Written for avatar_500 prompt #72, Patience.

Summary: Azula has taught her to see the world as she does, as a collection of weaknesses.

Blood, Water, and Fire

He was such a tiny, soft, helpless thing, a living spot of weakness, that stood out bright and unavoidable to any enemy of any member of her family.  As he lay there in the arms of some gawky boy her age, Mai stood tall. "You brought my brother?"

"He's here. We're ready to trade."  A wide-eyed boy in a hat stood in front, hugging his staff to his side.  It was strange, Mai thought, that she hadn't noticed him until he started to talk.  What else was she missing, she had to ask, that she just couldn't make herself notice with her little piece of weakness in the arms of a stranger.

There was a girl there too, and a blue sky, and the planks of the scaffolding creaked under her feet.  She could feel King Bumi's eyes on the back of her neck.

Azula turned to her, Azula who wasn't a stranger.  "I'm sorry, but a thought just occurred to me. Do you mind?"

"Of course not, Princess Azula," Mai intoned.

"We're trading a two year old for a king," she smirked, and Mai wondered if she understood anything about weaknesses except as something to exploit.  "A powerful, earthbending king."

King Bumi hummed an affirmative, and Mai wished she could ask him, please, just please pretend like you wouldn't be dangerous.

"It just doesn't seem like a fair trade, does it?"  Azula smiled at her like she was thinking the same way.

Her brother was in the arms of a teenage boy who was playing finger games with him whenever he didn't think anybody was looking, a boy who was a stranger when Azula was not.

"You're right," Mai said without inflection.  "The deal's off."

After the battle was over, and her brother back home with the parents who had left him alone to be kidnapped, or just walk away, as she had so many times as a child, Mai convinced herself Azula never would have hurt him just for being a weakness.  But Azula was always going to be so strange to her, even if she knew her.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #71, Equal.

Summary: Azula has learned from her brother's mistakes.  Companion to Words Lying Dead in Him.

Esteem

"I think you should take their precious hope  and the rest of their land, and burn it all to the ground."  She hoped Zuko was listening.

"Yes... Yes, you're right, Azula."  Her father said softly, and Azula felt herself beaming inside, but only the smallest sliver of a smile showed through.  "Sozin's Comet is almost upon us and on that day it will endow us with the strength and power of a hundred Suns.  No bender will stand a chance against us."

"What are you suggesting, sir?" one of the generals asked cautiously, and for once, Azula was glad someone had asked, so that she would learn the answer, and no one would ever know she hadn't guessed.

Her father stood up and left his throne for the map at the foot of the dais.  "When the comet last came, my grandfather, Fire Lord Sozin, used it to wipe out the Air Nomads.  Now, I will use its power to end the Earth Kingdom."  He smiled and stepped out onto the map, his robes swishing against the continents and tiny army figurines.  And Azula's heart dropped like a stone.  "Permanently.  From our airships, we will rain fire over their lands, a fire that will destroy everything.  And out of the ashes, a new world will be born, a world in which all the lands are Fire Nation and I am the supreme ruler of everything!"

As the generals clapped and cheered, the best and brightest that her father could find to surround himself with, Azula smiled, and kept smiling as she felt herself made small, as small as her brother on the other side of the throne, and felt his words caught in her own throat, "Well, that's not exactly what I..."

He thought she had meant it literally.  He thought she was brilliant and clever, wise beyond her years, and worthy of him, so she smiled, and knew she could never let him see through.  Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at her brother, at his face, and the price of failure to hide the cracks.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #70, Chakra.

Summary: There is no Avatar that has not felt the icy touch of failure.

The Shadow of Inaction

The hand that held the paintbrush didn't shake, as steady as the earth beneath her.  Kyoshi's mirror was a rock in her hand.  The face she painted onto herself was still as stone.

Three days ago she had changed the very shape of the earth itself.  She had made an island, a new born land torn from the edge of another.  She had felt down to the depths of the earth and touched the fires that burned within.  She had seen the slabs of stone that fit over the earth's brightly burning core like a child's puzzle and ripped out a new piece.  In her very body, she had felt the slow shift of the earth, and forced the earth to roar.  The fires of the earth had bubbled up.  She had quenched them.  The ground had quaked.  She had quelled it.  There was a man who had fallen to his death at the bottom of the new-made cliff, and she had done nothing about that.

The black line of coal she painted over her eyebrow sat above the red like a shadow.  There was a man who had died who should have died a long time ago before his shadow had spread over the Earth Kingdom.  It was the Avatar's duty to care about the whole world, not only her home.  She could remake the world.  She had.  She just hadn't bothered before.

No matter how hard she looked, her eyes didn't glow, and the shame that clenched at her made her wonder, afraid, if she had so failed her duty that the universe itself had taken it away.

She couldn't feel the world around her, only the earth under her feet, the air she breathed, the sunlight from the window, and the water in the ocean beside her.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #68, Revisit.

Summary: It feels too small around her, like her little girl's clothes.

Ice Cold Change

Her braid just felt right hanging from the back of her head.  Her parka felt the way clothing was supposed to feel.  The air on her face, the bight of the wind, the shining white ice all around her, all of it whispered home to her.

Katara stood in the middle of the village, in the middle of the tents and undersized huts, the tiny circle of home, run down, small and too tight around her.

Aang, she knew, could never go home.  Toph she knew, wouldn't go home.  She wondered if Zuko felt this way back in the Fire Nation, or if being Firelord was big enough for him.  She wondered if Sokka and Suki felt this way, on little Kyoshi Island, surrounded by people who had never left home.

But so many people here had left home.  The South Pole was full of people who had seen the world. 

It used to be that this was the world, it used to be that when her father left, he left her world completely.  It used to be that the empty space around them felt so big.

She ran to Gran-Gran's tent.  "Master Pakku, can you get your students together?"

Written for avatar_500 prompt #66, Regret.

Summary: Earth is the element of substance, not of change.

Frozen as Stone

When they had been kids, it had been all of them, Tenzin and his siblings, Sokka's kids, Zuko's kids... and Lin.  And never for a moment had she thought that someday that could change.

As Tenzin left with the Avatar, the paperwork on Lin's desk seemed so unimportant, and so distant from her.  They had been friends long before they had ever started dating, she remembered, and just because she wasn't sleeping with him anymore didn't mean she wasn't one of their own.  Just because he had left her for some fresh faced university student didn't mean she didn't belong.  But she had left, and that might just mean she never had belonged.

She sat at her desk and inked her brush scowling at the paperwork under her hand.  She missed it, like she didn't miss Tenzin.  She missed it like she missed being a child on her mother's knee.  But she had left, and the way it would be was set, and her ways were set, and she wasn't going to go crawling back.

So she was trapped outside, and it was always easier to leave than to go back, and it wasn't going to change again for her.

Written for floranna for the prompt: "Zuko does something to prove he is not Bellatrix and Voldemort's kid, but his own good person. To someone who doubted him before."


Chip on his Shoulder

"You're not a teacher."  Zuko looked down his nose at Professor Smith.  "You're a bully."

"Detention, Lestrange," the professor said boredly.  "Move along.  You don't want me to take any points.  Your house doesn't like you much as it is."

Zuko's fists clenched, but he left his wand in his pocket.  "He's going home on the train tomorrow already.  You don't have to scare him like that."  He glanced down at the eight-year-old stowaway, glaring back and forth between Professor Smith and Zuko himself.  "He's gonna have to come back in a couple of years."

"And that's why he needs to learn now that you don't play with Hogwarts."  Professor Smith glanced down at the kid, who was looking at Zuko like he was the dangerous one.

"You're Zuko Lestrange?" the kid spat.

"Yeah," Zuko unclenched his hands and tried to smooth the front of his robe, nervously.

"My brother told me about you," the kid, Sensu's brother, growled like it was supposed to be a challenge.  "I don't want any help from You-Know-Who's kid."

"If you're so worried about the kid, you can take him back to the Headmistress, Lestrange."  Professor Smith gave him a cruel smirk.  "Have fun."

Written for elrhiarhodan's Promptfest VII (f-locked)

Summary: Because Zuko hunted the Avatar for three years, and Peter hunted Neal for three years. See? Meant to be. What do you mean that's just a coincidence? Crazy talk!


The White Collar/Avatar: the Last Airbender Fusion That Was Always Meant to Be

"It's about honor."

"What?"  Neal's forehead wrinkled, and his mouth hung a little bit open with bemusement.

"Honor," Peter tried again.  "You need to stop stealing things and going around lying to people, because you need people to think you're honorable, so they can trust you."

"I've never really had a problem getting people to trust me."  Neal leaned back against the pillar, and gazed out over the edge of the Western Air Temple and into the mists beyond, mirroring Peter.

"You're the Avatar.  Word's going to get around."

Neal heaved a sigh and stood up.  "Don't we have firebending to practice?"

"Later."  Peter didn't move.  "This is important.  You're going to be ending the war, remaking the world.  People have to be able to trust you."

"Wow," Neal said.  "Diana's right, you really do suck all the fun out of everything.  I mean, I thought she was bad, with the waking me up at the crack of dawn for earthbending practice, but no, you're the worst."

"I am not!" Peter yelped, startled.

"Are too..." Neal singsonged, pressing his advantage.

"I'm not."

Neal grinned and started walking away, back towards the temple and his friends.  "Just keep telling yourself that."

Written for avatar_500 prompt #62, Anonymous.

Summary: Other people worked hard to put him where he is.

On the Building of a Fortune

She sucked in a breath and made the flames as hot as she could.  Metal melted and fused together as each half-finished satocycle passing her got an exhaust pipe welded into place thanks to her firebending.  When the break bell sounded, she grabbed her lunchbox and joined the escaping throng.

~*~

The healer bent the water low, close to the burn on his client's chest.  The water glowed blue as it soothed the pain.  "Try to keep it clean, Mr. Sato," he said with a bow when he had finished.  "That's a nasty burn.  You don't want it to get infected."

~*~

"So, boss," one of the earthbenders said as she bent the rubble into the underground wall.  "Why you been having us clear out this hole under your place?  Wine cellar?  Laboratory?"

Hiroshi's expression slammed closed.  "That really isn't any of your business, is it?"

"Okay," she said.  "Just curious, sheesh!"

~*~

He almost left the arena twice.  It just wasn't right for his kids to see that kind of cheating.  He worked hard, had a good job at the power plant, that was the right example.  But when the Equalists stormed the arena, he felt his own lightning crackling in their gloves.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #60, Fanatic.

Summary: Two strangers talk before the Probending tournament.


Light that Shines in the Shadow of a Doubt

"I've been waiting for this all year!" she told him, hefting her juice cup high.

He slid into place next to her on he bench. "Hah, I've been waiting a lot longer than that."

She patted his shoulder with a sharp laugh. "I know it seems a lot longer, but they do have these things every year."

"Sure does." He smiled at her, eyes sparkling. "Feels like I've been waiting my whole life for this."

"So this is your first match?"

He nodded.

"Don't worry, I'm old hat at this." She grinned. "I'll get you through it without embarrassing yourself."

He blushed. "I wasn't worried."

"Don't be," she said more seriously. "Just relax and have fun." She cocked her head, uncertain. "It's been really nice meeting you, by the way, after the match, if you want to go out for drinks or something..."

"I'd like that." He blushed again.

"Then it's a date." She slipped her hand into his.

He held his popcorn in the other hand and felt the electrified gauntlet shift comfortingly within. "This will be some show."

"Yeah," she said, snagging a few grains of popcorn before he could stop her, grinning on obliviously. "It'll be great."

Written for avatar_500 prompt #58, Silence.

Summary: Zuko should say something, but he remembers what happened last time

Words Lying Dead in Him

His father's war room had loomed so much larger in his memories than it did in the real world.  Zuko tried not to glance at his sister as he crossed the floor and sat down next to his father's throne, palms sweaty, skin clammy, a thirteen-year-old boy and sixteen-year-old man pulled back together and into one.  He took a deep breath and forced the memories far away.  He had permission to be here this time.  He was wanted.

The war meeting flashed by around him, through a frozen carefulness, foreign to him, that kept him pinned to his seat, and when his father looked to him to ask him to speak, his tongue stuck to the bottom of his mouth.  Song with her scars, and Lee with his lost brother, the refugees pouring into Ba Sing Se, and Jet's band of fierce, damaged souls forced their way to the forefront of his mind.  "The people of the Earth Kingdom are proud and strong. They can endure anything as long as they have hope."

"Yes, you're right," his father said with a small smile, and sense of dislocation that accompanied those words, after he had imagined them in the dark of his ship's cabin so many times, left Zuko empty.  "We need to destroy their hope."

And the cold feeling that had been born when he had come home, the shiver in his spine that said his father approved of him, but only for things he didn't do, or didn't mean, only when someone lied for him, or... knocked his mouth open.  "Well, that's not exactly what I..."

Azula pressed her lips together in a thin, cruel smile.  "I think you should take their precious hope  and the rest of their land, and burn it all to the ground."

"Yes," the Firelord hissed.  "Yes, you're right, Azula.  Sozin's Comet is almost upon us and on that day it will endow us with the strength and power of a hundred Suns.  No bender will stand a chance against us."

One of the generals blinked.  "What are you suggesting, sir?"

Ozai rose to his feet.  "When the comet last came, my grandfather, Fire Lord Sozin, used it to wipe out the Air Nomads.  Now, I will use its power to end the Earth Kingdom, permanently."  He stepped onto the map and cast his shadow, thick and heavy over everything.  "From our airships, we will rain fire over their lands. A fire that will destroy everything.  And out of the ashes, a new world will be born.  A world in which all the lands are Fire Nation and I am the supreme ruler of everything!"

The generals burst into applause, and Zuko couldn't help but wonder if underneath it, they were as horrified as he was, if underneath Azula's mask, their father's words made her sick too, or if he was all alone.  The last time he had spoken, but this time his tongue wouldn't move, and he felt his honor wither away.