PLEASE READ THIS WARNING: I do not own Rio, Jewel, or any character or theme used in the Rio film. They belong solely to Blue Sky Films and 20th Century Fox.

…hey guys. ._. So, well, as you can probably see… I've decided to write something. This idea has been kind of nagging at the edge of my mind, and I really wanted to write it out on some form of media, just to blow off some steam from my writing space. And I figured, how about using Rio to do it?

Regarding NtY, I've already said it in my A/N, but I'd like to say that I'm sorry that I ran out of imagination fuel for that. I did have the entire plot kinda lined out and everything, but I didn't have the inspiration to etch it out. Thankfully RAS was there to help, and I can assure you that his version (if you guys haven't read it yet, which I doubt) is as good as, if not better, than I had imagined. So thanks for that RAS.

In the meantime, I'd like to present to you my first Rio fic in a long time. I'd like to warn though, that I've made quite a lot of sensitive remarks in this fic. A lot of it is regarding a topic that either gets you hugs or stones, mostly the latter. So before you venture into this fic, I'd like to warn all of you to be as open-minded as possible. Thematically and characteristically, I've been meaning to explore something a bit different than my typical, Twilight-esque love fics… so it'll be significantly different from my past works (if you guys remember them, haha). So please be open-minded, this is just an experimental fic, please be easy on me.:{

~This is not the me you know~

All over the world humans are debating about their rights. What they deserve as human beings regardless of race or gender or whatever. About the sanctity of life as a whole and how it transcends that of any other damned thing in the entire world. Any problem whatsoever is crushed like an egg under the weight of what humans think of themselves and about what life is as a whole. That everybody deserves to live a normal, healthy, hassle-free life, and that everything else comes second. Or third, if you count money. Fourth if you count sex.

The point is, humans seems to revolve around the one point that is almost universally accepted- life is holier than any book claims to be. The scatterbrains up there rampaging on and on about pro-life and how euthanasia and abortion are all satanic and bad, they argue that human life as sacred as cows are to Muslims or something like that. They think that their lives are all important enough to override more pressing issues. Like poverty. Or unemployment. Or even the lives of other people.

See this is why pro-lifers will never ever EVER get anywhere. They put a concept on the throne – a concept so selfish and unmovable – that when more factors are input into the equation, they are eroded away into nothingness over this overriding concept. They are ignored, considered less important, regardless of the actual consequences. Euthanasia is considered satanic even though it would save hospitals money, energy and time that could be invested in curing cancer rather than keeping a ripe old life afloat. Designer babies have become a ludicrous idea since once procreated, they are incorrectly perceived to live a difficult, loveless, purposeless life, when instead they are actually saving their sibling's life, which would otherwise fall innocently in the Grim Reaper's hands. The death penalty is considered outrageous as criminals are supposed humans too, when they would in actual fact pose a great threat to society should they be released back to it once more.

Life is supposedly sacrosanct and infalliable to whatever threatens it. And perhaps innocent humans do deserve to live instead of falling to the cruelty of life. But when it's one life against another, a choice is to be made. Some things are just more important and beneficial to the rest of the world. And sometimes, life isn't exactly life when it's incapicitated or still a zygote. Pro-lifers will often get mixed up because of these things.

Can we just move on to the more pressing matters? As in, the ACTUAL LIVING? The ones that have their whole life ahead of them? The ones who are bound for suffering?

I've just had enough of this nonsense.

~Let's start to where my life ended, shall we?~

There was always a gut feeling that perhaps, Rafael was right.

The whole concept was just so laughably ridiculous. It was just about as feasible as material that an egg can be cracked upon, and won't crack – it wasn't needed, it won't work, and the whole thing just sounded like a really bad joke. I burst into hysterics, tears in my eyes and all, when Rafael told us about the 'leaf' – it was either that or to slap him in the face and tell him to shut up. I mean, what was the point of having a leaf? – I can't imagine a part of sentient nature even being part of this, well, admittedly grotesque, process of life anyway. It was just so silly, I explained to him, and what were the chances of it working anywho? The leaf isn't exactly made of steel. They break, flake, crumple, and eventually get dispersed into the wind. About a couple of times later, I was sure that it wouldn't last a bit.

Blu, obviously, got a different reaction. He remained intent on listening to whatever his 'dear Rafi' had to say about the matter. It was important to him, he reasoned, and it should have been important to me. Well, of course it was important to me – I was more worried about me ending up in heat and then ending up pregnant, anyway, since it would be me who I couldn't control – but the moment Rafael moulded the solution into a sheet of Mother Nature, that was where I pressed the bullshit button. And not because I was disgusted by the fact that it would be contaminated with preferably-remaining-to-be-unspoken bodily juices, though that was a speck of my universe of problems with it. It wasn't feasible. It wasn't logical.

I ignored the two pairs of Z chromosomes to themselves, as Rafael tried to reason out pretty lamely how the leaf had prevented him, along with Eva (who I suspected was also going coconuts over this) from having more than their 20? (sweet papaya tendrils!) hatchlings in their family. I remained set on my belief. They were not making any sense whatsoever. Something told me that Blu was going to marvel over this makeshift contraceptive, and I internally groaned. This was going to take a while.

As much as I loved Blu, he was about as naïve as a fly buzzing towards a pitcher plant. Tell him that the world would end tomorrow, and he would hold me tighter than human right laws like no tomorrow, bracing himself for the fall. He had a plethora of ideas about our family, several of which were too fantasical for any lesser goofball to believe, and he wanted everything to be perfect. And he had the belief that they could be. He couldn't have been more wrong, of course, but he chose to be the-glass-is-actually-completely-full optimistic about it. Just making himself more vulnerable for the fall.

Anyway, one of things that his ideas of a family, (I swear he must've drawn these with Crayola on a piece of mahjong paper one day), was that his "family" was going to consist of more than just two birds. At first I thought he was planning to cheat on me and find more mates; three slaps to the face later, he explained that he was planning to have children. It never occurred to me that he wanted a family, having lived his whole life as a pet, but I guess it all added up. Linda had been like a mother to him, and he had his own external hemisphere of a family outside of Rio. Now that he was forming his own, he would want his family to be as extensive as possible. Like a hydrocarbonic chain, he explained, to have more bonds with one another, with more carbon atoms came a bigger chain, being more extensive and thus having a bigger attractive field.

Fourth slap to the face.

I probably should've seen this coming – it was another gut feeling, pretty subtle no less – but it still shook me, cracked me into shattered pieces like an egg. I never wanted a family. I never signed up for this. Perhaps I would have a companion in the form of Blu for the rest of my life. That was all right for me, and it didn't seem like I had a choice, I was addicted to loving Blu like it was cocaine/sex. But that's where I toed the line. After seeing Rafael's family, I mentally made it clear that I will never have a hatchling. And for reasons too. Practical ones. Not like Blu's organic chemistry nonsense.

Blu has tried convincing me. And every time his eyes get moist and I realise that he was going to cry over the fact that we might break up because of this one fact, I have to pull the "I'll think about it, I guess" card. He hasn't realised how many times we've pulled it, and it saddens me, honestly it does. I can't stand to see Blu like this. It cracks my heart open, and leaves me completely helpless. I love Blu a lot, I really do. Blu once said that love makes the world go round, and he's partially right. Love is powerful, more powerful than I would like, enough to supersede a lot of things. And the thing I was worried about was that my principles were going to crumble under such a crushing weight that had been thrust upon me.

I had to make a stand. I put my identity over my love.

But it was a ferocious battle. And worst of all, it wasn't Blu's fault one bit. I just couldn't understand Blu's rationale for wanting a family. I'm surprised that an antonym for 'freedom' isn't 'family', in any case, and who would trade their freedom to do what they want for a gigantic leech on their chests, sucking out their energy and time that could be better utitlised for themselves? It wasn't worth it. But I couldn't bear to tell Blu this – I would just be making all his fears and my gut feeling that we were partially incompatible, all come true. Some part of me always told me that Blu and I weren't made for each other. I didn't want to prove it right, not for my love for him.

So here I was, in a limbo between what I believed in and what my heart dedicated itself to. Blu was my lovebird, and there was no way I'd trade him for anything. Definitely not for hatchlings. But he still had his own preconceived notions of family and what we were meant to be. It was love, but it was me against him. And if neither of us were pulled to the same side, we were going to lose this battle, a hypothetical scenario's imminent reality that would keep me awake for nights. And no quantity of flames in hell would make me crumble in having children.

Nigel once told me in captivity that if Blu and I became mates (in the hypothetical, unlikely situation that we made it out, and we did), we would be in for a hell lot of trouble, and that our relationship was akin to that of treading over eggs. In all my indignant rage, I refused to believe his words. And now that I've kicked the can down the road, it's bigger enough to haunt me for the rest of my life.

Dear god.

At one point Blu had decided to consult Rafael for tips on how to delay our family planning and such, just to appease my "persistence" in staying away from procreation. My initial reaction was that I was slowly winning this battle, and that I didn't have to make a choice of Blu and family. I was relieved for a lightning-strike second, before my gut feeling intercepted and reminded me that 'delay' was not synonymous with 'avoid', and that family planning didn't exist in the natural world. In the natural world we let everything take its own course, for every river will continue to flow down its path, and that no amount of external forces can bend the will of Mother Nature. But one break in the dam of my mind was all that was sufficient to shatter my life into pieces. I simply couldn't let this happen. Not in a million years.

Figures that the one method that could possibly be a contraceptive was a leaf. A goddamn leaf. That did it for me. My gut feeling was right. There was no way in hell I could do anything about it but abstain. Better the river never flows at all than flow into a dam.

I figured that Rafael and Eva had gone off their rockers. After Blu had an unncessarily lengthy conversation with the two toucans, we bade them farewell, while mentally noting never to consult them for romantic advice. Nico and Pedro were more likely to offer more sane words of wisdom, and that's really saying something. Then again Blu would probably remain deep-rooted in his faith of them. I was already fighting so many battles over here; did I have to fight another? How many breaks in the thread binding me and Blu did there have to be? How many breaks before the string snaps and sends me tumbling into the bottomless abyss below? Nothing can simply last forever, but could it at least be delayed?

As we flew back, I kept hurling glimpses at my soon-to-be-but-hopefully-never mate, as he continued wearing one homogenous smile on his face, the kind of pleasure that exuded from the bond that tied two soulmates together written all over it. Once in a while his eyes would lock with mine, and his smile would amplify in a way that was mysterious to all of birdkind knowledge, curving upwards into his trademark, slightly goofy grin that was imbued with pure, unadulterated happiness. It was my lovebird who could make happiness like a virus, so contagious that I had to erect a wall of immunity to ward it away. I couldn't do this forever. Someday, I reckoned, Blu and I would reach that stage of innocent, pure love, free of any strain that would severe us apart, and the chain that would bind us together will remain untouched. But my instinct told me otherwise.

Screw nature. I wanted Blu. And nothing was ever going to tear us apart. Nothing.

But for now, Blu's unadulterated optimism and hope for our future was going to have to wait. It was about as out of place as a dam in a river – we had so many differences. He had ideas that were about as appealing to me as raw eggs for breakfast, traits that sometimes ticked me off, and actions that made me cross so many, so many lines. No matter how potent love really is, we had so many hurdles to cross. The whole escapade against Nigel was one thing. Procreation was another. And this time it wasn't us against the world. It was I against him. And if I didn't win, we might as well have let the world win.

It was dusk by the time Blu and I reached back to the hollow, the sun now a miniscule orange sliver by the horizon, the sky as azure as my feathers. He set me down, and pecked me on the beak. One kiss, about as long as our first, and it was enough to send my whole world spiralling, revolving around one Macaw, one Macaw that was enough for my heart to swell and melt. It might have just been a month since we met, and possibly just as long since we became lovebirds, but some things were like laws – unchangeable, immovable, unshatterable. And the fact that we loved each other was one of these laws. It never eroded away.

But it never meant that they couldn't be bent, of course.

Blu pulled away, a thread of saliva connecting our two beaks unwinding before almost instantaneously snapping. Sometimes Blu isn't as naïve or childlike as he seems to be – for one thing, he can kiss – and by that I mean, he can kiss. And I've had suitors who had the proficiency with using their beaks of mutes. And for one thing, he knew how to imprison me with the shadow of his heart. It wasn't something that the mentally challenged could even dare to do.

Sometimes he felt like the sun. Everything revolved around me, and he was my light. Not to mention goddamn hot.

"I'll be back, love. I'll bring back your favourite fruits. Stay put," he whispered huskily into my ear, before he fluttered his wings and flew off into a realm of possibilities.

And then before I realised it, I was alone again, vulnerable without my lovebird. The wait was going to be harrowing. The intangible chain that connected me to him tugged, almost begging me to take to the sky and rejoin him once more. But I decided to follow his orders.

I shut my eyes, the wind of the sunset rustling through my feathers and the taste of Spring on my tongue, as my mind spiralling backward into a memory of before…

It was a time that was disturbingly similar to this point. In one of those nights that Blu and I had become more intimate, he had me on my back, planting kisses along my neck, shivers rippling through my body, adrenaline pumping through my veins as my nether regions begged for action. It was a moment of pleasure and pain. Pleasure for obvious reasons, but pain as I struggled with my reasoning and what I stood for, one of those times where I was close to breaking and falling into that trap.

It was those times where, ironically, Blu was at his most innocent, most animalistic. He made every action out of love, out of his emotions, and not by his rationale. He loved me, and he wanted us to be as intimate and closely-knit as possible. I didn't want to blame him for anything. But every inch of me, even in between my talons, I wanted to scream for him to stop. He hadn't even made his advances yet, just foreplay and anticipation leading up to it, but I just couldn't do this. And I could never bring myself to do it.

I pushed him away.

Then came the surprised look, having transformed from the most erotic, lust-filled face to one of disbelief, almost as if his world had crashed upon him. It should have broken my heart, but I quickly struck.

"I… I'm sorry Blu," I muttered under my breath, putting on a masquerade of shyness, with my negative desire radiating almost visibly from me. "I… I can't." And I won't, I thought. "Not now." Not ever. "I… I'm just not ready. Perhaps another time." Never another.

Blu's face creased into a frown. He struggled between his hormonal desires and his love for me, and inevitably, the latter won. He pecked me on the forehead, pulling me into his embrace.

"I understand, love," he said, disappointement tinting in his voice, and internally I yelled a cry of victory. My poker face did not waver, but inside the relief flooded me like a dam in the river had cracked upon. I could do this, I told myself. It wasn't a matter of time after all; I would remain firm in my belief. There would be no family, or at least in Blu's dictionary's case. It would just be the two of us.

"I'm sorry I did that. I… I couldn't control myself. I love you so much, Jewel you know that? I love you so much that sometimes it hurts. And that's when you hurt." He kissed the edge of my beak, and nuzzled his head into my breast, like a child burying himself in his mothers' arms when he feels scared.

"I love you Jewel…"

"I love you too, Blu. And I'm sorry for this," I said, the moment I see Blu's eyes close and watch him drift to sleep, into another fantasy, another veiled reality.

That was the last time he had attempted to break my will, and out of those times this had been the one fraught with the least troubles, with the least arguments. I remembered once I had shouted, albeit with an unnecessary quantity of volume, for him to get the hell away from my cloaca. That kind of threw him over the edge, I could see it within him, even through his poker face as he attempted to defend himself with reasoning that I already knew but would never understand. He thinks I can't see him fight the tears, but the eyes are, after all, the windows of one's soul.

The number of 'sorry's and 'I didn't mean it's that have been exchanged through these months could outnumber the stars in space. (Blu tells me the phrase is over-exaggerated, but I say screw that, the point's there) And the worst part is, they've all been said in a way so honest it puts God to shame.

The gradient is climbing downwards, but who knows when it would reflect? I loved Blu, and still do, and the last thing I wanted to do was to leave him because of my own selfish desires. But if that meant delving into a scenario so horrifying and unnerving that it made my feathers crawl with, then god so help me.

I sighed, and my eyes turned back to the exit of the hollow, facing an outside world that was shrouded by darkness, glittering with specks of light from above, and possibly the world's largest expanse of vegetation ever known. It seemed strange that the Amazon could be considered the home to one of the greatest clusters of species in size, giving the connotation that the jungle would be overflowing with life. But 16 years in the wildlife and I know that at night, everything shuts down. It is about as filled with life as an egg- dormant being a zygote, but still completely, utterly dead nonetheless. You can't see any sign of life in the jungle- no movement, no sound save for the occasional hoots of owls, nothing. And no, I do not count, god so help me, an artificial nightclub as being part of the damn jungle. It taints what nature was meant to do at night – die. It becomes unconscious, unresponsive, motionless, and becomes a hunk of wood, leaves, meat, dirt and what-have-you.

No matter how inherently precious something is, the fact that it is dead doesn't honestly account for anything.

My reverie is broken when I spot something peek out of the hollow. At first I think that Blu is back, and, in the most literal sense, as a knee-jerk reaction I stick out my talon. But my mind registers that, even in the darkness, it had been a streak of orange, white and black, definitely not Blu. An intruder.

I stomped in fury. Why couldn't anybody ever respect privacy? I was alone, and vulnerable, as if being covered with eggshell, and this intruder was going to take advantage of it. This was simply unfair.

"Who's there? Don't be an asswipe coward, show yourself!" My voice tries not to betray any fear.

Immediately the intruder becomes visible, and when I catch sight of him, I let go of the breath I'm holding. It's a toucan, one of Rafael's children for sure. Alone. Probably just taking a look elsewhere, exploring in the middle of the night. Perfectly normal.

In the pale moonlight I could see his wide, cerulean eyes staring into me, almost innocently, like a child, reminiscent of the last time Blu and I had encountered a full flock of these. But I was at home base this time, and there hadn't been any other Toucans that would have aided a full-fledged barrage upon me. It was just this one lone ranger carrying about his normal business, having stumbled upon here unwittingly.

"Oh. It's only you… a… hatchling."

His expression of pleasant surprise, veiled with childlike curiosity, does not waver as his talons clamber rather clumsily into the hollow, nearly adjacent across me. He flutters his wings innocently until he stands right in the center of the circular base of the hollow, his attention swerving from me to whatever pattern or indentations there was above the hollow. Such curiosity never failed to amuse me, and more often than not it drew me to their field of vision.

And that was why I stood still, unwavering, completely trusting in the natural innocence of the hatchling – almost entranced of its presence. It was one of Rafael's, and I should have brought him back, but for one moment I tried to look past all the other traits of a child and focused on this one child, with its vast curiosity for the outside world, and what awaited him… a future of possibilities, like the natural engravings of tree bark. Never-ending, winding, spiralling, looping, meandering… like mini-rivers all racing down the journey of life, wandering aimlessly and covering as much route as possible.

Was that what children's destinies were? To explore the earth and gain as much knowledge and experience as possible, in this vast, almost boundless universe?

Now who were we to stop them?

My thoughts were almost drifting from the clouds when the hatchling stared at me, turning around, facing me and the exit of the hollow. His eyes seemed to twinkle slightly in the moonlight, the glint of a knife, as we peered into one another.

My head cocked to the side. "Is… there a problem?" I asked tentatively, as his global-vast eyes continued to bore into me, like twin mechanical drills.

His pupils rolled in his eye sockets before landing upon me once more. His eyebrows seemed to crease, in a skeptical, mature way, as if scrutinising me. His expression remained frozen, and his thoughts were incomprehendible.

The edges of his beak curled up, slightly at first, but then gradually until it became a smirk, one that was more typical of a teenager, a rebel, a monster.

"You," he said simply, in his squeaky, soprano voice, tainted by what I recognised almost instntly as pure, unadulterated fury. And before I could open my beak, he lunged at me, an animalistic, feral cry escaping from his beak as his talons aimed for my eyes, and his tiny body flung me over the edge with a surreal force.

The last thing I remember before blacking out was shrieking at the top of my lungs.

So yeah. That'll be it for now, hopefully you guys like it. :/ If not then… tell me nicely please? Also my MSWord spell check kinda decided to derp on me so… yeah. Forgive me if there are any errors.

Also, I'll be pretty much uploading chapters only if I feel like it. Don't expect regular updating as with my other stuff… my writing isn't as fast as I'd like it to be. Oh well.

And now because FFN changed their format (FFN…) I can't do any review button nonsense :{ So instead, just, you know, go to that box below and type what you want… please?

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