And now for something completely different

[resonance_and_d]

So I've been working on this fic, with the premise that it was much more than 100 years between the time Aang was frozen and the time Katara and Sokka found him. So we have the same characters, and there's still bending, but the level of technology is at the level of present-day Earth.

And... I was doing it because I was procrastinating on my other stuff, but now it's 12000 words long and I think I'd better start posting it or I'll start losing momentum.

BUT: It is written in totally random snippets, which are not in chronological order. I'm talking 25 separate drabbles or oneshots so far. I don't think I want to post them together, but posting them all separately would result in massive spamming.

Thus... I am going to follow the format of some memes I've seen, and put the drabble-length snippets in the comments of this post. Then I'll make another post where I figure out what order everything should go in and archive it.

Confused? So am I. But I'm going to try it anyway.

Comments

The Price of Failure (2/3)

[resonance-and-d.livejournal.com]

There was no time to change momentum. No time to do anything but realize the whole situation was a trap, as ice froze around her and she couldn't move.

After a moment, her head was freed. She took an undignified gulp of fresh air.

The waterbender was standing in front of her.

Heat, Azula thought. I need heat. She willed fire to her hands, and the heat melted the ice around her hands a little. Not enough to move them, but given enough time-

“You won't be hurting anyone else,” the waterbender said. “Not today.”

Someone would be here as her backup in just a moment. Which was, of course, unacceptable. She was trying to prove to father that she was strong. Failing at her mission, after a year of failing to capture the airbender- it would show him nothing but what he already suspected. That she was weak. That she couldn't handle the tasks he set her.

She'd lose her bending again. Or something else important, because if there was one thing that Father was good at, it was finding things you didn't even know you cared about and taking them away.

Unacceptable.

She directed as much heat as she could to her hands, but it was no good. The waterbender had noticed her efforts and froze the water again with a casual flick of her hands. “You aren't escaping,” she said. “Not until Haru and his family are safe.”

“My father is outside,” Azula said. “They won't get away.”

“He won't catch them,” the waterbender said. “We knew the house would be watched. But thank you for the warning.” She gave Azula a smile. Or showed her teeth, anyway.

Azula had been beaten. It was not a nice sensation. “What will you do with me, then?”

“You'll be free to go,” the waterbender said. “We aren't monsters. We don't kill people.”

There was a slight emphasis on “we” that Azula felt was unfair. She'd never- she'd only ever killed one person. She wasn't some sort of serial killer. She'd been interrupted several moments too early for that, she noted sourly.

The remaining moments of Azula's temporary captivity passed in sullen silence. Then the waterbender's phone buzzed, and she flipped it open. “Good,” she said. “They're clear. You won't find them again, so don't bother looking.”

She froze the ice around Azula's hands once more, and walked into another room. Azula could hear her footsteps on stairs, and then there was no sound. Had she gone to to roof? The earthbenders might have escaped through the basement, but they wouldn't leave that route open. The waterbender had probably called her airbender friend and escaped on the bison. Which meant Azula's father would know already that Azula had lost. That the airbender and his friends had been here.

It took a few moments to work her way free. Even with her hottest flame, there was a lot of ice that needed melting. She was numb and tired and all she wanted was to curl up with a cup of spiced drinking chocolate and Ty Lee.

But she still had to face her father.

The Price of Failure (3/3)

[resonance-and-d.livejournal.com]

She waited for a moment to regain her composure and to force warmth into her numb limbs so that she could stop shivering.

She strode out of the house, casually setting fire to walls and carpets as she exited. “It was a trap,” she told her father. “The waterbender was waiting.”

He gave her a look that was at once weary and angry. “And?”

“There were two earthbenders,” she said. And then, making sure to keep her tone casual- “I killed them both. But it wasn't clean.” She shot another jet pf fire at the house. “The waterbender escaped.” She didn't spend time hoping that the earthbenders would make as clean an escape as they were planning. They wouldn't. She'd only bought herself a little while, until someone looked through the wreckage and wrote a newspaper article that mentioned no bodies were there.

He looked at her for a moment, as though sizing up her words. Then he gave her a nod and turned to walk away.

When she woke up the next morning, Ty Lee was gone, and all her father did when she asked him where she'd gone was raise one eyebrow and say: “Where do you think she went?”

She thought of Ty Lee, locked away in one of the buildings they kept benders in so that her father could go and take their bending. Or one of the ones where they kept witnesses who were too important to kill but too dangerous to let free. None of them were good places for Ty Lee, who needed big spaces to practice her gymnastics in, and who couldn't stand staying still for more than a moment.

There was a dangerous look in her father's eyes, though, so all Azula said was: “I guess she couldn't handle the pressure. She must have run off.”

She walked to her room, and sat, and watched her hands clench and unclench as though they belonged to someone else, and wondered why there was a sick hollow feeling in her stomach, and why all of her ability to craft cunning plans had abandoned her when that she needed it the most.