Written for the atlaland bingo, in which I won the Fire Nation 300 points. We won, but sadly, this is my last round, at least for a while.



( Wood: Safe Inside - Suki, Toph, and Sokka )

( Asymmetrical: Fingertips - Toph and Zuko )

( Pai Sho: Liar's Game -Toph and Iroh )

( Wartime: A Cup of Tea - Pai Sho: Liar's Game -Toph and Iroh )

( Spirit World: Watersblood - Yue and La )

( Air Ship: Flotsam on the Wind - Jet, Smellerbee, and Longshot )

( Tom-Tom: Uncle - Tom-Tom, OCs )

( Hubris: Quiet Please - Wan Shi Tong and Zhao )

( Alternate Universe: Bow Your Head - Iroh and Zuko )

( Greed: On his Children - Zuko and OCs )

( Ruination: She's Within - Zuko and Azula )

( Metal: Keeping Time - Sozin, Azulon, Zuko, Iroh, and OCs )

( Warrior Fans: The Wind's Birth - Ty Lee )

( Sword: Hew and Join - Ursa )

( Lightning: Family Resemblance - Aang and Zuko )

( Made in Earth Kingdom: Transfer of Property - Iroh and OCs )

( Latest Fashion: Avatar Horror Picture Show - Aang and Katara, but everybody gets a mention )

( Ice: Keeping Score - Sokka and Katara )

( Royalty: Lovely Girl - Ozai and Ursa )

( Air Nun: Bad News Goes Far - OCs )

( Library: Feathers and Fingers - Yue and Wan Shi Tong )

( Puppet: Tying the Strings - Kuei, Long Feng, and OCs )

( Death: More than Forgotten - OCs )

( Rebirth: Moonshadow - Tui and OCs )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #42, Music.

Summary: Azula is good at everything important.

Useful

Azula threw down the biwa in disgust.  It clattered against the floor of the music room and jolted Zuko out of his own playing.  The strings popped and burst free from their tethers as Azula shot to her feet, pelted the pick across the room.  It stuck in the wall and vibrated like a knife blade.  Zuko stared at it until it stopped moving.

"Please, Princess Azula," the music master smiled, tight lipped, voice too calm.  "Come sit down."

"No!"  She spun around in the doorway, the tendons in her arms popping like she as going to pull the walls down.  "I don't have to!  It's not going to make me a better firebender, or help me conquer the Earth Kingdom, or rule the Fire Nation, or... anything!"

The pounding of her feet grew quieter and quieter, and Zuko just eyed the music master and waited to be noticed again.

Azula didn't give up.  She never gave up.  And she was always good at everything.  All the sour notes- She just didn't care.

"Prince Zuko."

Zuko picked up his tsungi horn, then put it down.

Of course it was useless.  He was good at it.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #40, Give. Meant as a companion to my drabble Shadows on the Floor.

Summary: Mai can see it happen.

Stand Beside the World

Mai knew the day she was betrothed to Zuko that she would one day have to stand beside him in front of the world, and the morning she saw him again in Ba Sing Se, she knew it would be worth it. Sometimes, watching Azula play her power games, and Zuko bristle and let her made a fist clench and then unclench inside her, and hoped, a little furious with herself, that when it came time for Azula to take power, Zuko would just bristle and let her. Then she could stand a few steps behind Azula at Zuko's side, instead of at Zuko's side in front of the world.

He should just give way. Azula was unstoppable anyway, and if he just gave up, she could still have him when it was over. They could make their lives in the in between places of the palace, and in the cracks of the world.

Their love flourished in code, in words whose meanings changed shape when they spoke them, in masks they only took off with each other, together, alone. They touched, and Mai wanted to give him everything.

When Zuko left, the world gave way beneath her. She tried to piece it together in that prison chamber, so she could leave him there, but there was something hatefully like hope in his face when he talked about the Fire Nation, and there was that restless, relentless conviction that if he threw himself against anything long enough, it would give.

Written foravatar_500 prompt #38, Road.

Summary: Ty Lee fears the change more than she fears facing 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 four drabbles, Fight and Flight, Stay his Hand, Spirals Within Spirals, and Wake


Snuff the Candle

Ty Lee's great grandmother hadn't been there the day they fought the Avatar, the day they sealed him in the ice for a hundred years.  They thought it would be forever.  They hoped it would be forever, but nothing was ever forever.

She hadn't been there the day the peaceful monks and nuns had torn each other apart under the Avatar's power, even after they locked him in ice.  She hadn't been there, but when the survivors crawled home with their stories, she had listened with her hand clamped over her mouth.  And she had passed the stories on.

It felt like Ty Lee had been following Azula her whole life, like Azula had always been there with her thousands of sharp edges and unexpected affections.  It felt like Ty Lee had always stood beside Mai, who never let her lie to herself, who never even considered mixing her up with someone else.  They had chased the Avatar and his followers for a day and a night once without rest, and the exhaustion still tugged at her memory.  The chase went on and on, and they kept getting close, and each time they did, she felt the darkness closing in.

If they ended tearing each other apart, like the monks and nuns on the ice, leaving bloody scraps of bone on the ground for the rest of the world to find, Ty Lee didn't want to know.  She crushed down the bitterness and hatred she felt just watching her friends.

 Written foravatar_500 prompt #36, Red.

Summary: After the Fire Nation falls, Azula tries to stay Azula.

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 two drabbles, Fight and Flight and Stay his Hand


Spirals Within Spirals

They cut her nails so that she wouldn't dig them into her arms and stain the floor with blood. She dug them as deep into herself as they would go anyway. The room had bars on its only window, even though she wasn't a threat to them anymore.

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

The loud, omnipresent silence reverberates inside her head.

She can see her father leaving to fight the Avatar, to meet him before he could use the comet. She can see him leaving her to defend their home, and the way he cupped her face and hugged her close for the last time.

And Zuko came, and she lost, lost because she cracked up.

Crazy, crazy, CRAZY!

It was her fault. She cracked up.

NononononononnnNO!

Father lost too, sometimes her mind let her remember. The Avatar killed him, left him battered and broken to drown in the ocean below.

And her whole life, she had known about the Avatar, and the corruption he brought, about the times the world had only just been saved, about how she would have to guard herself, to be vigilant against the cruelty that would creep across her mind. Her brother was weak, and he had crumpled, but she was strong, she was moral, she was good.

Failure, weak, pathetic.

The Avatar was back, and Azula had felt the worry, but somewhere, somewhere deep she didn't want to acknowledge, she was... It was their turn! Their world to protect. And they lost.

They...

lost...

it.

Her mind won't wrap around it. It's real, it's true, it's irrefutable, and it won't sink in. She wonders how long it will take for the sky to grow dark and the seas to start burning.

There's nothing left to trust. Not her father who was dead, not her brother who... Not her own mind. Her own mind. Her own mind. HER OWN MIND, SPIRITS DAMN IT! It's split open. It's like she can't keep it inside her head. And the Avatar's corruption comes creeping in. She sits there, digs her nails in, and waits for a little extra madness.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #35, Water.

Summary: Rain is a terribly disruptive thing.


Laughing, Falling

The grass grew thick and long by the edge of the turtle-duck pond, cropping up between the stones that lined it.  Mai lay sprawled in it, head resting on Zuko's knee, idly turning a fan around and around between her fingers.  There was a half-written letter resting flat on a portable writing desk beside her with a donation to a war orphanage, and beside him lay the reports from the field commanders on the disarmament.  Both lay ignored as the clouds gathered heavy and black overhead, and the air hung humid and still around them.

The sound of his breathing steadied, faint beneath the hum and chirp of bright colored grasshopper-beetles and  butterfly-crickets as she listened to him drift into a doze.  The green, growing smells around her hung on the air and tickled her nose, and every so often, with a faint flash of guilt, she picked up the brush on her writing desk and set a few more words to the letter, before she let the sweet smells and the humming lure her back down to rest.

She unfurled the fan, trying to shift the still, sticky air.  When she felt generous, she waved it in front of Zuko's face and thought, maybe it wasn't generosity that prompted it, but the excuse it provided to just watch his face as he slept.  It was-  It was soothing, better to watch than the clouds rolling in overhead.  Off in the distance, she could see the rain falling over the city, and when she looked back at him, the grass puffing out from his face with each breath, she felt her face soften, felt an expression fighting its way onto it.  She lay her head back down against Zuko's knee and let her eyes close.

The first fat drops of rain landed on her bare arms and face, and her fingers twitched, but she didn't wake.  It was only when the lightning raced down the sky and the thunder cracked overhead, and the sky stopped leaking and just broke open that she jolted back to awareness, thrashing as Zuko squirmed awake under her head.  "What-"

"Rain," Zuko said, and she almost shoved her fan down his throat, before she realized he wasn't explaining, just...  "Rain, rain, rain..."

She grabbed the letter and shoved it into one of the portable desk's little drawers while Zuko threw himself over the reports and gathered them up.  Lightning flashed, lighting the garden up with instant flashes of color, and his hand gripped hers.  His hand gripped hers, and they ran for the palace, their clothes heavy and sticking to them, their hair coming undone under the weight of the water.

They slid through the palace hallways, wild and grinning, and into an empty room.  And it wasn't important that their wet clothes were thrown in a pile on the floor, or that the couch was narrow and uncomfortable under them.  All that mattered was that they were holding each other until they dried.

Written for round one of the wc_women_fest, a prompting fest focusing on the women characters of White Collar.  We're planning to expand to have monthly themes and fic hosting as well.


( Alex - Fast cars, money and sunshine (230 words) )

( Diana - Diana and Jones spend a boring night in the van on surveillance swapping stories (100 words) )

( Sara – silk (200 words) )

( Sara - Sara and Neal do domestic in their own way. (350 words) )

( Neal/Sara AU - he's an FBI agent and she's the clever art thief who slipped through his fingers. (700 words) )

These are the fics I wrote for round four of atlaland.  Every fic is between 200 and 1000 words, or, depending on how you count, between 200 and 600 words.



TLA Song Titles Flow Like Water

( To and Fro - Suki/Sokka - 200 words )


What's on the other side of the mirror?

( Fight and Flight - Yue - 350 words )



One Hundred Years of War:

( Light the Light - OCs - 600 words )


Avatars Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen:

( Everything Old is New Again - OCs and Kyoshi, Four 250 word fics )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #32, Empty.

Summary: The Dragon of the West has a proposition for her, and Jin knows she doesn't have any choices left.

Author's note: I should probably warn for some misogynistic attitudes and language on the part of one of the characters.


Fallow

The bell over the door chimed, and as Jin walked in, she gathered her hair up and pushed it back over her shoulders. The combs and headdress pulled it tight, and the robe and slippers kept her steps shuffling and awkward. There were women she watched who looked like they were gliding, who made it look easy and elegant and made Jin feel ashamed.

Iroh, the old Fire Nation general, not Mushi the teamaker, smiled as she came in. He took her hand, and guided her to a chair, poured her tea, and kept smiling.

The guards at the gate to the upper ring had glared at her hard when she held up the pass, signed by the Earth King himself, and given to her by this man. Her mother had dressed her in her grandmother’s silks and put the combs in her hair when she saw it, and teased her about men so old they became teenagers again. Jin liked Mushi. She had wanted his nephew, but she liked him.

His face, and the way he had looked so frightened as she chased him, as she caught up with him and led him to the empty alley. And it had been so easy. All she did was kiss him again, and wrap one hand around his neck before he started to move with her.

She sipped the tea, and gulped gracelessly with her nerves. He put his hand on top of hers and she looked up at him, astonished to realize just how afraid she was. “I heard about the miscarriage,” he said, rubbing his thumb across her hand, kindly.

Here it came, her mother’s voice told her. He knows he has you. He knows no one else will take a slut whose womb can’t even hold a child.
“I wanted to ask your permission to tell my nephew. I think he would want to know.”

That she had been pregnant, Jin wondered, or that she had lost it and he was safe? “Yeah, sure, tell him. Whatever you want.”

“And I wanted to offer you a job.” He picked up his own teacup and took a sip. His hand stayed on hers, and it felt wrinkled and dry, like leaves. She looked down, and she could feel his eyes on her. “I’m not trying to get you into bed. It’s just, I’ve been a bit...” lonely. “Short staffed.”

Written for avatar_500 prompt #30, Pirate.

Summary: Stealing from thieves is liberation.

The Scrolls

The ship darts through the water, throwing itself into the waves. “Hey captain!” The first mate hands the spyglass over and points to them, the moon and the waves on the sails shining in the sunlight.

He chuckles. “Good work. Men! Prepare to intercept!”

They swing on the ropes and slam down the planks, and scramble onto the Water Tribe ship. The tribesmen rush to meet them, weapons high, and the pirate captain turns to them. “This unpleasantness can all be avoided if you just hand over your valuables.”

The Water Tribe captain spits on the deck of his own ship and turns his head to an old, smiling man. The water around the ship goes suddenly horribly calm, and the pirate captain freezes.

One master waterbender and a couple of his students, and they were in the middle of the ocean, at his mercy.

A chill goes over all of them. A shudder runs through the whole crew, and the black water around them looks so, so cold. They wait for the wave to wash them away.

The arrow buries itself in the old master’s neck. The blood spurts, and he falls. The captain smiles. “Now, about your valuables...”