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Mpreg Meme
I'd intended to toss one of these out there someday, only to find I was not alone, and held off to enjoy the others^^ So- if it please you, toss me a pairing/person and a prompt, and I'll see what I can cook up. Avatar fandom only, please, although if it's something I recognize I'll see what I can come up with.
Let's say two prompts per person, promise of one ficbit.
Don't be shy, it's all in good cracky fun!
(Standard warning about not being superfast applies.)
Let's say two prompts per person, promise of one ficbit.
Don't be shy, it's all in good cracky fun!
(Standard warning about not being superfast applies.)
Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (1/however many it needs)
It is said, in the days after his defeat and Firelord Zuko’s ascension to the throne, that Ozai lay in a stupor of despair and could not be comforted, even were anyone to try. The man had been strong and proud, standing at last atop the whole of the world, as none had ever done before him, lord of his own fate and beholden to none lesser. And now all, all was in ashes around him.
Zuko did not have time to attend his father- he had a country to put to rights and a war to restructure into an age of peace and healing. He had found his own two feet and was not willing to be suckered into the game of ‘you bite, I snatch away’ again for love and approval.
It did come to his attention one day, that the guards had noticed their former lord putting on weight that could not be explained away by simple inactivity, nor extra meals bought with bribery for he had nothing to bargain with. Zuko didn’t want to think anything of it, but things had been entirely too quiet from those quarters and he might as well check it out now.
It wasn’t a formal visit. Late in the evening, he walked up the path to the cliffside dungeon, clad in a heavy cloak that signaled, much like stagehands’ black clothing at a play, that he was to be acknowledged but ignored. Guards made way for him and ushered him where they knew he wished to go.
The Firelord’s personal prison wasn’t as empty as he would have liked, but there was still space enough that Ozai’s cell was far away from any that might speak or conspire with him.
As Zuko and his guards approached, he could swear he heard- humming. A deep, resonant sound that idled across some tuneless air, and he would swear he could never remember, could not even imagine his father making that sort of sound ever in his life.
Oh, something was up, and he meant to find out what and snuff it out before it had a chance to spread.
The door clanged open and Firelord Zuko stepped through. There was no party of conspirators to break up, no sorcerous devilry about to whisk his father away with a flash and an evil laugh.
There was just Ozai, lounging in the corner of his cell, hair draggled without the topknot keeping it in order, humming as if he were lazing about in a sunlit field. He wore the same simple prison uniform, hands and feet bare, and did not look up or stop when his son entered the room.
Zuko paused, almost disappointed that the man could still get him worked into a paranoid frenzy without even a fraction of the power he’d thought Ozai wielded as a boy, through the sheer enigmatic mystery of fatherhood.
The fallen Phoenix King brought his nameless song to an end and glanced sidelong at his son, neither smiling nor grimacing but somehow giving the impression that behind the mask of his face he was grinning like a fox, with many teeth.
“To what do I owe this honor?”
“You’re not moping anymore. What are you up to?”
Ozai shrugged, perhaps the most informal gesture Zuko had ever seen him make, and did not uncross his arms. “I? I am doing nothing. Perhaps I have merely found peace in a simple life. The sun sets, and rises, and the world moves on.”
“You’re starting to sound like Azula. I thought you were above her sorts of games- or at least better at them.” Now the gold eyes narrowed, and the smile grew a little tighter. Ozai flicked his gaze to the guards at Zuko’s sides, and he dismissed them with a curt gesture.
The door shut, and Zuko strode forward. He glowered through the bars, watched as his father got lazily to his feet and stood an equal distance away, neither trusting the other to get within arm’s length.
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (2/however many it needs)
“That’s the thing- you haven’t. You’re too quiet- the only strange thing I’ve heard about is the guards think you’re getting fat, and spirits alone know how that could be spun into a conspiracy,” Zuko said, and watched Ozai’s reaction with guarded wariness.
The older man simply smiled. His faded burgundy prison tunic hung baggily about him, neither concealing nor revealing anything in particular but a paunch any other man of his age would have been proud of.
“On that, I suppose we must agree.”
“This was a waste of time,” the young Firelord snapped, turning on his heel. “I cannot believe, even when you’re not trying, I still let you into my head…”
He didn’t have to look to know Ozai watched him go with more amusement than he had watched him enter. His father’s humming resumed, following him out.
…
The jailers had been ordered to keep their lord apprised of any changes. There were none to report; their charge neither complained nor asked for anything, he simply- grew heavier.
Seven months after he took the throne, Zuko stormed into his father’s cell once more.
“Are you sick?” he demanded. Ozai looked up from where he had bundled his pallet up to support his lower back, and did not deign to rise.
“Why-ever do you ask, O mighty Firelord? Is my health of such concern to you?”
“It is when you look like someone who has a stone growing in their guts- what is wrong with you?! Are you so proud you wouldn’t ask- but no, of course you are-!” Ozai watched his son fume with the air of someone who knows he has won the game, and is simply allowing his opponent to bury himself up to the neck before delivering the final blow.
When Zuko wound down, the former Firelord got slowly to his feet, coming closer to the bars. Zuko stepped up, opened his mouth, about to insist that there would be an inquest and a healer and that Ozai was not to break any bones nor even insult the healer, and there would be acquiescence and he would be a good patient and-
His hand was yanked through the bars in a grip of iron, and settled against his father’s rounded belly.
Zuko’s eyes went wide, and he twisted in his father’s grip.
“You didn’t think that when I took the name Phoenix King, it was merely an empty title, did you?”
There was taut muscle stretched over the form of some great sphere under his palm, the skin tight under the slide of cloth. The senses he had as a firebender were singing up his arm, telling him this, this was terrible power and coiled potential and fragile as a kindling flame in his father’s belly, hot beneath his hand.
“What did you do?”
…
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (3/4)
At the end of it, he could only curse the sun, the stars, and all those ancient emperors and kings who wished so desperately for immortality that they stole its secrets and found ways to bend their own abilities to the task.
At least he knew why Ozai had ordered such a mad scheme as burning down the Earth Kingdom when its prize jewels were already in his hands. What was a world of broken cities and bitter ashes, when you could stride it as a living god, and simply outlast the damage, sustained by such terrible sacrifice?
While his son went quietly mad trying to find a solution, to even understand what the effects of his father’s scheme would be, Ozai himself was apparently content to wait it out in his cell. The guard on him was doubled, which had no effect but to make him laugh. The sages had claimed that the ritual was incomplete, that without the conflagration of nearly the whole of the world, the Phoenix King’s plan to reincarnate himself into an eternal spirit of flame would simply fail.
And yet, the- child, or stone, or egg grew slowly, and Zuko hated to visit, hated to see that smug glint in his father’s eye or the way he caressed his abdomen.
Whether his bid for immortality was successful or not, the Phoenix King remained triumphant in his own mind.
…
Eight months after his coronation, Firelord Zuko sends discreet envoys to the university of Ba Sing Se, to the secretive outpost of the Sun Warrior civilization, even to the spirit world by way of ritual prayer and begging of his friend the Avatar.
…
Nine months after, he waits anxiously, only to find that the consensus is that Things are in motion, and that Ozai would have to simply be let go to his natural conclusion, whatever that might be. Zuko finds that his father’s smiles have slipped, and now, though he tries to hide it, worry has creased his face as he grows larger.
He wonders if that is a good thing, or a very bad one.
…
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)
Change has come.
The once- Phoenix-King lies where his pains have tossed him, crouched low like an animal and fighting not to make noise like one. He is flushed and feverish, or perhaps it is the room that grows hot even as he himself goes pale and gasping.
He growls at the sight of his son, and even louder when Zuko orders the room cleared, only to cut off as a cramp ripples through him, vicious and hard.
“You wrought this on yourself,” his son says, voice small and flat. Ozai knows it, too late he knows it. There are things he would say, cunning words and the kind of despairing laughter that cuts both ways- but he cannot bring them forth. Only when the pain passes does he collapse on his mat, gasping after breath.
“Is this how you meant to live forever?” Zuko asks, looking down through the bars at the looming monster that has once more shown itself only to be a fool mortal man.
“I- I cannot abandon this flesh- your Avatar wrought better than he knew-!” Ozai grits out.
He is dying. They both know it. His body will tear itself apart trying to birth what it should never have carried, a too-mortal remnant of a failed attempt to gain immortality. The egg’s power that he had thought he might tap- he contains it, but without his bending he cannot touch it, nor bring it forth to free his spirit from its prison.
The next pain hits, and Ozai screams.
Zuko watches his father’s spine arc, his swollen belly straining horrifically. He reaches through the bars for the grasping hand that scrabbles at the stone, because that’s just what you do. The older man clings to him, willing to hold even to his despised son in this fatal hour.
Never in his life has Ozai asked for mercy.
Now he pleads for it.
And Zuko- being himself, and not the man his father sought to raise- grits his teeth, and gives it to him.
…
When the embers have died down at last, there is an egg in the ashes. It is warm to touch, and glows like amber around its shadowed center. The sages swarm the room and inspect it in every way short of cracking it open, seeking its spiritual significance and if it must or must not be purified with flame.
Zuko stands aside, cinders smudged on his hands, his face as he stares at the ground. He stays that way until the senior sage places the egg (it is heavy, and warm, so warm he can feel it through his clothing) in his arms, and the rest of them begin funerary rituals to lay to rest the spirit of one who dies in childbirth, to keep them from haunting.
He feels the pulse of flame below the surface, and it is neither malevolent nor shiningly holy- it is simply alive.
He wonders if he should shatter it, or place it far below in a vault, or simply hold it close and see what hatches.
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)
Wow. WOW. Completely different I expected and in a really frakking GOOD way.
Aafgdgjk.
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)
I'm so glad you liked it^^ That's one I've been *wanting* to do.
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)
At first I was like: Oh shit, I meant Zuko preggers (very surprising, coming from me) but then I read along and I was flabbergasted. It was so bloody good!
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)
Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)