weirdlet | Open Meme

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.

Oh. Oh. This is beautiful. Lan Min, oh.

My cousin has just gotten two kids and I am kinda baby-crazy. Been for awhile so that's why I request so much about characters having kids.

This? This is beautiful and makes me want to scream for more.

^^

(If you like, make a few prompts for within this little AU- I wouldn't mind writing more, I just need starting-blocks.)

You would? Really?

The first time Aang sees Lan Min.

Ozai meets his first grandchild.

Someone is questioning about Lan Min's father and Zuko reacts.

You are wonderful!

Aang buzzes through the corridors, checking door after door for his staff. He’s outrun the soldiers, misdirected them down a different section while he himself has gone further in. The last door he tried had a man snoring away behind it- now he can hear shouting and clanging footsteps in the distance, and slips into one that’s already open, shutting it behind himself to hide.

He comes out of his crouch and turns around to see bright red hangings and gently glowing candles, a hammock and a desk and thick rugs on the metal floor.

In the middle of it all is that Fire Nation girl. She’s seated on a large cushion; her breastplate is off and her tunic pushed aside as the toddler in her arms nurses heartily.

“Whoa,” says Aang, who’s familiar with the basic idea but hasn’t ever seen it this close up before.

Or with someone he’d swear was only a handful of years older than he is.

Her face is bright red and blank with surprise, blushing clear past her scalp- and there’s a lot of that, which is weird. Still, Aang grins sheepishly and is attempting to back out as her face begins to twist into that snarl he saw back in the village.

“Stop.”

The marching that rumbles past the door is a better incentive, but the result is the same- Aang stays still.

The girl-captain rearranges herself slightly- face forward, kid tucked up protectively, chest hidden behind the baby’s coal-black hair. Her expression is grim, and Aang is beginning to wonder just how he’s going to get out of this one.

“You’ve never known a father, have you. Being raised by monks and all.”

“Ah- no…” he replies, back against the wall and eyes flicking to the corner where his staff is leaning. She catches his movement, and glares harder.

“Then you don’t know what it’s like, do you. To want one- or to be in want of one. That’s why there are laws- strict rules about how one behaves when there could be children involved.”

“Uh- I don’t know where this is going, but could I please have my sta-“

“No. You are going to listen to me. I broke the rules- I’ve had to wander the earth trying to find a place for us, where we could be safe-“ loved, her eyes say. “-and I had almost given up hope.”

The littler girl decides she’s had enough and turns to look at him, glittering gold-coin eyes in a round, chubby face like a porcelain doll, a smile gaping. Her mother pulls her closer, never wavering her snake’s-gaze on him.

“You? You’re her ticket to legitimacy. And that’s why you’re not. Going. Anywhere,” she finally growls, and the guards burst in grabbing at his arms and legs-

Aang struggles, but their grip is firm- and later, when Appa has gored through the metal plates and there’s half an iceburg burying the bow of the ship, he thinks that he’s never going to let himself get distracted by a pretty girl again.

He breaks that vow five minutes later, but it’s the thought that counts.

Oh WOW. I am incoherent puddle of mush who screams KIDDIES!!

But I truly love this verse, honestly. But is Zuko completely banished, without the Avatar-mission or what? You sort of leave that impression.

And again, I love this.

I figure she's *firmly* banished, but not 'OMG kill-onsight' banished. Bringing back the Avatar covers a lot of sins, and now she's sure he's real. The faint hope she's been chasing actually has a chance of coming true.

And that hurts me a bit. oh Zuko...

...You do realize that you ahve made me addicted n another Au again?

As my friendly neighborhood comics dealer says, first taste is always free...

(I rather like this one too^^ But I'm trying to be good and answer some other peoples' prompts first before I dive back into Yet Another Gender-Bender AU)

Yeah, be good. But come back! ^^

Loved that last line; so very funny, so very Aang.

^^

Loved that last line; so very funny, so very Aang.

Princess Zura is nervous. Throughout all the formalities and the welcome-home revels and presentations to the people she has been stoic and hard, the picture of a warrior who has roamed the world and fought valiantly for her people.

Now she looks as though she would like to leap across the barrier of the Imperial Flame and snatch her ill-gotten child from the Firelord’s arms.

The Firelord does not deign to acknowledge this, but simply inspects his first grandchild in a perfunctory manner.

He can’t tell, just by looking, who the father is. That was perhaps the great scandal of the time, beyond mere defiance, beyond rudeness in the war-room that bordered on treason- one cannot have the royal bloodline being flaunted about so commonly, not only for the honor of the house but the example it sets the rest of the state. He finds the gold-coin eyes are common enough, the skin baby-fair and perhaps on its way to porcelain, if not browned in the sun first.

His daughter watches him, eyes like a dragonhawk’s and like a startled komodo rhino as well, the white ring showing all around in fear.

He smiles, and lets the little creature tug on his beard.

Azulon will not like that his sister has returned, with yet another barrier between himself and the highest place he can currently occupy, that of Crown Prince. Yet the prince smiles and preens, the happy brother and young uncle, and Ozai knows that this is the time to watch most carefully, for when Azulon gets frustrated he gets clever, and Zura is a walking ball of easy targets.

This child will never be closer to the throne than now, as she sits in his lap and shows no fear from the dancing flames- but he thinks that Azulon had better be very careful about how he goes about clearing his path. He is the one who controls life and death in this kingdom, in this world-

And for now, he chooses to allow his grandchild her life. Zura has bought a great deal of leeway, with the Avatar’s death, and that she chooses to spend it on the cause of half her suffering shows her stubborn loyalty, if not her wisdom in its placement.

He suddenly has to pat out sparks that singe his beard, and the dear little thing giggles.

Ozai scares me. You write him very well. I was halfway expecting for him to hurt her and you managed to bring very well Zura's distress in the text.

Azulon, do not dare...

Thank you- sometimes Ozai's hard to get a handle on, but there are a couple buttons I tend to go to that seem to bring out a version people like (or love to hate).

Azulon's already dared quite a bit- but there's some lines he won't cross if he thinks Father is looking.

(Assume that everyone’s about a year or two older than they are in Avatar canon- enough that early love-games and jealousy were a possibility for all involved at the time of banishment.)

The full moon is on the rise, and Zura is staring at it over the rail of the ship.

She’s heard that the moon turned red, then black, while she was hauling the Avatar across blizzard-burned tundra, seeking a way back to the ship and losing sight of the stars in the howling gale. There are stories, about the terrible rage of the oceans and the loss of half a fleet- the death of a beautiful princess to make the moon rise again.

The thought makes her shudder, and not because she might have been at fault for it (she was there, she could have gotten what she wanted and got out, she had, but no one ever said she had to be in the same room to cause trouble).

The moon’s still there, though- or there again, pure and shining, and the terrible night of its death has passed away into history.

She doesn’t hear Mao ghost up to her until he lets her know with a footfall, knowing better than to sneak up on a soldier.

“You cold?”

“Everything’s changed. Nothing has.”

“I asked if you were cold, I didn’t ask for philosophical nothings.” She can feel him resist the urge to roll his eyes, and glowers away to the side- another moment ruined by mutual malfunctions. But he tugs off his long black cloak, rich as sin in the fur of some dead platypus bear, and she lets it settle around her shoulders.

Mao looks at her funny- she can read his ghost-mask better than most, although that isn’t saying much- and stands next to her at the metal rail, looking upwards as if he can’t quite think of what to say.

The waves slap at the ship’s hull for a while.

Her brother’s bodyguard looks at her sidelong from under his girlish fringe- he keeps his nails like an Imperial lady’s, black and deadly, and no one says him nay. Zura puts her hand in his, feeling the different calluses between them; her nails are short and blank, filed down harshly to keep out of the way.

Mao traces the fuzzy outline of her hair, growing out from the adulteress’s cut. Now she has a peasant’s shaggy bob, her face a little too sharp for true beauty even under the scar framing her eye like a phoenix-wing.

He leans in and kisses her jaw anyway.

“Stop worrying. Come inside- I’ll make you tea.”

He learned the art from Lo and Li, Azulon’s tutors- he doesn’t flatter himself that he knows all their secrets, but he’s mastered a trick or two, including some that would blanch his mother’s hair if she knew. He’s pretty sure Azulon learned a few things as well.

Three years now, Mao’s always made a fresh pot.

They drink outside Zura’s cabin, after she checks to make sure her daughter is sleeping. Mao looks over her shoulder, and doesn’t quite know what to think. She’s about the size of his little brother, and he knows that in a few years he might have been expected to produce one or two of his own. It doesn’t make it any easier to imagine Zura with a baby, even with everything that’s happened, even with it right in front of him, dozing in a tiny hammock.

That mad protective streak that flares up when she touches the blanket, though- that fits. He thinks he can start to reassemble the picture of his exiled first-love-come-home from there.

They talk in low voices, in fits and spurts, avoiding the raw spots as best they can- it doesn’t keep them from stumbling on them headlong.

“You know people will talk about us if we’re all over each other when we get home.” He’s level-voiced as ever, as if he’s talking about potaturnips for dinner.

“Let them.” The reply is short and harsh, and Zura buries anything further in her teacup.

“Is that any good for Lan Min?”

She looks up at him, her good eye blank, her bad eye glaring.

“It’s gotta be better than the truth,” she finally allows, looking at the floor. The silence fills the air between them for a while, a heavy bubble growing slowly larger until Mao pokes it, more hesitantly than he’s ever thrown his needles or his knives.

“…what is the truth?”

A laugh bubbles up in her, something half-hysterical and more than a little like a sob. “I don’t know,” she says, running her fingers through her ragged, tufted hair. “Even now- I just couldn’t tell you, because I don’t know. It could be either. It could be anyone, if they were stupid enough.” Or unlucky enough to get caught in Azulon’s little games.

Mao bows his head, mouth in a straight line and eyes hidden. Zura doesn’t know if it’s from her pain or his.

She looks at the moon out the porthole, and shakes her head, setting down her teacup.

“It doesn’t matter. I traded a kingdom’s-“ Uncle’s- “freedom for her- if I have to bring down the walls of Ba Sing Se again by hand, I’ll do it. If anyone asks, I’ll say she’s the true-born Son of the Sun and anyone who says otherwise is blaspheming.”

It really doesn’t matter. The Avatar is defeated. She’s on a ship bound for home. The moon is still here. She is still here, or here again, even after a night when the world went from red to black and only the death of a princess could have restored her.

Anything is possible.

If she has to, she’ll make it happen.

Aww, now you have done all my prompts. Very well, too.

I have a weird way of liking/hating Mai, I hate how they treated her and Zuko's romance in canon but I love reading them in fandom. This makes me giddy, jealous!Mao is one of my favourites. And the moon...

I like Mai, and I like her and Zuko- I love Avatar, but like just about every show I've ever been a fan of, there's some things that are better-handled in fandom where you've got room to spread out from the backbone they give you.

^^ Thank you. If you have any more notions for this one, by all means, send'em along.

You mean, new prompts?

I am still a Zytarian, but I like Maiko also and that's mainly because of the fandom writers I have read. There was a time when I didn't like it. Never hated it, though.

*nod* I'm enjoying this AU- no push if there's nothing else, just if there is, I would like the opportunity.

You kidding? I have more than you could probably expect!

Lan Min creating havoc and mischief at western Air Temple.

Lan Min hates water tribe food.

Lan Min and Toph and/or Duke bond.

Ursa meets Lan Min.

How Jet treats Zura and Lan Min in the ferry or in the Ba Sing Se.

“Come ooon… it’s just a little blubber, you’ll like it!”

The kid sticks her tongue out, declining the bland, salty chunks that Sokka’s trying to spoon into her. He can’t believe that they’ve staged a repeat of the Omashu incident, and after the biggest baddest assault on the Fire Nation attempted in living memory. Not only that, but Katara, in all her unfailing motherliness, is not in the mood right now- and so it’s falling to him to keep the little Fire Nation baby out of trouble.

He doesn’t want to broach the subject with her- he’s honestly afraid of the answer he’ll get (something along the lines of 'stop wasting our supplies on the enemy!' is his first bet, and one he doesn't want to win). But, no time for that now, here comes the war-balloon…

“Do you want me to chew it for you? I warn you, there’ll be nothing leeeeeft…” he teases. The little girl’s glower as she sits with crossed arms upon his knee says plainly that he can have it, and there’s something kinda familiar about that pout…

Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Re: Princess Zuko, Out Of Wedlock

Ozai Meets His First Grandchild (sorry, forgot italics)

Re: Ozai Meets His First Grandchild (sorry, forgot italics)

Re: Ozai Meets His First Grandchild (sorry, forgot italics)

Questions About Lan Min's Father- Zura Reacts 1/2

Questions About Lan Min's Father- Zura Reacts 2/2

Re: Questions About Lan Min's Father- Zura Reacts 2/2

Re: Questions About Lan Min's Father- Zura Reacts 2/2

Re: Questions About Lan Min's Father- Zura Reacts 2/2

Re: Questions About Lan Min's Father- Zura Reacts 2/2

Re: Questions About Lan Min's Father- Zura Reacts 2/2

Lan Min Hates Water-Tribe Food

Re: Questions About Lan Min's Father- Zura Reacts 2/2