Open Meme

[weirdlet]

I'm in a creative mood. So- this here is an open Avatar: the Last Airbender meme. Post up to three- I'll promise one.

Since this is wide-open, please give me a specific to work off of- a line, a quote, a nebulous verb, something. Just a pairing does not count.

(And just as a note- the Dragon Hatching AU meme is still open, if anyone's interested!)

Edit- Meme is closed. I will fill out at least one of everyone's prompts, and more if circumstance permits. Thank you all for your patience, your comments, and the fun you've given me^^

Comments

[floranna.livejournal.com]

Okay, when Princess Zuko (yes, princess) was banished, she was also pregnant. The scandal is that no-one knows who the father is and Zuko won't reveal him. Kids born out of wedlock are a great shame in Fire Nation and now Zuko must sail teh seas with a kid along. Who the father is, is up to you and you can choose how she got pregnant. (I mean, was it consensual or what...)

Zuko with wings! And only him. Only Ozai and Ursa know it, but Iroh and Azula suspect something is off on him but don't know what.

Sorry if these weren't what you were looking for...

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

Perfectly fine^^ I said open meme, just gimme something to work with, and I meant it.

Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

Little Lan Min reaches out a chubby hand towards the light that pierces the sky, bundled up against the arctic cold and pressed to a fur-lined breastplate.

She’s seen every port from Gaoling to Chameleon Bay before her second birthday. She’s never felt the languid mugginess of summer in her home nation, or tasted fireflakes at a festival. She goes about in the arms of her mother, a banished princess fallen from grace, the brand of a coward on her face and an adulterer on her scalp, naked but for the lock that marks her once-rank.

There are men who have been broken to pieces and burnt to ash for wanting to tug that lock.

She gets to do it all the time, and her fingers are gently detangled from the pretty strands, her mother’s pretty eyes like the jewels in the furnace, and she doesn’t recognize sadness yet but there are times when they’re like the moon too, far away and lonely when the stars won’t come out to play.

Right now they’re blazing, in something she’ll one day learn is hope.

“Ma-ma-“ she starts, and gets a hurried kiss and is passed to Great-Uncle, who is warm and kind and smells of good things. Mama is heading to the bow, standing with her head tilted back, her arms reaching for the spyglass.

“Helmsman!”

And the lurching of the boat she knows the word will herald doesn’t disappoint, turning them around to chase the pretty lights again.

Lan Min claps in delight, and giggles when Mama takes her back after she’s done being shouty. Familiar calloused fingers smooth back her hair and replace her cap, tugging the flaps down around her ears, and Uncle stands nearby to block the wind.

It’s going to be a very exciting day.

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

(cookie if you know where I outright stole this from)

Ursa holds her breath as she looks at the scale, wide and flat in the palm of her hand. Thirteen ridges bar its copper surface- the last still faint, as if lightly scored.

Thirteen years, she has held her greatest gift back from the world, mother-madness deeming that she keep him from soaring away from her, as all children must, as she has taught and been taught by countless mothers, fathers, officers, teachers.

Very soon, she may not have a choice.

She watches her son, her precious son, as he fumbles in his training and grows ever more frustrated. She rebinds his bandages each night, and bites her lip as he hunches more and more. Iroh is growing suspicious, of course- Azula, her baby girl, the unexpected second gift, merely teases him ever more viciously and never seems to think that her temper and her tongue might make her worthy of the same.

Her husband grows impatient, and, she thinks, even a little afraid under the cloud of disdain and disappointment. First they had no child to present to Azulon as a sign of their devotion and duty, even with a stunning heir in place. Then they had one, after a secret trip and a secret bargain, never to be spoken of again. Now they have a stumbling, aching boy who grows ever more angry as he grows ever more pained, and a stinging, sly girl who is sweet and too much like her forefathers to offer much comfort to an aging monarch.

When the Mother of Dragons roars circling around their castle, she runs to prevent his madness, the father’s-madness that says something marked and marred is not wanted anymore. It doesn’t work-

She takes her boy back anyway.

The palace shaking down around her ears, her companions, her friends, her own body growing as stone and ash, she reaches out, and sees her son reach back, charred, scarred, his woven vest torn and tattered as ribbons.

His poor little wings, so bent, so small and deformed, still flair free, and he cries out in the shock of it.

Ursa can only wish with her last breath that they will at least grow stronger.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

- Ozai/Ursa. If I let you, you might kiss me/If you kiss me, you might stay/If you stay, then I might love you/If I love you, who's to say?

- Aang/Ozai. I kind of like the misery you put me through/Darling, you can't trust me completely/If you even try to look the other way/I think that I could kill this time

- Piandao/Sokka. I want you to want me/I need you to need me/I'd love for you to love me

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

If I let you, you might kiss me

Ozai knows that the brazen warrior who shouts along the line with swords aloft is just as much a mask as the black velvet that slips behind enemy lines- or into a lower officer’s tent, away from prying eyes and wagging tongues and ink just dripping to be stroked onto court-martial documents.

If you kiss me, you might stay

The lamp is out, and at a deliberate footfall, he breathes just enough to light the candle nestled between his palms. She stays on the edge of the light, midnight clinging to her curves like water.

If you stay, then I might love you

Her hair falls down, and he aches to see one more layer gone, one more mask laid aside- one more facet laid bare. He wants to see her as no one has- as no one else will.

If I love you, who’s to say?

He feels her breath tease over his chest, blowing along his skin, and the candle goes out.

His sigh is swallowed up by the dark.

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

The Avatar has returned, tall and bright and grim in the dank surrounds of his lowly prison. Ozai bares his teeth. Aang lowers his brows.

One has too much remorse, and yet, feels that pang, yes, that vicious thrust of anger when the other shows none, absolutely no regret at all- save a few, precious, vulnerable things that he treasures and nurses in his darkest hours alone.

“Why can’t you be someone I can beg for forgiveness from?” the boy says through gritted teeth as he rides him, for boy he still is, even warm and lean with twenty summers behind him.

“Feel free to try- that is one thing you cannot take from me,” the older man says, pinning his hips with bruising fingers and knowing he will feel the stones in his back tomorrow.

Long fingers yank at the silver hair in his temples, and he snaps his gaze up into blazing grey with a gasp.

[crystaldrake.livejournal.com]

Zhao/Ozai - It's a loss, it's a win.

Piandao/Jeong Jeong - Brush stroke

Iroh/Ming - Melt

Piandao/Jeong-Jeong- Brush Stroke

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

(Icon love)

Some things cannot be taken back.

A stroke of the sword. A stroke of the brush.

A lick of flame.

A stolen word.

A scar, a brand, a kiss that is both.

Some things wouldn’t be given back, even if it were possible to.

[teacup-werewolf.livejournal.com]

Aang/Zuko: Awkward explanations

Katara/Aang: Mile high club

Roku/Gyatso: Ritual

Roku/Gyatso: Ritual

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

Contrary to popular belief, Airbenders do, in fact, have sex-lives. Love is not discouraged- just the practice of coveting it or being distracted by it. Air-nomad affairs tend to be brief, sudden, and then gone again like a laugh drifting on the breeze.

Then again, sometimes they can get quite involved.

Roku knows that at least half of what Gyatso’s said about holy ritual and rite of passage and mastering aspects of the Avatar state that might otherwise remain unbroached is probably true, and the rest is just to make it sound like he doesn’t especially want a special evening together, it’s just necessary to his friend’s development.

Suuuuuure.

Surrounded by candles, gasping as he feels the white-hot lightning snake from deep in his belly up slowly towards the crown of his head, feels Gyatso’s hands pinning his hips to the earth and his mouth driving his heart towards the sky- Ruko thinks this must be why they don’t let it get around, because they’d never get anything else done-

[aerodactylus.livejournal.com]

S1!Zuko: I don't know if we'll make it home/All we can do for now is hope

Pre-series (at least, pre-introduction) Toph: They're gonna clean up your looks/with all the lies in the books/to make a citizen out of you

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

It's been a long voyage, and the men are tired and grumbling. They've been stuck out these doldrums, avoiding this fleet and that for weeks and constantly being told to push off, this is no place for toy soldiers.

Zuko knows that if he were the right sort of captain, the right sort of leader, he'd have a speech all lined up about how they can't give up and there'll be wine and pay and our loved ones waiting for us in port.

But there is no port to welcome them, and no pay worth the name, and the wine's practically recycled at this point. The sort of men who are assigned to his ship are at the rank they will die in- there is no advancement from here on out.

He doesn't know what home means for them. A wife and children and candles in the windows? An aging grandfather, living off what's sent home from the war and wishing to hear of the sea again? Does it mean the smell of fire-lilies, the shape of the coast, the sometimes-rumble on the littler islands when new land is being born?

Does it mean medals and honor, and proud smiles? Is home where they have to take you back, or where they want you?

He doesn't know. All he can do is hope, and keep going.

[sableambiguity.livejournal.com]

Sokka and Katara; back to basics

Ursa/Ozai; privilege


Thank you for this! 8D

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

It takes a while to get used to the new role of princess- Ursa is a lady, of course, and descended of strong nobility, but she has also been long in the field, and it isn't always as simple as little soldier girl comes marching home.

It isn't as though she's a ragtag barbarian- upkeep is challenging in a camp but officers manage, because one should be able to pass inspection if one conducts it, and she does with flying colors. It's the littler touches, sometimes, that trip her up, even though she's studying her subject and laying plans with her advisors and ladies-in-waiting, intent on sweeping the court as its newest trendsetter.

Ozai has to tease her into luxuriating, and sometimes bribe her with pretties that no soldier could lay hands on outside of looting a conquered palace. A shared desert that could double as a piece of art, glazed and sculpted and dissolving sweetly tart on the tongue; a robe that has a fortune in delicate hand-work and silk let fall to the ground and kicked aside like common cloth. Scent and sight and allowing other, more practiced women to do things for her, to gild her nails into proper dragoness's talons and make her hair into art, not inconvenience.

Sometimes, she's a little more receptive to the idea than she lets on.

[suzukiblu.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, well, I never DID request on the Dragon Hatching meme, so I'll just ask for stuff here. *grins*

And I'm in an arty mood, so let's do picture prompts! >:D


Nothing will ever be okay again.
THINGS THAT ARE TOTES FUTURE!CANON.
Gargoyles fusion. Pairing optional; epic awesome of fire-breathing gargoyles not.

Or, in the event you don't know Gargoyles (in which case I MOURN YOUR YOUTH for you DDD:), let's just have some gloriously adorable CRACK.

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

(Hey, feel free, it's still open^^ And I dropped into the Gathering of the Gargoyles a year or two ago when they turned up practically in my backyard)

Nothing Will Ever Be Okay Again

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

Theater is a high art, the appreciation of which is pastime and gathering-place of high nobles and the worthy rich. Theater-folk on the other hand, are lowly sorts, little better than beggars and harlots, and anyone who says otherwise is a fool or possibly one of them, in a patronly sort of way.

Thus is the general consensus of the circles Zuko has moved in from birth, although his mother declares that mostly hogwash and delights in plays for the show itself, rather than the seeing and the being seen. Right now, though, he's beginning to think that there might be something to it...

Meet the cast, they said. Get a feel for how they thought of the play, they said. See if we could give them some feedback, they said...

The actress who has an uncanny and terrifying resemblance to Aang is making the moves on him, and he's not sure if he's a dirty old man or in desperate need of an adult to rescue him, because her voice is still in pixie-range and she's tinier than Ty Lee but she's built just like her and he keeps thinking she's a little brother and she's coming on to me...

He presses back against the wall.

The wall moves.

He tumbles out in front of what remains of the audience, some talking amongst themselves, most heading out to the rest of their fashionable evening.

In that moment he knows that things can, in fact, get worse.

[yamiloo.livejournal.com]

Azula/Ty Lee

Prompt: These are a few of my favorite things.

XD

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

When Azula's aura flickers, bruisey yellow and purple or poisonous black that the lightning-crackle blue swallows up again, Ty Lee knows that there are a very few things that can make her smile again, although she has endless variations on the theme.

She'll make a mistake- a clownish tumble, a pratfall, something expensive will almost shatter. Someone hearty and strong of will will need shouting at, and Azula's there to see it. When all else fails, something new about her is available to be praised, worshiped, exclaimed as the very ideal and instructions on lower-ranked mimicry begged for.

Ty Lee is very good at finding her princess's favorite things. And when she can tease some caress or grudging note of care from Azula in spite of herself- that's one of her favorite things as well.

[raeraem.livejournal.com]

Iroh/Aunt Wu, mutual affection - prompt: "I'm tired of telling other people's fortunes, why don't you tell me mine?"

Thanks in advance :)

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

He chooses the tea leaves, of course. She gathers the tea set and lets him hunt among her collection for the right blend, smiling as he flicks his thumb and lights the kettle. It's on its merry way to bubbling as they sit down together, and she cocks her head like a schoolgirl, eager to hear her fortune.

He pours graciously, and they drink together for good times and bad, the old days and the new ones at hand. She swirls the dregs and offers her cup, sleeve drawing back carelessly to show her pretty wrists.

Stroking his beard thoughtfully, the Dragon of the West looks into the shapes of soggy leaves and pronounces her greatly blessed, horribly doomed, and possibly the next Avatar if she can wing it. She laughs and tells him that he's looking at it upside down; he goes all indignant and asks who's telling this fortune, me or you?

She always did like to make him puff up with false pride- he always made it so entertaining when he deflated, and would teasingly beg for her hand, for he surely needed her guidance to give him good sense. And as always, she feigns to answer, for who would guide her village should she leave it? First he was Fire Nation, then he was married, and now, well- time marches on, and they must make the best of it while they can.

[alpha-hydra.livejournal.com]

Zuko/Aang "The Avatar gives people hope."

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

The Avatar gives people hope.

The war ends. The world breathes. Three days later the next one starts.

It's much smaller, but it's the first of many- and Firelord Zuko has a use for his soldiers beyond simply turning them into farmers and keeping them busy putting down his own rebels. Under the righteous water-whip of Chieftess Katara, Southern warriors and Northern amazons and Foggy Swamp cousins fight off their own people and dissolve earth to mud, keeping a core amidst the splintering cracks. The Bei Fong Omashu Subsidiary pulls weight in coin, cunning and the sheer stubbornness of the greatest earthbender in the world, kicking her foes' collective asses in the field and in the negotiations-hall.

Zuko is the one showing the most strain- he shows up to the meetings grey-faced and lined, dressed in mourning and penance and it will never be enough, he knows. All he can do is hold on grimly, accept the lash on one hand and offer the other to be chewed.

Aang stands beside him one day. He's stood next to the Avatar for portraits, for shows, for grand speeches and hearty displays of friendship in the face of absolute denial by the state of the world.

It's been a while since he stood next to a friend.

Aang lays his hand on his shoulder, and Zuko almost collapses where he stands.

"You're tired." It's not a question.

"I am." It lacks hope.

"C'mere, then."

There's a speech he finds out about later, from the Bei Fong woman- something about 'we're borrowing your Firelord for a little bit, we don't think you've been feeding him right'.

It takes a long time, longer than he thinks he can afford- just flying across the world, reliving his great defeats and great adventures and mostly just living, with the last living Airbender by his side. He visits the homesteads of the Southern Water Tribe, and the colonies of the North. Villages and cities and mountains in the Earth Kingdom, a high palace and a lowly tavern and a circus with a very entertaining bear-act. All of these are places he's seen and heard from across the negotiating table, read rejections from on scrolls, heard screams and curses heaped upon his name and all his line.

Aang shows him the hope that's in these places too.

Slowly, Zuko begins to smile again.

[alexb49.livejournal.com]

Can the nameless characters get some love?

The guys that were on the Fire Nation airship that Sokka dumps into the ocean in Sozin's Comet- It *is* supposed to be my birthday.

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

They make it to shore without losing more than one or two guys- the brief, sudden flood that douses the forest-fire doesn't do much more than lift them up and set them down gently, and by that point everyone's stripped off their heavier armor.

Quan Li helps drag Ben, who's birthday it is, up to the bar when the reach the nearest coastal town and troop into the first tavern they see. They set him up, and then proceed to buy (or beg) their own drinks in round upon round. Nobody objects, since the world's ending and they can see that the rest of the peninsula is on fire out the windows.

Hours later, Ben raises a question, between slurps of his imported Si Wong Sledgehammer, which comes in a cactus-shaped jug and is making the edges of the world turn pretty colors.

"Thhhhhhink th'cap'n 'll have us up on drunk'n'dsorderly? Or 'sit drunk'n'duty?"

"I 'unno," says the guy from the furnaces, face red as the rest of him now that his mask's off and he's had several wine-bowls in him.

"Don't care. Barstud let 's swim to th'invasion," says Hiza from Communications.

"Wellll, ash to him, then! I saaaay we jus' cel'brate here!" Ben exclaims, raising his ceramic cactus. "'S my birthday and I don' like hotcakes anyway!" He pauses, and seems to squint at the table.

"At least not without sweetcream. Too hot, otherwise."

They agree, and drink to that. At some point they watch through the window as the forest fire dies down, and raise glasses to that, too, because at this point a fly passing by is cause for celebration. The waitstaff just wait for the next repetition and it seems to keep them from burning down the place.

Get knocked out of an airship in a foreign land, get free drinks. In the end, there've been worse birthdays.

[mahoushoujo15.livejournal.com]

-Sokka/Yue. Heaven. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ymIaFlwRI)

-Aang/Meng or Sokka/Toph. Don't Make Me Over (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1YWWFpYCyY)

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

(I am so sorry for the lateness on this)


"This isn't working."

Sokka, enmeshed as he is in plans and gears and she thinks there's a scrap of wood placed behind his ear like a brush, looks up.

"I'm sure I can make it work! If you'll just-"

"Look, Sokka- I don't care if you somehow manage to floor an entire village in heated stone, I'm not becoming a good little Arctic maiden."

"I'm not asking you to- I love kickass Toph! I just want at least one place where I can actually, y'know, lead the village and have my wife at my side. Besides, you like me hanging around at your house even if I'm not up to your fancy business-partners' standards..."

"Fair enough."

"You've still gotta wear shoes, though."

"This is why it doesn't work!"

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Toph meets Zuko instead of Iroh during "The Chase".

Jin manages to talk Juko into coming home with her for one night, and he gets her pregnant.

Moon!Yue talks with Suki.

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

Suki is not spirit-touched or shamanic. She's a well-rooted tree, firm in the earth and allowing her branches to brush the sky, but never to fly about loosely.

Still, she follows the tides as much as any woman, and the moon whispers to her when the dark side of the circle comes about.

is he well

It is an echo and an absence, the boom of surf and the stately dance of planets against the black. Suki shakes her head, and cleanses herself of paint and powder.

It fills the night, the moon's voice.

is he loved

"Yes," she whispers.

does he still walk into things when he catches sight of you

Suki buries her laughter in her palms, snorting, and the moon laughs with her.

[spyridona.livejournal.com]

Jet and Hakoda - Because someone needs to tell Jet to knock it off and drag him off to a flea bath. AU, since, y'know, Jet's dead as doornail.

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

The boy turns up hacking and coughing and a feast for fleas. Hakoda takes one look at him, orders hot soup made, and hauls him off to the sweat-lodge for a good scrubbing. He gets stripped *first*, because the last time the little fuckers got into the lodge they had to build it over again to get rid of them.

When you spend ninety-five percent of your time bundled up in heavy furs and leathers, fleas are serious business.

The boy has the remnants of horrible bruising from collarbone to belly, purpley-yellow and green in places. There's a roughly-healed scar where someone might've let blood out, and he still hacks and shivers even in the darkest heat of the lodge. He'll keep his fingers and toes, but Hakoda has seen men die like this, just healed enough to move but not enough to fight off the cold and sickness.

"Whatever possessed you to come out here on your own?" he asks, kinder now that the kid looks less like a broken-down pirate and more like a kid.

"There's a g-girl I'm looking for," he finally says. "About a head shorter than you, real pretty- hair in dangles, waterbender, has a blue stone necklace."

"That describes almost every girl of marriageable age in the tribe. Why are you looking for her?" Hakoda says, neutral.

"To get her to finish the job she started," he grins, and Hakoda suddenly wants very much to know just what his daughter has been up to whilst saving the world.