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

Training

[resonance-and-d.livejournal.com]

“I don't feel any different,” Ty Lee said, because the differences she felt were all pain, and Azula would have mentioned, if that was what being a bender was like. She would have stopped Ozai from doing this to Ty Lee.

At least, Ty Lee hopes she would have.

“You've never bent before,” Azula said, tones crisp and military, as though Ty Lee were some new recruit in Ozai's little army. “It won't be easy at first. It took me until I was four to figure it out. It will probably take you at least a few days before you can feel the difference.”

With that, she began to walk Ty Lee through the basic breathing exercises. She was more relaxed once she was in motion, dropping the precise diction and moving Ty Lee's limbs to the correct positions.

“Power in firebending comes from the breath,” she said, murmuring it into Ty Lee's ear and blowing so that it tickled. Ty Lee giggled.

Azula stood up straight and assumed a commanding tone once more.

“It doesn't matter how strong you are physically,” she continued. “Control your breathing, and you control the fire.”

So Ty Lee did the breathing exercises, and there was- maybe something, a tiny decrease in the pain- but she couldn't make flames. And Azula looked irritated after an hour of trying and failing, but she wouldn't give up, and finally Ty Lee had to drag her to the bedroom just to get her mind on something else. Which was a little risky, since Ozai might come home at any time, but that was part of the thrill.

The firebending lessons continued every day after that. Ty Lee made no progress, though she managed to learn some of the forms and the pain went away gradually. It wasn't that she wasn't trying. She was. But when Azula talked about the source of fire that Ty Lee ought to be feeling, she didn't feel it. And the forms seemed wrong, though she couldn't figure out what might be better, and every time Ozai came around he scowled at her, and she remembered how it had felt, when he'd tried to give her bending, and she shivered.

Ty Lee wasn't a bender. She wasn't sure why Ozai had thought she could be made into one.