Kindle the Wind (The Avatar! Zuko 'verse) commentfic meme

[attackfish]

That's it, folks, I can't take it.  In the hopes that maybe writing some of what I want to write will get me unblocked on the fic I'm trying to write, I'm giving in and running a commentfic meme for my Avatar!Zuko verse.  Comment with up to five requests, and I’ll guarantee you at least one commentfic.  I’ll probably answer with more, knowing me.  weirdlet , fanficforensics, beboots, and floranna  get seven requests and a guarantee of two fics, because beboots  and floranna  are the best betas ever, and weirdlet and fanficforensics just because.


Also, the 'verse has a title now, Kindle the Wind!


Air, Water, Earth, Fire.

Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.

A hundred years passed and the new Avatar crashed into the ice sheet that borders our village. Although he is the Fire Nation prince, and it's his family and his nation that have brought this war to the world, I have hope that inside Zuko lies the spark of greatness. In the end, he has to save the world.

Front Cover Illustration

Timeline:

The Turtle-Crab and the Hawk
The first time Zuko struck a Fire Nation soldier in anger
Banner
Meeting Sokka and Katara
The joys of new bending
Zuko surprising himself by being spiritual and philosophical
Gran-Gran criticizing Uncle's parenting skills
Uncle Iroh finds out
Iroh has a talk with his nephew
Agni Kai against Zhao
Laying Aang to rest at the Southern Air Temple
Momo joins the Party
Sokka finds out the women on the ship aren't there to cook (and learns something, maybe)
Act of Providence
The Spinning Gates

Comments

Re: Korra as the waterbending sifu to Zuko's successor

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Oy.

[anon616.livejournal.com]

1) Fire - Zuko and lighting, success or failure
2) Air - The second time Ty Lee revealed she was an Airbender to Zuko, after the first didn't take. (Silly Ty Lee, Zuko does not get subtle hints.)
3) Water - The blue spirit. Whoever said there was only one?
4) Earth - If Toph ever got scared, she would find it scary how good the Fire prince is with Earth.
5) Spirit - The first time Zuko went into the Avatar State.

Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 1/3

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

In the morning, he had almost convinced himself he had dreamed it.

Zuko had stared at the ceiling for hours, and at the Fire Nation insignia on the wall after he had made the air move in his still little room. He had stared at them unable to sleep, unable to twist away from the bitter realization that he was everything he had trained so long to fight, that his father was right, and he was no true son of the Fire Nation.

That there was no Avatar for him to find.

The last struck him like a bolt of lightning, in the middle of the night, after he had almost made it all the way to sleep. There was nothing to do now, no more clues to hunt down, no more faint traces to chase. The only acceptable, loyal thing for him to do now as to turn home and surrender himself, and hope that his father would take him at his word that he would never attack his own people and wouldn't lock him away.

But when he woke up, he convinced himself it was a dream, or midnight sun madness, or anything except real. How could it be?

The sun was already high in the sky, as Zuko walked out onto deck, the South Polar summer in full swing. "Lieutenant!"

Lieutenant Jee stopped polishing the trigger mechanism on the catapult and threw the rag down as he sauntered over. "Prince Zuko."

"How close are we to the Southern Water Tribe?" Zuko ground the words out, the need to capture the Avatar, to find him hiding out there among the icebergs was more desperate, and more panicked than usual, with the strange dream, it was a dream, it had to be a dream, still playing behind his eyes.

"We are less than a day out, sir." The lieutenant stood at attention as his eyes flicked dubiously over the ice choked water around them. "Sir, let me remind you, the Southern Raiders have been patrolling these waters for eighty years, and they haven't seen anything. They say that there haven't been any benders at all at the South Pole for eight years, much less the Avatar."

"I want to see it with my own eyes," Zuko growled, spinning on his heel to walk away. The winds picked up.

"This is a waste of time," Lieutenant Jee called after him.

Zuko whirled back around, the rising gale whistling in his ears. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Jee held his ground. "The Avatar is not going to be there, and you are dragging all of us into this frozen wasteland for nothing."

"You have somewhere better to be, Lieutenant?" Zuko seethed, his voice deadly calm, and nearly inaudible over the wind.

Jee opened his mouth to speak, but the ship bucked on the choppy water, tossing them into the guardrail. They glanced at each other and ran for the open hatch. As he ran, Zuko swore he could feel the wind rising higher and higher with each step.

He practically threw himself down the stairs leading into the maze below decks. Half a dozen soldiers had made it there before them, crouching in the darkness. Grabbing the hatch, Zuko pulled it closed behind all of them as the ship made one last fearsome lurch.

The hall around them shook back and forth, rattling them like dice in a cup as huge, grinding boom ripped through the metal walls.

Then, just as suddenly as the wind had risen, everything went still.

Zuko stepped over Lieutenant Jee, who sat sprawled against the wall where the impact had tossed him. The hatch creaked open under his hand, and polar sunlight flooded in. There were no clouds, no storm, nothing bu clear sky and bitterly cold air.

On the other side of the ship, he could see his uncle and the helmsman stumbling out of the control tower, and the rest of the crew crawling out of the other hatch.

One of the crew members made his way up the steps behind the prince. "What was that?" he asked no one in particular.

"That was no storm," another man said, awestruck, face hidden behind his mask. "That was airbending."

One soldier, who had a black eye and a busted lip from the ship walls, held his hand out to the Lieutenant. "What did you say about the Avatar not being here?"

Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 2/3

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Zuko made his way over to the guardrail, legs shaking under him, with the vague idea that he was going over to survey the damage. He could feel the skin of his scar, trying to stretch wide around his eye. It seamed like the only thing he could feel, like the rest of him, body and mind, had gone numb. He couldn't feel the ship deck under his feet, or the bruises forming on his arms and chest.

"Lower the gangplank," Lieutenant Jee commanded behind him. "Whoever bent that windstorm must be close by. "Get the rhinos."

As they darted off to gather armor and lower the gangplank, the crew cast anxious glances at the prince, wondering why he wasn't the one barking orders, why he was just standing there.

Two forms were moving closer to them across the pitted, hilly ice.

Zuko released a breath he hadn't even known he had been holding. "Soldiers!" he shouted, pointing. "There.

Zuko's heart thundered in his chest. As the crew wrestled with the gangplank, bent and twisted by the impact, he grabbed the guardrail and launched himself over.

"Prince Zuko!" His uncle was leaning over the side of the ship as fast as his legs could carry him there. "What are you doing?"

Zuko pulled off his gloves and clung to the side of the ship like a monkey-spider, nails clutching at the rivets. Scampering down to the ice, he didn't answer.

From below, he could see the wide, jagged gash the impact had made in the ship's hull. Zuko ripped his eyes away from it and put his gloves back on, slinking through the ice dunes. As he drew closer to the people he had seen from the ship and his uncle's voice faded into the distance, he could hear the voices of the two bouncing amongst the ice. He followed them.

"I managed to get us to shore didn't I?" a girl's voice justified irritably.

Zuko hid behind the ice slope, keeping his breathing low. His dream the night before must have been prophetic; it must have foretold this meeting, with this, the new young Water Tribe Avatar.

"Well, it's good to know your freaky magic water got us out of this mess," the other voice shot back. "After it got us into it in the first place!"

Their footsteps crunched on the snow as they climbed the ice hill, over Zuko's head. "You're the one who doesn't know your right from your..." the girl's voice trailed off as she caught sight of the ship.

Without thinking, Zuko lunged up at her, knocking her flat on her back.

"Get off my sister!" the other voice, the boy's voice yelled. He had a boomerang in one hand, which he brandished menacingly at the Fire Prince, the sharp edge glinting in the summer sun.

Squirming, the girl got her foot between herself and Zuko, and kicked him off her. "Fire Nation," she hissed.

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Zuko staggered back, and brought his arms up to fight, eyes flicking between the two of them. "Which one of you made that windstorm?"

"We didn't make any-" the girl started angrily, but the boy stepped on her foot.

"We're telling you nothing, Fire Nation scum," he declared.

The girl glared at her companion for a moment before speaking. "Yeah, that's right."

"We'll see about that," Zuko snarled, glove covered hands wreathed in flame. "Tell me which one of you it is!"

"Neither of us!" The girl brought her arm forward, melting the ice and shoving it up into a clumsy little wave.

Zuko glanced at it surprised. "That's all you got?"

The boomerang whizzed past his head in answer.

The Fire Nation and home were so close he could almost taste the ginger-cinnamon in the freezing air. The old Avatar who had eluded his people for so long was dead, and the new one was a child, master of nothing. For the first time in years, it felt like, he smiled.

The Water Tribe boy's answering smile was the only warning Zuko got. Later, he would swear that he was trying to set it on fire, but when he spun around to strike the boomerang that had been speeding straight for the back of his unprotected head, it was wind that caught hold of it and threw it harmlessly into the snow, wind that followed Zuko's movements.

The girl's eyes were enormous. "It's you!"

"Liar!" Zuko bellowed, flame filling his hands. "Which one of you did that?"

"That was airbending," the girl said in awe. "And... you were firebending! You must be the Avatar!"

"Don't be stupid, Katara," the boy groaned. "He's Fire Nation. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who can do two kinds of freaky magic. Besides, the Avatar probably doesn't even exist anymore."

"Gran Gran says he does," the girl, Katara, retorted. "And she says the Avatar's the only one who can bend more than one element. Are you going to argue with Gran Gran?"

That was it, Zuko realized. Obviously, he was still dreaming. He was going to wake up, and his ship would not have crashed into an ice sheet, and he would still be hunting desperately for any sign. He wasn't listening to two Water Tribe teenagers arguing about the existence of the Avatar.

"I'm not the Avatar." It was like the air had been leached from his lungs, and the words came out thin and nearly soundless. He took a deep breath and yelled, "I'm hunting the Avatar! You will tell me which one of you it is-" The crunch of Komodo rhino footsteps on he snow hill above them cut through Zuko's demand, and the three of them turned to look up. "Never mind. I'll find out later. Soldiers, take both of them prisoner."

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

Oh Zuko. You poor, grumpy, denial-filled baby.

Why do I get the feeling he's in for a lot more trouble than he anticipated with those two on his ship?

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Why poor Zuko? Don't you mean "poor crew"? Just think. They went from being stuck with one bossy, bad tempered teenage know it all to being stuck with three.

Yeah, Zuko? No idea what he's in for.

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[wolfs-lament.livejournal.com]

Wow, Zuko's in denial. I don't actually know who I feel the most sorry for, though at least Sokka and Katara are tough enough to stand up to him. The crew's lives are about to get a lot more interesting.

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Zuko has a lot of practice with denial. And oh yeah. Poor Iroh especially.

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

True! And Uncle's going to be stuck giving advice... ohh, schadenfreude is tasty.

Thank you so much! This is lovely!

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[luunyscarlet.livejournal.com]

Ah, Zuzu. Denial is not just a river in Egypt ;).
Knowing Katara, she'd probably do her best to get Zuko to admit that he's the Avatar. And Iroh'd keep letting the Water Tribe sibs out of jail to give them tea and teach them how to play Pai Sho, much to Zuko's dismay.

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, Katara has a trick up her sleeve.

The joys of new bending, Part 1/2

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The boy twisted his hands against his bindings. Leaning over in the rhino saddle, Zuko swatted him on the back of the head. "Don't do that. You won't get free."

He worked his wrists harder. "Then why do you care if I try?"

"Because you'll take all the skin off your wrists."

The boy just glared at his captor. Katara, trussed up behind Lieutenant Jee, wasn't glaring. Her eyes stayed on the saddle leather, lost in thought as her brother struggled. As they made it to the top of one last rise of snow, she looked up, and sucked in a breath at the sight of Zuko's mangled ship. In the back of his mind, almost unconsciously, Zuko tallied up the repair costs, and what he could cut from the budget, for just a little while to cover costs until the year was over and he could collect his allotment of funds, hoping that there would be enough to cover a year's worth of coal and food, before he realized with a wild sort of glee, that it didn't matter. He had captured the Avatar. It didn't matter that it wasn't in some heroic battle, he was going home. He never had to worry about stretching his ancient ship's tiny budget ever again.

The rhino stopped at the bottom of the gangplank. Zuko flicked the reigns and the beast started lumbering up the steep metal ramp. The Water Tribe boy tried to shimmy off the saddle and over the side of the ramp, but Zuko caught him by the back of his tunic. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Uhhhh..." He flashed a grin. "Nowhere?"

Grunting, Zuko turned back around.

At the top of the ramp, Zuko dismounted. The soldier whose mount he stole jumped down from behind one of his fellows and ran forward to take the reigns out of his prince's hands.

"Soldiers," Zuko snapped. "Take the prisoners below decks. I'll be down to speak with them soon."

"Renshu, Zhen," Lieutenant Jee said curtly. The soldiers he had named grabbed the Water Tribe prisoners and pulled them out of the saddle.

"Wait," the boy said, looking at Zuko. "You don't even know their names?"

Zuko shot him a poisonous look as the soldiers marched the two of them away. He turned to the chief mechanic, who was staring over the rail. "How long will it take to repair the ship?"

The man grimaced. "Days, a week even, and that's just to get it able to take us to the next port for the real repairs."

Zuko closed his eyes. He didn't catch the glimmer of a scheme in Katara's eye as the soldier hurried her down the stairs, into the hold.

~*~

The joys of new bending, Part 2/2

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

As the guards opened the door for Zuko, the Water Tribe boy threw himself at the gap, hands high to fasten around the Fire Prince's throat. Reflexively, Zuko shoved a hand out at the boy's chest and swept his feet out from under him with one leg. He fell down to the iron floor with a shocked expression.

Zuko didn't lower his guard. "Close the door," he told the guards.

"Sir, are you sure."

"I'm sure." If that girl was going to start talking about her crazy idea that he was the Avatar, the last thing he wanted were witnesses. When the door clicked closed, he stayed standing in front of it. "I'm willing to make a deal with you. If you tell me which one of you is the Avatar, I will let the other one go. You can go home to your village, and I will never come back."

"We already told you who the Avatar is, but you don't believe us," Katara insisted, fisting her hands and putting them on her hips. "Besides. I think we can escape on our own."

The boy stepped in front of her. "I'm the Avatar. Let my sister go."

"Stop trying to protect me, Sokka," the girl huffed. "He's just trying to protect me, don't listen to him. Anyway, I have a deal for you."

Zuko felt even more like a complete idiot than usual, because it really should have occurred to him that they might just lie. "Whichever one of you is the Avatar is going to have to demonstrate it," he growled. "And I already gave you the only deal I'm going to make."

"Just hear me out." She nudged her brother out of the way as she stood to face her captor. "It's the Avatar's job to maintain the spiritual health of the world right?"

Zuko nodded uneasily.

"Well, my brother and I found somebody frozen in the ice today, and he definitely isn't Water Tribe, and I was kind of hoping, since you're the Avatar, that you would... bless him and send his spirit on its way?" She smiled at him.

"I told you, I'm not the Avatar!" Zuko yelped.

"Then this won't mean anything," she said stubbornly. "But if you go with us, after we get back, we won't try to escape, and we'll answer any questions you have."

Sokka's mouth dropped open. "Katara!"

She shushed him. "You're going to be stuck here for days anyway. Might as well."

They were going to ambush him, Zuko knew, but he also knew he could take them. "We'll take the steamer."

~*~

"So." Sokka peered through the window at the furnace. "How does this thing work."

Zuko kept his hand on the wheel. "Shut up."

"It's just little further west," Katara called to him from the front of the ship.

"How did you find this person anyway?" Zuko sighed, annoyed.

"I sort of accidentally raised an iceberg out of the water." Katara shrugged, embarrassed. "I mean, I don't know how I did it. It's not like there's anybody here who can teach me."

it hit him all at once that he was in a boat, surrounded by water and ice with an untrained waterbender, and probably an untrained Avatar. Suddenly this didn't seem like such a good idea.

Zuko surprising himself by being spiritual and philosophical

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The iceberg reminded Zuko of a volcano, soon after an eruption, like the capitol caldera in frosted miniature. The steamer bobbed in the water next to it like a warship in harbor, making him feel like a giant as they scrambled out of it and up the iceberg face. At the top, Katara pointed down into the ice crater, and Zuko leaned down to look, but all he could see was a hairy mound. For a moment, he wondered if that was the real reason the Water Tribe siblings had brought him here, to be eaten by this thing. Then he saw the arrow on the beast's forehead. He had seen paintings of this thing, in the scrolls he had read so obsessively during his quest. A sky bison, frozen and dead. Zuko leaned further to get a better look. One smooth soled boot slid on the ice, and he slid down into the pit.

Right into the frozen body of a child.

Zuko didn't scream. The sound that came out of him was more of a strangled croak. Carefully, he turned the inflexible form over, and his hand brushed the boy's face. Zuko shuddered. He looked like he could have been frozen moments before, but Zuko could see the hundred years pass. He jerked his hand away. "Aang," he breathed.

Katara sat down on top of the ice wall. "Who?"

Putting the hand that had just touched the child Avatar to the side of his own head, Zuko started to shake. "The Air Avatar before me."

"I can kind of see the resemblance," Sokka said. Katara smacked the back of his head.

"How do you know?" she whispered.

"I just know." The words were almost too weak to emerge. Zuko wanted to curl up in the snow and hide.

Katara pushed off the ice wall and slid into the belly of the iceberg. "You really don't want to be the Avatar, do you?" She reached out and put a hand on his arm.

He shoved her away from him. "Don't touch me!"

"Hey!" Sokka yelled, grabbing for the boomerang Zuko's soldiers had taken away. "Don't push my sister."

Zuko bared his teeth at both of them. "Then she shouldn't touch me."

Determinedly, Katara stretched her hand out again and grabbed his shoulder. "You said... You said you were hunting the Avatar. What were you supposed to do with him when you found him?"

Zuko swept her hand away. "I was supposed to take him back to the Fire Nation," he muttered, hunching over, one hand on Aang's lifeless chest. "Where he would be locked away, so he could never interfere with the Fire Nation conquest."

There was so much more to it than that, the chains that would pin the Avatar in place so he couldn't bend, the drugs that would leave him barely conscious and helpless, the way he would be kept alive as long as possible so he couldn't be reincarnated. It wasn't something he had ever liked to think about. He shivered in his Fire Nation armor and his own Fire Nation skin.

"We aren't going to let that happen to you," she told him. "My brother and I will keep you safe.

"How do you think you're going to do that?" Zuko sneered. "Why don't you just run back home to your parents? If neither one of you is the Avatar, I have no reason to keep you around."

"Don't be stupid." Katara glared at him. "What are you going to do, go back to the ship and turn yourself in?"

"You don't be stupid, Katara!" Her brother hung one-handed to the top of the ice wall and tried to snatch hold of her wrist. "He told us to go, and we're going. I just want to get back to the village, and-"

"The world needs the Avatar." she said, cutting Sokka off. "I can't let you just-"

"Get on the steamer," Zuko snapped.

Katara's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Get on the steamer!" he yelled. "I'm taking you to your village."

Katara didn't move. "What are you going to do with Avatar Aang?"

Zuko thought about how he was finally going home, even if it was just to be locked away. "I'm taking him to the Southern Air Temple."

Gran-Gran criticizing Uncle's parenting skills, Part 1/2

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

There were children waiting for them on the ice, children with bone clubs and fish knives, four little boys. Zuko blinked, and then stared at Sokka and Katara. "What do they think they're doing?"

Sokka opened the steamer's cabin's door and hopped up and down waving at the children on shore. "Who are my brave little warriors?" he cooed.

The boys grinned, waving back. When Zuko stopped the steamer, they ran over, waving their weapons as Sokka jumped down.

The bravest boy poked the side of the steamer with his club. "What is this thing?"

"Did we do right?" another asked, wrapping his arms around Sokka's leg.

"Are the other boys going to be in trouble?"

"Are we going to be in trouble?"

"Nobody's in trouble," he assured them. "Except Katara, who thought it was a good idea to bring the Fire Nation to the village-" One of the clubs collided with Sokka's knee. "Oww!"

Katara stepped out of the steamer more cautiously, dragging Zuko behind her, and the boys abandoned Sokka to pick up their weapons and advance on Zuko. The Fire Prince's good eye went wide. "What the-" As he stared at the approaching boys, Katara froze the steamer to the shore. "Hey, don't do that!"

"Okay men." Sokka ordered. "Help me guard the Fire Nation enemy. One on either side, you two in front, I'll take the rear!"

"No way!" Zuko howled, backing up. "I brought you home, I'm going back to my ship." All four boys waved knives under his nose.

The boys surrounded him as Sokka came up behind. "Alright, march!" he crowed, poking Zuko in the back with one of the boys' clubs. "You're our prisoner now."

"I can't believe this," Zuko muttered, humiliated. The boys Sokka had told to take the front stayed in at their of Zuko for only a few steps before they dashed off towards the cluster of tents and crude ice buildings close to shore. Rubbing her forehead, Katara ran off after them, leaving him alone with Sokka's evil children.

By the time they made it through the village's low wall, the entire tribe had gathered in the center of their tents. Katara grabbed Zuko's arm and pulled him forward. "There's someone I want you to meet. Gran Gran, this is- wait, what is your name?"

"Zuko." His eyes circled the tiny village.

"He's the Avatar!" she told her speechless grandmother. "I saw him airbending, and firebending, he made that windstorm!"

"Katara," she said at last, casting Zuko a horrified, suspicious look. "How did he get here?"

"He has a ship, but don't worry, he wrecked it." She beamed at the old woman. "They can't use it to attack us."

The old woman's face grew even more alarmed. "They?"

"The ship's crew."

Zuko seized on the opening. "And if you don't let me go, they will come here looking for me."

Gran-Gran criticizing Uncle's parenting skills, Part 2/2

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

"Katara." Her grandmother shook her head. "What did you do?"

"he just found out what he is," she pleaded, "He was going to turn himself in. You always said the world needs the Avatar, I couldn't let him be locked away!"

"Yes you could," Zuko growled. "It's none of your business."

"it is my business," she shot back. "It's the whole world's business."

"I'm not going to fight against my country!" he shouted, startling everyone. "So if that's why you keep doing this, you can just stop!"

One of the little monsters standing next to him tugged on his sleeve. "You're really ugly," he said forthrightly. "What happened to your face?"

Zuko looked down at him and growled. The little boy backed up.

"He doesn't seem like a very nice boy anyway," she told her granddaughter. "Even if he is the Avatar."

"Just let me go!" Zuko snarled. "My uncle is on that ship. He will find you and make you pay for this."

"Your uncle is with you?" the old woman began. "Is that wo raised you? He didn't do a very good job."

As Zuko yelled in reply, flames spewed out of his mouth. The whole village jumped back. One woman screamed.

"Not a very nice boy at all," Katara's grandmother said. "Let him go back to his men."

"Then I'm going with him," Katara told her. "Someone has to make sure he does what the Avatar's supposed to do and doesn't get himself locked away!"

"No way!" Zuko yelped. "You are not coming with me! I'm going home."

"Warriors," Sokka commanded. "Escort the enemy back to his vessel."

"Sokka's supposed to babysit them when the women take the big fishing boat out together, but he pretends it's warrior training to make himself feel better," Katara whispered to him. "Gran Gran, he must be a sign from the spirits. With the Avatar back, the world has hope again."

"No, Katara." She watched the boy who was slowly being lead away by a troop of little boys. "He will have to find his own path."

~*~

Katara shifted her pack on her shoulders and kept walking. "You can't stop me, Sokka."

Sokka took a deep breath. "Listen, Dad told me to protect you, and-"

"I told you, you're not going to stop me."

He spun around to show her the pack slung over his own shoulder. "Then I guess I have to come with you."

"Sokka!" When she threw her arms around him, she almost knocked them both into the snow. She glanced back at Zuko, still trying to thaw the ice encasing his little boat. "Come on. We have to get back to the ship before he does."

Re: Zuko surprising himself by being spiritual and philosophical

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

An excellent first step on his road to enlightenment and heroism or Zuko: doing the right thing for the right reasons and not getting burned by it this time

Re: Zuko surprising himself by being spiritual and philosophical

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Good precedent yes, but this is Zuko. the road to enlightenment is long like a long thing *grin*

Doing the right thing does tend to screw our boy over, doesn't it?

Re: Gran-Gran criticizing Uncle's parenting skills, Part 2/2

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHA THE WARRIORS. They're the cutest ever. I love Sokka cooing at them. His own army of widdle minions, ready to poke the enemy at a moment's notice. And of course Zuko isn't going to firebend at little kids.

Wait, Katara wants to get back to the ship before Zuko does? Katara, what are you doing. What. Granted, she's making things happen, but Gran-Gran's horror is perfectly understandable.

That ship is in for a wild ride. I love where this is going.

Re: Gran-Gran criticizing Uncle's parenting skills, Part 2/2

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I love the Warriors! They were so much fun! (I loved them in canon too). They give Zuko his daily dose of humiliation. In canon, he gets dumped butt up in the snow. In this, he gets ambushed by waist-high little boys. You decide which is worse.

Poor Gran Gran. There she is just trying to keep the village together until the men come home, and her granddaughter is suddenly showing off her heretofore unknown suicidal streak.

You'll see what Katara's up to in a moment.

Uncle finds out

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This sort of answers number one, right?

~*~

The gangplank was still down. Katara heaved a sigh of relief as the siblings crouched behind a snowdrift. Sokka ducked down and scuttled over to the next snowdrift, waving for his sister to follow. "Okay," Sokka whispered. "We have to do this quietly. No talking."

"Then hush," she hissed.

On their hands and knees, they crawled up the ramp, the tops of their heads barely visible from down below. The soft leather on their gloves and boots hissed softly against the metal, and Katara was terrified they could hear her breathe.

Then Sokka sucked in a very sharp breath that she was sure the whole world heard. She elbowed him in the back of his thigh.

"Funny meeting you here," a smiling voice said. Sokka and Katara were on their feet in an instant. the short, fat old man the voice belonged to put a finger to his lips.

They tiptoed guiltily onto the deck behind him. He led them into a room in the command tower, with a low table and a small window, and shut the door behind them. "First my nephew disappears, and then I find the two of you trying to sneak back onto the ship. Very suspicious."

"We weren't sneaking onto the ship," Sokka tried. "No, we were sneaking off backwards, yeah."

Katara cringed.

The old man smiled. "Would you like a cup of tea? I'm about to start a pot."

"That's okay." Sokka's voice cracked. "We're fine."

"I'd like one." Katara tried to smile. Really, she would feel a lot better, she thought, if she had a cup of scalding hot water to bend if something went even more wrong.

"It just doesn't make sense to me." He took a teapot, small brazier, and a bottle of water off one of the room's shelves and poured. With a slight push of his wrist a small fire began to crackle in the brazier. "My nephew wouldn't let you two out of his sight if he believed one of you was the Avatar, because the Avatar is the only hope he has of going home and reclaiming his throne." He leveled them with a furious stare. "And if you had escaped him, why would you come back here?"

"Wait." Katara leaned over the table. "What throne?"

"Because ah, neither of us is the Avatar, and um, your nephew knows that now, and he let us go!" As Sokka's voice sped up, it grew higher and higher. "But we left something on the ship, and we're just going to get it, and, uh..." he trailed off.

The old man folded his arms and eyed Sokka skeptically. Katara let her head fall to the table.

Sokka scowled at her. "Well, it's mostly true." Then he looked up at the old man. "Your nephew? The guy with the weird bald headed ponytail thing, bad ugly scar? He's the Avatar."

"Shut up, Sokka!" Katara cried. "I promised him we wouldn't-"

"Are you trying to tell me that my nephew is the Avatar?" The old man almost dropped the teapot. "No. I cannot believe you. It is not possible."

"I'm sorry Katara," Sokka told her in that calm voice he used when he thought she was being too stupid for anger, ignoring the old man. "But this way, they can lock him up, and we can go home, and you'll be safe, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Katara closed her eyes. "I promised."

"Yeah, well," Sokka started angrily. "I think that went out the window when he decided he was going to fess up himself and let them arrest him."

"My nephew," the old man said very slowly. "Is the one who is supposed to bring balance to the world? Prince Zuko?"

"I guess?" Sokka squeaked.

The old man blinked his wide, horrified eyes. "And he wants to turn himself in?"

Katara shrugged. "That's what he said."

"I don't want to see my nephew locked up." He sat down heavily. "I love him."

"Then you better stop him before he tells everybody else," she mumbled.

"And this is why you came back?" he said with a weak smile.

Katara looked back at him stubbornly. "Someone has to make sure he does what he's supposed to."

The old man nodded. "It is an arduous task."

"So," Sokka cut in. "What's this prince thing?"

Iroh has a talk with his nephew

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Because I sort of wimped out before, not giving you Iroh-and-Zuko interaction, the second half of the answer to prompt one

~*~

Iroh was waiting at the stern of the ship when his nephew's steamer sailed up under the cover of the strange, short polar summer twilight. He watched his nephew hook the special chain to his vessel and creep up the ramp. As his nephew sent a fire blast into the miniature moter that would haul the steamer onboard, Iroh stepped out of the shadows. "Nephew."

Zuko spun around slowly, carefully in the polar wind. "Uncle," he responded warily.

"I had an interesting talk with those children you captured," he said calmly. "Very interesting."

"I'm sorry, Uncle," Zuko whispered, feeling sick. "I know I dishonored the family and I'm going-"

Iroh grabbed his stupid, wonderful boy's arm and pulled him into a fierce hug. "You will not. I won't let you."

"It's the right thing to do," Zuko muttered into his uncle's sleeve.

"No, it isn't," Iroh told him, holding tight. "There is no honor in choosing captivity, and I will not let you do it."

Re: Uncle finds out

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, Zuko is sure going to love Sokka and Katara a whole lot more after this! Those two will have so much less fun traveling in this verse than they did in the series, I almost feel sorry for them.

And for Iroh. This Zuko is going to be so much harder to deal with than angry!Zuko.

Oh, Sokka excuses. Never change.