Five Flashfics and Ten Drabbles of Different Lengths

[attackfish]

Written for the atlaland fic-prompting challenge and red envelope gift fest.


The Blue Spirit Redux

The Avatar let his head hang down and his whole body droop against the chains. Aang crept forward, keeping to the shadows around the edge of the room, his breath soft and shallow, careful and quiet.

A rasping, desperate cry burst out of the Avatar’s throat, and Aang’s masked head whipped around. Frogs sprang out of the neck of the avatar’s tunic and croaked their way down the floor, leaving a trail of melting water and slime. “Come back...” the Avatar pleaded, but the frogs didn’t listen.

Aang watched them hop away bemused, but he shook his head and drew his swords.

The Avatar’s eyes bulged in their sockets at the sight of them and struggled harder against the chains locking his body in place. “No,” he gasped, but the masked figure didn’t stop coming, swords raised high.

They swung down-

And cleaved through the iron chains. They fell to his sides, weighing his arms and legs down. He dragged his limbs against them and spun the air around him, lashing the chains against it, but the masked figure only ducked and drew his arms around his face. The winds died down. “Who are you?” Zuko demanded, feet sliding against the broken chains into a fighting stance. “What do you want?”

Aang shrugged behind his mask. He wanted to be back on his own ship with a fruit pie, a game of pai sho and a quiet night with his teacher. But he held out his hand to his quarry anyway.

The Avatar pulled his hand back and held it closer to his chest, teeth tight in a fierce grimace. Aang closed his eyes in a long, slow blink. I don’t get it, he wanted to shout. I’m trying to help you! Okay, he only wanted to help him long enough to get him into a new cell on board his ship, but... That was better than Zhao’s chains, right?

The masked figure’s hand didn’t fall. “Alright.” Zuko drew a long breath. “Well, I guess you can’t be worse than staying here.”

Prince Aang smiled behind his mask and beckoned the Avatar forward.
 

Above it All

Katara yanked her arm against the vines. “Well, this is a fine state of affairs!”

Toph groaned. “Shut up.” Her feet hung above the ground, and she kept herself as still as possible lest she yank herself free and fall all the way back down to the ground. Which felt like it was miles away, like it didn’t exist at all. Like she could keep falling.

Katara grabbed the vines and pulled herself up. Resting her weight on her hands, she kicked up over her head, bringing up a sharp razer blade of water up to cut through the vines. “This is your fault, Toph, you know that, right?” she yelped, panting, shaking the vines around one wrist loose, and swinging on her still bound wrist. She grabbed the vine that still held her off the ground and worked free the rubbery tangles. When the knot gave way, her hands slid down the vine, and her heart jumped up to bang against the roof of her mouth as she dropped. She clutched as hard as she could, and the skin on her hands burned, but she stopped falling. “You’re the one who got us into th-”She glanced sharply at Toph and stopped. Toph’s face was gray and blank. Sweat poured down her face and dripped into her eyes.

Katara climbed hand under hand down the vines and swung closer to Toph, from one vine to another, until she hung in front of her. She reached her hand out and cupped her cheek.

Toph gasped, and a tear welled up in her eye, but she fought to keep it there instead of letting it fall, and let Katara see it. Katara’s thumb stroked her cheek, and the tear ran down for her to wipe it away. “It’s okay.”

A shiver wracked Toph’s body. Katara petted her face and ran her fingers through her hair to calm her. “Yeah, sure,” Toph mumbled, leaning into Katara’s hand for just a moment. “Just get me down.”
 

War Games

Holding his boomerang in one hand, Sokka leaned over Appa’s saddle and ruffled his fur. Appa started to rumble his approval, but Sokka tugged th reigns before the sound could escape. With a faint sigh, he circled lower and lower. He eyed his target and held his boomerang high, and when he passed by, he thumped it across the back of her head.

Toph shouted and whirled around, leaping to her feet and rubbing the back of her head.

Sokka whooped and shoved his fist and his boomerang into the air.

“Okay, okay!” she yelled, her feet shooting spires of rock into the air. “You managed to sneak up on me. Happy now?”

He grinned, but she couldn’t see him in the bison’s saddle. He grinned harder.

 

Mechanical Marvels

When Yugoda had been a child, she had wanted to know how everything worked. She had had her hand smacked for taking apart her mother’s spice grinder, and her father’s blade sharpening wheel, and a dozen other things.

But she had put them back together again, eventually.

When she first went to the healing hut, she saw living things, things that couldn’t be taken apart and put back together again as right as before. She couldn’t make dead things live again. So she had learned how to see how people and animals and everything alive worked without taking them apart, and how to put them back together when they fell apart without her help.

Caring came easily to her. She cared for all of them. But what made her friends into her friends was a wonderwork so much more complicated than her mother’s spice grinder or her father’s blade sharpener, and she wanted to spend her whole life just exploring it.

Sometimes, the men and the nonbending women all forgot that the people who could put them back together were the ones who knew best how to take them apart.

Sometimes Yugoda wanted to forget that it wasn’t right to.

 

The Shadow Falls

Azula stood high and commanding, like a statue that moved, barely human. “No, you miscalculated!” she raged. “You should have feared me more!”

Ty Lee’s blood hummed in her veins. It vibrated until she thought it was going to shake her skin off her body, shake her apart. She turned to Azula like a spinning spoon turned to the south pole. Mai was unimportant. Mai was a shadow. Azula was the light. Azula was the one who-

Mai was an idiot. Azula was going to kill her. She’d always known, she thought they’d both always known, that if Azula was angry, nothing went well. They weren’t meant to have their own lives. They weren’t meant-

They couldn’t fight her.

Mai was a shadow.

Like her.

She was moving before she realized it. Her fingers found the pressure points in Azula, and she fell.

“Come on.” She tugged at Mai’s arm, terrified. “let’s get out of here!”

They had to leave before the world righted itself.

Hands and Feet

She found him in the courtyard, flipping over onto his hands and coming closer to crying every time he fell.

“You have to keep your hands in front of you like this,” she said, holding them up, and he whirled around, mortified, but he tried it that way. When he started to fall again, she caught his legs. “You have to move them against the fall, feel?”

“Yeah.”

She let go. He walked a few steps and beamed up at her, and she had never seen him like that before.

And when he tried to walk back to her and overbalanced his legs knocked her to the ground too on his way down, and they laughed together, and he gave his hand to help her back up.

Five years later, he walked on his hands to laugh at her and call her a freak. She wondered what that made him.

 

To Become

“Not my Kyoshi.”

Chubby, awkward Kyoshi ran behind her brothers and sisters as fast as she could just to keep up. Sloppy, imprecise Kyoshi’s bending always got away from her. Quiet, uncertain Kyoshi couldn’t be the Avatar.

“We tested her when she was born, remember.”

“Yes, but you went away!” She stared at the Earth Sages who had come for her daughter wide-eyed with something like panic. “Surely there were other babies-”

“She’s the one.”

When her daughter came home four years later, in her war paint and her armor, stronger, surer, and two heads taller, she didn’t recognize her.

 

With Her

Mai needed Ty Lee. Ty Lee smiled at everybody, even after Azula, even while they sat in that cell together. Mai didn’t. She could stand against anyone, and fight, kill or die, but she couldn’t smile the way Ty Lee could, letting everybody see. Mai wished she was brave enough.

Ty Lee needed Mai. Ty Lee smiled at everybody, even when it hurt, when she hated everything. Mai didn’t. When she was angry, she let everybody know. Ty Lee could stand against anyone, and fight, kill or die, but she couldn’t stop smiling. Ty Lee wished she was brave enough.

 

Humming

She swatted at the bug, and it buzzed away before she could kill it.

“You won’t notice them, eventually,” Hue told her, eyes opening and closing lazily.

Like how she had stopped noticing the heat, how in the South Pole, she hadn’t noticed the cold.

“There was a woman living in the Fire Nation who taught me how to bend the blood inside other people’s bodies,” she whispered, sitting down beside him and crossing her legs. “It wasn’t that hard.”

He squeezed her shoulder and backed away, at her indrawn breath and convulsive shudder. “Stay as long as you need.”

 

Pieces

There were pieces of the world that looked real, so real that everything else faded to gray around them. Those were the pieces she needed to avoid. Azula clung to the gray, to the things that were real, even when they didn’t look it. Her mother was standing there, bright and red (and sharp) but her uncle was gray and steady. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard you were doing better.” He unlocked the door and locked it behind him.

There was padding on the walls, and she leaned against it, eyes clear. “Aren’t you afraid to be locked in here with me?”

He shook his head. “Are you doing better?”

She twitched her foot. “Do you trust me?”

“No.”

“Good.” She laughed tiredly. “So why should I tell you if you won’t believe me either way?”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“No thanks.”

“Then don’t tell me.”

 

Editing Out

“So once upon a time, there were two girls.”

“Three girls.”

“Which one of us is telling this story again?”

“Sorry, Mai.”

“These two girls grew up together, and they were best friends, but once they had grown up, they had to go their separate ways.”

“Is there a handsome prince in this story?”

“There are no princes, and no princesses.”

“Azula and Zuko were there, you don’t get to forget that.”

“Yes I do.” She looked around at the metal cell. Azula ruined everything she touched, and Zuko-

“Well I can’t. It can be a good story anyway, though.”

 

She Bends

The moon was just a giant rock in the sky, and there wasn’t a single rock Toph couldn’t bend. “So... you come here often?”

“Hi Toph. It’s good to see you.”

“You here for something special?”

“Just wanted to see you.” She rested her hand on Toph’s shoulder and Toph cupped her own hand around Yue’s pretty cheek.

She couldn’t feel her footsteps, but she could feel her touch, and she could feel the pull of her on her blood. “You can do that any time you want.” Toph bent the moon’s face to her and pressed their lips together.
 

Back to Normal

The records are a mess after the war. It takes almost a year of searching squashed around war reparations, and education reform, and when he finally finds her, he learns she was sold to one of the ferries that took refugees into Ba Sing Se for meat. He thinks back on that rotten food he tossed over the ferry railing and feels queasy. He figured she would be pulling a cart somewhere.

So when his soldiers go to Song’s village to help rebuild, they can’t bring her ostrich-horse back.

So Zuko goes with a string of gold coins and guilt.
 

Left

Ty Lee bites. She doesn’t look like it, but she bites. And Katara loses her patience and starts grabbing everything she can reach. She tickles, and she pinches, until Ty Lee’s breath comes in short little gasps of laughter, and the tears well up in her eyes.

Her fingers jab into Katara’s arm, and it falls limp to her side. “You little-” Katara snaps, and pins Ty Lee down with her other arm.

But Ty Lee’s hands come up again and Katara’s body goes numb and falls on top of her. She squirms helplessly as Ty Lee flips her off to sprawl on the pillows. She wraps her arms around Katara’s neck and slips her tongue inside her mouth. She sucks Katara’s tongue into hers. Katara tries to touch her.

And Ty Lee leaves, but she does it with a smile and a wink, and a promise to come back.

 

Stop Spinning

It’s like she doesn’t know him. They let her out of prison, and send her home like the world is supposed to just start turning on its axis again, and she is just supposed to forget it ever stopped.

So she goes home. She jumps out at him from the shadows and helps him dress, and he holds her like he’s coming home too.

Like he won’t forget the whole world has changed.

She doesn’t know him. He’s someone new now. But when he holds her, the world isn’t there anymore. She kisses him, and holds onto him, and hopes.

Comments

[lunafana.livejournal.com]

Blue Spirit Redux - Zuko's slightly abrasive even as an airbender and Aang is pretty calm and laid-back even as a firebender, interesting. :)

Above It All - A poignant look at Toph's sense of vulnerability. She's such a tough-as-nails character it's easy to forget how scary the world can be when she's not "seeing" with earthbending. In fact it's easy to forget she's blind period, something that happens all the time in canon and, I'm told, in real life.

The Shadow Falls - The most dramatic of the bunch, and a fitting look at how Ty Lee looks at their dynamic. With that kind of viewpoint, her actions in the show make a lot more sense. The last line is both striking and ironic.

Hands and Feet - Puts the campfire scene in "The Beach" in a whole new perspective! I like the descriptive details and the emotional punch at the end.

With Her - makes a nice contrast between these two very different friends.

Humming - I didn't really understand this. I know it's Katara's PoV and that she's in a warm climate, and still traumatized about bloodbending, but otherwise I can't tell what the context and meaning are.

Pieces - This one felt, I don't know, incomplete to me. Like it should have gone on for a sentence or two longer for me to really get it. I like the view into how Azula sees the world now, especially that delusion is more vivid to her than reality, and the grim little detail of Iroh unlocking the door behind himself.

She Bends, Left - Hee! Fun.

Stop Spinning - I like the more ambivalent look at the ending, and how the Mai/Zuko affection is very much alive despite this. The last sentence is particularly poignant, and shows how emotions are more realistic and have more impact when they are nuanced.

Overall, that's a lot of content and punch packed into a few words. Great drabbling.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The Blue Spirit Redux- the reason all the Air Monks have no hair: they had to teach Zuko.

Above It All- And yet, at least for me and my disability, I have to keep it on my mind all the time. It's the constant back-of-the-mind compensation for it that makes everybody else able to forget it. And when that compensation fails...

The Shadow Falls and With Her- My best friend growing up was a sociopath who desperately craved control. After I finally realized what she was and tried to get away, she stalked me for four years. She played her sister, brother, and me against each other to maintain her hold and keep us from overthrowing her, all the while remaining the favorite of her at the least emotionally abusive father and sweet but deeply in denial mother. She had all of our secrets, and some days, she would be nice, and we'd delude ourselves into thinking that was the real her. I sunk into a deep depression and contemplated suicide over and over again. I managed (that time) to pull myself out of it after I moved and the stalking let up, but I succumbed to it again in collage. Everybody offline who I tell that to tells me that I always seem so happy and they never noticed, even my parents. Given that I played Ty Lee to someone else's Azula, I always wondered how much that relentlessly cheery exterior wasn't a survival mechanism for dealing with her family, but one for dealing with Azula.

Hands and Feet- This was just going to be fluff, and then... Oops.

Humming- Hue is the "time is an illusion and so is death" guy from the swamp. She talks about him a bit in "The Puppetmaster" and mentions his swinging vines in conjunction with what Hama was teaching her. I think maybe this wouldn't be something she'd feel comfortable discussing with somebody back home, or with Pakku, so she goes to someone whose waterbending is similar but less horrifying.

Pieces- I mostly just wanted to show Iroh being kind and loving without being trusting or thinking she's a good person, and Azula slowly gaining her self-awareness back. I was also trying to show that the psychosis didn't negate the sociopathy, and that the sociopathy didn't negate the psin and fear the psychosis caused her. And that no matter how much she recovered, she wouldn't stop being a sociopath. I'm not sure how well I did with the last set of things. It was mostly just meant to be an impression.

She Bends and Left- I love femslash and wish there were so much more of it in fandom, yet I can't stand the primary femslash ship of this fandom. Honestly, given the heavy romantic overtones of my friendship with little miss sociopath, and the fact that we're neither of us straight, I always suspected that had we been any older when I broke away, there would have been a sexual relationship between us. This is why I have never been able to ship Tyzula. It hits a bit close to home. Plus, a lot of the Tyzula fics downplay Azula's cruelty and need to control.

Stop Spinning- Mai/Zuko is my favorite ship in this fandom, and I think part of the foundation of their relationship is a sort of survivors' understanding. I like the fact that they're both deeply damaged and they're going to heal together instead of the show trying to set them up with emotionally clean people who would by sheer force of love heal them.

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

The Blue Spirit Redux - This one didn't do a whole lot for me. I liked Aang's note about what he'd rather be doing back on the ship (did Gyatso get swapped with Iroh?) but otherwise it didn't feel like I learned anything significant about the characters. And did Zuko leave the frogs behind? If he did, it was unclear.

Above it All - Nothing to say since the first reviewer said it better.

War Games - Short and cute. I liked how Sokka figured out how to exploit Toph's limitations in order to defeat her. After reading "Above it All", though, I can't help but think about how Toph must feel inside.

Mechanical Marvels - Interesting insight into Yagoda, both in her role as a healer and as someone affected by the NWT's sexism.

The Shadow Falls - Interesting take on Ty Lee. It really dug up the terror we saw Azula visit on Ty Lee in "Return to Omashu"; how Azula effing crushes Ty Lee when she tries to quietly resist Azula's orders.

Hands and Feet - Nice Ty Lee/Zuko moment.

To Become - I once wrote a lone one-shot about Kyoshi's life that got torpedoed for me by a reviewer's comment. He pointed out that Kyoshi was 42 when she killed Chin, which raised the question of what she was doing in all those years before he rose up and claimed his empire. I figured there were two possible solutions: either Kyoshi chose not to interfere with the civil war until Chin threatened her home village, or she didn't start training as the Avatar until well after the customary age of 16.

With Her - And then, at the end of everything, they split up and move far away from each other.

Humming - I got nothing for this one.

Pieces - I dig post-war Iroh/Azula stuff. Nice to see them vaguely normal with each other, with full understanding of who and what the other person is.

Editing Out - A neat summation of the difference in Ty Lee's and Mai's outlooks on life. Ty Lee runs away, forgets, and starts over anew. Mai sticks with her lot in life and manages the best she can.

She Bends - A nice little bit of crack yuri for Toph. The line about bending rocks and the Moon was a good Toph-ish boast.

Back to Normal - Chopped up ostrich-horse for food! Good imagery. I can't think of another Zuko/Song reunion fic that deals with the original stolen ostrich-horse.

Left - Playful Ty Lee yuri. Nice to see her paired with someone besides Azula. Even having written TyZula, I generally agree with your assessment of their relationship in the other comment. It's something that either has to be brutally dark or outright comedic. Middle-of-the-road Gen TyZula falls into the pot hole of Ty Lee being frightened of Azula in canon.

Stop Spinning - Good Mai drabble. A lot of post-war Mai stuff either ignores her reaction to changes in Zuko or uses it as a springboard for breaking them up. Combined with "Editing Out", this gives the sense of Mai being inwardly desperate that everything will work out if she stays.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The Blue Spirit Redux- He did, but he collects more methinks. More like they hopped off. He also his much more resentful about dragging an injured Aang with him than Aang was about dragging him in canon. Gyatso and Iroh are switched, but that's as far as the switching goes.

Above it All and War Games- I wrote War Games first, and you're right, it's bleaker in retrospect. But speaking as someone with disabilities, it's always there, but it only scares you to bits when things go wrong.

Mechanical Marvels- I come from a nursing family. They like to tinker, and talk shop at the dinner table with poor unsuspecting non-nursing people.

The Shadow Falls- This. Everybody seems to forget, Ty Lee said no dice, and then Azula threatened the hell out of her until she came.

Hands and Feet- *pets them*

With Her- But they visit! They have to visit!

Pieces- I don't know what to say about this, except that I like the thought of Azula getting a little bit more like herself, but with Azula, that's not really a good thing.

Editing Out- But Mai's the one trying to forget for a while. Ty Lee's just starting to learn that it doesn't work.

She Bends- Toph is THE GREATEST EARTHBENDER IN THE WORLD! And don't you dunderheads forget it.

Back to Normal- Zuko just has no luck. Being his animal=DOOM.

Left- Seriously, why does nobody get that Ty Lee is freaking terrified of Azula. She flatters and smiles because she likes breathing.

Stop Spinning- I love Maiko because of all this mess. I see the end as a beginning for them, really.

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

Eh, shipping can justify most anything. It's also probably a little bit of people willing to overlook the nastier aspects of their favorite badass. If a character is sexy and cool, they can be a complete monster and get away with most everything. Being a badass covers a multitude of sins.



Y'know, when you put it that way I sort of wonder how TyLuko would (or would not have) worked out. I once read a post where someone complained that Mai and Ty Lee would have been equally interchangeable as Zuko's S3 girlfriend, but your comments make me wonder. Would Ty Lee have seen Zuko as a form of protection against Azula? And how negatively would she have reacted to her shield dumping her with no warning?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Eh, shipping can justify most anything. and If a character is sexy and cool, they can be a complete monster and get away with most everything.

This is true. Bellatrix and the Malfoys are the darlings of the Harry Potter fandom, after all.

I once read a post where someone complained that Mai and Ty Lee would have been equally interchangeable as Zuko's S3 girlfriend

Oh good God. One of them would have ended up strangling each other, but it would have been beautifully cracktastic to watch. On a more serious note, I think she would react badly to having taken a gamble and losing if she did choose to date Zuko, but given how afraid she was, I don't think she would have gone anywhere near that option in the first place for fear of antagonizing her. She flirts a bit with him on the beach, but I think that's her default.

[ferricent.livejournal.com]

I love all of these! Wonderful moments of character and connection. "Editing Out" would be my favorite... but I can't pick only one.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Thank you! My favorite would be The Shadow Falls, closely followed by Hands and Feet. You many have noticed I hace a thing for writing Ty Lee.