It saddened her how, everytime someone looked at her, they either held amorous feelings to the point of being dirty in their eyes, or disgust. She wasn't blind. She knew how people saw me. They saw her as a whore, a woman who had engaged in sexual acts with so many people, she had lost count. They always looked at that fact, never looking at the fact that it was her life's sustenance. She could absorb energy from the people she had intimate contact with and that, in turn, infused into her body and allowed her to survive in the human body she cherished so much. She could survive a few whispers if it meant her own happiness... But everyone had a limit, and it was getting to her. She couldn't keep up her mask of non-chalance anymore. Her smiles cracked, her eyes shone with hurt and her fingers clenched everytime she saw someone looking at her with those two emotions in there eyes.
But he... He was an exception. When he looked at her, he didn't have any of those expected reactions. He saw her... just her. He saw her for who she was, nothing more. He didn't judge her. He definitely didn't desire her. He simply... saw her. He was the first one to make her feel like a normal human. He talked to her as he would talk to anyone else, which was in that flat, focused tone of his. His golden eyes that so matched her own would gleam whenever she asked him questions. He was intelligent, and he approved of anyone gleaning to know more. She spent more time with him under the pretense of learning more about the world, about the culture. She learned about his order, about his way of life. His beliefs of Order and Balance, his role as the Eye of Twilight. She learned about his past, his regret of how he had not fought to keep his brother with him and had lost him to the shadows. She learned about how he struggled and fought hard to protect his order from the genocide by the shadow order. She learned how he got every little scar on his arms.
She liked this... He was the first person she could talk to who wasn't genuinely interested in her body. He made her feel... Warm... She felt flutters in her stomach everytime he looked at her, and felt her face heat up whenever he said something encouraging or nice. One day, she simply asked him what she thought of her. He was curious about why she asked. She told him everything about how people looked at her and how it made her want to claw her own skin off.
He grabbed a hold of her shoulders and she had to fight to stop the quiver in her as she looked up into his intense, smoldering eyes. "You are none of that, Ahri. Yes, you delve into sexuality a lot, but you do that to survive. We all do certain things to survive, Ahri. That doesn't make you anything less. That doesn't demean your value as a person... That simply makes you human, like the rest of us."
Her tears escaped her eyes before she even realized she was crying, and she spent the rest of that afternoon hugging him, her face buried into his chest. He didn't object, he didn't say anything. Only allowed her to hold onto him like an anchor until she finally drew away. Only then did he ask about her well being. She smiled. He suggested some herbal tea to make her feel better. As they stood up, she slowly, hesitantly edged her hand into his. He opened his fingers and allowed her to intertwine her slender digits with his.
For the first time in a long time, she felt simple happiness at simple gesture that was so strangely intimate. She smiled.