attackfish

Written for avatar_500 prompt #57, Mercy.

Summary: Bending hasn't done him much good.

Even Out the Playing Field

"Listen you little punk," the girl spat, grabbing his arm.  "You're going to give me back my money right now."

Skoochy was a punk.  It wasn't like he didn't know it.  It's all anybody from off the streets had ever called him.  It's what they called anybody who didn't back down from getting what they knew they deserved.  "I'm sorry, but I don't have your money," he drawled.  "If I did, I'd be living in a sweet little apartment somewhere with my mommy and daddy."

With a growl, she unzipped her backpack and thrust her hand in, down past the university textbooks and the leaflets.  "You're an earthbender, right kid?" she said calmly.  "I saw you playing with your friends."

"Yeah, you caught me."  He rolled his eyes.  "What, you going to call the cops on me for putting holes in the sidewalk?"

She pulled her newly gloved hand out and shoved her electrified palm into his face.  "You make me sick kid," she hissed over the crackle of electricity.  "Lying, stealing, bet it's only a few years before you join up with a triad."  She dropped him as he sank down to his knees to vomit on the sidewalk.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #56, Celebrate.

Summary: Zuko has already turned misery into an artform.

Turn of the Sun

"Go away, Uncle."

The cabin door creaked shut.  "Nephew, the crew's getting worried."

Zuko doubted that.  He doubted the crew had even noticed.  It wasn't like it was unusual for him to spend all his time in his room, whiling away the monotonous miserable days stuck on this floating ruin of his.  "Somehow I think they'll get over it."

"It would do them good to have something to celebrate," his uncle pointed out, putting his arm around his nephew.  "You are not the only one on this ship who is far from home."

There were so many things to say to that, tumbling over and over, around themselves in Zuko's mind.  Yes, he wanted to say, wasn't it a shame he couldn't be a different, better prince.  "I'm not coming out."

"Then I'll stay here with you."  He rubbed his nephew's shoulder with his thumb.  "Happy fourteenth birthday, Prince Zuko."

Written for avatar_500 prompt #54, Blue.

Summary: Her rigid precision may be all she has left, or like mother like daughter.

Control

Ursa's fire is blue.  She holds it steady in her palm.  Azulon used to watch her when she practiced, that smug, speculative look on his face.  She used to raise orange flames and slowly, carefully raise their temperature until they burned yellow, then white, then bright, clean blue.  She used to cool them down until they glowed dark cherry-rose red.  Sometimes, she would hold one blue flame and one red, one for each hand, just to prove her control.

She used to think she would need that control for the day she entered the navy, for the day she became captain, then admiral, for the days she would fight the war, and the days she would fight Agni Kais.  She imagined she would raise her flames, clear, fierce orange, and use the control she had learned changing their temperature to strike for her enemy's heart.

She looks away from Ozai as they stand before the fire sage.  He leads them to the royal hearth fire, and they hold out their hands.  His fire pours out of him soft and orange, the color of the fire the sage points to.  It joins with the living fire lit by some distant ancestor of his.

And Ursa has forgotten how to make fire that color.

It's the strength of her fire that makes the Firelord overlook her tainted blood.  Her strange, strange blue fire.

The flames change to orange as soon as they leave her hand, blending in with the others and disappearing.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #53, Rules.

Summary: Their life together has become bounded by them, and Mai is still figuring out how to reach for Zuko through them.

The Unspoken Ones

There were rules to sleeping with the Firelord, customs, traditions, nods towards discretion, a thousand and one things they had never had to think about before when he was just a prince.  A prince who was never going to take the throne, they never talked about it, never, but Azula...  It didn't matter.  There were rules now.  There were secret passageways, and chaperones, and a tangle of betrothals broken both times Zuko had left that had to be remade and renegotiated.

There had always been rules to sleeping with Zuko, things to back away from, things that hurt too much to look at.  Things that needed to be lanced or skewered.  Things that were the remnants of Azula's friendship.  Sometimes, she couldn't see through all that to what was theirs, and what they were free to do and be.

There were rules to being a couple, any couple, and it was when the rules began to contradict each other and twist on the page that Mai wanted to throw them away and stare mutely at the wall until it was over.

Just so long, Mai decided, as there was room for Zuko and Mai in the spaces between the rules.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #51, Door.

Summary: She isn't there for herself.

Solid Walls

One of her guards rushed forward to bend the door door open, and Yue stepped though, her skirt sweeping the floor, refined, traditional, and perfect.  She was a princess, a living symbol, wearing a mask that every chief's daughter had worn since the day the palace rose from the ice.

And there was nowhere to get away from it.  Against the walls of her chambers were heavy tapestries, empty porcelain vases from the Earth Kingdom, multi colored woven baskets from the Fire Nation, sculptures from her homeland.  It was as grand as any princess's chambers in the Fire Nation, any royal wife's suite in Ba Sing Se.  The Northern Water Tribe could have a princess, and dress her in fine fur robes and give her rooms like these to dwell in.  How grand and sophisticated they must be.

Her hair is white, her people said to themselves when they saw her.  The moon spirit has blessed her.  How many other nations have their princess blessed by the spirits?  How lucky we are to have her.

And when her guards sealed the door to her chambers for the night, leaving a blank wall, Yue felt her own unused, untaught waterbending answer.

Summary: Ty Lee begins Avatar Zuko's airbending training.  Takes place in the same universe as "Banner".

Author's Note: Wow, I actually wrote a drabble just because.  I haven't written like that for a while...  Anyway, this arose out of a conversation with weirdlet in which we both agreed *SPOILER FOR LEGEND OF KORRA (highlight to read)* that the way Korra's first airbending lesson went was the exact same way Zuko's would have gone were he the Avatar.



( The Spinning Gates (Spoilers for Legend of Korra, chapter two) )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #48, Finish.

Summary: There was a time before the Avatar, and before people knew what the Avatar was.


One Circle Closed

The lakes sank lower with each year, disappearing into the empty dust.  Fewer benders were born each year, and the people who had once lived on the backs of lion-turtles instead of rafts, and bent other people's bending were barely even memories.

No one had seen a spirit in dreams in generations.  The spirits had deserted them.  Only the blood of their greatest bender could bring them back, they whispered.

She was old.  Her children were dead, and her grandchildren were grown.  She put her own head onto the block, but when they raised the sword, her eyes glowed white.

~*~

When raiders came from the islands, his mother grabbed him and his brothers and sister and ran with them into the hills.  Fire burst out of the raiders hands and feet, catching in the thatched house roofs, and he watched it from safety, but when the fire came out of his hands, and the earth trembled with his footsteps, he ran down the hill to fight with the men of his village, and when his eyes burned white, and the voice of an old woman came out of his throat along with his own, no one stood in his way.

~*~

The dragons came out to meet her on the day she was born.  They sniffed her, their whiskers tickling her cheeks.  When they left her again, her parents breathed a sigh of relief.

As her belly grew round and full with her first child, the girl the dragons had blessed drew water from the well.  She pulled her hand up...

And the water followed.  She screamed, the water clinging to her, and she ran through the village as the old Sun warriors spoke of the boy who had driven them away from the Earth shores with earth and fire together.

~*~

As word traveled throughout the world that High Priestess of Fire with her glowing eyes and three voices had died, a woman gave birth alone, far from her clan, in a sky bison saddle.  She took the baby home and he cried into the wind.

His aunt and grandfather said he was the greatest airbender they had ever seen, but it was the day he mimicked the earthbenders at a festival and he earth moved that they realized just how powerful he really was.

"You know," his mother said, "He was born the night the three voiced Fire priestess died."

Written for avatar_500 prompt #46, Hold.

Summary: Song watches the colonists leave, and watches the Earth Kingdom soldiers return.


Stitching Together

The needle and thread slid, catching, and then tugging free of the impediment.  The stitches formed a crooked, sloping line.  "Stop squirming," she said, laying her hand down on his head for a moment before she picked the needle back up. 

"I'm sorry," he grumbled, "but it hurts, and you keep sticking your stupid needle into it."

She stitched another neat X on he skin of his stomach.  "If you didn't want me doing this, maybe you should have ducked out of the way of his spear."  The needle jabbed into him again.  "Or maybe you shouldn't have gotten into a fight to start with."

Out of the corner of her eye, Song could see her mother rubbing aloe-mint paste thickly over the burns on the Earth Kingdom spearman's chest.  Sometimes, she wondered if the colonists who streamed through her village on their way back to the coast would ever leave their shores and go back to the Fire Nation, which rumor said had no room for them anymore.

She sank the needle into his flesh again, and he yelped like a child.  "Careful!"

"I told you to stop squirming."  She pulled the thread hard.  "You're lucky it was a glancing blow.  He could have killed you."

"I didn't do anything wrong," he pleaded.  "I have six daughters, and that soldier of yours was saying we should get less food than the other families because my wife's dead!  They would starve!"

Song ran her needle under the string and pulled the new knot tight.  This was what the Fire Nation had done to the Earth Kingdom, humiliated them, killed them, beat them, starved them, starved their children.  It couldn't last.  "Be careful," she told him instead of what she thought.  "Take it easy for a few days, and that should hold."

Written for round three, Holidays, of the wc_women_fest, a prompting fest focusing on the women characters of White Collar.


( Diana - drew the short straw when it came to planning the office holiday party this year. (350 words) )

( Sara - She and her parents put up a front, but the holidays are all wrong without her sister. (500 words) )

( Elizabeth - first Christmas with Neal around, what do you get someone who seems to have everything and nothing at the same time? (350 words) )

( Alex - Ring out the old, ring in the new (250 words) )

( Diana/Christie - First holiday together (250 words) )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #43, Never.

Summary: Sokka is Katara's older brother.

New Worlds

She was two, and the ice climbed up her legs with every step she took.  She was four, and the snow parted around her when she spun around.  She was six and the waves under their canoe sank into valleys and rose into mountains.

She was eight and their mother...  Their mother was dead.

She was ten and nothing moved.  She was ten and their father was gone.

She was twelve, and nothing moved.

On her thirteenth birthday, she pointed at his watchtower, and told him it was stupid, and it fell down.  Sokka started screaming.  He couldn't stop.  He danced around, grabbed her around the neck and planted a kiss on her cheek.

He sat on the steps sometimes, while she trained with Sourpants-Pakku, and watched her remake the world.

Their dad told him he was supposed to protect her, but how could he when she didn't need it?

Written for round three, Travel of the wc_women_fest, a prompting fest focusing on the women characters of White Collar.


( Diana - growing up in hotels (has its benefits) (200 words) )

( Elizabeth - Her sister from upstate visits El and Peter in NYC. (650 words) )

( June - There's a pretty common theme in WC fic to have June conveniently out of town so Neal has the house to himself, so let's hear about one those trips. (200 words) )

( Diana - Casefic! Diana's current undercover assignment leaves her with just phone check-ins as her lifeline back to the home office. (250 words) )

( Sara - Sara sends Neal postcards. (400 words) )

Written for the atlaland and avatar_500 joint challenge, prompt #41, Window.

Summary: Iroh is locked up, but he's also cut adrift.

It Doesn't Hold Him

There was a window above the cage, and he could just barely feel the sun on his hands and feet when he pushed them out of the bars and into the patch of light it cast.

"I brought you some komodo-chicken." Zuko's voice fluttered on the air, hesitant, sullen. "I know you don't care for it, but I figure it beats prison food."

Iroh turned his back.

His nephew clutched the bars, unscarred eye wide. "I admit it. I have everything I always wanted, but it's not at all how I thought it would be. The truth is, I need your advice."

The words should have been sweet. At last he admitted it. At last he was willing to listen. Iroh kept his hands onside the cage, away from his nephew. Now he was willing to listen. Now.

He kept talking. Iroh listened with half an ear because he couldn't stop himself. "I think the Avatar is still alive. I know he's out there. I'm losing my mind."

He didn't answer. And when Zuko stormed away, tears ran down Iroh's face.

He didn't look up. The world outside that window wasn't one he wanted to look at anyway.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #39, Captive.

Summary: He doesn't know how to tell her the truth.


Shadows on the Floor

His chest hit the chair, forcing the air out of his body, and he twisted around, but the guards ignored him as he shouted that he hadn't done anything wrong.

"Come on, Zuko, we all know that's a lie." She stepped out of the gloom in the corners of the room, arms folded across her chest.

"Mai," ever since he could remember, he had always fought to tell the difference between the slight variations of her voice, when she was bored, and when she just didn't want him to know she wasn't, when she was happy, and when she thought he was an idiot. It got easier and easier, until right then, when her fury and scorn were staring him in the face.

He scrambled into the chair and she stood back against the wall again. He rubbed his arms where they had hit the arms of the chair. The door was open, but neither of them tried to leave.

"You could've at least looked me in the eye when you ripped out my heart." It wasn't funny. It shouldn't be funny, listening to Mai talk about feelings, deadpan and cold.

His mouth moved, but it caught on the words.

"This isn't about you," he told her. This isn't about you. It's about people dying, and choosing sides, and trying to figure out what's right. And he couldn't speak, not about the things he needed to. I love you, he wanted to say. Come away with me, I love you.

Written foravatar_500 prompt #37, Feel.

Summary: There are nights when Zuko can feel what he should have done pulsing inside him.

Author's note: This is part of that mirrorverse I've been playing with in the commentfic memes, with eldritch abomination Aang. If you want to read it, click on the "meme" tag and all of the parts are conveniently linked in the body of the commentfic meme entries. There are also three drabbles, Fight and Flight, Stay his Hand, and Spirals Within Spirals


Wake

Sometimes, when he's lying next to Mai, he remembers the nights his father used to tuck him into bed with Azula, when Azula was too afraid to spend the night alone.  He hadn't been the great coalition builder, world leader, great man, yet, just... their dad, just the Firelord's second son, never meant to rule.

Zuko feels the press of the night around him, and watches Mai frowning in her sleep, and his father's stories run through his mind.  The next day, he gets a letter from Aang, or he send word that he will visit.  Or he shows up unannounced.  But there in the dark, with Mai asleep, the Avatar's wisdom is cold.  What sounds like "using your resources to their fullest potential" when Aang says it starts to sound more like destruction.  What sounds like "letting to weak fall by the way for a stronger tomorrow" sounds more like callus cruelty. What sounds like "hope" sounds more like despair.

It's those times that he looks over at her, and it's like he can see the tendrils of darkness coiled around her and closing in over her head, and he's the one who brought them.  He's the one who...

Written for round two, Hopes and Fears of the wc_women_fest, a prompting fest focusing on the women characters of White Collar.


( Kate - She more plans for a life with Neal than he knew. (250 words) )

( Neal's mother - What was going on in her head when she told her son his father died a hero cop? (150 words) )

( Diana - They live in New York, and damn it, Christie wants to get married. (300 words) )

( Sara - What did she want to be when she grew up? It probably wasn't an insurance investigator. (250 words) )

( Diana - She has a fear only Christie knows about. (700 words) )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #34, Red.

Summary: Azula always knew what to expect from her father.



Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Little Girls

She held the burned doll, and turned it over in her hands.  She could smell the burned hair and the cloth from her clothes as if she were a real person, but under that came the sweet smell of woodsmoke instead of cooked flesh, and Azula threw it away in disgust.

She bounced against the floor and split in two.

Her father stuck his head through the door at the noise, and Azula smiled at him an open smile.

She could see the pride in his eyes, the smug assurance that she was everything she was the best, there wasn't a trace of weakness within her.  He sat down in a chair near her bed, and she kissed his cheek.  "Oh, Azula, what have you done with the doll your uncle sent you, bad girl," but he was smiling a secret smile to her, and Azula knew what he meant.  And he knew she knew it.

She widened her eyes innocently and glanced down at her broken body.  "Nothing father, Zuko had a little accident, and he ruined my doll."

His smile deepened, brutal.  "Of course, Azula."  He watched without comment as her foot came down on the charred remains.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #33, Trust.

Summary: Wan Shi Tong always speaks the truth.

Warning (highlight to read): character death


Spoken True

The feathers brushed by his face.  "I'm not going to hurt you."  The air was hazy with falling sand, and the words reverberated inside the spirit's beak like a cave.

He looked... like a scholar again, a bird, not a feathered snake.  The library rumbled lower into the belly of the desert, and Zei smiled.  "You'll let me stay?"

The sand was up to the man's thighs, and he had to dust off the scrolls to keep reading.  "Don't worry about that," Wan Shi Tong murmured.  "You can't leave now."

Zei turned back to the scroll on his lap.  It was fascinating, about the ancient Water civilization that had covered much of the northern half of the continent.  He took his students out on a dig last summer and brought back piles of their pottery shards.  He could feel the sand rising around his neck, but he ignored it.

He spat sand out of his mouth and held the scroll up out of the way.  "Great One," he called out, and the spirit pulled the scroll out of his hands and watched him thrash.

"I said I wouldn't hurt you, little human, but I never said I would help you."

These were written for the atlaland Work at Your Own Pace Seven Fanworks Challenge, where I chose Suki. Since I posted three of my fills as graphics (and the two wallpapers aren't set in the Firebender Suki universe) I'm only posting the artwork I made for this universe and the four one thousand word fics . The artwork is intended to be this universe's banner. All fics are 1000 words long and take place either before or during this AU's version of Book One, Water.




The Avatar Comes to Kyoshi | Fire Sifu Suki Meets Jeong Jeong | Out of Order | The Bright Burning Thing | Ty Lee on Kyoshi




( Dragons and Mountains )

( Friends and Allies )

( Enemies and Liars )

( Ice and Snow )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #31, Mirror.

Summary: Zhao isn't sure how it happened, and he doesn't expect mercy.

Author's note: This is part of that mirrorverse I've been playing with in the commentfic memes, with eldritch abomination Aang. If you want to read it, click on the "meme" tag and all of the parts are conveniently linked in the body of the commentfic meme entries.

Stay his Hand

Once upon a time, there was a young prince who had been kidnapped by his dastardly uncle, and the prince’s poor, desperate father had turned to a brave Navy commander to rescue him. This was the story Zhao told in every port city from there to the Fire Nation.

But Zuko stood, on the deck of Iroh’s stolen ship, staring back at him. After three years, there was Zhao, with an army at his back to capture the traitor Iroh who sought to free the Avatar, and return the kidnapped prince to his father and sister, and there was the prince, fighting to stay.

When the first fireball sped his way, Zhao didn’t believe it except for the heat pulsing as it passed. And when the boy had him on the ground, and his uncle urged him forward for the killing blow, Zhao closed his eyes.

But it never came.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #29, Travel.

Summary: Toph can't settle.

Many Homes, No Home

Toph’s feet hit the road.  The sun shines overhead, heating up the stones and the dust, and the space iron in her bracelet.

She just came from Aang and Katara at the Southern Air Temple.  Now she was on her way to Zuko in the Fire Nation.

It would have been a shorter trip if she went to Sokka instead, on Kyoshi island, but she wanted (she needed) the long journey.

Every journey had something wrong with it, boats, ice, all of Ba Sing Se.

Toph tells everybody that she has what she wants.  It isn’t true.  What she wants is for all of her friends to wander with her again, to ramble around the world together, just them, like they used to when there was war, and danger, and an entire nation out to get them.

But she can’t have that, could she?  And she really shouldn’t want it.

fanficforensics recently won the bidding on my help_japan offering of a 2000+ word fic, and after she prompted me, I sent her this drabble to tide her over and also to test out her likes and dislikes before I started her fic.  She wanted Zuko's ship captured by the Northern Water Tribe early in his exile.  The short story I wrote for her, "Holding This Breath", takes place several years earlier than this drabble.  This also fills my wildcard square on atlaland's recently finished bingo, giving me my blackout.


Releasing It

The day the Avatar came to the Northern Water Tribe, Zuko stepped out of his room,cell, it was his cell, he had to remember that, and nodded to the guards on either side of the door.  They used to bend the ice door to his room closed until he melted it open again.

He just kept walking.  He just couldn’t think in there, when that stupid place was actually starting to feel like home, like he belonged, and should stay.

For a moment, he contemplated shining his armor, and just coming down to the banquet, if they would let him wear his armor or even tell him where to find it.

Ever since the rumors had begun to filter through the merchants and sailors, to the young warriors and other people who fet safe gossiping around him, he had made plans and contingencies, and plotted escapes, and stuffed his head full of sea charts and maps of the ever-shifting underwater ice and stone tunnels, and how to steer the little Water Tribe kayaks and manage their strange outrigger sailing ships, and...  And now that the Avatar was there, his mind was just empty, like a rubber ball someone stuck a nail into, flat and airless.

The ice halls twisted and bent outwards, and he walked out onto the palace steps.  He let his legs give way, while the Avatar toyed with the ice under Pakku’s disapproving eye.  The Avatar didn’t even glance at him, and Zuko tried to imagine how he looked, small and harmless in his Water Tribe blue parka and shorn hair, sitting on the steps and blinking in the sunlight.

He had the kayak tucked away in one of the inlets and vials of cotton-poppy juice frozen in the ice under the nest of blankets and furs on the floor of his room to keep the Avatar asleep for the journey.  He knew where he could steal a boat small enough to sail by himself, close enough that he could get there in the kayak.  He had the barrels of fresh water, dried fruit, and jerky stashed nearby.  And he had the route to the Avatar’s room memorized.  He was going to do this.  He was.  It was going to happen.

And the sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach meant nothing.

And he couldn’t think about what it meant that in two and a half years, his father hadn’t ransomed him, or dashed off a treaty with his captors, or even attacked, done anything.  And he couldn’t think about the couldn’t and shouldn’t and what-are-you-thinking-they-will-be-so-mad.  All he should be thinking about was melting through every wall the Northern Water Tribe had and running home.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #27, Sky.

Summary: La grasps for both of them, which is why it hurts.

Glimmers

Tui scampered across the sky.  Her paper lantern bobbed beside her in one hand.  It flew above her head when she let herself fall down to the sea.  She held it aloft, dipping her feet in the water.

La couldn’t touch the lantern.  Tui couldn’t let it touch him, because the water would dissolve the paper and extinguish the flame.  She swung it just out of his reach with a grin.

He grabbed her arm and she grabbed his.  The moon was full and the lantern cover all the way off.  The light from it broke all over the waves.

~*~

Yue walks across the sky, and she doesn’t grab his arm, but she holds his hand.  He has to walk with her.  She won’t drag him.  She doesn’t hold a lantern.  She has a mirror, a disk made out of silver and glass.  She holds it to her chest most of the time, but sometimes, she holds it out to him.

She lets him touch the mirror, those times, but it only reflects the light.  It has none of its own.  His fingers scrape across it.

The ocean water reflects the light too.

With Yue, there are so many mirrors.

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


( The Blue Spirit Redux- AU, role-switch. Avatar Zuko and Prince Aang of the Fire Nation (353 words)  )

( Above it All- Katara/Toph, Bondage: “Well, this is a fine state of affairs!” surprizingly g rated (333 words) )

( War Games- Sokka, “Sneak attack, dammit!” (127 words) )

( Mechanical Marvels- Yugoda, first do no harm (200 words) )

( The Shadow Falls- Ty Lee, Holding on to what I haven’t got (165 words) )

( Hands and Feet- Ty Lee and Zuko (150 words) )

( To Become- Avatar Kyoshi (100 words)  )

( With Her- Mai and Ty Lee (100 words) )

( Humming- Katara and Hue (100 words) )

( Pieces- Azula and Iroh (150 words) )

( Editing Out- Mai and Ty Lee (100 words) )

( She Bends- Toph/Yue (100 words) )

( Back to Normal- Zuko and Song (100 words) )

( Left- Katara/Ty Lee (150 words) )

( Stop Spinning- Mai/Zuko (100 words) )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #25, Jail.

Summary: The place can't hurt her anymore, but somehow...
Warnings: War crimes, genocide, and traumatized children

Author's Note: When I was in middle school, one of my teachers showed us a video walk-through of Dachau.  I looked up at it through my little Jewish, disabled, queer eyes, and couldn't figure out what I felt.


Empty, Closed.

The cages were empty, their doors thrown open.  Light poured down yellow and muted from the skylights, and dust swirled on the air, insubstantial in the gloom.  The pumps had ground to a halt a long time ago, and the air inside was as humid as it was anywhere else on the islands, hot, heavy, and unmoving on her skin.

Rust clung to the bars and ate away at the chains hanging down from the ceiling like vines.  Ty Zhi put her hand on the bars, and felt the rust scratch cold against her palm.  Her breath shuddered in her chest.  The place smelled old, felt ancient, like something out of some scroll tucked away in a library corner.

Not like something held over her head since she was born.  Not like someplace that made her father shout at her when he saw her twisting in the air outside the house.  It was the first time her father yelled at her.  It was the first time her mother didn’t soothe her when she cried.  Not like someplace real.

Her mother sat her down and ran her Fire Nation nails through her daughter’s hair, and held her in her Fire Nation arms.  She told Ty Zhi about the Southern waterbenders in their prison, and about the massacre of the Air Nomads, and told her if she was lucky, the Fire Nation would just kill her.

Ty Zhi raised her hand and swirled it in the air.  The air rose up and spun, dragging the dust, rust, and rot around and around.  She grinned wide and wild, hair pulling out of her braid, air whipping his face.  It was beautiful, and she felt so strong and so brave doing it there, bending there.

And then she felt very silly, and very small.