#zash returns to her roots

[1zashreena1]

Reading slashfic while listening to house mix trance as my partner watches the 90s xmen cartoon next to me

We are autistic cats

[capaldisrighteyebrow]

handprints on bark, marks on my heart - Amilyn/Leia fic

Summary: Amilyn and Leia recall an earlier moment in their lives. A sweet night full of tree climbing and kisses. Note: Written for @darth-zash. Thanks to @haraldskaer for the proof! Rating: Teen+ AO3 Link

Do you remember how the trees looked all those years ago? How they breathed out and we breathed in? A shared existence under the moonlight.

The lowest branch hovered just out of reach, teasing her in tandem with the incorrigible Gatalentan legislator stalking along the thick, ashen limbs. If Leia had any chance of heading off this reckless foray into the private grove of the Imperial Senate, she’d have to jump. Soon, too, or Amilyn would disappear among the sweeping curtains of sapphire leaves.

“Come down, now,” she ordered, hands propped on the hips of her white gown. “We’re in serious violation of--”

“Since when did you start caring about rules?”

From above, Amilyn shed the elegant purple dress she’d worn to the gala, casting it down. It rustled the leaves and came to rest on the branch above Leia’s head, swaying despite the non-existent wind of the enclosed Imperial Greenhouse.

Leia had been schooled enough to contain her sigh. It wasn’t about rules, or having to face Palpatine if they were discovered. “You’ll break your neck.”

The groan managed to sneak past her ingrained manners. When had she started to sound like her least favorite aunt?

“You scared, princess?”

Even before the last word twittered down from the eaves, Leia’s hands were pulling her hem above her head. In a moment, she was in nothing but a thin slip of shimmersilk. Its faint peach color looked almost nude against her thighs. “You know how I hate that title.”

Her voice carried from further away, farther up. “Then do something about it.”

Do you remember when I reached out my hand to help you, and you didn’t hesitate to push it away? How the bark glowed red under your strangling grip? I soothed it down to blue--lilac--white.

Leia shook her hands at her sides, flicking away the sudden clamminess that could compromise her hold. Faced with the towering tree Amilyn seemed intent on scaling, her left forearm reminded her that her past climbs had, on at least one occasion, ended with tears.

There had been no broken neck, as her aunt had predicted, though there had been a fractured wrist, multiple stubbed toes, one unlucky little finger, and a twice-rolled ankle to round out her time in the trees of Alderaan. It had been her father who allowed her to learn the hard way, kindly declaring, “Should my daughter insist upon climbing, she must get down herself.”

Her jump was well-calculated, her grip strong. Soon enough, she had successfully hooked one leg around the wide branch and hoisted herself up. Leia kept to a crouch as she sought balance, then stood slowly and surely, her breath and pulse fighting inside her throat at the sudden exhilaration.

Stars, it felt good.

Amilyn used her arms to spread the cascading leaves. Delicate flowers made of purple lace covered just enough of her skin to call them underthings. “Coming to get me?”

Leia reached for the next branch, finding purchase against the trunk that was easily three times her size. If she tried to stretch her arms around it, they wouldn’t make it halfway around. When she touched the bark, the bleached white surface changed to a deep scarlet hue under her fingers. Leia flinched back, momentarily startled.

“It doesn’t look like it wants me to leave,” Amilyn continued in her gentle, uninflected voice.

“What do you mean?” Leia asked, choosing to ignore the blood beneath her hands and scaling up the branches one at a time.

Amilyn dropped down, hanging her impossibly long legs over either side of the limb. She stroked the bark so Leia could see the resulting royal blue color. “It senses emotion,” she explained as she nodded at her friend’s handprints. “Red. The universal sign for trouble.”

Among the leaves, where only Amilyn could see her, Leia allowed herself to sigh. “I have a lot on my mind.”

The Alliance to Restore the Republic. Fulfilling her duty to protect Alderaan.  Aiding all those who couldn’t stand up and defend themselves against the self-declared Emperor. The expectation that she would set aside the warm fluttering in her chest and in her gut, to give up everything she had in order to serve her people.

There wasn’t time for stolen midnight climbs and pretty eyes that looked on her with a mix of mirth and sadness.

“I want to show you something,” Amilyn told her, extending her hand now that Leia was within reach.

Leia brushed it aside. “No.”

With a shrug of her shoulders, the coy nymph dotted with purple flowers vanished into the canopy. Leia took a deep breath, then climbed after her anyway.

Do you remember why we laughed, then cried? How homesick we were? Our arms became a shelter of their own, a comforting, encapsulating space that sang out “welcome.”

They were so close to the top that the boughs swayed with their weight and the leaves thinned enough to see the sky through the greenhouse glass.

“This had better blow me away,” Leia breathed. Her arms trembled from the uncommon exertion, and her slip stuck to the sweat pooling at the base of her spine. Still, she smiled up at the tall, purple-haired cat who refused to be taken from her perch. “Or I’ll be explaining a murder instead of trespassing.”

Amilyn laughed, lashes dusting her rosy cheeks as she grinned in return. She held back the drape of blue and stared at the black sky beyond, lost in concentration for several beats. Her smile softened, turned to something Leia understood as fondness.

“There,” Amilyn whispered. “Do you see it?”

Leia sidled along the branch to stand closer to Amilyn, searching for the mystery they had come up here to see.  “The moon?” Leia breathed, incredulous. “You came here for the moon?”

“Not the moon,” Amilyn dismissed, shaking her head. “Who strings their hopes on something so inconstant? Always changing. Different every time it rises.” She slid her arm around Leia’s waist, pulling her into her sparsely-covered side and doing her best to point out what she wanted Leia to find.

“There . The suns,” she illuminated. “Gatalena’s suns. My home.”

From her new vantage point, Leia followed the long, slender finger tipped in black lacquer and saw them: a cluster of three stars triangulated around a focal point that could only be a planet. It was barely visible, almost indistinguishable from the myriad of stars and planets surrounding Coruscant, but something inside her whispered that she had found the right celestial bodies.

Amilyn’s finger curled back into her fist, holding it there as if she could capture her home world all in her hand. She was quiet for a long moment before she dropped her arm back to her side. “I never thought I’d miss it,” she confessed, tears glinting in her eyes. “It’s dull there except for the suns. The suns.”

The reverence in her voice dipped deep to touch the cord in Leia’s chest. Her hand moved up and down Amilyn’s back, absentmindedly counting the notches on her spine. “I miss Alderaan too,” she admitted quietly. “But that’s why we’re here. We’re going to fight for what we love. For our people. For sunrises. For hope.”

Do you remember what it felt like to be pressed together, skin warm and smooth? How we shivered among the branches of cascading, sapphire leaves and silver buds? A luxurious innocence we traded  for knowledge.

As they began to descend, working together to find a route, leaving behind blue marks so faint they appeared almost periwinkle, water began to trickle through the leaves. The greenhouse irrigation system kicked into life in a sudden downpour that mimicked the humid, tropical conditions of the trees’ native environment, giving the women no choice but to pause, the smooth limbs too slick to navigate safely with their half-clad, equally soaked, bodies.

Amilyn leaned against the sturdy trunk, mischievous blue eyes smiling as she pulled Leia into her arms.  Though the water was warm, Leia’s skin prickled with awareness: of the skin beneath her that burned just as hot as one of Gatalena’s suns, of the sharp hip bones against her stomach and the edge of a clavicle pressed against her cheek, of the soft, fleshy thighs that became her seat when they sank down to wait out the manufactured rain.

Her hands framed Amilyn’s face as Leia pressed her lips against the other woman’s, breathless from nervous laughter. Their teeth bumped, too eager to stop kissing, too happy to stop smiling.

One determined hand worked to loosen the intricate braid that held Leia’s hair in check; Amilyn wanted to set free the damp locks to curl and wave as nature would have them. The other hand explored what was concealed by peach shimmersilk: the swells of Leia’s chest, the small curve of her belly, the downy curls that were wet from more than rain--relishing in the ample softness she found at every stroke.

Leia’s lips trailed down Amilyn’s throat, sucked marks across her shoulder, down her chest. She used her tongue to circle a nipple through the lace flower cleverly placed to hide the honeyed skin beneath.

They opened to one another, teasing, coaxing--whispering words meant to be consumed and used as kindling for the tender thing burning between them. A fire on the cusp of existence.

The blue leaves stoked the flames as they tickled their backs, their arms, their legs. Everything rocked and shifted together. Beneath their bodies, the branch blazed green with life.

Do you remember where we discovered each other and found ourselves lost? How the flowers in your hair wove their roots into my heart that night? Perennial blooms feeding from the blood in my veins, basking in your sunlike smile.

After the rain has ceased, after the steam from their bodies dissipated into the air around them, the tree revealed its last treasure: tiny silver flowers blossomed among the dangling leaves, unfurling their broad, curved petals with wild joy.

“Pretty,” Leia murmured from where she’d curled up between Amilyn’s legs and rested her head against her torso.

Amilyn considered the flowers a moment before plucking the ones within immediate reach. Leia watched her nimble fingers twist and tie the stems together in a ring, forming a small crown which she placed on top of the Leia’s long, chestnut hair.

“Pretty,” she echoed, smiling. “My sweetest sun.”

Leia’s nose scrunched a little at the endearment. “Yours?”

Amilyn’s eyes shone as she leaned forward to press her lips to Leia’s forehead. “Mine.”

Do you remember? Do you--?

The soil is spongy from the recent rain, soft beneath the feet they are content to keep grounded, to tread the path beneath the trees together. The weeping leaves stroke their cheeks and brush over their hair as they go. Their colors have faded. These days, she’s fond of gray; Amilyn favors lilac. They no longer wear the deep purple of youth or the pristine white of innocence, though they are just as vibrant in one another’s eyes.

It doesn’t matter that Amilyn can’t climb anymore. She can’t either. They are not goddesses, but mortals humbled by time and war and loss.

Leia touches the bark of the nearest tree’s trunk. Though it is a different tree, standing on a different world in a different time, it turns green beneath her hand--as if it knows. And maybe it does.

Or maybe the love she has for the woman beside her is just as strong as the night it first stirred to life.

There are silver buds interspersed in the blue leaves, and Leia stretches for the only one within reach. She snaps it from the stem, then tucks it behind Amilyn’s ear. Her lacquered fingers ghost over the delicate petals before securing it in her hair with a fond smile.

“I remember,” Leia assures her, clasping the woman’s hand within her own. “I will always remember.”

[1zashreena1]

If anyone encouters chapter 20 of No Shame out in the wild please holler at me because I cannot find this bitch anywhere on my own goddamn blog. Where the fUCK did it go?!??!1!!