Discover Top Posts Tagged with #avaloy

Aloy/Avad: Pikapeppa writes a gift fic!

I had the pleasure of pinch-hitting for this years’ @hzdsecretsanta, and I began this little rarepair Aloy/Avad fic for the inimitable @sun-and-shadow-aloy!

The fic is called Window Bird, and it will be 5 chapters in total. There is NSFW smut. First chapter is below!

Read here on AO3 instead.

***********

When Avad was young, the children at the palace used to play a game: if you could be a machine, which one would you be?

Avad would listen while the others gave their answers: Sawtooth, Behemoth, Snapmaw - the deadlier and more dangerous, the better. Kadaman always picked a Sawtooth, which Avad thought was funny; his older brother always seemed more of a Scrapper than a Sawtooth to him.

One day, while playing this popular game, Avad interrupted the usual debate about metal teeth and claws and zapping powers. “What about animals?” he said. His eyes were on the sky, following the path of a faraway hawk as it sought its prey.

The other children looked at him, and Kadaman elbowed him. “Animals are boring, little brother,” he said. “Nobody wants to be an animal. A machine could rip apart any animal with a single claw!”

“Not if the animal can fly,” Avad reasoned.

Their cousin Jarad snorted loudly. “Machines can fly too, bolts-for-brains,” he retorted. “If you want to fly, be a Glinthawk!”

“No, a Stormbird,” Kadaman argued. “Stormbirds are bigger and more powerful.”

The other children fell back into their debate about the virtues of the various machines, and Avad sighed. He lifted his eyes back to the sky and spotted the lone hawk just in time to see it curve gracefully through the air and fly away to the east.

He watched the predatory bird until it became a speck, then disappeared from sight altogether. He returned his gaze to the other children, but his attention remained in the sky.

Stormbirds were certainly bigger than hawks. But Avad wasn’t sure that size was the most important thing. He’d noticed something strange about Stormbirds during his rare supervised outings: as powerful as their metal wings were, they only flew in circles.

Hawks didn’t have to fly in circles. They could go wherever they wanted. And to Avad’s young eyes, that freedom seemed far more desirable than size.

As Avad and Kadaman grew older, the childish game fell out of favour. But sometimes, during the morning sun salutations or his history lessons or his sword drills, Avad would think about hawks. He would think about the way they floated gracefully on the breeze, and he would imagine the sudden breathless drop as they dove for their prey, and he would remember their confident departure as they disappeared into the distance.

Years went by, and reports about increasingly vicious machines began flooding the palace. A monstrous new machine called a Thunderjaw destroyed the secluded village of Morning Light, and Jiran’s strict-but-fair style of rulership began to twist into something harsh and uncompromising. Kadaman’s customary easy grin faded into a worried frown, and Avad found himself thinking about hawks every day. On the rare occasions that he spotted a lone hawk wheeling through the sky, he would wistfully wonder what it would be like to fly so free and untroubled.

More time passed. The situation in the Sundom became more dire, and Jiran’s stern lectures devolved into angry rants. Kadaman and Jiran butted heads over the alarmingly absurd things that Jiran would say, and it was left to Avad to try and keep the peace. Sometimes Jiran would ask Avad if Kadaman was trying to unseat him, and Avad would try his best to soothe his father’s constant fears.

“He is insane, Avad,” Ersa told him on the night that she left. “I know you want to reason with him, but a man like that can’t be reasoned with.”

“I have to try,” Avad whispered. He squeezed her hands, then kissed her knuckles on impulse. “Go. Quickly. May the…” He trailed off before finishing the Sun faith’s greeting that usually fell automatically from his lips. He swallowed hard, then said instead, “May you walk safe and free.”

He watched as Ersa slipped away into the dark. She might be sneaking silently through the dank and dirty sewers, but the fluttering corner of her disappearing cloak made him think of a hawk’s departing tailfeathers.

Then one day, after a particularly strident argument between the Kadaman and the King, Kadaman was executed.

On that day, the sands that had been shifting beneath Avad’s feet for years suddenly fell away. Kadaman was dead, and Itamen needed to be protected, and Avad was the only one left who could stop his father’s madness from spreading.

That was the day that Avad stopped thinking about hawks.

There was no place in his life for frivolous and self-centered hopes of freedom. There was no space in his mind for foolish wishes of peaceful resolution. Avad fled Meridian that same night with his most trusted allies and friends, and it didn’t even occur to him to think about the breathless flight of a hawk.

Many months later, after Avad killed his father and assumed the throne, he began to think about hawks again, but in a very different way than he had before. The thoughts of his youth were tinged with wistfulness, a certain selfish desire to be a little more free. But Avad was no longer a naive adolescent. He knew his place and his duty, and he knew he could never be a hawk.

Avad was the Sun-King, and kings had to be grounded. Every person in the Sundom was a life he was responsible for, a root that kept him tied to the heart of the Sundom. And if Avad knew anything about hawks, it was that they didn’t have roots.

Deep in his logical heart, behind the romantic wrappings that Ersa gently teased him for, Avad knew the truth: flying free and unencumbered had never been a choice for him. Avad was not a bird, and he never would be. If anything, he was a tree: a central pillar that supported myriad lives both big and small, firmly and deeply rooted in the ground.

It took a long time for the bittersweet taste of this truth to fade away, but eventually the loss became a small and manageable ache, like ocean waves smoothing the sharpest edges from a shard of glass. And eventually, with time, Avad became comfortable with the idea of himself as a tree.

Years later, under terrible circumstances, Avad would meet a woman who truly epitomized the spirit of a hawk.

She flew into his life with the suddenness of a hawk dropping on its prey. Her mind was as sharp as her gaze, and the flickering of her flame-red hair was like the russet tips of a hawk’s tail.

It wasn’t until Avad met this fearless Nora traveller that he realized something he’d never thought about before: hawks needed a place to rest. Their journeys spanned many lands, and they made discoveries that no machine or ground-bound beast could ever make. But hawks needed a roost to call their home, whether for a season or just for a day.

It wasn’t until Avad met Aloy that he recognized the value of being an aerie.

#avaloy

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#avaloy