#so'lek

Your avatar was your own home within the Resistance. You didn’t stay in the RDA long, you couldn’t bear it. Everything felt so gut wrenchingly wrong, nothing sat well inside you, not the commands, or the goals and especially not the RDA food.

Now it had been a year with the Resistance. A year of living in rebellion. Alongside the Na’vi and Resistance members who valiantly risked their lives to destroy the RDA.

Now every time you got into your link bed, it didn’t feel like a simple task, a job to be carried out for the RDA but a way to return to what you believe was home. No matter how deluded you knew you sounded. This large blue body was meant to be yours. You sacrificed for it, you risked your life for it and you’d do anything, be anything if it meant you could leave your human body behind.

You met So’lek without ceremony. Barely a greeting.

He held no acknowledgement for you beyond the simple nod when he walked past you. Neither of you had held a conversation until a couple of months ago.

You were sitting in a small clearing outside of the cave. Resting on your hands breathing in the air. It was a feeling you could never get tired of. The fresh crisp air instantly invigorating your senses. It made you feel as if you were floating. The sounds of the trees in the wind. Their leaves crashing together creating a peaceful rhythm that nothing on your earth could replicate.

“You.” He said lowly, his presence commanding. “What are you doing?”

You looked up startled. “Huh?”

So’lek’s glare tightened. He stayed eerily still in his stance. “What are you doing?” He repeated.

“Um.” You faltered; the words jumbled in your mouth. “Sitting?”

So’lek was taller than most Na’vi. Certainly, towering over you. His body adorned with scars, telling the story of one who had survived against many odds. “You are sitting prey.”

You instantly became more alert as the words left his mouth. Sitting more rigidly, eyes darting around you. “Oh. Sorry I thought staying close to Resistance would mean less…animals.” You realized how stupid you sounded as soon as the words rolled off your tongue.

So’lek evidently thought so too as he let out a loud scoff. “Only small ones. Ones you cannot fight off.” You nodded, letting out a small sigh. Your naïve bubble popped with the sharp pin of reality.

“Should I go back inside?” Starting to get up So’lek put his hand out to halt you.

“Stay. I will sit with you.”

With some miracle, the meeting didn’t just become a moment. It became a routine.

He’d meet you in the clearing when your schedule allows it. Sometimes he’d already be there waiting for you.

Words came easily with time. Never about the past, just the quiet things that felt safe the share.  

Within those months, neither of you acknowledged the shift but it became second nature. His presence was no longer intimidating but grounding. Pulling you closer to Pandora.

Pulling you closer to him.

The night was warmer than usual. The humidity grossly sticking to your blue skin.

Yet that wasn’t what had you so flushed.

So’lek was sitting closer to you than he ever before. You weren’t quite touching, not yet. He was just close enough that every time he shifted his skin would graze yours for just a second. A second long enough to send the heat right up to your face.

You watched him silently, the way he rested on his hands. His eyes facing up towards the night sky. The stars shining onto his face. He was so…beautiful. Every part of him had been crafted with precision, and the scars that had formed on him told a silent story of his path.

He glanced at you, eyes shifting. “Do you ever stop staring?”

You jolted in embarrassment, face grimacing. “Sorry.” You responded tight-lipped, ashamed you had been caught so blatantly.

So’lek let out a breathy chuckle, turning his head towards you now. His arm shifting, close enough now that it rested behind your back, your side pressed to his.

Your ears flicked back in surprise. The contact sending a small, electric shivers down your spine.

His gaze was locked onto you, watching you intensely. He waited to see if you would retreat, run away from his touch.

But you didn’t.

“You are stiff.” His words were smooth, his head tilted down, lips brushing against the tops of your flushed ears.

You let out an exhale, your eyes fluttering shut.

Slowly, gently, his hand lifted from behind you, settling on your waist. His fingers rough and calloused, tickling your soft skin. “So’lek…” You murmured, mouth slightly agape.

He inhaled quickly hearing the way his name mewled off your tongue. His hand flexing, grasping onto your waist tighter, pulling you close enough that your chest was flush against him. “You make this so difficult.” His voice was rough, as if the words were strained in his throat.

His tail flicked erratically behind him. Fighting the control slowly fleeting within him.

“What do I make difficult?” Your voice was trembling, eyes gazing into the ones he had screwed shut. “Tell me.” Your hands travelled up his vest, resting on the collar. “Please.”

He let out a small growl, chest heaving, his hands tight, forehead falling onto yours, fighting the last bit of self-restraint he had left. “You don’t understand what you do to me.”

“Then make me understand.”

That was all it took. The push for him to unravel in front of you. Both hands were on your waist, drawing you onto his lap. Even in this large avatar body you were still dwarfed by him. His body wide enough that when he sat you down on top of him, your hips stretched to wrap around him.

His breath was ragged. Head tilted down. He couldn’t help but admire the view that was straddled over him. “You will never understand” His words paused as his hands travelled further down, following the curvature of your frame. Letting a strangled growl out of his throat. “This feeling.”

His head slowly dipped down into the curve of your collarbone. He was controlled, his body stiff.

“Show me then.” Your breath was ragged, almost a pant as his lips tickled your skin. “If you can’t tell me, show me.”

So’lek’s lips crashed onto your neck, tongue gliding the stripes of your skin. He couldn’t contain himself any longer. This restless, gnawing urge that grew from the pits of his stomach ever since he first sat with you.

He hated himself for it. Letting himself get so carried away, especially to the likes of a tawtute [sky person]. But Eywa you were so irresistible, so smooth and soft. Skin untouched by the hands of fate. No, it was only his hands that have touched this body.

 His hands that moved from your back to your front, gliding up your stomach into the curves of your chest. His hands that grazed the sensitive spots of flesh. His hands that made you react so loudly.

You groaned in his ear. The sound sending tingles up his spine. Arms wrapping loosely around his neck. “So’lek- Please.”

His head lifted from your neck, lips parted and eyes clouded with lust. “Mm?” His voice rumbled in his throat gazing at the sight before him. “Please what?”

You panted pulling him closer to you, but your efforts were useless. He was strong, unmoving. His broad torso pushing against the tug of your slender arms. “Use your words.”

You let out a shudder, a soft mewl escaping your mouth. “You’re teasing me.”

So’lek smirked as your lips transformed into a pout. “Mhm…” His finger runs up from your sternum to your chin, tilting your head up, making your lips so easily accessible.

“Kiss me.” You pleaded, chest heaving.

So’lek didn’t waste time. The world around you coming to a halt as your lips met, leaving only the warmth between them. There was no calm or tenderness. It was raw and dominant. His hands pulling you in tightly, unable to escape the grip of his kiss.

Not that you intended to.

His lips latched onto your bottom one. Sucking it tightly enough for it to sting. But It stung so good. You let out a whimper as he released your swollen lips. But it just spurred him on.

He came back down onto your lips, crashing them together. If you thought he was noisy before he was blaring now. With every movement and meld he growled into your mouth, his fangs grazing your lips just enough for it to be present.

You were both intertwined, moving together as one. The sounds from your lips kept him raging on. Hands roaming each other’s skin, testing the boundaries that you both ignored tonight.  

So’lek was convinced nothing could break him out of the cage of your kiss. Your lips melded together like puzzle pieces. Latched together and locked with a key.

That was until your hands grasped onto the key.

His kuru.

It was a mindless action, just lustful hands roaming. But it became something catastrophic.

Every muscle in So’lek’s body went rigid. His breath hitching sharply as if you had struck him right in the heart. His lips broke away from yours, hands falling off your body as if they burnt.

How could he let it get this far. Setting his body upon this false skin. Letting his urges control him.

He looked down at you perched on his lap. His face grim and disgusted, eyebrows furrowing into a scowl.

You freeze, unable to react at the scene playing in front of you. Hands falling from the grasp of his kuru, falling limp at your sides.

“No.” He shook his head, voice hoarse.

Your mouth opened to respond to him, but he interrupted you before you could say something.

His hands, burning and shaking lifted you off his lap. Discarding you like trash next to him. He couldn’t look at you; his head wasn’t even turned your way.

You couldn’t help the emotions bubble in your chest, tears brimming your eyes. What had you done? Why within moments had you become a figure so horrid and unpleasant that you couldn’t even be gazed upon.

“So’lek, what happened?”

He swiftly stood up, his expression firm and disgusted. “This is wrong.” The venomous words burned his throat, an accusatory finger pointed directly at you, shaking with regret. “I should not have touched you. I should not have played into your fantasies.”

Your chest ached. A scoff escaping your throat. “My fantasies?”

“Yes.” He snapped. His voice was sharp as he spun to look at you. And just for a moment as he saw you sitting on the floor disheveled with tears threatening to spill, his gaze softened but he turned away. “Your demon fantasies. You wear a false skin and convince yourself you belong here. I should not have let you indulge into your human delirium.”

You turned away now, a whimper leaving your throat. This one wasn’t soft, the rhythmic mewls he made you let out moments before. No. This one was shrouded in darkness, raw and gut-wrenching.

“So this was a mistake?”

There was a long break between you. The world was no longer silent anymore. It was deafening.

“Yes.”

The lie that rolled off his tongue sat heavy between you.

Before you could respond he was gone. Disappearing into the forest. Leaving only the marks of his touch burning on your skin.

Hopelessly in denial you went to the clearing the next night. And the night after that.

You waited for him. Wishing that he would come and sit with you like he had before. But you knew he wasn’t going to do that.

Maybe he was right. Human delirium.

You rarely saw him in Resistance, and if you did, he would be gone within seconds. Putting all his efforts into pretending you didn’t exist. There were no more quiet conversations or lingering glances.

It was as if the months you both had spent building just a fragment of something real had never existed.

But your body remembered. Your skin ached in his absence.

And every night, as you left your link, and caught your reflection, you understood what he saw.

The air was different within the Resistance now. Everyone had noticed how off the two of you were. But no one dared to comment on it. Not when So’lek was acting so unlike himself.

Yes, he was a man committed to his mission but was rarely at Resistance anymore. Spending less time working with the other instead riding solo, searching through his rosters to hunt down any unlucky name that appeared on his list.

It had been almost a month since that night. And you were growing sick of the avoidance. You were rotting from the inside out. Unable to look at yourself.

How long had you convinced yourself you could become one of them? How delusional and crazy did you look to him?

Every time you catch your reflection you stop and stare. You didn’t recognize your human self any longer, but your avatar no longer felt safe. Every waking moment in that body you felt as if your skin crawled with the ghosts of his touch. The reminiscence of his touches still grazing along your skin and scarring your heart.

And yet, you still didn’t realize what you had done wrong. Each night you were kept awake, replaying the scene in your head. What did you do to make him lash out so instantaneously?

It was a question you had grown tired of being unanswered.

“Teylan!” You called out to him as he sat in a cushioned seat of Resistance beside the other humans lockers.

Teylan was someone you always found peace with. He was a talkative boy yet, he always knew when to listen. You found it an admirable strength of his.

“Oh! Hi! Is something the matter?” He looked up from the touch pad in his hands, resting it in his lap.

“Do you know where So’lek left to today? I need to speak to him.” You spoke as if you had run a marathon, yet it was only the nerves stealing your breath away.

“Hmmm…he said something about the Bloom of echoes, but I am not too sure.” You smiled

“Thankyou Teylan!” You ran off already trying to find Anqa to convince you to give you a lift to the upper plains.

The sight was nothing you would have ever expected. A purple hue caressing the area, glowing tendrils cascading from the large bloom on the rocky ceiling. Bioluminescent foliage that changes colour with each light-footed step.

The wind whistled through out the rocky formation, the breeze thick with the song of history. With every step your heart thumped in your chest, nerves wracking within your bones frightened of what may come.

Your eyes lit up as you saw him. He was knelt on the glowing grass, head bowed down, one hand bracing himself on the earth, the other holding onto the tendril his kuru was connected to. His shoulders were hunched, his posture stripped of the rigidity you often saw him with.

You froze in your place as his head tilted up, gripping tighter onto the tendril above him. You crouched down behind him, hiding within the cover of a large bush far from where he was kneeling.

You knew you should’ve turned back. Not invaded the privacy of his prayers. But you couldn’t get your body to move.

“Forgive me.” His spoke in a low murmur. “For I fear I have chosen the wrong path.” The words left his lips with pain, as if they were opening a scabbed wound.

“I carry the guilt of surviving. I carry that with me every day. And I wonder why I was the one to survive.” His head bowed down. “My clan, my family. Their blood has soaked the soil…and for a careless moment I fear I may have forgotten who spilled it.”

The tendrils pulsed brighter, the glowing green grass below him moving with his words.

“I have opened my heart to someone who I swore never to love. And in doing so, I have forgotten the journey that I have been set on.”

Your heart lurched in your chest, gripping tightly onto the bush in front of you.

“She wears our skin. You know of the creatures their kind has created. The one of Toruk Makto.” His breath shuddered. “She wears it so much I forget what she is inside. The tawtute inside of her. The same tawtute that has slain my clan. The same tawtute that has left me here alone.”

You shakily look down at your hands and though there is no blood you cannot help but feel dirty.

“And still, I yearn for her.”

A long silence followed, So’lek’s body trembling slightly.

“I laid my hands upon her false skin and felt nothing but peace.” His voice wavered. “Peace…that I do not deserve. Not when it comes to the people that took everything from me. Not when I carry the lives of the fallen on my shoulders.”

Your eyes were blown, hands shaking as you came to a devastating realization. He was ashamed. It boiled within him from the inside out. Your body- No. This avatar revolted him. It wasn’t yours; you have fooled yourself into thinking you belonged in this skin.

So’lek was never going to be yours. That was just a fantasy.

You turned away quietly stepping out of the bush. You had to leave; you had to run. You couldn’t stand to be there anymore. You didn’t deserve to be in this sacred place not while your presence would utterly disgust the man who has occupied your thoughts for months.

As soon as you escape between a crack in the rocks you run. You run until your feet can take it no longer. Muscles burned within your skin, your chest heaved as a loud sob erupted from your body. Collapsing you to the ground.

This planet was meant to be your escape. You thought that your sacrifices, the lost time could warrant you deserving of a fresh chance. And yet you had found yourself in another prison.

Solek was still in the same position, now his breath was shallower, his head hung low as he gripped onto the grass trying to cement himself from losing himself.

“I cannot solely blame her for the sins of her kind.” He continued. “But I cannot live with myself knowing I have betrayed my people. That I have betrayed them by wanting her with every fiber of my being.”

He bowed down completely now, his forehead resting against the soft grass. “I can bear the ache of her hating me, I can bear the hurt of her distance.” The tendrils started to dim.

“Please. I know of your powers Eywa and the path you have chosen for me. Please guide me.” His words break in a sob “Take this feeling from me. Take it away, because I am not strong enough to carry both my grief and the weight of her heart.”

Only silence answered him, the grasses glow fading beneath him. The winds no longer sing in harmony. Only an offkey tune.

He ripped his kuru off the tendril, slamming his hand on the ground.

So’lek was a powerful man and bowing here in front of the evidence of a failed prayer. He felt completely powerless.

So’lek immediately noticed your distance. Yes, he had been deliberately and painfully avoiding you but you entire demeanor had diminished. You didn’t linger with Priya or Anqa anymore. You rarely spoke to any of the Sarentu. And if he happened to catch a glimpse of you on a rare occasion, it broke his heart even more.

He expected you to hate him. Shit. He wanted you to hate him, he wanted you to be furious. To give him the punishment he deserved for being so careless. But you showed no signs of anger.

Your eyes were devoid of happiness. Your mind absent. You moved like a ghost.

He knew he was being a hypocrite. That he was allowed to avoid you, but you weren’t allowed to avoid him. But nothing he had felt these past months had made any sense at all.

He started to get extremely worried when he overheard Alma’s conversations. She talked about the instability of your link bed, urging you to stop using it for just a moment. That your human body was becoming weak and sick. Her words struck him one day, urging him to do something.

“If you stay in a link too long, your human body will not recover from this. You are one link away from never waking up. In either body.”

The world shrinked around him.

So’lek had lost too many already.

He could survive losing your love, he believed he had made peace with that. But your presence? Your existence? That was something he could not endure.

Luckily you were extremely easy to find. You never covered your tracks in the forest, and you could only travel on foot. It made So’lek worry even more. You shouldn’t be alone in this forest, not if he wasn’t there to protect you.

It was how he fell in love with you in the first place. Sitting by you, keeping alert making sure you didn’t get yourself naively killed.

He spotted you sitting on the edge of the riverbed, dipping your toes into the clear water. You were sitting just as he had found you for the first time. Resting on your hands as your face was tilted up to the beaming sun, breathing in the crisp air.

“It is dangerous out here.” So’lek said softly, his voice a low hum, waking you from your trance.

“I know.” You paused, not bothering to turn around. You knew exactly who had come to find you. “I’m fine here.”

“You are not.” His steps were careful, worried he may scare you off. The lack of reply grew into an eerie silence, stretching between you. “Talk to me.” He murmured. It wasn’t a command…but a plea.

You let out a hollow laugh, rolling your eyes. “That’s rich.”

So’lek’s frame stiffened. He should have expected the hostility and yet it still made an ache grow within him. “What is wrong?”

You turned around frantically, your eyes glassy and wide. Bewildered by the audacity of his question.

“What’s wrong? Are you serious?” Your words echoed against the forest shaking your head in disbelief. “You pushed me off like I was something filthy. You won’t look at me. You act as if I have branded your skin with my touch, and then you pray-- because you must be cleansed of me.”

Your voice cracked, the tears slipping from your eyes. You turned quickly to make sure he didn’t see you break in front of him.

“Are you ashamed of me?”

The words hit him like a blade driven straight into his heart.

“What?” It was so quiet, his voice barely carried.

Ashamed.

No. He was never ashamed of you. It was never you.

“You are” you continued, tears staining your cheeks. “Of this disgusting skin I wear and call my own. Of what I am underneath it. I disgust you so much you haven’t looked at me in weeks.”

“No,” the words tumbled out of his mouth immediately “That is not-”

“Then what is it So’lek?” You turned to face him now, despite the growing tremor in your legs. “Stop lying to yourself.”

“I am ashamed.” His words were slow, carefully treading on a tightrope. “But not of you.”

You shook your head in disbelief. “Then of what?”

“Myself.”

You face morphed into confusion,

“I have a mission. A mission of vengeance.” He continued. “I cannot forget what was taken from me. Who took it from me.” Your expression faltered. “And yet when I am with you…that vengeance goes away.”

He takes a deep breath, desperately trying to ground himself. “And it frightens me” he admitted “Because it feels I am betraying the fallen.”

Your breath hitched head hanging low. “So…I remind you of the people that killed your family?”

“No.” he snapped, sharper than he intended to. Immediately softening as he witnessed the shock in your face. “You remind me that I’m still here…”

A long silence followed. So’lek looking at you, waiting, begging for you to say something.

“Which is it then? Am I your peace or shame?” You waited for him to answer, his eyes dropping down to the ground as you watched him go to say something but the words never came.

 “God.” You breathed “I knew it.”

You stepped away from him, your body swaying uncomfortable. Your balance almost toppling.

So’lek reached for you, Alma’s words ringing in his head. But you swatted his hand away, pushing past him. The rejection stung more than the slap, watching you walk away realizing how horribly he fucked up.

“I never meant to hurt you.” The words came out like glass, sharp and painful. Halting you in your track. “I was-” The words bubbled in his throat hand reaching out to you. “I was afraid.”

You swayed more in your spot. Feet tumbling in front of you. The leaves crunching loudly below your feet. The colour started to drain from your face. “So’lek-” the words slurred in your mouth.

You felt your body start to go numb, your legs wobbling as they grew weak below you. Panic started to set in as a daunting feel grew.

“What? What is it?” So’lek’s arms brace you, hands tight around your shoulders.

“Something is wrong.” You murmured as you faded in and out of your consciousness, the numbness spreading throughout your body eyelids fighting to stay open.

“It’s okay.” His words were calm, but inside he was panicking. Ears stuck to his head, his hands shaking as they grasped you. His arms surging to catch you as your knees buckled, your consciousness leaving the avatar body. “Hey- no. Wake up…wake up!” He bent down hands trembling as he carried you in his arms calling for his ikran.

He needed to get back to you. Back to the other you.

So’lek held your body in his arms pushing through resistance to the human quarters. The airlock couldn’t have taken any longer. His foot twitched, thumping on the cool metal floors.

The doors hissed open and So’lek rushed out, only to be brought to a halt immediately.

The air felt wrong, stale and stuffy. It burned with every ragged inhale. The commotion grew around the link beds. All the tiny humans frantically ran around, the space blaring with alarms.

Even with all the commotion the world felt empty. He drew closer to the bed, glassy eyes and furrowed brows decorated his face. He had felt this helplessness before, 16 years ago. And as it came back up it reopened all his wounds, letting him bleed from the inside out.

So’lek saw Ri’nela and Teylan rush over to grab you off him. He didn’t want to let go, he was afraid, afraid of what may happen if he can’t protect you in his arms. But it was Ri’nela’s words that broke him out of his daze.

“She is not here So’lek…she is there.”

There.

So’lek’s body felt cold as he saw you. Your human body that laid impossibly small and still on the bed. So fragile and breakable.

Humans surrounded you, their voices frantic, yet sharp with urgency. Wires and tubes snaked in and out of your body. The blaring machines blinked and hummed, the fluorescent lights above reflecting off your skin, so devoid of any vibrance. So different to the glowing blue form he knew.

This was you. At your weakest point. So’lek couldn’t help but blame himself, that he had driven you to neglect your own self to such an extent.

You had no tail, no sharp fangs or beautiful large eyes. You were just skin and bones, purple bruises blotching beneath the surface of your thin skin.

His chest seized painfully, inching closer to try and get a closer look at the woman in front of him.

Someone spoke to him, the words drowned out by the deafening silence in his mind.

“Her body couldn’t handle the brain overload of the link. She’s gotten an intracranial hemorrhage. We need to stabilize her, reduce the swelling in her brain-”

“We cannot perform brain surgery here!” Another human interrupted

The words dissolved into noise; there was too many English words for So’lek to understand them all. He saw the helpless looks on the humans faces that surrounded you.

“This is her?” So’lek asked his voice breaking through the thunderous conversations like a bolt of lightning.

Alma looked towards So’lek, her ears flat and brows furrowed. “She is weak. She isn’t stabilizing…”

So’lek shook his head crouching next to your bed, his hand coming to cradle your face. Your head fitting into the palm of his hand. Your chest rose and fell shallowly. Each breath looked as if it were painful.

“Why are your sky medicines not working? You must do something” He paused taking a trembling breath. “You have to do something!”

“We do not have the means to. She requires surgery…her brain is bleeding So’lek. There isn’t much we can do.”

“So, you are giving up?!” So’lek snapped his hands trembling and quaking as they grazed over your weak form. “There must be something! Let there be something.”

So’lek bowed down his massive head dropping delicately onto your forehead “Do not leave me…please…I can’t- I can’t lose you too.” So’lek could feel his throat begin to close, air getting tight as he tried to calm down his breaths.

“There is something,” Ri’nela stood nervously behind him. “But it is dangerous.”

So’lek looked up to her immediately.

 “We can ask Eywa to transfer her consciousness…But if it fails-”

“She will die.” So’lek was somber, looking down at your frail form, your breaths so shallow it barely looked like you were breathing at all.

 “If we do nothing” So’lek said hoarsely “She dies anyway.”

The Bloom of Echoes shined at night. The rocks inside lighting up with bioluminescence, the grass beating with the breaths of the words. So’lek held your human body in his arms, it was so small, so weak. He was frightened if he moved himself to fast that he would crush you.

“So’lek…put her down.” Ri’nela ushered to a spot in front of her. Right in the middle of the bloom. Where the wind whistled the loudest, the bioluminescent thumbed surrounded her.

Her kuru was connected to the roots in the soil, breathing in and out, feeling the powers of the earth below her.

So’lek was gentle with both of your bodies, laying them gently onto soil. His hands came to rest on your unconscious face, hand so big, it cradled your head. “Be strong little one.” He murmured connecting his kuru to the soil below.

Ri’nela moved to connect your avatars kuru to the soil. Humming a loud prayer as the winds shifted. The tendrils of the bloom, starting to flicker, growing brighter and brighter.

The world from below started to grow onto your human form, covering you in thin white thread-like roots that found home on your skin. Ri’nela’s hands laid out over the body her hands sweeping towards the avatar.

So’lek’s head dipped down resting on the avatar’s body.

Your body.

It no longer mattered to him what form held your soul, only that you did.

He listened closely to your chest, praying to Eywa that she sensed his desperation, that his prayer before was found in a shroud of darkness and grief.

The tendrils shun a light, brighter than ever seen before. Illuminating the area as if the sunlight had directly beamed over your bodies.

Your human body let out a long exhale, weak and painful. So’lek’s eyes darted towards you. “What is happening?”

Ri’nela shook her head, her body convulsing was the lights of the tendrils started to flash erratically. So’lek bowed his head over the Avatar body, gripping onto your sides harshly “Come back to me.” He growled, panic ripping through him.

Then.

Your finger twitched.

A sharp inhale tore through your blue chest. So’lek’s head flew up violently, praying that he did not make up what he thought he heard.

Your eyes flew open.

“So’lek!” you gasped loudly.

He was cradling you instantly, large hands coming to support you. Running over your body grounding you back to the soil. You relaxed with his touches. They were warm, solid, real.

“I am here.” He hushed shaking hands coming to cradle your cheek. “You are here”

Your vision started to focus. You looked up at So’lek and down at your hands.

Your blue hands.

Your blue body.

You sucked in a sharp breath, tears rushing to your eyes as reality hit you all at once. You had woken up in this body many times before. But this felt different. There was no tug of another body waiting for you.

No.

This was you.

“I was so afraid.” You whisper out, the words are crushing as you look up at So’lek.

“I know” he whispers back, crouching next to you, his hands never leaving your body. “I was afraid too.” His eyes burned fighting back the emotions threatening to spill from his eyes.

You went to talk but the silence spoke enough. It was warm and comforting, wrapping around you both. Your body moved quickly, pulling his large one into a tight embrace. And for once he didn’t have to fight the voices inside of him.

Because with you all he felt was peace.

So’lek’s hands enveloped your body pulling it tightly into his embrace. Your breaths synced together as you finally accepted each other with no woes and sadness.

“I see you.” His voice was quiet, forehead resting against yours. “I see you now…I pray you forgive me for being so blind.”

You shook your head, nuzzling against him. “I see you.” The weight of the words lifted off your chests. Allowing in only the joy of being loved.

This time when his head dipped down to kiss you it was not ravenous. It was calm, lips moving as if it they were always meant to be there. There was no fever in his movements, no they were careful and precise.

Because when his lips melted into yours, he wasn’t desperately searching for an answer.

He was certain he had found it.

a/n: AHH okay i really hope this was good <33 i cant remember the last time i wrote something over 2k words LMAO but im definitely proud of this.

please leave an ask, comment, reblog i love to talk to u guys and i appreciate all of the love sm. okey byeebyee