#four: so that's more earthbending in one minute and ten seconds than was in that whole ass abomination of a movie | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

druddigoon · 4 years

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Snippets of ATLA wips I hate too much to finish that I like enough to post on Tumblr

I know most of my followers are from Pokemon nowadays, but I still do post some atla stuff. Also this is probably like 4k+ words of complete shit so I’m putting them under the cut

Brother, Son

“How do you play Pai Sho?” Ozai asks, peeking over the low rim of the Pai Sho table. He’s almost four now, toddles his way around the palace clinging the legs of the staff, parroting official declarations from the leverage of a chabudai. Their parents barely acknowledge his younger brother - Azulon is busy countering earthbender resistance on the eastern front, and Ilah handles military campaigns to the Water Tribes. As loyal Fire Nation citizens, their duty rings like a mantra: Nation beyond family, personal sacrifice for the greater good.

And Ozai is left alone.

Iroh idly twirls a lotus tile beneath his finger. “You’ll learn it when you’re older,” he says, pulling the trick their mother always used on him. Iroh is fifteen; old enough to join the army but not in the front lines, not yet anyways. It drives him mad.

Ozai pouts and starts whining an ear-grating whimper. That kind of noise usually gets him a backhand and a harsh scolding from their father, but he’s smart enough to realize that Iroh would never hurt him in that way. He tugs on Iroh’s sleeve, puffs his chubby cheeks into a pout. “Please?”

When Iroh doesn’t respond, Ozai stumbles his way to his brother and collapses around his waist. Small arms try, and fail, to wrap around him. “I humbly request assistance regarding certain matters of conduct that appear to be beyond my comprehension. Would you care to enlighten me?”

If Iroh had been drinking tea at that moment, it would be coming back up through his nose. He ends up bursting out laughing, because did Ozai not realize how sarcastic that was? His brother rolls off, confused, but ends up giggling along.

After their laughter petered off, Iroh wipes the tears off his face and grins. “I suppose that can be arranged.” He gestures at the tiles while Ozai bounces up and down. “Now watch, my disciple; Pai Sho is a game of strategy…”

Ozai fails to grasp the finer points of Pai Sho, but Iroh discovers that he didn’t mind. He likes watching Ozai; the boy has an awful poker face, and Iroh can differentiate the multitude of emotions that manifested in his expression. Confusion, in a crooked tilt of his eyebrows and a crease on his nose. Contemplation, in a furrowing of his forehead and intense glare of his eyes. Glee, in the way the corners of his mouth curved like a shy little thing. Iroh begins giving him little loopholes just to see that smile more.

Curt raps at his door snaps Iroh out of his contemplation. Ozai casually moves another tile. “Come in.”

A servant enters. “Prince Iroh, your firebending lesson starts at noon. It’s been two hours.”

Iroh looks at the sun outside his window, surprised to see how low it hangs; he’s never been the one to lose track of time. He glances back at Ozai, who has his head turned away from him as if he’d trying not to meet his gaze. “I’ll be out in a minute. Wait outside.”

After the servant leaves, Iroh grabs his brother’s shoulders and turns Ozai towards him. “What’s that matter?”

Ozai’s face looks crestfallen. “I-” he stops, purses his lips, and continues with the simple honesty of a child, “-I don’t want you to leave, that’s all.”

"No.”

So this is what having a brother feels like. Iroh smiles at Ozai, who looks back incredulously. "We’re princes. The servants listen to us, not the other way around.” He makes his move with a flourish. "Your turn.”

Oai’s grin was the widest he’d seen yet, and their game fades well into the evening.

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Ozai cannot please their father, Iroh’s learned, and not for the lack of trying. The boy wakes up hours before the sun rises, rehearsing through his katas illuminated by the cusp of dawn. Stands a little straighter in court meetings, gleams with a pomp of authority when in the general vicinity of the throne. He loves Azulon with every fiber of his being.

Azulon hardly notices.

He can feel the flames of rigor flare in his brother’s chi as he watches Azulon address his troops, the wisp of smoke that escapes through clenched fists. They were royalty; lavished with care, laden with gifts, and yet he still yearns, yearns for something that he will never reach. (They have a habit, the Fire Nation, of aiming the arrow further than the bow can shoot.)

Because Ozai is flawed, and very much so. Despite his rigorous training, he is naturally clumsy, as if his chi is innately unbalanced from the moment of his birth. At the age of six he still possesses the incoordination of a toddler, tripping over his own feet and fumbling with objects enough that he’s been banned from the royal archives from accidentally dropping a candle. His fire burns strong, but not strong enough for someone of his bloodline. By the time Iroh was his age, he’d already mastered four more sets than he did. By the time Iroh was his age, he could recite the names and dates of all important battles (all Fire Nation victories, of course) and pinpoint them on a map. By the time Iroh was his age, he had earned the respect of his father of his country.

Ozai is the second-born; less talented, less needed. He bears the scars of the uncontrollable on his skin, reminders of their father’s fury and the love he can never own because of his succession at birth.

(And perhaps that was why, when Azula came to the world with infernos in her eyes and lightning at her fingertips, Ozai named her after his greatest desire, and reached out for her like it never did.)

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Shortly after Lu (and he should think my son instead of just his name, like he’s a pawn on a roster, just a tally amidst the casualties, but it hurts too much when he’s used him like a soldier instead of loving him like a father) Ten’s death, Iroh receives a letter stamped with the royal insignia, addressed specifically to him. The person who brings it is one of his closest servants, one of the few he allows in his tent anymore; he bids him leave with a jerking sweep of his hand, and Iroh is alone.

The precise calligraphy of words is heartwrenchingly familiar, and yet the letter’s contents read like a stranger’s. His brother’s tone is formal, clipped. Ursa and I are sorry for your loss it reads, and the rice paper starts to smolder around its edges. I have decided to return this back to you. I no longer have any need for it.

There is a bundle attached to the message, heavier than expected, and inside Iroh finds the Prince’s crown. He knows that this means. He knows his brother too much and not enough, because they are worlds away and he is losing him.

His troops looked startled when they saw their general exit his tent for the first time in months, clad in the dark linens of a mourning man. When asked where he was leaving to, Iroh replied simply: “Home.”

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(“Ozai used to be my brother.” Iroh mentioned once, offhandedly, the night they first camped at the Western Air Temple when he found Zuko wide awake. He was standing in the central pavilion (with its sweeping murals amidst pallid marble, that probably wasn’t built to be so empty) leaning out from the balcony to catch the passing wind on his arm. The other was wrapped up in a cast.

Zuko looked at him. He seemed confused; he could see it in the familiar crooked tilt of the brow, the way his nose wrinkled just so. “But Father still is.”

He says it with such sincerity and innocence despite the bandages obscuring his left visage, and later when he falls asleep, Iroh weeps. Because after all Ozai did to the boy, he still loved him like a son to a father, a brother to a brother.)

Azula Week Day 7 (AN: Never thought of a title for this haha)

“I did not consent to this,” Azula says, after she recovers from the initial shock.

Her only reply is a burble. Izumi is one year and five months old and still communicates in phonemes. Zuzu seemed to be slacking in supplementing her development; by her age, Azula was just beginning to recite classic Fire Nation poems.

She resolves not to mention it in front of him. “I was also under the impression you had alternate babysitting options that didn’t drastically increase your child’s risk of mortality.”

Zuko, who had barged into her household unannounced (“You know there are strict punishments for home invaders under Fire Nation law, right?”), has the grace to act sheepish. “And those ‘alternate babysitting options’ are out of reach now, unfortunately.” He unceremoniously dumps his daughter onto Azula’s lap; Izumi’s shirtfront is damp with slobber and immediately wets Azula’s robes. “Iroh’s tending to his teashop in Ba Sing Se, and Ursa left with Noren to visit their old village for a couple weeks. Mai—not that I consider her a babysitter, she’d kill me—is coming with me, and none of my friends except you and Toph are in the Caldera right now.”

Azula raises an eyebrow, still managing to look skeptical with a toddler drooling against her robes.

“Please?” Zuko pulls a puppy-cub face, the one he used when they were children to get what he wanted from their mother. Azula has no idea why he believes it’ll work on her. “I have an urgent meeting with Aang in Republic City, and I can’t bring Izumi—or Kiyi for that matter, she had school—along with me. I don’t trust the palace staff to take care of them.”

Funny how Zuzu trusts her more than the people hired to serve him. Azula relents. “Fine. You better come back for them in four days like you promised, or I’m putting both up for adoption.”

Zuko ignores the jab (it had no heat to it anyway) and showers profuse thanks, pulling her into a quick, uncomfortable, and consent-violating hug. He sweeps out of the apartment before Azula can retaliate, most likely in a way that would burn her house down.

The door swings shut behind him.

Not long after, Toph walks in, clad in her official ambassador’s attire and looking utterly bewildered. Azula takes mercy and fills her in.

“We’re impromptu babysitting for my brother. I have Izumi, and Kiyi’s already upstairs brooding or something.” Kiyi is pushing into her teens and is already doggedly stretching her independence, as well as everyone’s patience. (Azula likens it to jumping off a cliff and hoping to fly.) She had bolted for their guest bedroom the moment Zuko arrived, in an attempt to avoid the “grown-ups” below.

“Oh. Huh.”

“We’re stuck with them until Zuzu comes back from his meeting.”

“Huh.” Toph sits down on their living room couch, still processing the information. Azula tugs a bowl of fruit out of Izumi’s reach. “Huh.”

“Remind me again why I decided to make nice with him.”

Toph shrugs. “Beats me.” ------------------------------------

Azula has brought down armies, made lesser men bow beneath her feet; she overtook Ba Sing Se in a day’s coup without killing a single person, something her ancestors been trying for eons without success; she almost killed the avatar, and had once stood against him and three other master benders (because Zuko wasn’t one) to come out unharmed. She was a prodigy firebender and manipulator, capable of getting almost whatever she wanted.

If any of those achievements transferred to present day, it means that she is capable of feeding a drooling toddler.

“Eat.” Azula commands, pressing a spoonful of rice congee against Izumi’s unyielding lips.

She once had the unfortunate privilege of watching Zuzu feed her—saying “heeeere comes the dragon!” in a disgustingly sugary voice and cooing whenever Izumi took a bite—and refuses to replicate his technique. So far she’s managed to get one mouthful in, only for Izumi to spit it all out onto her bib.

An ungroomed Toph walks into the kitchen, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Whereas Azula always rises with the sun, the earthbender prefers to sleep in. She sticks a finger up her right nostril. “Everything alright here, Thunder?”

Azula takes the opportunity to remove herself from the warzone, stepping over to the sink to wash the stickiness from her fingers. “Just peachy. The infant seems determined to starve herself and I’ve just about given up trying to stop her.” She glares up indignantly when Toph has the audacity to laugh at her. “Hilarious, isn’t it? You try shoving congee up her mouth.”

“Heh, sure,” It’s too early in the morning to engage in their snarky banter, so Toph just picks up the brush on the counter and grooms her boarqpine’s nest of a hairdo. Izumi starts making babbling noises, bits of congee still dripping past her lips. “You go wake up Kiyi then. The clock on the wall behind me says there’s only an hour until she has to go to her classes.”

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“How did waking the sleeping beast go?” Downstairs, Toph seems to have successfully allocated half the bowl into Izumi’s stomach. Her amusement tapers off as Azula sweeps into the kitchen like a brewing storm. “What’s wrong, Thunder?”

(It’s sweet that Toph can detect her moods and episodes through the way she carries herself and know what to do without Azula having to tell her outright. Right after the war it had been a sign that she was slipping from perfection, but nowadays Toph’s gotten sharper and Azula’s learned that there’s strength in vulnerability.)

“Not well, unfortunately. I stuck a hand in its mouth and it bit back.” She occupies herself in wiping Izumi’s face, hoping that Toph is familiar with her moods enough to know now is not the time to pry.

Toph’s not happy about that (she can see it in the way she blows at her bangs, how her nose wrinkles just so) but decides not to pursue. “Well I think that’s all Izumi’s eating today. We should probably change her diaper now. I smelled something funky while I was feeding her.”

“I’ll do it. Agni knows how you wipe your own butt.”

“If you want, I’ll let you do it for me.”

Azula mimes a shudder, and Toph snickers. “I did not need that suggestion. Next time you make such a scandalous request, I’ll sleep in my own bed for the next month.”

“Pssshh. As if you’re able to hold out that long.” Azula is pulling Izumi’s linens out from under her when she hears Toph set another bowl of congee on the counter. She looks over her shoulder to see Kiyi creeping near the table, timid as a sparrowmouse. The girl quietly takes Toph’s offered spoon but ends up clinking it against the ceramic, looking up at Azula in guilt. Toph tilts her head expectantly.

She sighs, strolling over to the pile of supplies Zuzu left her and picking out some clean linens. “I understand that some adolescents are incapable of regulating what comes out of their mouths, and will not hold it against you. Now stop acting like a kicked puppycub.”

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One questionably wrapped diaper later, Izumi is bouncing on the carpet with Azula holding her for support. The toddler is drooling (again) and making infant noises and what suspiciously sounds like “A-zhu-a”. Babies are a peculiar thing, high maintenance with rolls of fat, soft cheeks and a bulbous head. This one has come out of Mai’s vagina, after… no, best not to think about it. Azula can never imagine herself this gross and vulnerable.

An infant babbling Azula’s name on repeat is somewhat unnerving, so she procures a wooden rattle to occupy Izumi, only to remove it when she starts gnawing. Izumi starts pouting and making little distressed noises, so Azula returns it.

Toph has sent Kiyi off with some well wishes and a hearty slug to the shoulder. Now she settles on the carpet, listening to the rhythm of Izumi’s stomps.

“She should be close to walking by now,” Azula says, “Both Zuzu and I learned to walk by our thirteenth month.”

Toph shrugs. “Give her time. She might be a late bloomer; I didn’t walk by myself until I was well over two years old. It’s probably why my parents didn’t see me as a good earthbender, us being familiar with the ground and all.”

A pause. Toph leans in, contemplative. “...Do you think Izumi would let me touch her face?”

It isn’t like Toph—headstrong, stubborn Toph, Avatar’s sifu, greatest earthbender in the world—to speak with a quiet waver in her voice. In a way, her uncertainty makes Azula feel better about her own insecurities right now. They are navigating new territories, but they are doing so together. “I don’t think she’ll mind much. Be gentle with the top the head though; I’ve heard that the skull isn’t too developed there.”

It brings Toph out of her contemplation. She scoffs. “Yeah right, who do you take me as?”

“Someone who punches holes in the pavement when she’s angry and smashes boulders with her head when she’s bored,” Azula reminds her.

“Also someone who’s a master metalbender, which asks for, as you like to say about your crazy fire katas, ‘utmost finesse’.”

Despite her braggadocio, Toph reaches for Izumi’s face gingerly, cradling her cheek against calloused fingers. Izumi wrinkles her face but, to their surprise, does not cry out.

Azula watches as Toph’s hands explore Izumi’s face: cresting over her nub nose, ghosting past her eyes, combing the downy black hair without ever touching the scalp. Toph herself is in a trance, her brows furrowed in concentration. After a brief eternity she withdraws with a fluid motion as if finishing the tail end of a meditation.

“Hello, I’m Toph,” she tells her.

Izumi claps her hands.

‘She’s squishy.” Toph says, turning to Azula. Izumi is repeating “Tawh, Tawh, Tawh” while bouncing in Azula’s arms. Entranced, Toph reaches over to grab her hand. “Can I hold her?”

Yes, they’ll get through this together.

“Can’t know if you don’t try,” Azula says when Izumi leans forward into Toph’s arms.

Ember Island Blues (AN: This was a test thing gone wrong and I hate it a lot)

Azula has only gained a few inches after the war, making her shorter than Katara. Her hair, once lustrous black, has greyed prematurely; her eyes, while sharp, now have a haunted look to them - a sun’s wavering reflection on deep ocean. Still she walks with grim poise and posture, her royal robes replaced with a traveler’s attire that reminds Katara eerily of that decisive Agni Kai. They lock eyes, and the waves rock just a little higher.

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She wakes to floorboards creaking, Aku’s muffled hiss as she bumps into the dining room counter. There’s a distinct click of a lock, an agonizingly slow creak of the door as someone tries to silence her sneaking out only to prolong the sound she makes. Only when it stops does Katara sigh and get up. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes and tamping down a yawn, she steps outside.

Despite the heat wave indicative of Fire Nation weather, Ember Island’s mornings are surprisingly chilly. It’s still dark outside, the sun a sliver of pink beyond the horizon. Katara expects to find Aku fooling around before quickly returning home as the temperature gets to her. What she doesn’t expect is to find her at the edge of the ocean, practicing katas with a single-minded intensity that she hasn’t seen since Zuko joined their group during the war.

She clears her throat, notices Aku’s breath hitch, like she’d been surprised. The girl looks at her with a wide expression. “Good morning, Auntie Katara.”

As if she has done nothing wrong waking up and causing a racket at the crack of dawn. Katara clicks disapprovingly. “Kya and the others are asleep.” You should be too.

“Can’t.” Aku says. She draws her arms and legs toward her body, lowering and exhaling and relaxing at the conclusion of her kata. The entire move is precise, not a hair out of place. “It’s a firebender thing.”

Firebenders rise with the sun, Katara knows. They get their power from its rays, just like how her blood thrums a little bit stronger, her movements a little more fluid, under the waxing of the moon. What she doesn’t consider is how it affects their sleeping schedule.

No wonder she never sees Zuko asleep in the mornings.

“Well, be quieter next time, okay?” She says. Aku nods before resuming her practice. Katara sits down on the spray-soaked crags to watch.

Since the conclusion of the war, Katara’s waterbending had taken a backseat. Nowadays she mostly uses it to heal the scrapes and cuts on her children, to do the laundry. Her real waterbending (the hardening of blood against flesh, puppets straining under a master’s reins) is always - has always - centered around combat, and there is little need for that in an era of peace.

It surprises her how Aku practices without stopping—her little brow furrowing in utmost concentration—until the sun fully rises from sea to sky. If Aang had been this disciplined at this age, he’d have defeated Ozai before the start of summer. Occasionally she breathes, little tongues of flame leaping off her palms, her mouth, weaving fiery blue filigree in the shadowed dawn.

“Were you cold out there?” Katara asks, when the air starts heating up and they are on their way back to the villa. “Do you do this every day?”

“Um.” Aku looked perplexed. “No and...yes? All firebenders have an inner fire, which they have to maintain so it won’t die or get out of control.

"Mine keeps me warm, I guess. We practice katas every morning so we don’t accidentally burn something or someone.”

For such a destructive element, Aku’s explanation hinges a lot on precision and control. Perhaps that is why they need it, Katara thinks. “Do you like firebending?”

“Mhm.” A turtlecrab pops out of the sand, and Aku stops to observe as it burrows back inside. “Mommy always says that bending is a gift. Something that should be used to its fullest extent.”

Of course Azula would say that. “And what about you?”

“I don’t think it’s a gift.” The house is still silent and dark as they enter, the three other inhabitants soundly sleeping away. When Katara closes her eyes, she can feel the pull of her element, Aku smoldering softly by her side. “I think it’s a part of who you are, as a person, I mean. When you neglect it, you’re neglecting part of yourself too.”

Aku gives her one last smile, the ripe innocence of a child, then heads back to her room with the floorboards creaking behind her.

The next morning, Katara rises with the sun and leaves for the seaside.

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When it comes to her daughter’s appearance, Azula has clearly gotten the upper hand. Aku looks aristocratic: pointed nose, tapering chin, pale porcelain skin. The only outward resemblance to Sokka is her hair. Instead of jet black locks, Aku’s are dark and wavy, like the seas her father had once called home.

Sometimes Katara sees snippets of her brother in Aku’s mannerisms. How she seamlessly segues from a noble strut to stumbling over nothing, how she demands “scientific proof and evidence” when accused of not eating her vegetables, how she inhales information like it is going out of style, how she seems to eat more than Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin combined.

There are times when Aku is just Aku. Her demureness is all Azula with none of the underlying malice. Instead she’s hesitant, almost shy. Asks permission for almost everything she did. Speaks formally, and only formally, to Katara and her children untilasw Bumi decided to ask about her adventures with Uncle Sokka. She is—as Katara discovered accidentally, when she’d seen her sketching the sea on a notepad—an excellent artist. Katara has no idea who she gets that from. Certainly not Sokka, that’s for sure.

Her children are already familiar with the Fire Nation princess, having been babysat together quite a few times. Back when Tenzin was too young to bring to the Air Nomads, when Katara had actually accompanied Aang during his excursions around the world.

Tenzin is more wary than anything. Katara could distinctly remember Aku being there for his birth, but they never had the chance to bond as much as her other kids, what with Tenzin constantly being out with Aang. His father’s absence is clearly stinging; he’s more stiff than usual, takes his glider to coast the drafts first thing in the morning and doesn't return until dusk.

To Bumi, Aku is another playmate he can rope into playing with. As the sole non-bender of his family, he practically idolizes his Uncle Sokka. Aku soaks up the attention, telling (probably embellished, definitely exaggerated) tales of his conquests, later acting them out with theatrical flourish. She’s even carved out a replica of his boomerang out of driftwood, which now rests on Bumi’s bedside when he sleeps.

Kya is immediately taken to her. The girls both love to read, spending hours upon hours on the couch while Bumi and Tenzin play on the beach, curling up against each other with a battered book propped up between them. When not reading, she leads Aku around a tour of their villa and the surrounding beach, pointing out little pools and deltas she uses to practice her waterbending. Aku is fascinated, and on nights when Katara is too tired to enforce the curfew, the shoreline roils with flame-touched waves and steam.

Aku’s flames still give Katara a bitter taste in her throat, the pain of a could-be scar blooming against her chest. She remembers being at the receiving end of two pointed fingers, blue fraying at the edges, the same fingers her brother later kisses at his wedding. Aang is twelve years old again, wrapped in her arms; Zuko is seizing uncontrollably, the world is at war.

But this girl, the result of their union, is not born in war, has never carried the wounds or shed the tears or bore the frigid chains against metal grate bars. Just like Zuko shouldn’t be blamed for the deeds of his forefathers, Aku never asked for her parents’ histories.

Somehow, watching her stumble in the sand, Katara finds it easier to forgive every day.

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“It’s funny,” she murmurs, “Daddy laughs more to strangers than he does to Mommy, and Mommy acts better to officials I know she hates than she does to Daddy."

"But when they’re alone with me, Daddy can frown and yell all he wants and Mommy can throw fits and cry. And I’m glad. To be part of that. It means they trust me with their weaknesses, in a way.” And perhaps there’s a quiet strength in that too.

Aku reaches over to grab Katara's hand (the girl's skin is gritty with clinging sand, soft with an innocence her aunt’s never had; Katara wonders if she’s ever been burnt before) and their fingers touch with silent truce. "I trust you too, Auntie Katara."

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Bending is an art. Aku performs it with the steady tenacity of a wolf-warrior, an ice-dodger at the prow of a sailboat. Energy is never lost, only converted. Even firebenders must give to take.

#drudwrites #ATLA #avatar the last airbender

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