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...