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

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

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

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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?"

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.

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."

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?

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.

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

Thank you so much! This is lovely!

Thank you.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 1/3

Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 2/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3

Re: Meeting Sokka and Katara, Part 3/3