Is Your Love Strong Enough? Part 5 - The Land of Dreams

[cityship]

The dreamworld. The personal world that touches both the person's inner soul and memories of times gone past. the strange, the bizarre, the cruel, the comedy, it has a range of colors and emotions. Usually, very personal. Even the mind doesn't remember all of them.

But what if that soul is now shared with another? A windowed view into the deepest part of the body that possibly neither of them ever wanted to share, as one whose body they are currently drifts into sleep and gets carried off by nightfall, the other lives to see the dreams, one by one, even the ones the host body doesn't remember by morning.

How will this affect each other? Or will it just be a problem or things they'd rather forget?

[OOC - This is completely optional, and was a fun little idea that I figured if anyone else wanted to join in and have their characters see each others dreams or talk to them inside, are welcome too. Enjoy ruining each other's images. Again, if you don't want to do it, don't worry, it's all good. It's a good way of sharing innermost secrets and old memories. Ahhh, making out characters suffer for fun and profit.]

Comments

Lash and Zetta

[thewunderkind]

Lash's dreams oh god

[thewunderkind]

Lash's dreams were a strange thing to behold. Most of it seemed to be memories of old, rebuild from what she knew. The voices sounded almost robotic when she couldn't remember exactly how they sounded like. Sometimes the pictures fazed in and out like transmission was having problems.

Yet they seemed to keep having a patter - a few dreams of old memories then something she'd probably remember the next day - a crazy dream that didn't make much sense.

The first dream seemed to reach from the deepest part of her memories.

Black corridor. Just a flickering light ahead. Lash was holding the hands of two people, but she couldn't make out their faces. She knew who they were, however.

Mother and Father. They had names, right? She had never called them by their names. They didn't like it when she called them Mother and Father, so of course she did. That's how biology worked, she had told them. You couldn't fault her for being right!

No, no they could not. Which is why she was there. A testing facility, they explained. A place where she could prove a man of how smart she already was at her age.

He stood on a chair and desk that she had to crane her neck up and up and up to see, a single white light shining over her as they asked her for her name, age and occupation.

“Lash. Four! Uh...I occupy myself with science and blowing things up, tee hee!” The man scribbled something. Oh. Maybe she had said something wrong. Whatever. Everyone kept telling her she shouldn't be doing this or that, but everyone else was dumber than her. So she didn't listen to them. Iron-proof logic, really. At least that's what she thought when she looked up at the guy. “Please sit there,” he indicated, pointing to a chair nearby that looked more like what you'd find in a death row than a comfortable to sit.

In fact, as soon as she sat down, she felt a bunch of straps self adjusting to her and realized she couldn't get out. “HEY! No fair!”

No answer. The lights went back up into the room and...the faces of her family and the man were still black. Obviously Lash's brain couldn't call them up. Didn't remember what they looked like, even if she wasn't questioning it in this dream. It was only a replay of memories, after all. The tests began, regardless and it was a blur for the most part. 'Fill this out, explain this theory, do this mathematical equation, repeat the Black Hole Creed'

She did everything perfectly, of course. Everything was explained even if she had terrible writing at that age, she did all of the math without an error, and she not only repeated the creed, but also said it backwards.

Just to show off.

She liked to show off a lot. In fact...

“She likes to show off a lot,” was the man's first words spoken regarding her when all the testing was done and he went over his notes. “Emotional reactions are higher than average. It says here she is the third of four children. One died in battle, soldier. Two older brothers, soldiers. Both parents soldiers. You believe she'd be better suited for the research and science department, even considering her pedigree?”

“We do,” her mother answered. “She's managed to sneak off and do reading on herself, and has already been working on textbooks left for students much older than herself. We questioned her if she wanted to become a soldier and...”

“Soldiers are big, dumb and stupid and just little men you send out to shoot things!” Lash said, still tied in and unable to move. “I'm waaaay better than them!” Silence, for a few minutes, and all she could see was the men and her father exchanging papers. “Can I get out yet? I hate being stuck in a chair for this long and now you're not asking questions anymore!”

“You were right to do the test this early,” the man finally managed to say, looking over his notes and ignoring her. He pressed a button and Lash watched as a strange robot appeared, the hum of something being heated up. It was only when it pressed it close to her arm that she realized she was being marked with something.

“OOOOW!”

“Her tests are beyond the capacity of most of our brightest young adults in the labs, and she's still young enough to be molded and get rid of that...emotional problem of hers.”

[thewunderkind]

"I do not have an emotional problem!" she protested again, rubbing the place on her arm where the needles had penetrated. Everything had been done in a flash, and while the pain had been sharp for the first seconds, it was over quickly. She as more angry about not being told than anything else, really. "It's just everyone else that's dumb and I'm not afraid to show it and-" She stopped to see the robot dron test the mark he gave her, but moving an ultraviolet light around. She could see the nation's symbol, her name and a barcode with some numbers. "Hey! Neato!"

"...she'll no doubt cause a problem or two, but thankfully she has the brains to back up that mouth of hers." He pushed up his reading glasses. "Quite a Wunderkind, really."

"Wunderkind..." Lash repeated. That sounded really important! She liked that!

"Do you wish to transfer her now, or to wait an additional year?"

"We had hoped to have her in the science wing as soon as possible," her mother explained, giving Lash a light pat on the head as the straps around her stomach and arms were finally removed and she ran back to them. Lash grabbed her father's hand, listening in. "She's too bright, and we are used to having soldiers in the house. She can't learn anything from us. Moreover, she enjoys...tricking them a lot, causing disturbances at night...."

"My brothers are dumb!" Lash explained, out of turn as she tried to jump on the man's desk. Every half a second she could partly see his empty, blank face. "One time I built a firecracker and left it in his bed and he ran outside with his gun in his undies thinking we were under a sneak attack, tee hee hee!" The man stopped speaking before writing down more notes on his pad.

"Very well. I'll make the adjustments and she can be sent off." He mentioned at Lash a door that looked far, far far away. "Come. The science department is going to be your home from now on." she looked over at her parents, in their still-complete blackness and felt uncertain. They gave her a nod.

"Go on. Don't worry, you'll do us proud," his father told her dropping her off right next to men with bright red goggles and dark black outfits. The type you'd want to leave your children to. Suddenly she wasn't sure if she wanted to go. Lash felt her fingers in her right hand giving way from her father's one by one as she used her left took the other man's. They then walked and it as only when she remembered to that Lash finally turned to wave at her parents, not knowing that it would be the last time she'd get to see them in her life.

They didn't wave. The nerve!

She pouted quietly, fuming and planning all sorts of revenge as she watched them begin some dumb talk about raises and how many more children they would be having. Pffft! Whatever. She was going places with cool looking guys! She was going to be something much more than a dumb soldier!

It didn't take too long for her and weird goggle guy to get to the door.

"Can I open it?" the man shrugged and stepped back so she could by herself. Jumping twice, she finally managed to get the knob and turned it, as room was suddenly flooded with pure white light.

Marco and Sakura

[livestoannoy]

Night One

[encourage]

Sakura had the strangest urge to stretch and yawn, if it was all mental. Marco was in control -- if tired -- and she was somewhat interested in feeling what she could that indicated as much. She wondered briefly at the ethics to being on alert while he rested... but it wouldn't solve anything without having him take the kind of endurance drugs she did, time to time.

He also didn't have the tolerance she had.

Mulling over these quietly, more curious emotion than coherent thought, she didn't even notice as exhaustion of a different sort drew her into rest and reflection. It was so much easier, if he tried calming down first. Sakura had no eyes to blink, no way to stop herself from sliding backward through consciousness other than sheer stubborn willpower.

She was asleep before she was aware it had even happened.

Re: Night One

[livestoannoy]

Unfortunately for Sakura, this wasn't going to be a restful sleep. It took a while for Marco to fall asleep - trying to doze off with Sakura thinking loudly at him all the time was hard - but eventually he drifted off, and soon slipped into a dream.

Or, like most of Marco's dreams, a nightmare.

This one wasn't new. But ever since Eva had been jailed, he'd been having it more often, and more vividly. He stood on the pier of the Yeerk pool, all around them a jumble mess of battle and Dracon beams, while his mother crawled towards the small, insignificant slug.

"Die" she screamed, tears streaming down her face as she was blinded to everything else around her. Rachel was bleeding, the big fighter that Ax was piloting hovering near them, and Marco was trying to pull his mother to safety. But she wouldn't budge...she was too focused on the slug. "DIE!"

Marco tried to stomp on her, like he had the last time, but it didn't seem to be working - no matter what he did the Visser wouldn't die. In fact the slug was growing bigger - mutating and twisting until she had formed into his mother's body, the Visser reaching over to snap his mother's neck...

Night Sakura Something-or-another

[encourage]

In a bizarre way, Sakura's sleep schedule was more consistent with Marco nattering away (off and on) in her head, probably in part making up for how often she'd been nattering away in his, but really, that was hardly her fault. Having an active mind wasn't a bad thing. Not in her opinion.

Still, she was making the conscious decision to pretend at something almost healthy when it came to sleep, partly hoping that she'd be able to send them both down past the level of sleep where dreams claimed them, so they'd be able to get something like rest. She felt both more and less tired than usual, oddly grateful that the annoyance of having another person in her head almost meant she never had the time (or privacy) to get lost in her own thoughts. Even when she had been in his head, with nothing but time, his own thoughts, irritations, and habits were enough to keep her distracted.

One silver lining in a load of bullshit, she supposed. She fluffed up her pillow, brought out of the teahouse and to the couch she'd temporarily been sleeping on. It was a very... strange feeling. Sleepovers weren't something she'd ever done, and now she was fairly regularly occupying someone else's home.

Made her skin crawl, if she told herself (and Marco, if not intentionally) not to think about it, pulling a borrowed blanket over herself before she began drifting off to sleep.

Einhart and Fate

[hegemonstratos.livejournal.com]

Re: Einhart and Fate

[hegemonstratos.livejournal.com]

Einhart's dreams were mostly the same every night. Or rather, memories. Most of the time her dreams were memories of her ancestor, Claus Ingvalt. Usually it would start with Olive and Claus' first meeting, when she had been sent to Shutra, and the days thereafter when they had gotten pretty close. Doing almost everything together, especially training in their Kaiser Arts together.

Most of it wasn't that terribly detailed, but what was obvious in the memories was how close the two of them had been, growing up together over the years.

... Though one of the memories she had was pretty strange. If only because it wasn't a memory of something that had happened, but rather a fantasy of Claus's, where he confessed his love to Olive, and eventually the two of them kissing.

And well... starting to do other things. Claus Ingvalt had been a young man at the time, after all. It didn't last long though, mostly because Einhart's mind thankfully jumped to something else. A destroyed city, ruins of buildings and rubble all over the place.

But Einhart was standing around it, which was a bit unusual. This one must not have been a memory, because Einhart usually never experienced this thing as herself. And the rubble didn't look like something back from Ancient Belka. It looked a lot more modern.

Jamie and Victoria

[sonicscreamer.livejournal.com]

Jamie's dreams

[bonnypiperlad]

There's no color in Jamie's dreams tonight. Everything's firmly black and white, grainy about the edges with the occasional black thread running through them, like the 'floaters' you see when you close your eyes sometimes.

He finds himself in a study behind a shop full of Victorian curios that claim to be antiques, yet they look suspiciously new, completely wrong for the time they're in. There's a man with him, dressed in a baggy, over-sized tail coat and bow tie, hair slightly rumpled - the Doctor he spent so many years with before waking up on Stacy. A body lies on the floor of the study, finger pointing at a bookcase and a ripped photograph clutched in his hand. Jamie is trying to get the Doctor to leave, but the Doctor seems much more interested in solving the mystery they've found.

With a bit of fiddling, they figure how to get the bookcase open, revealing a room with a throne, some strange metal contraption that is hot to the touch and a box with the other half of the picture in it. Impulsively, Jamie opens the box, and a thick noxious smoke fills the room and overpowers the pair of them.

The dream skips, and suddenly he's sitting in a chair in Victorian house, a glass of something fizzing in his hand, looking up at an oil painting of a beautiful woman who bears a striking resemblance to someone he knows. "She was very lovely," he says, to a woman who is just off to the side. The woman leaves, and he gets up to search through a desk, unaware of a scruffy-looking who man creeping up behind him with a sap in his hand...and unaware that there's someone else with him, also watching the events unfold.

Hit Girl and Ruffnut (1/2)

[hit-girl-mindy.livejournal.com]

There was little in the world, especially on the ship, that Mindy Macready, that Hit Girl, feared. The Ohm were not a nightmare to her: they were an enemy, and she obliterated her enemies, kept her eye on the prize. It was as simple as that. It was, much of the time, how Mindy was able to keep her personas so separate: it was so much more than Hit Girl cursed and Mindy didn't.It was more that Mindy could be personable, she could give more of herself to people on the ship. When she was Hit Girl, play was limited, almost non existent. The advice to have fun fell on deaf ears. If she wanted fun, she could be Mindy. The work of fighting, the threat of the thing in the depths of space she had yet to explore remained, and no matter what anyone told her, that was something you had to fight.

But in that darkness, there was a weakness too, a thing both Mindy had Hit Girl had not foreseen until it was too late: the loss of a person, that one person, so precious that you had to use everything in your power to save them. That weakness became something Mindy and Hit Girl shared, a shame that they could never erase. It didn't matter that she had moved on, that the ship had shown her dad: she still remembered that day, the pain of it still raw in her, still a thing that drove her to train more and more.

And for a long time, that was enough. There was no more nightmares of that night, no more desperation in her heart as she saw the flames take him, as he shouted instructions she followed with vengeance even as he was cooked and screaming. No more smell of burned flesh as she finally reached him and wrapped him tight, knowing it was too late.

This was the reason Mindy never slept in one place for a long time. No roommate would have understood this, barring maybe Sasami, and that wasn't anything she inflicted on people. The day Stacy let her see dad, those dreams stopped, and she realized it was ok now. Dad was all right, and she would see him again. They went away.

So she thought.

Re: Hit Girl and Ruffnut (2/2)

[hit-girl-mindy.livejournal.com]

The last few days though, she was beginning to notice something that even she couldn't ignore: the dreams came back, altered. It had seemed all right when dad had finally been shown to be alive, she thought they would never come back. But now the thugs were all there: the torture happened, and she crept into the building, waiting to get the drop on those fucking thugs. She knew they wanted to make an example, so she was there to make an example of THEM. They would know exactly what the fuck they were dealing with.

So she shut the lights, creeping ever so slowly, putting on her nightvision goggles. The diatribe on fire came to an abrupt end as she took aim and started taking down the thugs, one by one. She knew this by heart, but it wouldn't change: she would make them pay.

And just as she rounded to the front, she saw it: the thing that changed the nightmare that left her speechless with fear. It wasn't Dave as Kickass, or even Big Daddy. The viking helmet was mashed onto her head: the hands looked mashed, her face all bruises, black eyes and blood stains. She was in one of her usual awkward poses, knees sort of pressed apart, and even that looked skinned. But she saw the lighter falling, and her heart jumped in her throat.

"Hit Girl," Ruffnut moaned, eyes pleading. "Help me."

A low strangled animal noise came from Hit Girl's throat. This wasn't possible: they couldn't have done this to HER, not Ruffnut, not her partner! They shouldn't have been able to touch her. For just a second, she was frozen to the spot, and then the lighter hit the ground, igniting the gas.

And her girlfriend was up in flames.

"No! NO NO!!! STOP!" Hit girl screamed but the guns were still going because the thugs were still there, and she could only run at her regular human speed!

"Come on you fucking legs, move!" She yelled, taking them out via Krypronite method, blinding them, but it wasn't fast enough GODDAMNFUCKALL it wasn't fast enough! Not even close!

And she was shooting with better accuracy but tears were in her eyes now, stinging as she heard the screams from Ruffnut and she was sprinting toward Ruffnut, her speed finally there!

But now she was getting farther away!

"NO! COME ON! FUCK!" She yelled. "It can't be her! Make it stop!"

But there was that smell, that smell that made her sick: burning flesh, fire, gasoline.

Failure.

Morgan and Sumeragi

[morganknight]

Morgan's dream

[morganknight]

Morgan didn't dream like normal people... well, like most people, anyway. The Akashic was trained in the ways of mind as well as body, and as a consequence, knowing when he dreamed was as instinctive as knowing when his eyes were open, or when he breathed.

So rather than a chaotic sequence of image or a disjointed storyline, Morgan took this opportunity to dictate terms and settings to his environment. With just a little concentration, he separated himself from his mind-companion, forming bodies that resembled the two of them... more or less. Morgan's was pretty accurate, but Sumeragi might find herself in a body just a little bit more perfect than she would expect of herself. It wasn't fantasy, though; just how Morgan saw her.

"I'm surprised I managed to pull this off," he said, grinning.

Ildraniath and Zouichi

[futureisclear.livejournal.com]

Although Ildraniath did not sleep all that often, she still dreamed when she did. Even if she didn't always remember them. In this particular dream, she found herself seated at a table in the courtyard of Zouichi's inn, holding a wraithbone cup and saucer. The sun was shining, as always. Obviously, this was a tea party.

And this was perfectly normal. She took a long sip of her tea and settled back in her chair, determined to enjoy herself for once.

Re: Ildraniath and Zouichi

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

Zouichi sat across from her, calmly holding his own cup, although his appeared to be made of fine china. A top hat of rather impeccable taste rested in front of him, set slightly to the side. There was a large platter of cookies in the middle of the table -- sugar, and in various shapes that seemed rather familiar. There were parrot-shaped cookies, jetbike-shaped cookies, even Ohm-shaped cookies piled up there and dutifully decorated.

Zouichi himself seemed to be dressed, rather unusually, in a neatly pressed suit. After a moment, he placed his cup gently down on his saucer. "Honey?" he asked, picking up a miniature pitcher.

Crichton's Harvey hallucination

[youmissed]

It wasn’t so much as a dream as getting pulled deeper into his own skull, with Malcom Reynolds along for the ride. John Crichton jolted awake and was glad all over again he hadn’t eaten more of Stacy’s slop in the recent past, what with the way their stomach was flip-flopping all over the place. His stomach. He had to keep telling himself it was his and not Reynolds’s. Felt like it was happening to someone else and he guessed it kinda was: for all he knew there was some technobabble term for having a roomie in your body. If there was, his mind was blanking out.

The fact the Aurora Chair was sitting before him probably had something to do with it.

John couldn’t stop himself from that spike of fear, this sold thing in his throat as he swallowed and felt that muscle in his jaw going so tight it hurt. He backed up, not realizing he was about to back up into Reynolds until he almost tripped over him. Not this again. Maybe he’d gotten teleported or beamed down or – or maybe he wasn’t thinking straight because just seeing that damn thing made him break into a cold sweat. Two days. The two longest days in his life. It took a long second to realize there was something wrong with this picture. Something so ridiculous he just couldn't accept it right off the bat. John swallowed, then squinted. The Chair. It was…sitting on a beach?

It was picture perfect, too. Like the beach you always saw in commercials: too blue water, white sand, a few topless bikini girls sunbathing, maybe throw in the volleyball game after (okay, so maybe that was just him and wishful thinking). The Chair itself was right up against the shoreline, water lapping against it, the torture device slowly spinning around to face them.

“Not quite what I had in mind,” said the spitting image of Scorpius lounging in the Chair, one skinny leg hooked over the other. He slid out and made for them, John frozen in place. Scorpius went right up to Reynolds and whatever sense of personal space he might have. “So, what do we do with you? Captain, yes?”

Re: Crichton's Harvey hallucination

[pantsaretight.livejournal.com]

Mal had been about to say something unkind about Crichton's own little one man space pod, something he'd likely regret, both because he seemed to be sharing a body with the man, and because he could tell from the bleed back he was getting that that little pod meant as much to John as Serenity did to him, but that all got thrown off by the man having the poor courtesy of blacking out.

Upon waking up with everything about his body feeling back in place in a way he couldn't really describe, Mal allowed himself the momentary indulgence of believing the whole incident had been a really weird dream from too much Stacy glop. Once the moment passed, he opened his eyes to see what was really going on.

Well, unless he'd fallen asleep in the Sensorium, he seriously doubted even Stacy had a beach stashed away in her crevices. And given the way Crichton, and he knew it was Crichton even having never laid eyes on the man from what he'd seen in the man's mind, was looking at that chair, Mal got a pretty good idea that neither it nor its inhabitant was anything good. Fear. That was the feeling that instantly drowned out all else when it came to those two, fear like the sort Reavers inspired in everyone who so much as heard their name, the kind of instinctive horror that came from knowing the best one could hope for from them was a quick death. Even knowing that fear was coming from Crichton, it was hard to ignore in the face of how much of it was coming off the man.

Unlike Crichton, though, Mal's heart wasn't an explorer or scientist, it was a soldier, and soldiers knew how to deal with fear. Though he had to suspect that if he'd actually been through what John had with these two, that might not be enough. Either way, he met...Scorpius's eyes, hand going to a gun that wasn't there as the alien whose name he somehow knew got in far closer than he'd like something this dangerous to be.

"Kindly gettin' your face out of mine would be good for a start."

Ellyn and Tim

[combustible_me]

Tim's

[battorch]

It was a familiar nightmare.

"Dad!"

The teenaged boy-- a little bit younger than he was now-- quickly shed his Robin costume as he barrelled up the stairs to his apartment. Someone spoke to him but he ignored it, shouting again and demanding, from Oracle, to know. He listened for just long enough to hear the beginning of the response: 'Tim, you have to understand...'

By then he was babbling, falling to the corpse on the floor, struggling to pull the sharpened weapon from his father's chest, just as frightened and desperate that time as any time before. His hands were hurting and bleeding, but he ignored it until he was pulled away by larger hands, covered in gauntlets. He cried over the reassurances of 'Tim, it's okay-- I've got you.'

Eleventh Doctor and River Song

[makeherblue]

Dreams and nightmares and all the dark, wonderful places in between.

Worlds burning in the sky. Stars exploding into existence. The very same stars dimming or, changing their minds, deciding to go out with a fancy supernova.

These days he doesn't know how many humans and other aliens he's seen die. Sometimes he sees them in those dreams. He's probably visited them more times than he cares to count. The Doctor doesn't make it a habit to sleep as much as a human -- it's a dull waste of time in his professional opinion -- but sharing a body with River Song of all people is exhausting business and apparently you can fall asleep even if you're in someone else's body. So instead he dreams about a library.

The Library.

Walking the halls. The shadows that moved. Sometimes you felt like they were staring back. The very last time he'd ever gone to the Library it had been dead silent, literally. It still is in his memory. His footsteps fall on the tiles, the bookshelves towering above him as the dream jitters from through his eyes to a disconnect, as if it's from someone else standing to his left and the timeline as shifting, as if he can see Time as it should be and it's happening all at once with the possibilities spiraling off into delicate strands. Right now Doctor can feel the psychic paper in his pocket, burning with questions (but! Not burning a hole in his pocket, you don't want to see an interdimensional pocket get one of those; incredibly messy. Also smelly) and he's not sure what the XX's mean, but at this point he's busy fielding questions from Donna and throwing in a few quick fibs to throw her off guard.

Eleventh Doctor and River Song

[hullo-sweetie.livejournal.com]

River is with him, drifting lazily through his subconsciousness without even fully knowing. She can see stars being born, stars dying without proper names, whole universes ending.....it's quite amazing, wonderous, and yet sad at the same time. She instinctively knows this isn't her memory/dream. It's the Doctor's.

A rare glimpse into the Doctor's past. One thing about the Doctor, he doesn't like to talk about his past ordeals. Not unless it's relevant to the situation at hand. Not unless she absolutely has to know. And that's exactly how River operates, feeding off of his future-self's indifference. She keeps her spoilers to herself and reveals next to nothing unless she absolutely has to.

She's in a library. Or rather he's in a library. A special one. It's somehow important to him, she can tell that much. It marks something.

There's something in his pocket and he's bantering with some redhead. A woman she doesn't quite know yet, but feels a slight kinship with.

She doesn't dare speak. River wants to see this play out.

[burnedbrighter.livejournal.com]

This world was cold.

That was always the first thing Azula was aware of, a sort of deeply penetrating cold cruel creeping sensation seeping into her body. Breathing was difficult, and the breath that came out of her numb lips was cold as a winter wind.

Her eyes were open, she could not close them. Her limbs were trapped and she could not move them.

She was frozen in a block of ice and that girl stood before her. The water peasant.

"Absolutely pathetic." She purred except now it was Kaya who turned on her wand slipped into the darkness, replaced by Mai and Ty Lee.

"No one's afraid of you."

"How were we ever afraid of her?"

"Look, she's so small now, it's adorable!"

And in fact Azula realized she was no longer her proper age but a child, a little girl trapped in an eternal scream in a block of ice. The girls laughed together and her brother came.

"You're sick Azula. But don't worry, I'll help you." He planted a foot on the ice and shoved her backwards splashing into water. She wanted to scream but couldn't open her mouth as the ice began to pull her under.

Her father next, watching her vanish with burning disappointment in his eyes and disgust that made Azula actually long for death to take her.

But panic was consuming her now as the water swallowed her up and she sank into darkness. She was drowning but not dieing. Monsters with her mother's face on them swam around her reaching for her, clawing at her.

And there...there was the Avatar, glowing with power, eyes burning white as he reached out for her from the darkness. Azula's heart was pounding so hard it hurt, but her body wouldn't warm, her limbs wouldn't obey her. She was no longer frozen in ice but ice itself.

His hand touched her face and burned like frostbite. She saw a glow of blue in her chest rising up into his hand and when he pulled away a blue flame danced in his hand.

Powerless now. No longer a princess, no longer a bender, no longer human.

And sinking into darkness.

[kungfu-sexnun.livejournal.com]

And yet she could not fear the Avatar. He owed her too much.

His touch burned her face. Her skin burned. The pain spread, becoming an agony that consumed her entire body - agony, and the pride she was not permitted to feel in waking.

She reached through the darkness, and her hand was flesh again. She touched the Avatar's face in return, and his touch no longer burned her. Their skin was the same. Their eyes, their beating hearts. Again, the Avatar took from her - but what he took, she gave to him freely, and the pain, the weakness, was only the double of pleasure. Pleasure which, in memory, she felt too.

Faces of loved ones and friends surrounded her, wounding her, insulting her, but she poured out love to them. Who was the woman whose face adorned the monsters? She loved her too. Yes. Loved her. Loved her so deeply, and hated so much. They were only each others' reflection. Of course she could feel both at the same time.

The Avatar - the Avatar would make this right, but not if he took her bending away. But he couldn't take from her. Not when she was so willing to give to him.

She embraced the Avatar, and the glow from his eyes and his tattoos spread across his body, until he was only a spirit of light in her arms. When he returned to the world, he would make this discord right.

The spirit seeped into her pores. She was empty of fire, but now she was growing full again, and the darkness that closed around her was not to be feared.

She was small, and without importance, a flawed, fragile being. But for a time, the greatest power in the world had consented to reside within her.

The pain dulled, an ever-present ache. The pleasure lingered, a whisper of the most divine ecstasy. Her friends wounded her, and her love for them filled her. All of these sensations, ultimately no more than this, the flotsam of mortal living. Only beyond them was peace.

She rested a hand on her full stomach, and felt fire inside her again - fire, and water, and earth, and air.

Only one of these belonged to her. But which one was it?