Numbers Meme!

[weirdlet]

Meme re-ganked from- well, I’ve seen at least three people do it, and thought it was nifty.  Oh good *lord*, what hath been wrought…  (Once more attempting to edit the 'enter's into something that makes sense...)

(Edit- figured out some Ursa crack!  Maybe that can lighten the load of unremitting angst I seem to have come up with otherwise...) 

1.  Ursa
2.  Jin
3.  Jet
4.  Ozai
5.  Spark!
6.  Hakoda
7.  Zuko
8.  Mai
9.  Iroh
10.  Lu Ten 

First Time, 4 & 6  (Ozai and Hakoda)

They are both of them experienced men, skilled in the art of lovemaking and warmaking and the proper way to hunt.

The fact that both Hakoda, son of the Southern Water Tribe chief and Ozai, son of Firelord Azulon are just sixteen does not dissuade either of them from these notions.  They have each been charged with the duty to show the other the proper way of navigating each other’s native environment, and so far the only progress they’ve made is to get stuck together in what seems like an endless series of enclosed spaces.

The latest of which happens to be this gods-forsaken hunting lodge, made of snow and ice and thankfully lined with enough pelts to completely cover the bitterly complaining Fire-prince.  Ozai has declared that side of the place to be Fire Nation territory, and any incursion will be met with fearsome wrath.  Hakoda thinks the other boy is being a complete baby about things, and makes a surprise attack by burrowing in under the furs and daring Ozai to do something about it.

Ozai does, and Hakoda yelps, and tells him not to do that unless he means it.

Apparently, he does.
 

 

Angst: 7  (Zuko)

my father died in summer

Firelord Zuko goes through his father’s things, not permitting the task to any servant.  The great heavy desk, too solid for even the once-Phoenix King’s muscle to hurl at his captors, is full of his papers, inks and writing implements and bits and pieces that manage to collect, even in a prison.

and all he left behind

The year has been a fair one so far, although not without its troubles.  Ozai’s sudden death came at the height of the dogs’ days, when the comet had come over a decade ago- he has missed the festival of lights and flavored ice and rock candies made up fresh that celebrated the fragile reunion of the world, missed it by a mere day.  Green and blue and yellow banners flew alongside red in the capital, honoring guests that Zuko will have to smile for.

were little scraps of paper

Here and there are missives, little poisonous notes that suppose how and when and what with he might regain his power.  Some are clear, concise, and cunning- others are half-wild and desperate, a man racking his brain for the wildest tales of heroes wounded and made whole, of kings crowned and prisoners rescued and spirit-wives won back.

little scraps of rhyme

Between half a memoir and two thirds of a treatise on the care of captive waterfowl, there are the littlest strips of paper Zuko has ever seen, perhaps meant to be rolled up into a dragonhawk’s leg-brace and flung far away into the ether.

They are prayers for a new-born boy, weak and listless.  Never burnt, they implore for strength, for breath, for the cunning to know what will let him live and the venom to take it for himself.

I read them, and felt something inside me break

There are many of them.

and angrily cried out- too late, too late!

The hand doesn’t change over the years, only the fragility of the paper.  Let him learn, let him grow, let him survive.  Let him be what is most needed in this world, strong and resilient and ruthless, for without that, there is nothing.  Let him die rather than be shamed, let that most intimate bond be between family and not foreign strangers.  Let him be to the last my own, even if he could not be what I needed.

The last- he thinks it is the last- begs for the spirits not to strike down a kin-slayer, for he knows he is being poisoned.  And Zuko doesn’t know what to think of that.
 

AU, 1 & 8  (Ursa and Mai)

Mai is not a kindly friend to all animals.  But she’s quiet, and very good at waiting, and handy with knives.  That gets her separated mounds of grain, golden wool from vicious sheep, and water from an impossible crag guarded by serpents.

When the Lady of Fire tells her to go and visit Koh and beg his many-faced mate for some of her beauty, she tells her to jump off a cliff, there’s more important things in this world than prettiness.  But the task remains, and when she returns she slams down the cask and demands to see her husband, however scarred he might be.

Ursa narrows Her eyes, and Mai stares her down as she sees Zuko’s shadow move behind his goddess mother.

Threesome, 3, 6 & 9  (Jet, Hakoda and Iroh)

“C’mon, old-timers,” Jet grinned, sprawled out across the furs like a lazy anteleopard.  “Maybe between the two of you, you can keep up.”

The Dragon of the West glanced sideways at the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe.  The other man quirked an eyebrow, and settled his arms across his chest.

“I believe that was a challenge.”

“I believe it was.”

“We gonna stand here and take that?”

“Absolutely not,”  the Dragon of the West purred, stroking his beard…

Hurt/Comfort, 5 & 10  (Spark and Lu Ten)

Lu Ten is still fairly small when his mother goes away.  Iroh holds him and hugs him, and Uncle Ozai doesn’t know what to say, and his nannies are gentle and comforting but too calm to echo the turmoil he feels.

He wanders out to the gardens, and then to the stables with the stone courtyard.  Uncle Ozai’s dragon is there, the big lizard that everyone says is still pretty small, but Lu Ten thinks he could ride on her if she’d let him.

She doesn’t let anyone but Uncle Ozai, do that, though.

She’s curled in a circle, a giant breathing wall of muscles and scales, and her head raises on his approach, dancing like a spidersnake’s in the air.

A whisker eels out and brushes his forehead, and he rushes forward to hug the long neck, everything that hurts suddenly rushing to the front of his mind.  He cries onto warm leathery scales, and a wing curls over him, pulling him close to the big, thudding heart in apology.

She wanted to know- now she does.  And she makes soft keening cries, nuzzling him close like a lost hatchling.

 
Crack: 1  (Ursa)

Ozai's pining in the tower and combing his hair as best he can when there's suddenly a great ruckus from the courtyard below, which he doesn't bother to watch until he starts hearing his beloved princess's voice.

"Stand aside, you blackguards!  You shall not keep my prince from me!"  That catches his interest, and he leans against the bars to see Ursa (her armor still fits great) wielding dual blades against guards upon guards.

They are dearly outmatched, and he loses sight of her only to hear the clamor of fighting move into the building and through the halls.  He tries to arrange himself as appealingly as possible as he hears her ferocious approach.

The door flies across the room with a clang, and there she is, mantle flying, breastplate burnished, as beautiful as the day she first knocked him down and refused to let him up.

"Have you come to slay me?" he asks.

"No- to save you."

Horror: 10  (Lu Ten)

The triumphant charge, more a formality than a true assault on the scorched farmland beyond the wall, is becoming a rout- the ground is shaking, waving, and Lu Ten hauls back on his rhino’s reigns as the first true shock comes through- and it seems a mountain rises up beneath him, rocks and soil and crushed tents and screaming soldiers tumbling down, down, down forever into the yawning earth-

He touches the sky, and then the ground is no longer beneath him, and his mount falls out from under him as the world does the same.

Baby!fic! 5 & 9  (Spark and Iroh)

“If you will permit me, kind lady…”

The sleekly monstrous figure draws back her head, dancing it back and forth amidst the streamers of her mane and whiskers, and finally bows acceptance.  Iroh comes forward, presents an offering of roast duck that is gone in a crunchy instant, and makes sounds of awe over the nestful of newly-laid eggs. 

Ozai cannot be here to see this, though he must surely know it has happened (his bond always was deeper than was traditional)- and so it falls to the elder brother to see that the new mother is properly spoiled.

Dark: 2& 8  (Jin and Mai)

“How did we find ourselves here again?”

“Our boyfriend got swept up in this multicultural mess and decided to participate in some crazy Earth Kingdom cave-based test of love?”

“Oh yeah.  I’m going to have to pinch Li for that- I mean- Zuko.”

“Just concentrate on the map, the light’s almost out.”

“If we don’t find the exit, do you think they’ll send anyone after us?”

“If they don’t, I’m haunting him.”

Romance, 4 & 7  (Ozai and Zuko)

(um.  ow.  Okay, this is dragon-bonded!universe.)

Zuko had grown up knowing that his father, the only one to hatch a dragon, sometimes flew with her in his mind when he did not ride on her back, dreaming through councils and meetings and smiling with eyes half-closed so that his advisors trembled.

After the war ended, when he himself had hatched a long-dormant brother-egg to the great Lady Spark, he knew that sensation too.  Ajit was young and curious, but grew quickly and become a passionate companion, intelligence side by side with Zuko’s but never bleeding across.  He danced in the skies while Zuko battled on the ground, fighting wars of paper and gold, and sought clues of scent and sign of his older egg-sister.

She flew wild, no longer commanded by Firelord Ozai, but offering him the sweet release of mind’s-flight.  Sometimes reports had her flying around the outer islands, other times she could be seen circling the capital at a distance.  Only once had she come near the prison tower, and the guards had reported their once-lord cursing and then weeping, and Spark had flown far and fast, never to come that close again.

Zuko didn’t want to sympathize.  But he knew if Ajit’s life depended on keeping him far away, it would cut the heart from him.

When he felt the harsh, hot drive for the first time, more than lust for wife or lover, he visited Ozai in his neatly appointed cell, hoping for answers.  Ajit could not simply give them to him, far as he was, and Ozai was the only one who had any practical experience in this matter.

He sent the guards away, and saw with one look the lustful dreaming that had overcome his father’s aging features.

“You know what’s happening.”

“I do,” Ozai purred, looking- wistful.

“This has happened before?”

“Oh yes.”

“When does it stop?” he asked, face flushed and verging on fever.

“When they are satisfied, or when the season passes, whichever comes first,” the older man smiled, and for a moment Zuko would swear Ozai was looking through him, assessing him all over again like all the times he had come up short.

This time the drawn-out gaze paused, blinked- and seemed oddly pleased.  Zuko went redder under his eyes, snorted flames and bared his teeth.

“Don’t push me, old man.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it- it’s you chasing me, after all…” and the eyes that had been cold and glinting all his life are suddenly- not welcoming, exactly, but warm and watchful, as if there was an actual chance that he might not be judged wanting.

“This is crazy.”

“You’re bound, heart and soul, to a fire-breathing spirit-animal with a mind and agenda of her own.  Get used to it, my son.”

Deathfic, 2 & 3  (Jin and Jet)

Jin wakes to the sound of rocks on her window, and slips out past heavy-sleeping parents to find some of her more ragged friends on the street, wet and battered and with tear-tracks through childish war-paint.

“We didn’t know anyone else- can you find a healer?” begs Smellerbee, who doesn’t beg.  Jin has met them in passing, made friends in a roundabout sort of way- they’d been distracted and worried, and clearly two parts of a trio that had been cut away.  She couldn’t fill that missing spoke, but she gave them some good advice and a friendly smile.

The boy they have slung between them should be dead, she knows that much.  His breath gurgles and his stomach is tight, beyond mere pretty muscle- he’s bleeding hard inside, and things are broken that she can see.

Her parents can lecture her again about the wrong crowd in the morning, but meanwhile there’s an empty kitchen table and she knows old Doctor Hui down the way and she gives directions to Smellerbee who’s fastest.  If her parents wake up and find three strangers in the house that’s a call for the guards- if they find two strangers and her and no one’s stealing the good dishes, that’s business as usual.

Longshot holds tight to the broken boy’s hand, head down and hat covering his eyes.  Jin sets water on, pulls out the old sheets, and tries not to do more harm than good.

The boy gasps, sudden and brief, and she grabs his flailing hand and meets wild, unseeing eyes.  He looks at her, and Longshot still holds on with a look of grief as his friend moans, breathless.

She can hear feet on the pavement below, Smellerbee’s skitter and Doctor Hui’s steady clomp, and knows that it’s not going to be fast enough.

She still holds on through the fading gasps, the flickering gaze, and finally closes his eyes when he’s done.  It’s horrible, and it’s over like that, and that’s somehow even worse.

Hui does what he can, but the boy’s spirit has flown, and without that there is little to be done, even with the removal of what blockages there had been to life.  This is not the first time Jin’s seen death, and probably not the Freedom Fighters, either.  It’s perhaps the most intimate she’s been with it, though, for all she doesn’t even know his name.

She cries with them, into cups of tea, and goes to explain to her parents that there’s been an accident no not a gang war and to call the corpse wagon no she’s fine her friends have lost someone and can they stay the night, she doesn’t think they have anywhere else to go.