attackfish

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.

Written for the atlaland team contest, for the "Worth a Thousand Words" challenge. I had to pick a piece of fanart and write a fic using it as my prompt. The art I picked can be found here.

Summary: The hero returns.

( Pigs Fly )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #22, Knight.

Warning: Some very very ablist attitudes on the part of the point of view character

Summary: Kyoshi Island didn’t have mothers.  Kyoshi Island had sisters, in a thin, unbroken green line.

Author's Note: I've been sitting on this for a while.  I actually wrote this as a sample drabble for happiestwhen when I was feeling out what they wanted for their help_pakistan  fic.  As such, this drabble is meant to be a companion to the resulting fic, Drink it Down


Thin, Unbroken, Green

Kyoshi Island didn’t have mothers.  Kyoshi Island had sisters, in a thin, unbroken green line.

Suki washed the blood off her mother’s sister’s daughter’s armor and laced it around her own body.  It gapped and pinched and fit her cousin’s body not her own.  But the warriors would teach her how to fix that.

She painted her face.  It’s soft and sticky, made from egg shells, animal fat, and soot, and the tiny red insects that only lived on Kyoshi Island, and it sat heavy on her face.  Strange.  She always thought it would be hard like porcelain.  She had been afraid it would crack.

The pots of face paint had come to her father’s house along with the armor.  Koko asked what she would have done if their mother’s sister’s daughter hadn’t died, but Suki didn’t have to answer.  There was always one warrior dying.  There was always a new one growing up.

She passed her mother’s sister’s daughter on the way to the dojo.  The woman wore the blue tunic and wide pants of a man or a child again, her hair unbound, her face unpainted.  She gave Suki a smile.  “First day?”

Suki shuddered, and swore to herself that when she died on the battlefield there would be no one-legged, still talking body for her sisters to bring home.

The other Warriors saluted her with their fans as she came in, their faces frozen beneath the forbidding mask of their makeup.

Suki had painted fans at home, pretty delicate things she had first learned with.  But the fans she held now were fans that broke fire.  These were fans that cut off heads.

~*~

Kyoshi Island didn’t have mothers.  Kyoshi Island had sisters, in a thin, unbroken green line.

A woman whose daughters could remember her when they were grown was either very lucky, or a coward.  A woman who made it to see her daughters become warriors was probably both.

There were pirates, and Fire Navy ships, and extortionate Earth Kingdom soldiers, and raiders from Chen.  There were warlords, and chiefs, and village murderers.

But the war was over.  Water Tribe ships guarded their shores.  The Fire Navy stayed within their own waters.  The Earth Kingdom soldiers had been sent home.

For a hundred years, no Kyoshi Warrior had ever retired.

There was a rush, a fear, a bond.  No one could ever mean as much as a sister.  Nothing could mean as much as a battle.  Kyoshi Warriors drank, and sang, and lived it up in a desperate need to do as much as possible before they fell.

There were women all over the world who expected to see their grandchildren grow up.

Suki was tired.

These were written for the atlaland lottery, where I got a random list of seven prompts and had to fill them by the end of January.  Since I posted three of my fills as graphics (and my art is just not good enough to post here) and one of my fills I'm in the process of turning into a proper fic, here are three of my fills.  One of the prompts below is actually a piece of fanart, and the link beside the fill's title will take you to the artist's post on deviantArt.  All fics are between 750 and 1000 words.

( Times Best Forgotton: Past Avatar- OCs, A swampbending Avatar fights the uncle of the Khan )

( Blast Radius: Two Sides- Aang, Katara and Zuko contemplate the same thing during chapter 2.01, The Avatar State )

( Songs in the Static: Future Avatar, OCs, one newly told Avatar doesn't think the world needs her anymore. )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #20, Spontaneous.

Summary: In families, everyone has a job.


The Work of Sisters

Ty Un arrayed her dolls on her bed and watched suspiciously as the maids cleaned the shelves and tables where they had been.  One of her dolls didn’t have any hands anymore.  One had a hole where her nose had been.  She straitened robes, and smoothed hair, and waited for the maids to leave.

And when they did, she put her dolls back in their places, walked out, and shut the door behind her. 

The maids didn’t go into Ty Lee’s rooms.  No one did anymore.  The dust hung thick on the floor, bed, and tables.

Ty Un was supposed to be the good daughter, the one who never bent, and never made trouble for her family.  The one who played with dolls and smiled, and didn’t drink.

They were all good daughters, her parents said, but it was Ty Un’s job.

She closed the door.  She slammed the shutters.  She raised her hands and the dust flew around her in waves and eddies.  It was Ty Un’s job plan her trouble so it was out of sight.  

Ty Lee was gone, and she wasn’t coming back until she wanted to.  So it was Ty Un’s job now to play.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #18, Cut.

Summary: Seeing isn't believing.

Rising Steam

“Come on, come on!” he groaned at his freedom fighters. “They’ll be here soon.” She left him hanging from the tree like a lemon-plum, waiting for the Fire Nation soldiers to cut him down. He clenched his hands into fists, his fingers numb with cold from the ice all around them.

Smellerbee slammed the curved head of Jet’s sword into the ice over his chest in frustration. It bounced off, vibrating in her hand with the blow. “Calm down, Jet! We’re going as fast as we can.”

He growled and banged his head back against the tree. “Then just get out of here!” He could hear the soldiers clanking closer.

“Jet-”

“Leave!” he hissed, and the ice hissed off him, sizzling off his skin. He fell to the ground. The steam curled in the air above him. He could taste the metalic heat on his tongue, and feel the crackle of sparks as they died.

His freedom fighters backed away. Jet’s eyeballs strained against the confines of his skull. “That wasn’t- I’m not-”

He wasn’t. He never had been. This was just something that happened sometimes. It didn’t mean anything.

They kept backing away.

He watched them slip into the shadows under the trees and picked himself up.

~*~

He felt a tap on his shoulder, and he spun around, reaching for his hook swords, but he didn’t have them.

Longshot gazed at him somberly when Jet. Jet saw him and heaved a sigh. He wasn’t all alone. Longshot glanced down at Smellerbee, holding up the swords. He took them and hung them from his belt. “Thanks.”

His eyes roved over the empty tree houses. His freedom fighters weren’t there, to listen to him, or fight him. They were just... gone.

“They didn’t see what they thought they saw,” Smellerbee said sharply.

Longshot put his hand on Jet’s shoulder.

Jet nodded. “They didn’t.” He could still taste the sparks.

~*~

Jet slung a sack over his shoulder and grabbed the treehouse ladder. “Let’s go.”

Smellerbee sheathed her dagger. “Where?”

“Ba Sing Se.” Where everyone else running from the Fire Nation was going.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #16, Mad.

Summary: Everything changes after the war.

What Can’t Change

They both went, but they never went together.  When they walked the road to the hospital, they were always alone, even when it was full of people.  And they always walked.  Zuko and Mai couldn’t be Firelord and Fire Lady, not for Azula.

They never went together, but Zuko knew the look Mai got, deep in the back of her eyes when she had been there.  They always held each other afterwards.  They always needed to be held.  Mai held Zuko while he tried not to cry, her face still and stuck, masklike and hard.  Zuko held Mai while she couldn’t cry, and he wished he could cry for her, and that it would somehow make her stop hurting.

They never went together; they couldn’t be together, not for Azula.  But they had to be together afterwards, for Zuko and Mai.

They never went together, but sometimes Azula still saw them together, and those were the hardest days of all.  On those days, Azula cried.

They never went together, and Mai sometimes forgot they were.  She remembered when she had first met Azula, and they had been so scared, and unable to show it.  Azula couldn’t stop showing it anymore.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #14, Supernatural.

Summary: They are different.

Someone Else

Zuko knew how to wield dual swords, even if he didn’t let anyone else know.

The Blue Spirit didn’t wield swords.  The swords were part of his body and being.  Sometimes the spirit sheathed them and took his hands off of them, but they were always part of him.

Even when they hung on Zuko’s wall.

Zuko could breathe life into fire.  He was the prince of Fire.  Fire was life, and strength, hope and pride.  It was his.

The Blue Spirit couldn’t bend.  He was a being of shadows.  Fire dispelled him.  Fire was death, and weakness, fear and shame.  It doesn’t belong to him.

The Blue Spirit never spoke.  He didn’t need to.  He had swords, and skills to speak instead.  He could go anywhere, and then disappear again.

The Blue Spirit had serenity and patience instead of Zuko’s endless frustration.

While Zuko never smiled, the spirit’s face was always grinning.

The Blue Spirit wore Zuko’s clothes, held his swords, and walked his floors.

But the Blue Spirit was not Zuko.

Zuko held the mask and gazed back into its empty eyeholes.  He turned the mask over in his hands and replaced its hollow eyes with his own.

Written for avatar_500 , prompt #12, Devour.

Summary: Neither girl really knows what to do after the fighting stops.

Normal People

The others trickled out of the teashop in twos and threes until Mai sat alone at the table with her bowl of noodles.  Even Zuko.  She heaved a bored sigh.

“You gonna eat that?”

Mai started in surprise.  The Avatar’s earthbender put her feet up on the table and leaned back in her chair until it almost touched Mai’s, pointing behind her to Mai’s bowl of noodles without looking.

Not that there was any point to her looking, Mai reasoned.  She lifted up the bowl absently before her eyes fell on the table in front of the girl.  Sitting back down, Mai pulled one of the noodles out of the bowl with her lips and drew it into her mouth with a long, careful slurp.  Mai didn’t slurp.  “You already have two bowls of noodles in front of you.”

The earthbender girl smirked and picked up one of the bowls.  “Yeah, not like I don’t want more after I’m done.”  She packed her mouth full and burped, dropping the bowl nonchalantly onto a letter in front of her on the table.

Mai glanced down at it.  “Want me to read that for you?”

“No,” Toph sneered down at it.

Mai shrugged.

“Parents suck.”  The earthbender’s voice cut through the stretching silence.

Mai shrugged again and slurped down another noodle.

“I didn’t think you made noise when you ate.”

“No.”

She smiled widely, leaning back in her chair far enough to rest her head on Mai’s shoulder. “Your parents as bad as mine?”

Mai glanced at the ceiling.

The earthbender elbowed her in the back.  “Come on, put your feet up here like a normal person.”

Written for avatar_500 prompt #10, Monk.

Summary: Xiangzhi loves funerals.

The Name Collector

He always arrived during funerals.

The girl’s family sobbed, and moaned, and carried on, calling out her name to themselves as he stepped into the village square, head bowed.  One old man grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the open grave.

“You must be a gift from the spirits,” the man exclaimed, “To come when you did.  My poor brother and his wife, could you say a blessing over my niece’s grave?”

Xiangzhi nodded and smoothed down his yellow and orange robes.  When he began to chant, everyone stopped crying to look at him.  An Air Nomad monk at the poor girl’s funeral.  She just died in her sleep, isn’t that sad?

She’d gone easily.  Her pillow pressed down on her face, over her nose and mouth, and she couldn’t even raise the air to scream.

Xiangzhi hid his smile.

The funeral was such a big deal.  He always picked the biggest house in town, the one where the daughters were bound to have their own rooms, and he could be alone.  It was so easy to get away when he didn’t have to leave footprints.  They made it so easy.

And it was so easy to wait in the woods until the wailing started and the grave was dug.

The girl’s spirit squirmed under his hands as he pinned her between them and forced her into her grave, and her mother moaned her daughter’s name again and again.  Xiangzhi let the name fall into his mind, satisfied.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #8, Token.

Summary: Iroh comes to a realization.

Never to Relinquish

The streets of Ba Sing Se twist around and around, and back on themselves, like coils of knotted rope.  Kuei’s feet follow them through the upper ring gardens, as he trudges beside Bosco, a three day beard on his face, hair springing out of his braid.  He sticks to the shadows as a pair of city guards passed, his hand on Bosco’s head.  Once they’re out of sight, he steps back onto the street and slips through the back door of the teashop he has been told to find.

“I don’t have any stale ca-”

Kuei shake his head, glancing pointedly at the piles of reports lying on a table in the corner.  “General Iroh.  I was told this is where I would find the real government of the city.”

Setting the teapot in his hands down onto the counter, Iroh narrows his eyes.  “Who are you?”

~*~

Iroh pours the tea into the teacup in front of Kuei before pouring his own.  “The Dai Li and my niece once tricked my nephew and I into coming to the palace by claiming we were going to serve you tea.”

Kuei lifts the cup to his mouth.  The steam stings against the freshly shaved skin, the sleeve of Iroh’s borrowed robe trailing behind his arm.  “I wanted to thank you for taking care of Ba Sing Se for me while I was absent.”

As the Earth King speaks, Iroh drinks his tea and wonders if this is what the Dai Li felt.