attackfish | The Avatar_500 Jump Start Posting And Comments Meme

Alright, I'm unwilling to let

avatar_500 go without a fight, so I am going to incentivize participation. Write and post a fic for Round 65 - Air, and I'll fill a drabble request of yours. Comment on all of the fics in the round (everybody said they wanted more comments), and at the end of the round, link me to all of the comments and I'll fill a request for you. Do both, and I will fulfill three requests for commentfic.

The rules for posting to

avatar_500 can be found here.

You don't have to belong to

avatar_500 or have ever participated in it before to earn a request for commenting, and if you do want to join to post a fic for the round, all you have to do is click the "join the community" button, and you're in, easy.

About which I will not write (so don't request):

Ty Zula
NC-17
Incest
Ships where one party is much older or younger than the other(s)
Rape
Other people's OCs

Other than that, everything is fair game.

The deadline to post fic is Saturday December 1st at 11:00 PM EST. The deadline to post comments is Saturday December 8th at 11:00 PM EST.

Fics in The Round So Far:

Marking Boundaries by

attackfish
The Need to be Seen by

lalunatique
Playtime at Air Temple Island by

wolfs_lament
What Are the Odds? by

c3childs
Wrong by

chordatesrock
Four Element - Air- Third Stanza by

clockwerkchaos
How Tenzin Met Pema by

lavanyasix

Fills:

For

wolfs_lament:
For a story: Hufflepuff Zuko, Secret Tunnel

For

chordatesrock:
   For a story: Holding This Breath: the Aftermath of Kidnapping Aang
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Quiet Shadowed Places: the Cooler
   Bonus: Zuko/Toph, all grown up and surviving state dinners

For

lalunatique:
For commenting on everyone's fics: Ty Lee and Suki - Sake

For

somariel:
For commenting on everyone's fics: The Grand Lotus puts out a call

For:

c3childs:
   For a story: Hama - Katara wasn't her first pupil *Warning for violence and death*
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Amon - the vigilante of Republic City
   Bonus: Yakone - he owns Republic City

For

lavanyasix:
   For a story: Lin Realizes Toph is a dirty cop
   For commenting on everyone's fics: Pre-series - Korra encounters prejudice due to being half Northern and half Southern
   Bonus: Ozai marries his son off into an insultingly low-ranked colonial noble family. Zuko/Kori

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The ice wall parted, and Zuko's head jerked up. Yue caught his eyes from the doorway and held them as she crossed the floor of his room and sank down to her knees beside him. "Zuko, what were you thinking?"

He dropped his eyes and glowered at the floor.

"Don't be like that." Grabbing his chained hands and cupping them in hers, she tried to catch his eyes again. "You had to know it wasn't going to work. What were you going to do when the cotton-poppy juice wore off?"

He stubbornly refused to look at her, and it made her unreasonably angry. He was the one who had run. He was the one who had left her alone.

"Zuko, it's me." She rubbed the back of his hand through his mitten. "Talk to me."

"What was I supposed to do?" Finally he met her eyes again, and his own were wide and unhappy before he narrowed them. "I never even had a chance to go home before, the Avatar- I never really believed he was real before, and now..."

Yue kept rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb. All day, she heard people talking about it. She wondered if the guards talked about it in front of Zuko, now that he was chained up again and harmless, or if they had stopped talking in front of him at all and consigned him back to the bubble of silence that had surrounded him when he had first been captured. She didn't know which was kinder, and she hoped that mattered to the guards, at least a little, enough for them to consider it.

They never had ever had a chance before either, not really. Nobody talked about it, because nobody wanted to remember, but they all knew that the only thing keeping the Fire Nation from their door was that they just weren't worth the struggle, at least not while the Earth Kingdom was around, richer, and easier to pick away at. But that wouldn't last forever, and everybody knew it.

It was usually much, much easier to forget about all of that when she was with Zuko, to forget that out there, it was Zuko's nation that was creeping ever closer to swallowing them whole. "Do you think your father really would have loved you again if you brought him the Avatar?"

"He does love me!" The ice under him hissed as it melted and boiled all at once. "I just have to-"

"He left you here to rot! I love you, I-" She stopped. Her mouth snapped closed, and absurdly, she heard her mother's voice telling her not to interrupt.

And suddenly it was his hands cupping hers, and he had slipped off their mittens to touch them skin to skin. "You've never said that before."

She hadn't. In all of their long, veiled conversations about duty, and honor, neither of them had ever said the word love. It was safer that way, pretending that they were talking about something, anything other than the fact that they could not be together.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"I love you too." His hands were warm around hers, but his voice was small and frightened. "I've loved you for a really long time."

"But you still need to try to go home."

He nodded, and she forced down the pricking pain at the corners of her eyes.

"And I need to marry Hahn." Her mouth drew into a thin, unhappy line, as she felt her words begin the well-trod path that would end with both of them without each other, both unhappy and honorable.

He wasn't going to succeed. They both knew that. She wondered what would happen to the Fire Nation prince if the Fire Nation conquered his captors. Would they let him free? Put him on a ship and send him out to sail the world again? Where would an exile sail when the whole map was colored red? "Do you ever think about what would happen if we won the war? Not the Fire Nation, I mean. The Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom."

"No." There hadn't been any reason to, she supposed. "I guess I would be stuck here forever."

"Your father would be dethroned," she said softly, barely daring to continue. "There would need to be a new Firelord."

"My father would be dead," he said flatly. "Not dethroned, dead."

"They might put him in prison." But of course neither of them believed it.

"And would this new puppet Firelord," Zuko closed his eyes and swallowed. "Be able to marry the Northern Water Tribe princess?"

"It would be a good political match." She clutched his hand. "I can put Hahn off for a little while. Maybe a year. It might be enough."

"It's dishonorable." Zuko looked away. "He's my father."

And that it. It always was. Her hand still in Zuko's, Yue sat back with him against the wall to stare out over Zuko's quiet, empty, little cell.

Edited 2012-12-03 05:14 (UTC)

Wow, this universe never gets any less horrible, does it? Poor Zuko.

No, it really doesn't. This is why I don't like to poke my head in. It never stops being grindingly horrible.

whoa. it is very horrible. but also poignant and I love the Zuko/Yue (Zue?) relationship.

I love them in this verse. I mean, part of the reason I love them is because they're the most tragic tragedy that ever tragiced, and they revel in it, but also because they have real misery and problems, and I'm a sucker for angst.

The Avatar_500 Jump Start Posting And Comments Meme

Holding This Breath - The aftermath of kidnapping Aang 1/2

Holding This Breath - The aftermath of kidnapping Aang 2/2

Re: Holding This Breath - The aftermath of kidnapping Aang 2/2

Re: Holding This Breath - The aftermath of kidnapping Aang 2/2

Re: Holding This Breath - The aftermath of kidnapping Aang 2/2

Re: Holding This Breath - The aftermath of kidnapping Aang 2/2