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.