to hide it from her, she was guarded.

Perhaps, Sasuke thought, this was just her adult self. War veteran, war hero, director of the hospital, best medic in all the nations, one of the most in demand shinobi, her accolades as Konoha’s golden girl went on forever.

But, he thought back to when he uncharacteristically joined Naruto for a night out with the rest of their graduating class. He had seen her across the bar. She was laughing. Her face exuded mirth, shoulders and head thrown back, hair wild and loose. She had her hand on Shikamaru’s shoulder and then giggled into his neck as he shot her a grin. He watched as Tenten said something and Sakura slapped the table in boisterous laughter. She had never shown this side of herself to him—to Team 7. So he turned back and left for home.

Team 7 arrived at night.

Sakura could have completed it as a solo mission, but Tsunade wanted Team 7 to be able to seamlessly work together during missions. Even if the team was grossly over powered for the task at hand, the task itself was hardly the primary objective.

Sasuke would enter the lord’s bedroom with Sakura, cloaking them both in a genjutsu. Kakashi would watch from afar and notify them of any irregular guard movements through the comms device, and Naruto would serve as a distraction if things went awry.

Sakura and Sasuke entered the lord’s estate easily. They cast no shadow against the black and white marble tiles, and the quiet patter of their footsteps was masked under the genjutsu. As they entered the lord’s bedroom, they ignored the ostentatious displays of wealth—fur rugs covering the expanse of the room, ornate candelabras and chandeliers gilded with gold and encrusted with jewels—and went straight to the bed. Next to the sleeping lord, was a young woman holding herself in a fetal position, twitching in her sleep. Sakura quickly and untraceably killed the lord with a precise rush of chakra before tending to the young woman. Standing idly while Sakura completed the mission, Sasuke noticed the hardness of her eyes and the rigidity of her shoulders. Sakura’s glove clad hands were steady as they glowed green and she was done as quickly as she started. Locking eyes with Sasuke and curtly nodding, they left out the window.

They made camp once they breached Konoha’s borders. Several kilometers inwards, they settled for the night. Sakura was silent—not unusual for her, but her movements were stiff and mechanical as she put down her pack and built the fire.

Naruto and Kakashi came back with food they had caught. She ate her portion with glazed eyes, staring into the fire. She bit into the gamey meat without tasting it.

Her hands felt cold even as she held them to the camp fire and felt a heavy emptiness at her chest that permeated throughout her body. She thought of the Tsuchikage and Hokage’s actions robbing a form of justice away from the victims of the lord. Closing her eyes, she circled her arms around her shins and bowed her head to relieve some of the tension in her neck. Cradling herself, she opened her eyes to soften her gaze downwards.

Her toes were painted a light blue—Ino had insisted that it was the it color of the spring season and it would make her tan pop. Forehead, she had said seriously. For all the shit you did with shinobi and mental health you need to take care of yourself too. Sakura counted the pebbles in the dirt—one to ten, just as Ino had done for her while she painted her nails—and tracked the steady march of beetles over twigs and stones.

She saw splotches of dirt turn dark with moisture and absentmindedly realized she was crying.

She felt Sasuke’s disapproval as much as she heard it—straight to the chest, electricity and fire—and seethed at Naruto’s immediate defense. Trapped in the orbit of two celestial bodies—two gods—she wanted nothing more to break their trajectory towards her and suspend their collision.

“Have you ever felt like your body wasn’t your own,” she said. “That someone had ripped your soul from its shell and you could do nothing but watch.” Sakura’s eyes were blank and unseeing as her tears made trails down her cheeks.

Kakashi went rigid and Sasuke and Naruto mirrored faces of confusion. Sakura exhaled and continued, voice steady and clear. “Konoha and Iwagakure know about—have known about the lord for months and the only thing they care about is the financial windfall,” she said angrily. “Iwa won’t consider those women citizens and will just push them to go back to their original villages. Even if some of them disclose what the lord did to them—what is anyone going to do?” she questioned angrily. Voice rising she snarled, “What the fuck is Iwagakure going to do? Konoha?”

Surprised at the uncharacteristic outburst, her three teammates listened to her quietly. Cataloguing her rage and thinking over the implications their interference, the men of Team 7 considered her words.

Silence hanging over the air, Sakura began again. “How are those women supposed to reconcile the fact that they were just a thing to that fucking lord?” she spit out. “That he can act upon them and that’s where their value or depth ends?” No one had an answer for her. “Sometimes I feel like I’m being torn apart and my cells feel like they separate and I can feel my pulse in my fingertips,” she choked out, shoulders heaving. “What the fuck am I supposed to do then?”

Sasuke’s mouth opened slightly then clenched it shut. He saw red.

Kakashi stared blankly at Sakura. Feeling exhausted by the information, his shoulders drooped. The heavy burden of survival. He felt the prickly heat of guilt at the back of his neck and his eyes fell to Sakura’s pack on the ground next to her, unable to look her in the face. The dawning realization that he had never noticed anything different with her made him feel every year of his age.

He started to apologize. To say he wish he had been there for her more, that he should have tried to get her to spend more time with the three of them, that he should have said something about her pulling away from the team—that he should have known better.

“Sakura, I—”

“Don’t make this about you.”

Misplaced and unfounded guilt didn’t matter. To her, she was the student he had discarded and continued to ignore for years.

He hunched impossibly more.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Naruto said softly.

“Because I didn’t want to then.”

“I thought we were family?”

She scoffed, “Why?”

“We’re together again! Sasuke’s come back to us!”

“He came back to you. You never asked if I even wanted him here.” Sasuke jerked back as if she had hit him. His face remained stonily still despite the searing pain in his chest.

Looking at Sasuke she said, “I don’t care that you’re back. I’m glad you feel safe or that you have a home again, or whatever you feel. But you did shit to me that I will never forgive.”

“Tch, so we aren’t friends anymore?”

“Since when were we ever.”

It was fair, he reasoned. Although he was friendlier with Sakura than anyone else besides Naruto or Kakashi, his outward actions or words didn’t denote that he felt any particular fondness for her. Not enough to make up for all the things he had done to her. His throat closed and his eyes stung and not from overuse of his Sharingan.

“Why didn’t you fight back?” he blurted out and immediately regretted it.

“Who was it Sakura-chan? I’ll beat ‘em up—I-I’ll kill them!” Naruto raged.

“You think I couldn’t if I wanted to?” Sakura said wearily.

A cold breeze rustled through the forest, bringing with it the scent of moss and pine. For what seemed like a millennia, Team 7 was suspended in stillness. Gray eyes locked onto a well-worn pack, cerulean grounded himself in the limitless indigo sky, and red irises drowned in pink.

“I’m sorry,” Sasuke interrupted the silence. “I didn’t mean it that way. Or that you're weak," he glanced at her hunched form. "I’m sorry.”

Their journey back to Konoha was quiet. For once, Naruto was at a loss for words. Sasuke watched from the rear of their diamond position as Naruto snuck glances at Sakura to his left, but she never wavered. After the previous night, her face had been an impenetrable porcelain mask.

She had told them then, “We cry and we cope and we continue.” Her eyes had found Kakashi’s and he held them for a long minute before shifting his gaze uncomfortably towards the ground.

After the mission debrief, Sakura hung back to go over documents with Tsunade as the rest of Team 7 parted ways. Kakashi had immediately dispersed which left Naruto and Sasuke idly walking the packed dirt roads of the village.

Sea glass on twinkling wind chimes glinted green and blue as Sasuke and Naruto walked past vendor stalls. The warm breeze carried scents of fried food and sweets and the duo ignored the glances of awe and apprehension thrown their way.

Still mulling over the events of the previous night, Sasuke clenched his hands into fists. Across the street, sitting underneath the shade of a tree, Sai was painting the landscape around him. Pointing towards their other teammate, Naruto nudged Sasuke towards his direction.

Walking up the grassy hill towards Sai, Naruto sent him a halfhearted wave and tried to figure out how to ask Sai if he knew. If he knew what Sakura had been going through and how they could reel her back into Team 7. He rubbed the back of his head in frustration and fisted at the roots of his hair. Opening and closing his mouth several times while growing agitated, his eyes darted towards Sasuke then back to Sai as he struggled.

“Did Ugly finally tell you?” Sai asked, intently studying his painting. “And could you two move—you’re blocking my view.”

Finally finding his voice, Naruto exclaimed “We’ve been her teammates for years.”

“And yet she chose not to tell you,” Sai replied evenly.

“But w-why?” Naruto spluttered disbelievingly. “Why would she keep this a secret from us?”

“Because she did not think you could offer her any emotional comfort.”

Quietly, Naruto murmured, “Has she at least told Ino?”

Sasuke stared down at Sai. He thought he was aloof and detached with brief moments of social understanding, unfalteringly deadpan but unwaveringly steadfast. Sasuke and Sai had shared only a handful of greetings and exchanges, mostly nonverbal despite Naruto and Sai’s efforts and provocations. Sasuke had found his replacement irritating in his quiet observations and noted the way he and Sakura tended to gravitate towards each other during missions with thinly veiled contempt.

“The rest of your graduating class is aware.”

“How did I not know about this!?”

“She had you sent away on a mission when Tsunade informed them of her temporary release of duties.”

“Well, what about me?” Sasuke finally asked, feigning nonchalance despite his racing heartbeat.

“You were never a consideration.”

Sasuke jerked his head to the side and clenched his jaw, face settling into a scowl. He had wondered if with time, Sakura would look at him the way she used to when they were younger. Actually, he amended, he didn’t need for her to look at him with bright eyed adoration, cheeks flushing at any attention. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t need furtive glances thrown his way or delicately packed bento boxes. He wanted her acceptance—acknowledgement even, would have sufficed.

“What will you do now, Dickless?” Sai questioned.

“I’m gonna go to Tsunade baa-chan and force her to do something about this!”

“But did you ask Sakura what she wanted?”

“Huh?”

“Tch, dobe. You don’t even know what Sakura wants. She didn’t tell you because it’s just like you to do whatever your first thought is.”

“Precisely.” Packing away his supplies and shutting his sketchbook, Sai rose from his seated position. “Well,” he said with a fake smile, “this was fun.”

He watched as Naruto scrunched his face deep in thought and noted the quiet anger rolling off of Sasuke in waves. “I know this may be hard for you two,” Sai said cheerily, beginning to walk away, “but try not to impose yourselves further on the hag.” With one last wave, Sai walked leisurely back to the main road.

He had come to her apartment in the middle of the night. He had seen her open balcony, cream curtains billowing in the breeze, and hopped onto the ledge. Before he could wonder if he should have knocked on the front door, Sakura was in front of him.

“What.” She asked

He swallowed. His hands felt clammy.

“I’m sorry. For everything. I know it doesn’t mean much. But I mean it.”

She nodded. She went back into her apartment and left the glass door open, inviting him in. Shutting the door behind him and taking off his sandals, he looked around her living room. It was relatively spacious for just herself, light wood floors and neutral décor. Her side tables and bookshelves were crammed and overflowing with medical tomes and scrolls. Kunai and various weapons were littered on top of her coffee table along with notes and ink wells. Her living room opened up to a modest kitchen, where she currently stood towards the kettle.

“Do you want tea?” she asked, lifting two boxes to choose from.

Her hair was pulled into a braid down her back and she was wearing pajamas—clearly intending to sleep soon. He nodded at the box at her right and she took out two packets. Unsure of what to do, he hovered next to her coffee table until she came to sit at one end of the couch, sweeping a hand towards the armchair to the side and the other end of the couch.

He tentatively sat at the opposite end and clasped his hands in his lap. He nodded at the mug she handed him and stared into its contents. He felt a fever rush to his brain and felt a heavy cold settle in his bones as he attempted to parse through his emotions—sorrow, rage, guilt, shame, yearning. He could hardly name them for what they were, each overwhelming him like a tsunami wave, unrelenting and overlapping until all he felt was hurt ricocheting off his ribs and reverberating against his lungs.

“I’m sorry,” he bit out awkwardly. He intently analyzed her face and wondered why for all the things he felt, for all the things he wish he could articulate, all he could ever do was apologize. She sighed into her mug, the tendrils of steam making the fine hairs framing her face stick to her skin.

"I’ve forgiven you even when I don’t fucking want to—when my brain screams not to." With another deep exhale she rests her head on the cushions behind her and stares up at her ceiling.

“I’m sorry it happened,” he says quietly, fingers playing with the string of the teabag.

It’s something, Sasuke thinks to himself. They’re talking. For the first time, maybe ever. And he lets that little flicker of hope consume him. That maybe they can continue to talk. He’ll let her in, he’ll be vulnerable, he’ll apologize if she’ll just keep talking to him.

Sasuke and Naruto stood next to each other in the early morning quiet and unsure, facing the village gates. Kakashi was behind them, hands deep in his pockets, hunched over as if trying to make himself smaller. Looking at Naruto, the village to his back, Sakura watched as he fidgeted in uncharacteristic silence.

Surprisingly, it was Kakashi who began to speak. Raising his eyes towards Sakura, he began to apologize.

It had been weeks since Sasuke had shared tea with Sakura, talking through the years he had missed, actually learning who she was as a person. During that night, he was able to indulge in the fantasies he had been harboring for months—the desire to talk to someone like family—to someone who is family. To divulge in past memories and future hopes. The start of sealing the cracks he had left and wedged open.

But now, he watches as she grips Naruto in a tight hug, whispering fiercely into his ear as he shakes in her arms. She shares sweet goodbyes with her friends who look at her with pride and tell her to bend the world to her will because they’ll always be waiting. A curt nod and a squeeze of the forearm and Sasuke watches her back and wonders if her heart shattered the same way when he had left her all those years ago.

At the time, she had told him that she would go with him—that she would shoulder his pain if she could. But now? He supposes this is payment for all the times he ripped her heart from her chest. It would have been merciful, he thinks, if she could have knocked him out unconscious so he didn’t have to be the one to watch her back as she became a distant pinprick in the horizon.

#sasusaku #sasuke uchiha #sakura haruno #naruto fanfiction #sasusaku fanfiction #sasuke x sakura #sakura fanfiction

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bastillia · 5 years

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First Lesson (NSFW)

Read on Ao3

Summary: Commander Kylo Ren needs a competent officer to accompany him on an important mission, and he has requested you specifically. When he discovers that you don't know how to pilot a TIE fighter, he takes it upon himself to fix that. Turns out cockpits are good for other things, too.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 7.4k

Content Warnings: possible dubcon, choking, spanking, inappropriate use of the Force, rough sex, minimal aftercare, cockwarming… yeah.

A/N: Wow so this is officially my first published work after lurking in the fandom for a good 4 years??? Holy shit. I'm super nervous, but hey, I've got to start somewhere! I've had this silly idea gnawing around in my little rat brain for fucking ever, so it feels good to finally pound it out (heh). I have... literally never written smut before, sooo I welcome any feedback. Thank you for reading this!

"Take a fighter. Follow me to the surface."

The commander strode powerfully over the gangway, dismissing you with a flick of his gloved hand as he approached the yawning cockpit of his TIE silencer. Engineers scrambled aside like rats to sunlight as he moved, conveniently parting a clear path for you to follow the rippling tower of black robes across the platform. You stumbled and jogged slightly to keep up, your gaze shifting nervously along the sinister row of TIE fighters. They sat anchored to the dock, still as a cavalry line at dawn, each black durasteel destrier awaiting its chance to charge into battle. But there was no impending fight here. Why weren't you taking the command ship?

"Commander. Sir, w-wai-" You collided with an unyielding wall of black, having not been looking where you were going. Ren had stopped and was now turned to look at you, posture stiff, eyes burning with impatience. You straightened sharply and jumped back, shying away from your next words as your cheeks burned under the dark beam of his stare.

"I... I don't know how to fly one. S-sir." You managed to say, and your heart plummeted into your stomach with the admission. It seemed childish. Silly. But-- what would he think of you now? You had always admired the commander more than you'd ever admit to your peers, and if you were honest, you found him wildly, dangerously attractive. There was something about the way he barely held back. The fire that shone behind his dark eyes like they were the only living part of a face cast in carbonite, that made you dare to wonder what he would look like if he let go. The power that radiated from him was always so visceral, yet restrained. Except, of course, when he had his outbursts. You only ever saw the aftermath: a shredded, glowing control panel, a dazed and heaving officer slumped against the floor after being Force-choked within an inch of death over a particularly inconvenient mistake. You'd be lying if you said such unbridled evidence of his power didn't stoke a flame of intrigue. And perhaps something else.

You had only recently been promoted to lieutenant general, but you had a feeling Kylo Ren had watched you closely for some time. You saw it in the shift of his eyes whenever you passed him by, the particular burn of his stare when you delivered reports on behalf of your superior general. You'd never known a commander to hold such a piqued interest in the drabble of stormtrooper reconditioning scores. Or why he had to fix his gaze so intently on you that you could swear he was trying to turn your blood molten.

You knew that you were more than competent in your position, yet you couldn't quell a desire to impress the commander. Whether it was with your sharp aptitude for command, tactical maneuvers, or securing risky strategic alliances, you always tried to establish presence. To command the room, intimidate both your peers and subordinates with your sharp wits, and earn those rare, blood-branding stares of approval from Kylo Ren when your steel confidence washed a hush over the room. What you'd never admit was how that steel later melted down into gushing whimpers under the forge of your sheets, imagining the kinds of things that your commander might do to you.

You'd had to forcibly smother your elation when you received the order for your aid specifically on this mission, not even knowing until a few minutes ago that it was you, and only you, that Kylo Ren had requested to come along. It sank like a cold blade into your gut now to know that your ineptitude would make him think less of you. The knife twisted with the realization that you would be left behind on the only opportunity you might ever get to spend some time alone with the commander.

He looked at you for a moment, expression unreadable. How had your command training not included basic piloting by default? A brief flash of anger lit his eyes and set his jaw tight as he thought about whoever's incompetence he would have to deal with later when he reviewed the training program. But for now, there was no time.

Your eyes were fixed to the metal grate of the floor, stomach knotting, as you steeled a calm mask over the disappointment that tightened your throat. You began to speak, your voice coming out smaller than you intended. "I’m sorry, Commander. I will inform mission control that you are in need of--" Before you could finish, Kylo Ren clamped his arm around your waist, pulling you firmly to his body as he leveraged his hips in one fluid motion to drag you with him into the small cockpit of the TIE silencer.

Your brain reeled, a small yelp escaping your lips as your ass landed firmly into his lap, one of his arms anchoring you there while his other hand reached to flick a control above him. Before you could stammer out the question of what the fuck he was doing, the cockpit was already hissing closed around you both.

"First lesson."

Your pulse was a flurry. He began to flip the controls absently, looking easily over your head as you awkwardly adjusted yourself on his thighs. The space was so small, there was absolutely no position you could assume that didn't involve your ass planted into his hips, your back against his broad torso, and your calves draped around either side of his ridiculously long legs. Your head spun. The thrusters hummed to life. Fuck. Everything was moving too fast. His gloved hand began to point individually at each control he had just engaged.

"Auxiliary."

His voice was dead even as he pointed to the first switch on your left, the movement of his arm making his chest ripple under your shoulder blade. Your brain was a mess of thrill and panic. Was this really happening right now? Heat flowed in a river down your spine and pooled in the roiling cauldron of your belly. Whether it wanted to wash you away, or pull you in like a rip current to his body, you couldn’t decide. His hand moved to a lower control panel where the second switch sat, affording you little time to take in what he was saying.

"Compressor."

You tried hard to focus on his words, blinking the spinning confusion out of your eyes as you dumbly studied the path his hand had just taken. You blinked again, hard. Auxiliary. Compressor. Okay. You forced yourself to bid the controls to memory, trying to catch up as he moved along. Four adjacent switches to your right had been next.

"Ignition,"

His gloved finger drew languidly against the curved switch in a way that suddenly made your skin light up against every solid line of his body pressed flush to yours. Your thighs tensed. Heat climbed your neck as you struggled to hold onto a fragile thread of focus.

"Thrusters."

He gestured to the final three buttons. Fucking breathe. Ignition, thrusters. Okay. Simple enough. You sobered yourself sternly and nodded your understanding as you flicked your gaze along the control path that started the engines, internally repeating it several times as your heartbeats became distinguishable again. It was quick. Concise. Fitting, you thought, for a state-of-the-art starfighter prototype that might need to get airborne in a hurry. It was certainly far less brain-scrambling than the orchestrations you'd seen performed upon the control panels of freighters to wrangle them towards liftoff. Why don't they label anything in those damn ships anyways?

"Now," Ren’s hands gripped your hips, instantly shattering your moment of composure. Stars, why did he have this effect on you? And why did a part of you never want it to end? He adjusted your seat, pressing you slightly straighter against him, and you could feel the warm, solid contour of his abdomen flex under your spine. You swallowed hard.

"Steering is intuitive." His palms smothered the backs of your hands as he picked them up, guiding them to grasp the vertical steering grips. Your blood felt uncomfortably hot in your veins. He kept his hands wrapped firmly over top of yours, arms encircling you like a gigantic fucking scaffold, coaxing you to lift the handles very slightly upwards. The craft lurched to life in response, and you were suddenly thankful for his hands holding yours steady as your heart threatened to explode from your ribs.

It was intuitive, you'd give him that, even if your intuition felt starkly absent from your brain at the moment. The body of the craft lifted smoothly, almost sentiently, with the subtle upward press of the handles. Still, the sudden g-force of liftoff sank you firmly into the commander's lap, amplifying an alarming and far too pleasant stir that agitated the pit of your belly.

You breathed slowly, trying to stay as still as possible on top of him, your brain still coming to grips with what the fuck was occurring right now. You thought maybe you'd had a dream like this once. Come to think of it, the enigmatic commander had starred in many of your most pleasant dreams -- with or without the mask. Oh, stars. You screwed your eyes tight, inwardly cursing your useless fucking brain. Did you really have to think about that right now? You were definitely blushing. A puff of breath hit the back of your neck. Wait- Did he just chuckle?

You didn't have time to figure out the answer as his gloved hands flexed over the top of yours and your eyes flew open, finding that the fighter was now hovering a comfortable distance from the hangar floor. He pressed your joined hands forward, and the ship responded gorgeously, accelerating towards the mouth of the docking bay in a smooth departure that made your veins flutter with a thrill of adrenaline. Vacuous darkness swallowed the viewport as the Supremacy was left swiftly in your wake, and you released a lungful of air you didn't know you had been holding. An unexpected calmness suddenly blanketed you as everything fell to the periphery. As your wide eyes adjusted to the void, a spattering of stars slowly blinked into view, decorating the expanse. It was... silent. Still. Breathtaking.

Ren pulled the grips under your hands back like the reins of an obedient steed, and the craft responded as such. The only indication that the fighter had stilled was the slightly quieter hum of the idling ion thrusters vibrating softly through the air of the cockpit. Your respite was brief. The tranquility of space was magnifying your far-from-tranquil realization that you were now decidedly, irreversibly alone with the commander, and your insides folded in half.

You hardly dared to breathe, let alone move, your senses suddenly augmented and trained sharply onto Kylo Ren as you sat pressed into his lap. His lap. Maker, have mercy. Your clean-pressed uniform suddenly felt tight and stifling around your neck, and you swallowed thickly.

"Take over."

He spoke curtly into the silence, almost making you jump as the baritone rumbled close to your ear. Stars, everything he said was a fucking command. You couldn’t deny how much you’d always enjoyed the rich color of his natural, unmodulated voice, taking secret reverence in the way he could paralyze a room with it. Nor could you ignore the way that every word he spoke was now having the opposite effect, riling up that dismayingly persistent heat between your legs.

He slid his hands off of yours, leaving you in full command of the sleek starfighter. Nerves needled a patchwork in your gut as you stared disconnectedly at your own bare hands gripping the controls. They might as well have been someone else's entirely. Two palms settled over the tops of your thighs, and the gesture pierced all the way to your brain.

By the void, calm the fuck down. You grounded yourself sternly, tightening your grip around the contoured handles and forcing yourself to feel their texture, the ridges that dug into your skin, the tension that rippled up your arms and into your shoulders as you squeezed them. Breathe. There was a reason you'd been promoted so fast: it was your aptitude toward levelness and situational control under pressure. You could do this. Just... treat it like another test. Taking a steadying breath and fixing your brow in determination, you pressed the grips forward.

If you thought takeoff was intuitive, now that you somewhat had your frayed wits about you, this was like an extension of your own consciousness. The silencer handled like a dream, and you quickly got the hang of its basic movements, almost forgetting your strange predicament as you took surprising delight in steering the agile craft through the vacuum of space. Kylo Ren hardly moved beneath you. He seemed to be letting you feel the ship out on your own, but his hands occasionally flexed over the curve of your thighs, his fingers splaying into a wide grip that pressed heat into your veins. An alarming reminder, each time, that he was paying attention. Always paying attention.

You cut the silencer back towards the Supremacy after a short while, and were surprised to note that the stifling mega class dreadnought seemed much… smaller, from out here. It felt strange, looking upon the massive vessel that encompassed your entire life, whose halls and chambers you had meticulously memorized, as if it were no more than a distant memory. The perspective settled a quiet feeling inside you that you couldn’t quite formulate.

Also in view, and framing the silhouette of the star destroyer impressively, was your ultimate destination. A large planet, twinkling with tiny rivers of light between clouds, and crowned in a halo of white flame from this system's central star. The planet would be the site of your mission, which, you noted -- the commander still hadn't even briefed you on. You funneled the nervous pang at the thought into determination as you caressed the controls again, considerably braver now about handling the craft.

In a moment of spontaneity, you locked the arches of your feet under Ren's calves and accelerated sharply, whipping the silencer into a tight barrel roll. A breathy, delighted laugh swelled in your chest before you could catch it as you righted the ship to its initial orientation again.

"Good," Ren murmured into your hair, a large hand sliding up to your belly as you reined the ship smoothly to a halt. He pressed you slightly tighter to him with a splayed palm, his strong nose grazing your ear, and the responding thrill between your thighs set your brain back to spinning. You suddenly became aware of a firm knot under your seat that you hadn't noticed before, and your breath stopped. You'd been so distracted maneuvering the ship, you couldn't be sure. You cocked your hips slightly, daring to shift against him, and with the movement it was undeniable: Kylo Ren was hard as a rock.

You gasped, and the moment you tensed, a gloved hand snaked up to slam into your throat and pull you roughly back against a solid chest, breath hot and immediate in your ear.

"Don't think I haven't noticed..." His voice was dark and dangerous as his free hand slid to your inner thigh, gripping the sensitive flesh there, your airway closed tight. You trembled, pulse galloping, as a spear of adrenaline ignited each of your most primal instincts at once.

"...How you can hardly keep those eyes to yourself around me." His lips were warm against the shell of your ear as his nose grazed the baby hairs at your temple, the feeling adding a confusing tingle to the sharp claws of terror that gripped you. Your pulse was deafening, and you struggled to find either breath or coherence under his iron grip. His hand on your throat loosened slightly with a creak of leather, and the sweetness of air crashed into your lungs.

"I could say the same," you breathed without thinking, suddenly wondering if you actually had a deathwish. His hand flexed threateningly on your throat and you flinched, but he simply breathed a dark chuckle into the hollow of your ear. Oh. That made you fucking shiver.

"Observant." He slowly ground his hips up into you, more or less fucking his prominent erection against your ass. Needles of fear laced confusingly into a wash of desire as a soft noise escaped you, and you bit your lip to catch it in its tracks as he continued. "But I know every thought you've ever had about me, lieutenant." Oh, stars. Fuck. You knew he’d paid attention to you, but not that closely.

"It's pathetic, really… " He continued to grind torturously against you, his broad hand pinning your thigh the same way a predator might hold down a piece of live prey that it wants to toy with for a while before killing. "...The way you try so hard to impress me." His growl bottomed out on the emphasis with a decisive roll of his hips that sent an electric shock careening to your core. You squirmed against him, but his grip on your neck and leg had you on an axis that allowed precious little freedom. His hips continued their disciplined pace as he spread his knees slightly, forcing your own to follow, and his thumb traced electricity into the tender patch of thigh just below your most intimate parts. You clenched at the closeness of it.

"But…” he purred, tone shifting slightly.

“The things that cross your mind at night?" You froze with dread, wishing the ice in your spine would somehow percolate into the space around you, freeze it into stasis so that he wouldn't continue with his next words. But Kylo Ren was a furnace, burning the unlimited fuel of your fear, and he rumbled on.

"When you touch that wet little cunt, and think about me?" He lifted his palm away briefly - the predator's illusion of mercy - before delivering a hard, stinging smack straight to your inner thigh. Your cunt convulsed.

"Filthy."

A silent pause filled the cockpit, allowing both the word and the impact to sink into your nerves before he slowly circled his glove across the tingling flesh under his hand. Your bones went gelatinous, and, stars, you whimpered. It was a sound so foreign to even your own ears, that you startled yourself.

His straining cock pulsed against the curve of your ass, and he swore darkly, sliding his hand on your thigh up to cup your sex through the fabric of your pants. You were already wet and aching, you could feel it, but the slight pressure of his hand over your sensitive heat drove your need to a frenzy. Another whine leaked unbidden from your lips.

“Tell me, lieutenant, how do you prefer me?” His voice was cruel and dark, drawing out your torment as he began to tease your slit with a pressure so light you thought you might die on the spot.

“With, or without the mask?” He pressed down, rolling his forefinger over your clit in a firm motion that sent sparks into your brain. Your mouth fell open in an obscene moan that echoed around the cockpit. Kylo Ren stiffened, tightening his grip on your throat and stilling the pressure on your aching bud.

He didn't have to say anything for you to know in your gut that an answer was required. Your stomach quivered. This was his game, and you were going to have to play at it if you wanted any of your deepest, most secret desires to come to fruition now. And stars, you wanted it bad. You found a few breaths, collecting fragments of your voice.

"Any w-way you'd have me, C-commander." Your voice was hardly intact, but you managed to breathe the words out through your daze of terror and need, finally pushing your own ass back into the motion of his hips. He released a warm huff of breath into your ear, seemingly pleased. Thank the Maker.

"That's right."

His soft hair dusted your ear as he dipped to latch a hot kiss into your neck, pulling your head slightly aside for better access. His tongue was molten and wet against your skin, and the feeling sank straight to your core. You reeled and whined as he sucked a bruise into your throat, taking his time tasting you, his hand over your pants drawing an embarrassing volume of wetness from your aching cunt already. You dropped your hands beside you and sunk your nails into the fabric over his thighs, need overflowing from your skin and into his body.

Kylo Ren sucked a breath through his teeth and slipped the hand on your throat upwards, gripping your jaw instead and pushing the leather pad of his forefinger through your lips. You accepted it a little too eagerly, sucking it in delicately and running your tongue across the ridges in the supple material as you relished the expensive taste. He hummed and slid a second thick digit into your mouth as his lips and teeth continued to worry the tender skin of your neck, and you were sure you would bear the dark purple evidence of his possession for at least a week. You didn't care.

His ministrations had your body pliant and wanting in no time, and your thighs had involuntarily begun to relax, falling wider around each side of his lap even as the sharp edge of a control panel dug into your leg. You felt the rigid hilt of the saber on his hip as well, a sensation that paralyzed you for a moment with a new spike of fear and thrilling desire. He ascended from your neck with a sharp nip.

"So eager, lieutenant." He clicked his tongue once and landed a sharp spank straight to the mound of your pussy. It made you jump, and clench hard with a small, leather-muffled yelp. He deftly switched hands, removing his fingers from your mouth as his other hand closed around your neck. His moistened digits dipped below the waistband of your pants, and you felt his own breaths quicken underneath your shoulders, exciting you. The smooth, warm leather slid easily down your folds, drawing a gasp from you as he collected and spread your arousal. Now, this, you had definitely dreamed about before. He circled slowly across your clit, slicking it over in a motion that sparked white ecstasy through your nerve endings, and you whined pathetically.

"What would your superiors think," Kylo Ren's deep, mocking voice dripped through you as he slid one finger down to tease your entrance. Your hips bucked, trying in vain to draw him in. "If they knew what a desperate little whore you are for your commander?"

Your brain stuttered then. An involuntary smirk pulled at your lips as you conjured the image of your superior general, and how his eyes always seemed to darken when they wandered a little too far down your uniform. You didn't consider the fact that your mind was on full display to Ren before the brat center of your brain produced one clear thought.

They'd envy my commander.

You bit your tongue hard the second the thought formed, as if you could banish it with the flash of pain, hoping desperately that he hadn't read your mind. But the way that Ren’s whole body went rigid suggested otherwise. Maker damn your smart ass.

His hand fisted into your hair, wrecking your neat bun, and he wrenched your head to the side, forcing you to look up at him. Your brows knitted together in pain, but you dared not whine about it as you met his stare. His eyes were black saucers, clouded with such a tenebrous fury and lust that it made your walls flutter in time with your stomach.

"Is that so?" The ice in his voice squeezed your veins.

Gone was all that confidence that you prided yourself on in your profession, all the poise and tact and sharpness of wit. It slipped as easily as water through your fingers now as you drowned in the inky depths of his stare, fear anchoring your words to your diaphragm with no means of escape.

Ren studied you, embers flaring in the pits of those live irises, framed by the beautiful stone hearth of his face. He moved your head back and forth a bit by his grip in your hair. You winced, but your muscles might as well have been liquid, unable to resist him in the slightest. He was testing your pliancy, considering.

"Open your mouth."

There was no warmth, no tease behind the words, and as if they flowed straight into your neurons directly, you obeyed. Your jaw fell open, your pink tongue pushing slightly against the pillow of your lower lip as it rested over your bottom teeth. He spat into your mouth, holding your stare in the tight space as… Oh. He sank two thick fingers straight into your soaking core, stretching you full, holding them rooted inside you. You might as well have been vibrating.

"Swallow."

The command was deadly. You snapped your jaw shut and complied, heart thrumming with fear and a hot, blooming need originating from the delicious ache that now filled your walls but refused to move. You whined, trying weakly to shift your hips for any amount of friction on his hand, but his hold on you tightened, immobilizing you.

"Impudence will get you nothing." He uttered warningly, never breaking your stare as his fingers began to pump slowly, agonizingly inside of you. You could feel yourself dripping around him now as the ridged leather of his gloves did something delicious to your walls. "Don't you want to come, little whore?"

You were putty in his lap. "Yes, Commander, sir." You managed to groan out quietly, embracing the pain that screamed through your scalp. His plump, gorgeous lips were parted slightly, a signal of desire to underlie the tempest of his stare. You relaxed more into his grip, hoping your show of submission would drive him just a little more wild, just a little closer to... Yes.

He yanked you closer and stroked his hot tongue into your mouth in a fucking vulgar kiss that spun your brain like a top. You suppressed a sigh as the taste of him filled you, his plush lips divine and remarkably soft against your mouth as you melted into the heat of his possessive kiss. He jerked you away by your hair long before you'd had your fill of his taste, a thin string of spit connecting you as you squeaked a pathetic sound. Your disappointment was fleeting, though, because his fingers were now curling faster against a heavenly spot inside of you that was beginning to coil you tight.

"Then be good."

You sucked your bottom lip between your teeth, bit down, and nodded as well as you could with his fingers rooted into your follicles. He watched the ecstasy blossom across your face as his thumb began to pass in quick circles over your sensitive clit. A cry fell from your lips as your pleasure began to overtake you, his fingers building you towards a crescendo that threatened to split you clear in half with a galaxy between. You didn't even have to try to keep your mind blank now as he consumed your every nerve ending in rippling pleasure, and soon you were barreling towards the event horizon of climax with every stroke of his digits and every slick pass of leather over your delicate pearl of nerves. Sparks flowed like hot plasma to your extremities as your walls began to flutter tight. You whined the warning of it as your brows drew together in restraint, pleading silently for the commander to send you halfway to hyperspace with the orgasm that teetered in your core.

"That's right, cum for me, little whore." His voice was harsh and cruel and delicious and everything your reeling brain needed to send you barreling over the precipice. Your orgasm split you, blanching your vision as your walls slammed down around his fingers and you sobbed out the waves of your release. He didn't slow, drawing out your climax to an impossible length as each clench sent you spinning and wailing again. Ren groaned and cursed under his breath as he watched you come apart, leaning on the familiar edge of desperate self control as his stiff cock twitched violently under the confines of his trousers.

He slowed and withdrew his hand from your pants, allowing you to come down with shallow breaths. He brought the hand up to taste you slowly from the glistening leather of his fingers, eyes never leaving yours, and the sight made your insides combust. He hummed a low, appreciative sound before shoving the cum-slicked digits roughly into your mouth. The sweet tang of your juices flooded your senses as he sat you back up against him, such that you faced the viewport again. Impossible as it realistically was, it suddenly felt as if the entire Supremacy may as well have just watched you cum like a trained whore around Kylo Ren's fingers. The thought tickled your belly as you laved your tongue over his glove, still warm from your cunt, your body thrumming with the high of post-orgasmic ecstasy as you diligently cleaned the ridges. Your insatiable pussy clenched hard when you felt his length grind against your ass, reminding you of its presence, and you suddenly ached to be filled again. You whimpered into his hand as you rolled your hips.

"You want my cock?" His voice was ragged in your ear, hardly restrained as he fucked his bulge against you. You nodded with an obscene whine, clutching the sides of his thighs and using them as leverage to grind yourself into his throbbing length. He cursed.

"Filthy girl."

Ren released you, withdrawing his fingers from your mouth and hair, and you collapsed back against his chest, panting. He shoved at the waistband of your pants, and with a thrill, you lifted your hips as far as you could to allow him to yank them down around your thighs, panties and all.

He propped you forward slightly, bringing a hand behind you to wrestle with the clasp of his own trousers. He unleashed his cock and sat you back over it, so that it rested thickly between the flesh of your thighs, flush with the swollen line of your wet slit. You looked down and gulped. Stars, he was big. Not that you expected any different -- you'd be the first to admit that this man carried himself like he was packing. Still, you couldn't suppress a twinge of nerves as you looked down at the fat head of him, swollen beautifully at the end of a thick shaft and leaking a bead of pre cum between your thighs. He rocked his hips up, and the thick, velvety length of his cock parted your lips, coating the top of his shaft in your wetness as it slid against your tender folds.

You whined, your walls screaming to be filled, to be stretched, and you strained your pelvis down towards his dick, but the angle was all wrong for you to have any control. His glove snaked into your hair and fisted it roughly, yanking you immobile again as you gasped.

"Beg."

Your pussy throbbed, dignity a distant echo in your brain as you keened and clenched around nothing. You'd never been known to beg for anything in your life, but with the way that every nerve ending in your body felt like it was curling towards him, trying to take root, to feel him in every way possible, you were sure you'd do anything to earn his cock now.

"P-please-" it came out in a whisper, your voice absent from your chest, and he jostled you by your scalp sharply. Pain shot through your nerves, somehow only kindling the flames of need that were licking up your spine and you yelped, the roughness punching your voice back into you.

"I can't fucking hear you." He growled through his teeth, breath crackling in his throat as he fought his own restraint. The sound shot a thrill through you. Oh, you were gone.

"Ple-ase, s-sir, please f-fuck me," you moaned louder, and your voice sounded foreign through the ring in your ears. Your thighs strained against the hobble of your waistband as your body tried to spread and arch back for him like a bitch in heat. Thoroughly carried away, heady pleas continued to pour from your mouth. "I n-eed your cock in me, Com-commander, please." He huffed a pleased sound, pulling you back until his lips grazed your ear.

"Good girl."

He released your hair and gripped your hips hard, lifting you up just enough for the head of his cock to slide down towards your entrance. You found yourself pressing your palms eagerly into the seat, pushing yourself up to give your commander better access. You tipped your hips until you felt the swollen head of him perfectly align with your soaked entrance, and-- Oh, fuck.

Even thoroughly lubricated with your own cum, it was a tight fit as he began to sink you down. You whimpered as the angle forced you to take the entirety of him, struggling to relax your tight walls through your descent. You were sure you'd never taken a man nearly this big, sure that your body might break open around him, and yet you were determined to withstand his challenge. He hissed slowly through his teeth as he buried into you inch by steady inch, until you finally sat flush with his lap again, keening from the pleasant sting of complete fullness.

Ren choked on a stifled groan as you reached the hilt of him, his grip bruising your waist as he held you there for a moment. He shifted you both forward, allowing him to brace you up with his arms, and pumped his hips once slowly to test the position. The feeling of his thick cock sliding tight against your walls until it pressed your cervix was as obscene as it was delicious, and as he buried himself again, you couldn't hold back the wanton moan that tore itself from your diaphragm.

"Fuck," You heard Ren mutter raggedly behind you as he adjusted his grip. He began to rut his hips up into you at a punishing tempo, and your thoughts evaporated as his cock slammed over and over into the epicenter of your core. You cried out, voice hitching from his pace and ferocity, as you wildly clutched at the side of a control panel for stability. Somehow the pain of taking him over and over began to morph into blinding oblivion, and the viewport swam before your eyes as you lost yourself in the furious rhythm of his cock.

Ren grabbed your neck and arched you back against his chest, slowing his pace enough to allow shards of air to fight back into your starved lungs. The slower thrusts, the slick feeling of every ridge and vein of him, sent a spike of voltage through your limbs that jump started your senses again.

"Was I wrong to assume you could handle me, lieutenant?" He purred breathily as he slowed to nearly a stop, though clearly not intending to cease his torment altogether. You whined your dissent and tried to roll your hips down into him, hoping to fuck yourself on his cock, to feebly prove that you could take him. "No?" His voice dripped warm with mockery. "We'll see."

His grip anchored you fast. You gasped, almost panicking for a moment as a foreign pressure began to flit and squeeze around your clit. It wasn't his hand. One was controlling your neck, the other a vice on your hip. You didn't have much time to register the fact that he was using the Force until his hips were moving again, his cock filling you whole at a steady pace as that strange and wonderful pressure swirled faster at your bud.

Then suddenly his hand was closing like a leather serpent around your neck, slowly, expertly constricting your pulse. A primal burst of adrenaline blinded you for a moment. He could kill you. It rang between your ears, imploring you to resist, but your body was so pliant, so wholly under the spell of submission, that the thrill melted into something warmer. Something perhaps like trust, but with a much sharper edge as it cut a path through your veins. He squeezed your arteries steadily until your hearing began to fog and inky motes crossed your vision. Pressure swelled in your head, the cockpit beginning to drift away around you until all that grounded you to reality was the steady pumping of the cock inside your cunt and the Force at your clit shooting effervescent waves of pleasure into your darkening brain.

Just as the cusp of total unconsciousness began to seduce you, the pressure vanished. Ren slammed his length into you, and you gulped a massive breath of air as the Force jetted against your clit. Your orgasm crested hard, and shot you over the edge faster than you'd have ever thought possible as he held you steady and pounded into your core. You screamed as your release tore through your body in a perfect harmonic overtone to the oxygen flooding back into your brain, and the combined relief washed such a powerful bliss through your nerves that in that moment, you felt as if the very fabric of space could part for you.

"That's it, fuck, good fucking girl." Ren’s snarls were filthy and delicious in your ear as he continued to fuck you hard, the pace of his cock refusing to let your body come down from the orgasm. You keened and moaned in an incoherent stupor as he slammed up against a spot inside you that was somehow, impossibly, pushing you towards the edge again already. Another orgasm ripped through you, this one singeing your nerve endings as you felt his thrusts become unsteady. Ren bellowed through gritted teeth as he came, cock pulsing inside you while your quaking walls milked him through his release. He pumped you slowly through your aftershocks, tensing with each clench of your cunt around his oversensitive dick, until your bodies stilled in a tranquil beat of silence and shared breathing.

You didn't know at what point he had wrapped both of his arms around you, but you snapped to the realization that Kylo Ren was now holding you tight, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he came down through shuddering breaths. You blinked, slowly bringing the geometric planes of the viewport back into blurred focus, and then beyond it, the distant Supremacy.

It hung suspended like a leviathan in the void, a staunch and silent voyeur to the star-shattering sequence of undoing and accretion that you had just experienced here at the hands and cock of your inscrutable commander. You couldn't be totally sure this hadn't all been another dream, but the feeling of him now was so real, so warm, so human in the depth of his breathing and the slight dampness of his skin against yours, that you were sure no version of Kylo Ren you'd ever conjured in your dreams could feel like this.

You didn't move, didn't dare, but simply felt him encase you, afraid to break whatever spell was holding you in this moment. In a place where maybe, maybe, you could pretend that you weren't just a rank. Or a strategist, or a minuscule pawn in the grander scheme of First Order rule. Here you were a body, yes, but a body that intertwined with something beyond material. Something that laced gently with the threads of humanity behind the frozen carbonite mask of Kylo Ren, which now seemed to thaw for the smallest moment as he held you wrapped in an embrace that could almost be mistaken for tenderness.

Almost.

Your high descended on clipped wings as he finally stirred, settling colder in your stomach as he loosened his arms and you waited for whatever would happen now. He was still inside of you, and half-hard at that, but even so, you felt filled to the brim with his cum and stretched tight around him. Your body bemoaned the idea of vacancy, but if time was up, then it was up. You weren't about to push it. You started to move, shifting to lift off of him.

"No. Stay." He murmured against your neck, and you almost questioned whether your brain had shorted out and you'd misheard him. He coaxed you back against his chest with a press of his palm, and you hesitantly allowed the gentleness of it to malleate your rigid spine. Your brain misfired again as you felt the soft brush of his thumb running slowly up and down the contour of your ribs. Your pulse skipped into your throat. You didn't dare allow your body to think that this was anything akin to intimacy. You had been starved of it for so long that if you let it believe so, you might fully lose sight of the fine line you were now walking. And if you fell, it would be straight onto a saber's edge. The vibration of your body fighting against its own tension ricocheted to the walls of your pussy, and as you squeezed him slightly, you felt his cock already beginning to harden again inside you. Your breath hitched.

Kylo Ren made no acknowledgment of the exchange as he peeled his face from your neck, straightening slightly. He reached his long arms around you to grip the controls of the silencer, but didn't move the craft. He sat still. Contemplative, perhaps.

You were leaned back against his shoulder, forehead resting just by his jaw, and you dared to let your face tuck gently towards him. You waited for a reaction -- to be pushed away, for some signal that you'd overstepped. But he was still. You cautiously nestled the bridge of your nose against his neck, feeling the steady thrum of pulse there, the soft currents of breath that drifted from his nose down to trickle across your skin. You tried to memorize the warm, masculine scent of him that drifted up from his collar, magnified by body heat, stirred by the gentle tide of his breathing. Oh, how long it had been since you'd had this…

The oxytocin-riddled valleys of your mind echoed with a sudden and deadly urge to tilt up and press a soft kiss under his jaw, but a harness of fear held you still as you remembered your place, and the fragility of whatever this was. Instead, you squeezed his cock with your warmth again, a flame of lust already flickering against your belly and providing a welcome distraction from the confusion that was drawing and quartering your brain.

Ren's chest swelled with a soft "mmph" as he seemed to come out of his own trance of thought. You wondered if he'd even been listening to yours at all. He rocked his hips once, the slide of his stiffening cock making your walls leak, and you sighed. Yes. This was fine. This was simple. He pressed his hands forward, beginning to guide the craft towards the twinkling planet in no particular hurry. You gripped his thighs and rolled your hips, squeezing and riding him slowly so as not to break his concentration as he guided you both through the silent expanse of space.

Yes, it was best just to enjoy the simplicity of this. Of two bodies exorcising your respective tensions through the physical release you could pull from one another. And soon it would be over, and the chaos would resume around you, and you'd carry on like your spirits hadn't just fused like two atoms -- for a microsecond -- within a supernova of passion in the middle of space. And that was fine. That was for the best.

So you fixed yourself on that tangible goal of physical pleasure, on the rhythm of your hips, on keeping your commander nice and hard and ready for whatever he decided was next.

Because if you were good enough, then maybe.

Just maybe.

You'd earn yourself a second lesson.

***

Update: Part 2 here.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo ren #kylo ren smut #kylo x reader #kylo ren imagine #star wars fanfiction #first lesson #my works #masterlist

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tawakkull · 4 years

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ISLAM 101: Spirituality in Islam: Part 51

Part 6

In its institutional venues for living, experience and learning such as Takka and Zawiya (zāwiya), Sufism aims to create a spiritual atmosphere and an intimate connection between man, his faith and his fellow creatures. The educational premises and concepts of Sufism can be summarized as follows: the recognition of the self (maʿrīfa an-nafs), the attainment of awareness of God (maʿrīfa-t-ullāh), love of God (hubb-u-llāh) and his creations, awe of God’s radiating love, as well as action that is worthy of God and his creations. These premises have aspects observable epistemologically, affectively and morally and are simultaneously levels of fulfillment of Sufism. The way that man locates himself within the universe should occur by way of self-recognition, self-appraisal (as God’s Caliph on earth) and development of consciousness of his relationship to God and his creatures. A Sufic-minded individual sees himself not only connected to Islam, but as brother to all men, created by a single, common creator. Islam in general is understood by Sufis in the most general of terms as “devotion to God.” Sufism as a simultaneous site of learning, spirituality, religiosity and morality portrays itself as more anthropological (or student-oriented) in comparison to Madrasa (theological schools and colleges). In the Takkas and Zawiyas (locations of living and learning of Sufism), people stand ontologically, intellectually and ethically at the center of the pedagogical act while in a more significantly pious and spiritual atmosphere. Regarding the Madrasas, it is rather knowledge and epistemological orientation that form the focus. With its person-oriented pedagogical mindset, it was largely possible for Sufism (Tasawwuf) to even out-equalize the dialogue between religion, spirituality, reason, ethics and philosophy. In a closer reading of the Sufic path as one based on intellectual (sensually interpreted), inner (affective) and plot-oriented (moral) experience, the relatively multifaceted pedagogical possibilities and levels are revealed. It follows that with Sufic applications in religious pedagogy, a broader (horizontal) and deeper (vertical) view of topics in religious instruction is possible.

Sufism regards learning as more than an epistemological, didactic interaction between teachers and students, emphasizing the affective relationship between the two. This bond occasionally leads to student disenfranchisement, however in this school of learning and experience, autonomy is perceived differently than most school pedagogies of today. With its institutions and forms, Sufism holds a respectable position in the landscape of educational upbringing. The values-oriented and socially-motivated pedagogical approach intends to prepare an individual both mentally and morally for the capacity to act as and to remain “God’s caliph on earth.” It is the aim of such a method to maintain a perspective that includes all of creation and to mirror God’s mercy and love in regard for the multitudes. After completion of the Sufic education, a person can, by way of this religious instruction, be empowered as the most competent of beings (Koran, 95: 4), in whom God immerses his soul (Koran, 15: 29); who internalizes the godly attributes such as “the loving” (al-Wadūd), “the all merciful” (ar-Raḥmān), “the nurturing” (ar-Rabb), “the knowing” (al-ʿAlīm), etc.; and reflects these qualities in demeanor and deed.

Tasawwuf nourishes itself not through Islamic theology alone, but also through Islamic philosophy. The disciplines of ethics, anthropology, and epistemology have all been intensely reviewed by Islamic philosophers, and the resulting insights have been integrated into the philosophy of Tasawwuf. The Sufis devoted much attention to philosophy and defined the rumination (tafakkur) on existence as a service to God. They formulated their own philosophical questions and developed approaches in accord with their ethos. The particular relationship between philosophy and Tasawwuf favored the high visibility of pedagogically-relevant approaches within Sufic ideas and action. Accordingly, Islamic philosophy—with its relationship to antique Greek, Indian, Mesopotamian and Far Eastern philosophies, as well as the early influence on the development of European philosophy (for example Averroes [Ibn Rušd] and Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā])—was able to establish the preconditions for Islamic educational philosophy to communicate on an equal intellectual plane with European schools of thought. It can be useful for multiple reasons to treat the scientific and culturally historic relationships and interplay between Islamic and western civilization as an entity for various educational subjects. Such an intercultural, scientific exchange could, for example, realize a form of study based on cultural dialogue and peace pedagogy.

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spaceexp · 4 years

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NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2: Preflight Checkouts, NASA Administrator Briefing and Launch Weather

NASA & SpaceX - First Crewed Flight DM-2 patch. May 26, 2020 Only one day remains until the planned liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying two American astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Liftoff is targeted for Wednesday, May 27, at 4:33 p.m. EDT from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch window is instantaneous.

Image above: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with Crew Dragon atop, stands poised for launch at historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 21, 2020, ahead of NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission. The rocket and spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, returning human spaceflight capability to the U.S. after nearly a decade. Image Credit: SpaceX. Prior to tomorrow’s targeted launch of the Crew Demo-2 mission, SpaceX will bring the rocket horizontal to perform additional preflight checkouts of Falcon 9, Crew Dragon, and the ground support system, including an inspection of the ground-side chilled water radiator feed that keeps Crew Dragon cool before launch. Today’s checkouts do not impact the flight system or targeted launch date, and the vehicle is scheduled to go vertical later tonight. Tune in to NASA TV and watch online at 10 a.m. EDT as NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana, and astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Nicole Mann discuss the upcoming SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station and answer questions from reporters. The U.S. Air Force 45th Weather Squadron now predicts a 60% chance of favorable weather conditions for NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 launch. The primary weather concerns for launch are flight through precipitation, anvil and cumulus clouds. FORECAST DETAILS Clouds Coverage Bases (feet) Tops (feet) Cumulus Scattered 3,000 10,000 Cirrostratus Broken 25,000 28,000 Weather/Visibility: Rain showers/5 miles Temperature: 82 degrees NASA and SpaceX will provide live coverage of the launch activities beginning Wednesday, May 27 at 12:15 p.m. leading up to the lift off of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelling the SpaceX Crew Dragon carrying NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley on their way to the International Space Station.

Image above: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with Crew Dragon atop, stands poised for launch at historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 25, 2020, ahead of NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission. Image Credit: SpaceX. NASA and SpaceX will provide joint, live coverage from launch through arrival at the space station at 11:39 a.m. on Thursday, May 28. This will be SpaceX’s final test flight for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and will provide critical data on the performance of the Falcon 9 rocket, Crew Dragon spacecraft, and ground systems, as well as in-orbit, docking, and landing operations. Related articles: NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 Launch Readiness Review Complete https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/05/nasas-spacex-demo-2-launch-readiness.html NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Brings Extra Hands to Science on the Space Station https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/05/nasas-commercial-crew-program-brings.html Related links: Commercial Crew Program: http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew NASA TV: http://www.nasa.gov/live International Space Station: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Anna Heiney. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article

#space #science

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taww · 4 years

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Acoustically Treating Side Reflections: Even Better and Not as Hard as You Think

It's common acoustics knowledge that "early" or "first" reflections in the listening room are the most damaging to sound quality. Every single loudspeaker setup on the face of the earth will have to deal with these to some degree, and the ill effects tend to be concentrated in the midrange where both the bulk of musical content lives and the ear is very sensitive. And yet many audiophiles, yours truly included, spend far less time addressing this than tinkering with our gear. The reasons are understandable - decor considerations and living practicality often make acoustical treatments a nonstarter. Often we'll throw down a heavy rug to temper the floor reflections and call it a day, leaving side walls untreated to say nothing of the ceiling. I get it, it's a pain to deal with acoustics. But as my equipment continued to improve, one particular pesky reflection was weighing more and more heavily as the greatest sonic issue in my setup, and I finally resolved to doing something about it. Well, I was pleasantly surprised (and maybe a little embarrassed) that I was able to address this with a very minimal outlay of trouble and expense, effecting a massive improvement on the quality of my music!

The Problem

My room is a bit lopsided - I have the system placed along a 11 foot wall, with an exterior wall to the left side and an open layout to the kitchen and entryway on the right. It's over 26' long with 12' ceilings, so rear and overhead reflections are less of a concern, at least at midrange frequencies. A heavy wool rug with pad tames the floor decently. There is a kitchen island to the right but it doesn't seem to factor that strongly as an early reflection source. The left wall, on the other hand, is very clearly causing all sorts of issues - a lopsided stereo image, uneven midrange frequency response (different notes along an instrument or singer's range would pop forward or recede due to the comb filter effect) and a general feeling of glare and confusion that would make extended listening fatiguing, particularly at higher volume levels. I had from time to time mitigated it by propping up absorbent objects like a dog bed against the wall, but after a lot of eye rolling from my wife who pointed out I was robbing one of our pups of his leisure spot, I decided to find a more permanent and effective solution.

Current setup in our open living space.

There are tons of online resources for finding early reflection points - e.g. here's one from GIK Acoustics - so I'll leave you to that homework. I finally used the mirror technique to locate exactly where the side wall reflection point was, and luckily it is nearly perfectly centered on a 36" section of solid wall. I was relieved it wasn't on the windows, as treating those in a spouse-friendly way would have been far more difficult. Now all I needed was to decide whether to diffuse, absorb or both at that point, and find the appropriate treatment.

Treatment Option

GIK Acoustics is a well-known purveyor of affordable treatments and I had a good experience ordering a number of their 242 acoustic panels for my wife's music practice room. I'll comment more on them in a dedicated review, but the important things to note is that they feature 2" of fiberglass foam with 1.5" of air gap between the foam and the wall, which increases overall effectiveness, and they are also available with a "scatter plate" option if you want to mix diffusion and absorption. GIK gives this guidance for early reflection treatment:

Though diffusion is sometimes the right solution in the context of a design that supports it, in most existing problematic spaces absorption is not only more effective, but also a simpler, less expensive option.

I decided to stick with absorption and forgo the scatter plate option. A pack of three 24" x 36" panels ran USD $183 plus shipping. Since I only needed one panel, I used the other two to further treat my wife's room. Most people will need two of these for side walls and you can play with the most effective location for a 3rd panel (e.g. directly behind the listening position, if the rear wall is nearby). I roughly centered it vertically with the upper-frequency acoustical center of my Audiovector SR 6 speakers (the point between the AMT tweeter and 6" midrange). With the panel's 36" height this easily covers incident reflections from any sitting or standing positions in my listening area. Hanging was a piece of cake - a single screw directly screwed into drywall is more than strong enough.

Results

The improvement was instantly obviously. Finally I had a balanced soundstage, sitting more naturally at the plane of the speakers with a rock solid center image. Vocals and woodwinds took on a buttery smoothness, and the overall presentation was much more relaxed and evenhanded. The GIK panel was significantly more effective than other materials and panels I had tried (e.g. a 2" Acoustimac Eco Core panel), largely making the side wall disappear. It won't kill all reflections - you'd need a significantly thicker panel and bass trapping - but it sufficiently attenuates them to more than tolerable levels.

View from the listening position.

Interestingly, I've found Audiovector speakers, with their AMT tweeters and slender, tapered cabinets, to be relatively sensitive to side wall disturbances. The Silverline SR17 Supreme monitors with their more traditional Dynaudio drivers and cabinet were still able to image pretty well without treatment. I'm guessing the lateral radiation pattern of the speakers is pretty different - I'll have to take some frequency response measurements to confirm - so YMMV, but any speaker will benefit.

Conclusion

If you have a bare side wall by your speakers, you really owe it to yourself to try this most basic of treatments. We 'philes are more than willing to throw hundreds, thousands of dollars at cables and sundry accessories, but a modicum of effort mitigating the peskiest of early reflections can provide far greater return on investment. Using the right type of panel is also key - the GIK 242 measures well and was particularly effective in my application. There are dressier, more visually appealing options from companies like Vicoustic, but check specs carefully to see if they're comparable in absorption. And convincing your significant other of the decor is an assignment I leave to you. 🙂

#audiophile #audio #hifi #acoustics #stereo #speakers #tips

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darkpoisonouslove · 5 years

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“Your Call”

Summary: Valtor is after a powerful enchantment that will force him to face the most dangerous challenge he's ever encountered. Will that be enough to deter him from his pursuit of power or will it simply make the hunt more interesting? Siren AU. Part 1 of “Love Can Be a Trap That Sets You Free”.

In her review of my previous Valtor/Griffin fic @her-majesty-wears-jeans mentioned siren in relation to Griffin and my brain immediately jumped on the Siren AU train. So here is the Siren AU that nobody asked for but I hope you'll enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it. (Seriously, this was so much fun to write!)

Valtor assessed the entrance of the cave. It looked open and unprotected, and ready to lead him to the enchantment he was seeking. A fool would’ve run straight into it, lured in by the promise of unparalleled power. But Valtor was no fool. The mere fact that he’d gotten this far proved it. The location of the cave had been hidden behind countless riddles and obstacles that he’d smashed right through, determined to lay his hands on what could possibly be the greatest treasure of all. It would be his no matter how much patience and resources he had to exhaust.

He summoned a ball of magic and crouched, ready to dodge if necessary. He threw it at the entrance of the cave, but it was blocked and dispersed by the shimmering net of yellow that revealed itself. Pesky fairy dust. He’d be damned if he ever let that of all things stop him. Especially now that he was so close to getting the one tool that could make all his desires come true.

His own magic was useless against the barrier–as proven–since it was meant to repel all dark magic and his Dragon Fire was as black as the coals it left behind. Luckily, he’d stolen some spells for rainy days.

He used the oppositus spell he’d stolen not long ago, robbing an entire planet of its defining trait, on the barrier itself. It was neither light, nor dark magic in essence and provided him with the perfect way to override the otherwise effective defense system.

The bright yellow turned into dark purple that hurt the eyes and looked like it would jump at you and wrap around you tight enough to suffocate you. But to Valtor it was the color of victory. He threw another ball of power at it, causing it to tear and fall to the ground, dissolving into the grass. It was where useless dust belonged anyway.

Now that that was out of the way, he could take a good look at the cave. Well, actually, he couldn’t since it was engulfed in darkness that started right at the line of the entrance even though the sun was supposed to shed some light on the first few meters, at least. But where magic was involved, nature was powerless. And when he obtained the enchantment he was after, everything and everyone would be powerless against him.

He conjured a magical sphere that would follow him and float around him no matter where he went and captured a flame of his Dragon Fire inside it. Light seemed secured but when he pushed the sphere into the darkness of the cave, the flame was immediately extinguished. This was proving to be a challenge which would only make the reward sweeter.

He considered his options. Not that there were many. He couldn’t go back now. So he had to figure out a way to keep the flame intact. Separated from its source, it could be extinguished, indeed. The problem carried the solution in itself.

Valtor cut off a strand of his hair and put it in the sphere before lighting the fire in it again. It carried the essence of the Dragon Fire and would keep it burning.

And indeed, when he extended his hand forward, the sphere dispersed the darkness and allowed him to see the place of his greatest conquest yet. It was an ordinary cave with no remarkable features except for the darkness which hid its ugly plainness. He hoped the rest of his journey wouldn’t be quite so underwhelming.

He stepped inside and felt the space behind his back close in on him. When he looked back, there was nothing but darkness. Gone were the clearing in front of the entrance and the stone walls he’d just seen. He was walking in darkness, stepping on darkness, surrounded by darkness. There was nothing but darkness and him. He’d be scared if they weren’t old friends, if it weren’t flowing through his veins and allowing his lungs to take in air, to take in life.

He walked. And walked. And walked. And all he was getting to was more darkness. It was just the next obstacle on the road. It was a spell that manipulated space, making it stretch out before you until you forgot your destination because you were getting nowhere. And you couldn’t be nowhere so it brought you back at the last place you could remember before you could lose your mind. The moment his mind formed the word “nowhere”, he’d be spat back at the entrance, forced to begin the process all over again. Well, he wasn’t planning on doing that. His mind was set on his goal and his secure steps were taking him right there. His desire to claim his prize was burning in him stronger than the tiredness.

His determination never wavered, and neither did the flame in his sphere. It brought him to a small passage in the rocks. The same rocks he’d seen at the entrance. He cast a glance over his shoulder to see the sun drenched clearing just a cast behind him. He grinned at himself. That sight almost made even him feel like it’d been all for naught. And it was so much better than the derision which the miniature hole in the stone brought about. As if that could pass as a challenge.

He turned into a rabbit that was just big enough to go through and hopped through the hole, his sphere following him and revealing devastating beauty before his eyes.

The place was full of silver flowers with fine petals that reflected the soft light reaching them and created a glowing aura. It was magical in every sense of the word and carried a quiet strength that was so breathtaking, it would be a shame to step all over them.

Valtor considered passing through the field of flowers as he was – a little rabbit that was light and small enough to go between the stems without causing any damage. He was already in rabbit form anyway. It wouldn’t cost him anything.

Caught up in his thoughts, he only noticed the bugs approaching him when they attacked him. They were almost as big as him and attached themselves to his front and back. Two were enough to hold him down but they kept piling on top of him, threatening to crush him underneath their weight. He tried to shake them off since he couldn’t use his magic in that form but he couldn’t move. Their reddish brown bodies were like a rusty armor that would not allow any movements. And it looked like their carapaces were resistant to magic because he couldn’t transform back. His magic was trapped into his body which, in turn, was trapped between the bugs with no option of escape.

He summoned the sphere with the Dragon Fire to hover over the bugs and willed the fire to burn as brightly as possible. It seemed to do the trick for they got off of him and he was human again in no time, running straight into the field of deceitful beauty.

The moment he crushed the first flower, the grass seemed to come to life with its tiny sickly green tendrils reaching for anything that wasn’t fast enough to get out of their way. They swallowed up the silver stems and tore apart the delicate petals with sadistic passion. But their appetite–just like them–seemed ever growing for they grabbed for Valtor, too, wrapping around his boots in an attempt to hold him down. He used his magic to ward them off, but they kept plaguing the place, growing with every stem of silver they devoured.

In his haste to get past them, Valtor almost stepped on a snake that was lounging amidst the massacre with decided indifference. It was beyond him how he didn’t see its deep purple scales in the sea of green, but he’d missed it all the same, busy with the killer plants.

It hissed at him before diving towards him to bite him, its fangs sharp enough to go through his boots and full of magical poison.

He managed to dodge by throwing himself on the ground that was still covered with monstrous grass. It snaked around him with a clear intent to kill while the snake watched, its tongue coming out of its mouth as if it could taste his defeat and its eyes in the same sickly green as the grass that was currently putting enough pressure on him to break his bones.

For a moment it crossed his mind that the snake was controlling the grass–its manic stare would be proof enough–but he brushed the thought off. It would take a greater power than a glorified magical lizard to bring him down to his knees. Or in this case – sprawled on the ground and cornered by grass.

His blood started boiling and he allowed the pulsing energy to radiate off of him, emitting unbearable heat in the air via his magic that cooked the grass and forced the snake to retreat. He was quickly on his feet and ran after it to see it crawl into the still waters of the lake that he hadn’t noticed up until now.

No wonder, really – the waters were as black as the soil and the only thing he could see was the green glow of the snake’s eyes under the surface. Its movements indicated for a very steep slope that went down almost vertically. One step in the water and he’d be completely submerged.

That was not the best news for someone whose magic was fire-based. Even if he had the Dragon Fire. But he knew he had to dive if he wanted the enchantment. There was nowhere else for it to be hidden and the snake’s choice of a hiding place was further proof.

As he contemplated his approach, a loud flapping of wings startled him. He looked up only to lock eyes with what he would’ve mistaken for a giant hummingbird if not for the solid beak and intelligent eyes. No, what was looking back at him form a niche high up in the wall with yet another pair of glowing green eyes was a crow. A crow with purple and green glittering feathers. It was magical. Just like everything else he’d seen in the cave of wonders. Wonders that were trying to kill him.

The moment the crow extended its wings, Valtor summoned his magic, ready to defend himself. He wouldn’t be caught off guard again. And the feeling of power in his fingers reminded him just how much above these magical beasts he was.

The crow flew straight for him, dodging the magic he threw at it, and used its beak to tear a single hair from Valtor’s head before making a turn and flying back over the lake. It dropped the hair in the water and returned to its niche before Valtor could even attack it again. So much for his previous thought.

He almost missed the movement in the water while trying to stare into the crow hard enough to decipher its bizarre behavior. Two fingers showed from beneath the surface to grab the hair and disappeared again without leaving a trace in the water that was still as a rock again. They did leave his curiosity piqued, though, and his heart thumping loudly in anticipation. He would finally get to see who was the puppeteer of that beautiful, yet, hostile ecosystem.

A wave of magic swept over him and he looked at the water that was hellbent on keeping its secrets and gave nothing away. He didn’t have to wait much longer, though, for the water finally moved to make space for the creature emerging from its depths.

She had long light purple hair that fell over her breasts, protecting them from his greedy gaze, and a fish tail in a darker shade of purple, the scales looking exactly like those of the snake. He’d thought her to be a mermaid if it weren’t for her eyes. They reflected so much of the light that they were glowing and were molten gold in color – the shade of the sky during sunset. And how fitting that was since that was exactly what they were made to watch – the sunset of people’s lives.

She was a siren whose only purpose was to lure everyone who walked into the cave to their death to protect the powerful magic hidden in her domain. A purpose rather lowly for a magnificent and powerful creature like her. Her skin had a pale green glow to it – the same glow as the eyes of the animals and the grass. They were her creations just like the flowers that were growing between the scales of her tail and were sustained by the magic of her body. One of them tore away and used its leafs to swim over to a rock where it attached itself and started developing a root system that soon covered everything it could reach. The place where the flower had been growing on her had the color of her skin but quickly turned purple and extended over the scales beneath it, turning into another one of them when it was touched by the water.

And in the skin of her abdomen, below her breasts, was embedded what could only be a key. A golden key that kept the enchantment he was looking for safe into her grasp. The irony was so sweet he could laugh. The only way to get your hands on the one magic that could make anyone do as you desire was to resist the temptation of the siren. And if you failed, you’d have to do as she desired of you for the rest of your decidedly short life.

Oh, but Valtor wanted more than just the magic. He wanted the siren. For she was made of pure magic. He could feel it radiating off of her skin. It was so powerful that it lured him in closer, right to the edge of the lake. One more step and he’d fall in her embrace. He wanted to. He wanted her. She had to be his for he wanted her more than the enchantment he’d come for.

“Welcome to my lake,” she spoke with a voice as deep as the ocean.

“That was a very warm welcome I got there,” Valtor said, unable to take his eyes off of her, afraid she might disappear back under the water that he couldn’t see through. The mere thought tasted bitter like failure.

“It wards off those who do not deserve my attention,” she explained and he ate up every single word formed by her voice. It was like music to his ears and he never wanted to listen to anything other than that magical sound. “I can grant every wish. You don’t even have to say it. Just think about it and it’s yours.”

Valtor almost didn’t think of the enchantment, his mind full of all that she was, his senses overloaded with perceiving everything that she did. He couldn’t function without her at his side anymore. He had to have her. “What’s the price?”

The corners of her mouth twitched up. “A simple kiss,” she said, causing his mind to stop working altogether. Kissing her would be like tasting magic in its purest form. No will was strong enough to resist that. Not that he wanted to.

“I believe we have a deal,” he knelt down to level himself with her. Suddenly, the steep bottom of the lake seemed like a blessing for it allowed her to come close enough to touch, close enough to kiss.

He buried his hands in her long purple hair that had been dry the moment she’d shown her head above the water and pulled her closer.

She clutched at his clothes, keeping him in place as she stole the breath out of his lungs, her soul trying to drown his. It was a common misconception that sirens didn’t have souls. But they did. They had souls like the ocean and once you got lost in their waves, you lost your soul to the siren and she could make you do her bidding. And right now her ocean was fighting to extinguish his flames.

Part of him wished to let her do it. Just lose himself into the incomprehensible waves of her power, into the ocean of magic that she was. But that way she would have him. And that was every bit as different from him having her as their core elements. So he had to resist the urge to give in and keep his fire burning.

His oxygen was running low, though, and if he didn’t pull away, he would die. But if he did pull away, he would die, too. If he broke the kiss, he’d be hers and she’d mark him with the first letter of her name–all too tempting a possibility since the power of the ocean was captured in every siren’s name and it was written in the language of the waves that no human could understand–using water to carve it into his skin like the waves carved holes into rocks. And she would only stop when the water was spilling down his throat and making his lungs burn for air that would never come.

He discarded his gloves, letting them fall into the water, and moved his hands to her neck, covering the gills located there. The feeling of her bare skin under his palms was so heady that he would never let her go. He concentrated all of his power into sucking the oxygen out of her body and into his. He felt it flowing through his blood and towards his brain, helping him stay focused. He could feel it affecting her, too, for she slowed down in her fervor and it wasn’t long before she was pulling away. And that was how the fire triumphed over the might of the ocean.

He gasped for breath, yet yearned only for her, and the only thing that calmed his frantic heart was the knowledge that she was his and he would never let her go.

He had to pull his hand away from her neck when he felt her skin burning under his fingers. There, next to the gills, appeared an elegant v burnt into her skin. Her own magic was marking her with his initial because she was his now. And he was certain he’d never seen anything more beautiful than the look on her face.

She was looking at him as if he was her everything. And he was. He meant more to her than the ocean now.

Without a word she dived into the lake to get what he’d come for. Though now he had a problem. Or at least he thought so before he saw the scales of her tail going all the way up her spine and into her hair. It was a physical expression of the ocean woven into her soul that linked her to the water. But she was faithful to him now.

She soon emerged with a shell in her hands and nothing more than a pale scar where the key had been nestled into her skin.

He pocketed his enchantment and pulled the real pearl up on the shore. He put a hand between her breasts and willed his fire to burn and force all the water out of her soul.

Her face scrunched up in pain but she held still for that was his will. Her scales started to lose color and retreat back, turning into human skin cells. Her tale separated into two legs that would allow her to walk together with him and her gills closed, leaving no sign of ever existing. The edges of the mark on her neck got distorted and made it look like an ugly wound rather than the elegant brand that it was. And her eyes lost their bright glow, turning a shade tamer as if the sun had already set on their sky. Gone was the adoring look, too.

He hoped he hadn’t overdone it. He knew he had. Or maybe that was just the price for taking away a part of her soul. He couldn’t be her ocean if she didn’t have one engraved into her being. He also might have burned away enough of the spell that made her his to give her free will. But he had the enchantment now so losing her was not a problem he had to worry about. She’d be his one way or another.

He made her a dress in the same dark purple that her tail had been and helped her up. He supported her until she got stable enough for him to let go of her and allow her to deal with the killer grass that had almost stopped him on his way to her and had grown back even though he’d destroyed it. But now that he had her, it wouldn’t be a problem. Nothing would be.

She raised her hands and the green glow of magic that came out of them made the grass retreat back into the soil, leaving the path clear for their passage.

The crow cawed inconsolably but she silenced it with a single motion of her hand. Valtor wasn’t even certain if she’d used magic. But the crow didn’t try to interfere and passively watched them go. The life of the lake was nothing without her.

She smashed to pieces the wall that had forced him to shapeshift before with the violent purple energy coming out of her hands.

“Come, Griffin,” he offered her a hand and gave her a new name. She was his now and her name had to reflect that. The griffin was a powerful and majestic animal with wings strong enough to keep up with a dragon. The perfect partner.

She took his hand and he walked out of the cave not only with his life and the enchantment, but also with a powerful partner who would follow him into the fire.

#winx club #winx valtor #winx griffin #griffin x valtor #covenshipping #fanfiction #my fanfiction #my writing #au #siren au #love can be a trap that sets you free

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