Socchan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
soc_puppet) wrote2008-08-08 06:41 pm
soc_puppet) wrote2008-08-08 06:41 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: A Strong Enough Place to Stand (1/1)
Fandom: Avatar
Prompt:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
girlquinn's request: Please tell me what happened to Azula... or just make it up.
Pre-fic notes: This is something that either will or won't work, so here's hoping it works, I guess. Also, choc full of run-on sentences.
Fic: A Strong Enough Place to Stand
Give me a lever long enough, and a strong enough place to stand, and I will move the world.
- Archimedes
In the space of a breath, Azula went from being chained in the palace courtyard to being unbound in a surprisingly natural-seeming arena, not unlike where an Agni-Kai would be fought. Across from her, as before, stood the Avatar.
Not bothering to waste time wondering where she was or how she got there, Azula charged him. She whipped her leg around in a vicious kick and punched out, summoning flame, and ended with her fingers extended to gather lightning.
Nothing happened.
Snarling, she tried another attack, bringing her closer to the Avatar. When still no flames came forth, she snapped at him, "What's going on! What have you done to me?!"
The Avatar held his position. "This is the spirit world," he said. "Normal bending doesn't work here."
Azula flashed her teeth. "But I can still fight you, Avatar!" She struck out at him, grinning viciously when she landed a glancing blow.
An air of melancholy and resignation settled around the Avatar as he moved around her blows. "Yes, you can," he answered. And then he struck out at her.
The Avatar only landed a glancing blow on her shoulder, but the vivid sense-memory of the first time she'd used firebending (it was during one of Zuko's lessons; she'd been watching, and it really all looked so easy, and now her pathetic brother expected to be Firelord--). Azula caught herself and forced her breathing back to normal. From her peripheral vision, she saw her shoulder glowing the airy blue of distant horizons, though it was shrinking back now. Rage lashed out of her: "What was that, you loathsome piece of—"
He struck her again, this time on the forearm (and she saw herself practicing firebending, first under supervision, and then later on her own, aiming for moving targets like sparrow-finches and turtle-ducks). She watched her limb light up, and willed it back to normal as hard as she could, but the glow retreated like molasses on a cold day.
"It's something I learned from a friend," the Avatar told her, landing another blow, this one on her midsection (demonstrating firebending at the academy, the way the other children had fallen back in awe, as they should, given her blood, and now she had the power to make them). Only his answer didn't matter, had never mattered, because now she could see how he did it.
Azula leaped forward and lunged out, landing hit after hit to his chest and shoulders, the familiar darker blue radiating from him in spots like the heart of the hottest fires. But the glow faded more quickly from him than it did from her, much more quickly, and he was still striking (the faint smell of burning grass as she informed a schoolmate that she didn't have to miss) (the taste of ozone and the accompanying rush of power when she learned to bend lightning, one more weapon in her arsenal) (the (few, tiny) burns she had incurred in the Agni-Kais she fought before people learned better than to challenge her, the blisters and charred flesh and scars her foolish opponents had suffered). He was still speaking as he fought her, how could he still be speaking?!
"You've practiced firebending a long time, and because of how you've used it, your spirit is out of balance," he was saying, but he was wrong, she'd only done what she had to do, what fire had wanted to do, she hadn't done anything wrong, or at least not really wrong. "If you're ever to restore balance, you're going to have to live without it," only that was impossible, there was no way they could keep her from firebending even if they locked her up in ice for the rest of her life, and it was getting difficult to see anything but horizon blue now, but it didn't matter. "You won't really remember this after we leave, but you'll never forget—" and his palm flattened against her chest, energy rippling out from that point of contact through her chakras, "—in here."
And the whole world faded into Avatar blue.
-----
Azula's world flashed back to her, the memories of that other place already fading and nearly gone; only a few moments seemed to have passed since the Avatar had first reached out to touch her. She was still chained in place, only now the Avatar looked grim and satisfied and a little pitying all at once, while his fellow slap-dash warriors and friends seemed in awe of him. Azula's eyes narrowed, and she summoned reached within for a spark of fire to spit flame in his puny face for his insolence – only it was gone, snuffed out like it had never been there.
It was gone, the one thing that truly separated her from those unfit to rule, more even than station or blood, and Azula mourned its loss, slipping at last into unconsciousness and despair.
--fin--
This is the second incarnation of this fic, and while I'm not sure which I like better, it's the one that I was able to write more easily. The first incarnation involved the gaang discussing what to do with Azula, given that Aang wouldn't kill her (etc) and was reluctant to use spiritbending for a reason I hadn't quite decided on, so instead he sent her to another universe, where her firebending wouldn't work - probably to spend the rest of eternity in a show aimed at very young children, likely Barney, with a small possibility of The Smurfs. (She totally would've teamed up with Gargamel and tried to take over, though.)
Sadly, I couldn't think of a good enough way to pull that ending off, fun though it would've been, so instead I attempted an inside look at what might be happening when Aang spiritbends. While it's not as funny, I think it turned out about as well as it could have. [/ramble]
Prompt:
girlquinn's request: Please tell me what happened to Azula... or just make it up.Pre-fic notes: This is something that either will or won't work, so here's hoping it works, I guess. Also, choc full of run-on sentences.
Fic: A Strong Enough Place to Stand
Give me a lever long enough, and a strong enough place to stand, and I will move the world.
- Archimedes
In the space of a breath, Azula went from being chained in the palace courtyard to being unbound in a surprisingly natural-seeming arena, not unlike where an Agni-Kai would be fought. Across from her, as before, stood the Avatar.
Not bothering to waste time wondering where she was or how she got there, Azula charged him. She whipped her leg around in a vicious kick and punched out, summoning flame, and ended with her fingers extended to gather lightning.
Nothing happened.
Snarling, she tried another attack, bringing her closer to the Avatar. When still no flames came forth, she snapped at him, "What's going on! What have you done to me?!"
The Avatar held his position. "This is the spirit world," he said. "Normal bending doesn't work here."
Azula flashed her teeth. "But I can still fight you, Avatar!" She struck out at him, grinning viciously when she landed a glancing blow.
An air of melancholy and resignation settled around the Avatar as he moved around her blows. "Yes, you can," he answered. And then he struck out at her.
The Avatar only landed a glancing blow on her shoulder, but the vivid sense-memory of the first time she'd used firebending (it was during one of Zuko's lessons; she'd been watching, and it really all looked so easy, and now her pathetic brother expected to be Firelord--). Azula caught herself and forced her breathing back to normal. From her peripheral vision, she saw her shoulder glowing the airy blue of distant horizons, though it was shrinking back now. Rage lashed out of her: "What was that, you loathsome piece of—"
He struck her again, this time on the forearm (and she saw herself practicing firebending, first under supervision, and then later on her own, aiming for moving targets like sparrow-finches and turtle-ducks). She watched her limb light up, and willed it back to normal as hard as she could, but the glow retreated like molasses on a cold day.
"It's something I learned from a friend," the Avatar told her, landing another blow, this one on her midsection (demonstrating firebending at the academy, the way the other children had fallen back in awe, as they should, given her blood, and now she had the power to make them). Only his answer didn't matter, had never mattered, because now she could see how he did it.
Azula leaped forward and lunged out, landing hit after hit to his chest and shoulders, the familiar darker blue radiating from him in spots like the heart of the hottest fires. But the glow faded more quickly from him than it did from her, much more quickly, and he was still striking (the faint smell of burning grass as she informed a schoolmate that she didn't have to miss) (the taste of ozone and the accompanying rush of power when she learned to bend lightning, one more weapon in her arsenal) (the (few, tiny) burns she had incurred in the Agni-Kais she fought before people learned better than to challenge her, the blisters and charred flesh and scars her foolish opponents had suffered). He was still speaking as he fought her, how could he still be speaking?!
"You've practiced firebending a long time, and because of how you've used it, your spirit is out of balance," he was saying, but he was wrong, she'd only done what she had to do, what fire had wanted to do, she hadn't done anything wrong, or at least not really wrong. "If you're ever to restore balance, you're going to have to live without it," only that was impossible, there was no way they could keep her from firebending even if they locked her up in ice for the rest of her life, and it was getting difficult to see anything but horizon blue now, but it didn't matter. "You won't really remember this after we leave, but you'll never forget—" and his palm flattened against her chest, energy rippling out from that point of contact through her chakras, "—in here."
And the whole world faded into Avatar blue.
-----
Azula's world flashed back to her, the memories of that other place already fading and nearly gone; only a few moments seemed to have passed since the Avatar had first reached out to touch her. She was still chained in place, only now the Avatar looked grim and satisfied and a little pitying all at once, while his fellow slap-dash warriors and friends seemed in awe of him. Azula's eyes narrowed, and she summoned reached within for a spark of fire to spit flame in his puny face for his insolence – only it was gone, snuffed out like it had never been there.
It was gone, the one thing that truly separated her from those unfit to rule, more even than station or blood, and Azula mourned its loss, slipping at last into unconsciousness and despair.
--fin--
This is the second incarnation of this fic, and while I'm not sure which I like better, it's the one that I was able to write more easily. The first incarnation involved the gaang discussing what to do with Azula, given that Aang wouldn't kill her (etc) and was reluctant to use spiritbending for a reason I hadn't quite decided on, so instead he sent her to another universe, where her firebending wouldn't work - probably to spend the rest of eternity in a show aimed at very young children, likely Barney, with a small possibility of The Smurfs. (She totally would've teamed up with Gargamel and tried to take over, though.)
Sadly, I couldn't think of a good enough way to pull that ending off, fun though it would've been, so instead I attempted an inside look at what might be happening when Aang spiritbends. While it's not as funny, I think it turned out about as well as it could have. [/ramble]