Sun Child: Aftermath
Dec. 16th, 2009 04:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weirdletThe Prompt: Where is Lan Min during the invasion of the Northern Water Tribes?
The Fic: Part 2.
Zhao is getting away.
The Avatar’s too strong, with his friends and her uncle at his side and busy tending the fish, but like hell is she going to let Zhao get away with everything he’s done. He’s slick, but she’s fast- and she’s younger, and angrier, and he didn’t just try to kill her.
What if she hadn’t sent her daughter off with Uncle for that walk?
The Ocean Spirit flows outward to the ocean and proceeds to play kick-the-floating-can with the warships. Zura has her own concerns.
“You tried to have me killed!”
He doesn’t bother to deny it.
The blasts are sharp, vicious, and come in a fast barrage. They fight their way through the shattered city, ending up on a bridge when the moon relights. Then the Ocean itself reaches up and tears Zhao out of her reach, and she can’t leave him to that, to the endless cold and deep especially when she wants to break and burn him, bring him to justice herself. But she cannot save him- he refuses her grip himself.
After that it’s a matter of finding Uncle and making their way back over the cliffs, without a snowstorm blinding them to the stars and the path.
…
The fleet is gone.
Zura is standing by the boat she managed to hide and staring at blank, open water.
Her uncle is by her side, and she’s on her knees, holding her mouth to not scream. The Ocean spirit. The Avatar. The waves the fleet the ships the crewherdaughterherbaby-
“There-!” Uncle is saying, shaking her shoulder and pointing. “Far out to the west- you can see the light off the hulls-“
Zura is already scrambling to get the boat ready- it’s too small, and they end up losing even more time while cobbling together a raft that can hold their weight and be directed, and if they’re lucky, go faster than just what her arms’ strength can gain them.
The Water-tribe is busy within the walls, and if there were any bodies to mop up, they’ve been plunged to the bottom of the sea. They make it out and start skimming along the waves, Uncle guiding the sails with Zura’s muscle to make up for his.
The fleet is more than a day’s travel away already, if those are even living boats and not broken hulks where the Avatar tossed them, and they have neither fresh water nor food.
…
The fleet is broken.
Well, that’s not strictly accurate- they lost several ships with all hands, their commander and most of his officers have been lost, and every vessel is limping along. Even those that weren’t bent or broken, sheared against each other or viciously sliced along the waterline, have had to dry out the engines before they could move on.
Some limp along slower than others. The former flagship, oddly enough, is stringing along almost dead last, despite having been the first to turn tail and retreat, before the enormous strength of an angry god had begun flinging them skidding along the waves to land a day’s travel away. No matter- it was only full of the most basic of officers and soldiers, everyone of higher rank had been unfortunately lost. If there was mutiny, they’re at least falling into line for the moment- there’s simply no time to deal with it right now.
With their spyglasses focused forward, praying for land, port and dry-dock to appear on the horizon, no one really pays attention to the broken flagship and its ragged skeleton crew.
Or the faint light that sometimes appears behind them, a flicker on the waves in a feeble, steady pattern.
The battered vessel limps further behind.
It had taken five weeks for the fleet to make it to the North Pole. A week and a half after they leave it, a rope is lowered over the side of that last draggling ship in the night and two castaways are pulled aboard.
The old man is tired and salt-soaked. The girl cries when the soldiers gather around her- they slap her back and bring her food and present her daughter to her, clean and whole and cranky from being woken from her uneasy nap. The crying doesn’t stop then, but it’s clearer and cleaner than before, and goes on through the night until they’re all asleep, exhausted and well-fed.
A message flashes out to the rest of the fleet- ‘we’ve taken too much damage and are abandoning ship.’ There’s land nearby, but not a harbor equipped for the sort of repairs an Imperial class flagship needs.
The rest of the fleet moves on.
And the tattered remnants of a loyal crew disperses into a town choked with cherry-blossoms.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-16 10:18 am (UTC)I knew that you wouldn't kill of Lan Min but still, I was terrified. You managed Zura's terror very very well, without making her wimpy or a 'wilting woman'.
You just keep on spoiling me.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-16 10:23 am (UTC)(Crazy-er, anyway)
I'm having fun filling this in^^
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Date: 2009-12-16 05:56 pm (UTC)Every time I see you've posted another one of these, I just get this jump in my stomach, yay!
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Date: 2009-12-16 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-16 11:12 pm (UTC)I love that they love her.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-16 11:21 pm (UTC)^^
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Date: 2009-12-18 09:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-18 10:00 am (UTC)This exact line is me paraphrasing something from a Twilight Zone episode set in the Vietnam War, which in itself is a reference to Animal House and the character Douglas Neidermeyer, a dick of epic proportions. Zhao would have liked him. In the little 'where are they now' blurbs at the end of the movie, it mentioned that he was killed by his own troops in Vietnam. Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-18 10:07 am (UTC)That's...really appropriate actually. XD
no subject
Date: 2011-11-05 06:47 am (UTC)He's like my favorite minor ATLA character ;A;
*coughanditotallydontshiphimwithzukocough*