The Avatar_500 Jump Start Posting And Comments Meme

[attackfish]

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 byclockwerkchaos
How Tenzin Met Pema by lavanyasix


Fills:

Forwolfs_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

Comments

Hama - Katara wasn't her first pupil pt 2/2

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

~*~

"Go slower." Hama ordered, deliberately taking even longer to finish her own form.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, go slow, so you can get every little bit right." He rolled his eyes and pitched his voice high and mocking, and Hama wondered who exactly he was supposed to be making fun of. He certainly didn't sound anything like her. "I know how to practice forms."

"You go slow so that you don't catch the guards' attention." She thought the fact that she restrained following it up with "you idiot" was very kind of her.

He flushed, and slowed down, properly chastened.

~*~

But it didn't last, not that Hama thought it would. He was a child.

"Stop moving," she breathed. Wasn't he the one who was supposed to be so worried about the guards, she wondered.

But her warning didn't come soon enough, and the guard shouted out as he rounded the corner. "Hey you! Stop that!"

The boy stumbled in the middle of his leap and crashed to the floor of his cage, legs askew beneath him. Hama slumped back against the bars of her cage and watched, eyes blank as she could make them.

As the other guards sprinted from their posts to the prisoner, lying sprawled in his cage, the first guard unlocked the bolt on the boy's cage and yanked open the door. "You, boy," he shouted, grabbing the boy and threw him out onto the prison floor. "Were you trying to bend?"

"No!" he yelped, cowering against the ground. "I swear, I was-"

"Shut up!" the guard yelled, shaking him until his head rattled up and down on his neck.

It was then that the other guards began to catch up. The prisoners, trapped in their separate cages could only watch, their eyes boring into the guards, as the first kicked the boy in the ribs. The air in his lungs spilled out into the room. Years Later, Hama would swear she had felt it, even though she knew there was no way she could have.

Some of the prisoners clutched the bars and screamed out. Hama heard them as if through layers of snow. The guards kicked the boy, and hauled him up in their arms to punch him, and dropped him back to the ground to kick him again. His moans, louder in Hama's ears than the screams all around her, gurgled out of him with flecks of his blood.

~*~

All through the night, Hama sat awake, pressed against the bars of her cage and listened to the air bubble in and out of his lungs. She snaked her arm out of her cage to grab his own hand, left dangling out of the bars, and felt him grip her back. So she was the one to hear his breathing stop, and feel his hand go slack in hers.

~*~

The next morning, a guard poked the boy's body through the bars. "Hey, guys, he's not moving!"

Hama listened to the recriminations, the you-weren't-supposed-to-kill-hims, and the well-it's-your-fault-for-kicking-his-ribs, and the everybody-just-shut-ups, and found that she didn't care at all about what they were or weren't supposed to do.

~*~

The moon rose in Hama's blood. She opened her eyes, dispelling the fitful sleep she had been chasing, and twisted her hands into claws, and waited for a guard to pass near enough to her. She was escaping, and she was, she decided, doing it alone, so that nobody else could mess it up.