This is the reason I don't have the next Jeture chapter done yet.
procrastinatingSo it occurred to me that Dilandau could totally be a Firebender. I mean, come on. And without a teacher or anyone who even knows what he is, his lack of control is totally explainable. I could say that the Sorcerers' Fate Alterations had something to do with making him a Firebender. Somehow. It's possible!
This little AU has consumed my mind over the past two weeks, whispering you want to write me you know you do. Just a drabble or two! C'mon! It's perfect! This NEEDS TO BE DONE!
So I caved. I wrote a little something last night. Of course that wasn't enough, but I don't have time to write a full-blown epic for this (and I'm already working on Jeture and that
avatarbigbang mini-bang fic that became a monster) so I'm turning this into a request meme. Meme is probably not the right word for this, but oh well. I can get away with this with my current schedule because I know there aren't many people watching this journal, and the active Escaflowne fandom is kind of small. Poor fandom :( The Rules
1. Comment with your prompt: a character, a scene from canon to redo, or something else you'd like to see done. You can request any point in the timeline, though I might ask that you don't request anything post-series or near the end of the series just yet, as I have no idea how the plot for this will pan out.
2. You can request as many times as you like, but wait until I've filled your current request before you ask for another. Put each new request in a new comment.
3. Official deviation from canon begins when Dilandau is created. The first notable deviation is the thing I have written at the end of this post.
4. I am open to the idea that other canon characters might become benders. If they do, it is all Hitomi's (accidental) doing.
5. Bending is unknown in this Esca-verse. People don't know what bending is or even that it exists. In fact, it probably shouldn't exist, but messing with Fate does funny things.
6. Repeat requests will be deleted (I'll let you know if yours is a repeat)
Timeline/History:
World Building: where bending comes from, and how Millerna is a waterbender
World Building: bender population distribution (second half of the post)
World Building: Folken's role in all of this
This timeline will get filled in as prompts are requested and answered.
Pre-series:
Dilandau discovers fire
During series:
Millerna heals with waterbending for the first time
Post-series:
Celena knows that something is missing
And here is the (first) thing I have written for this AU. I might put this in a more convenient location later, when I think of a more convenient location.
Dilandau is seven, and he is in a room with the sun.
He has never seen fire burn before. Candles are nothing like this. Candles are small and weak and know nothing of hunger, of potential, of ambition. Candle flames cling quietly to the wax-wrapped string that is their entire world and wait, placid and content, for their lives to be snuffed. Dilandau is a fighter; he cannot respect something that has no spirit.
So it isn’t until he accidentally knocks over one such candle from its perch in his master’s study that he realizes what fire can do. His master notices the mishap instantly, of course, and rushes to stamp out the flames, cursing Dilandau’s clumsiness with each breath.
It will never occur to Dilandau to wonder why the fire didn’t die. It should have—the flame is small and the master’s boot is large and heavy—but instead it sparks and sputters and clings desperately to the dry cloth it has fallen upon. It darts through a forest of winding threads, one boot-step ahead of the curling smoke trail that the master frantically follows.
Dilandau watches, mesmerized, and does not hear his master snarl at him to don’t just stand there you foolish child! Help put this out! All he hears is the ragged crackle of the fire’s breath, desperate for life, fighting to survive and consume and rise.
Dilandau understands that desperation, and suddenly all he wants is for the fire to win.
Go! he thinks, and his fingers clench into the soft centers of his palms, where they feel—but don’t register—the heat budding beneath his skin. There, catch on the papers! And the tapestry behind the desk!
Dilandau doesn’t think it strange when the small blaze follows his mental commands. The fire is not a thing; the fire is a brother in arms. The fire is a kindred spirit. The fire is him.
Dilandau draws in a breath and he feels something break loose inside him like a crusty scab peeling away, like the roots of a baby tooth tearing from the pressure beneath: painful, startling, and liberating. Something hot kindles in his stomach.
The fire has caught a corner of the papers. It flares, bright and joyous in its success, and flings itself across the desk, spreading out as the master tries to beat it down with his coat.
Heat roughens Dilandau’s throat; it burns as though he’s run for miles. The kindling in his stomach catches with his next breath, and a fever floods through his legs and arms and wraps around his scalp. But none of this feels uncomfortable. None of this feels alien.
Dilandau does not feel as though he’s on fire; Dilandau is the fire. When he raises his hands up and fills his lungs, he is not even conscious of his motions; all he can feel is a fierce swell of triumph as the flames on his master’s desk snag the tapestry on the wall and begin to climb.
The flames will not touch Dilandau. He knows this instinctively, so it is without hesitation that he urges them to circle around the desk and cook the door’s circuits.
The enemy cannot be allowed to escape.
Seconds later, the fire has won, and Dilandau is standing in a room with the sun while his laughter drowns away the sound of his master’s screaming.
Here via escafans, because crazy crossovers are always fun
What're your ideas on airbenders?
('cause my brain went : Fanelia! Hey, look, it's people with wings who are all but extinct!)
Hm. How about this: were/are any of the princesses benders?
Yay crazy crossovers!
Ah, airbenders. Yeah, I was thinking about the Draconians as well, as they did mess with Fate to the point of destroying their own civilization. So they could be the reason that bending is even possible through Fate alterations. Soooooo, let's say that bending first came into existence in Atlantis, but the abilities and arts were lost after their civilization fell. The Draconians retained some of their airbending in the form of their wings, but people like Varie and Van are unaware that their ancestors had the ability to actually manipulate air itself.
Outside of the people that the Sorcerers experimented on, anyone who is alive and currently a bender is so because of Hitomi. She accidentally warps reality on a daily basis without even knowing it, so that's a perfect excuse for the art coming back.
As for the Princesses, I'm assuming you mean the Astons? Heheeee.
Millerna becomes a waterbender. She's powerful enough to heal with it. I'm unsure about Eries, as I don't really have a good grasp of her character.
Re: Yay crazy crossovers!
Millerna heals with waterbending for the first time (1/2)
The bandages aren’t helping. No matter how many times Millerna changes them, the red continues to seep through until the cloth is soggy and dripping onto the metal table. The wounds refuse to close and the blood doesn’t clot until long after it has abandoned the slowly fading warmth of Van’s body.
Van is going to die, and Millerna can’t save him.
It doesn’t make any sense.
But not much in Millerna’s life makes sense anymore. She has befriended a strange girl from the moon—the Mystic Moon—and has watched that same girl wrap time and space and even destiny itself around the cards in her fingers. She has watched people be spirited away in columns of otherworldly golden light, vanishing and re-materializing like the gods themselves. She has watched a mechanical metal dragon fly with more agility and speed than its slender wings should be capable of. She has watched kingdoms fall before invisible armies, and she has seen a boy call a firestorm to life with his bare fingers and not be burned.
And she has watched the boy on the table before her sprout the wings of demons from children’s fairytales.
The solidity of Millerna’s world is crumbling. Her life is spiderwebbed with impossibilities, its reflection in her mind like that of a cracked mirror: disjointed and surreal.
Hitomi and Merle hover silently nearby. Hitomi twists her fingers and tugs at her pendant while Merle paces and taps her claws, her fur frizzing from anxiety. Merle catches Millerna’s gaze and stills, narrowed eyes widening momentarily, then narrowing again. “Well?” she hisses, and Millerna knows not to take the catgirl’s anger personally. Merle is frustrated and terrified, and the general atmosphere of the crew isn’t helping anyone’s nerves. Their nervous whispers invade Millerna’s ears as not-quite white noise and dull the edge of her focus.
“I can’t believe the King is a Draconian!”
“I thought they didn’t exist…”
“Did you see those wings?”
“Are they really cursed?”
“I always thought that Escaflowne don’t fly natural. It’s no wonder…”
Millerna lashes out against the unwanted murmuring by answering Merle with her voice raised louder and sharper than necessary. “His pulse is unstable. At this rate, he will die.”
Millerna heals with waterbending for the first time (2/2)
Hitomi blanches and gasps “no!” and Merle is an orange blur that’s suddenly in her face, snapping, “You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Do something!”
Millerna’s lips tighten. Her throat knots with anger and frustration, and the back of her neck flushes with heat. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been trying, but his wounds aren’t natural. It looks almost like they’ve been inflicted from the inside.”
As she says this, she reaches to the side to dip a clean cloth into a tub of disinfecting water. She doesn’t bother to wring it out before she brushes the sodden fabric over a wound that she’d been in the process of re-bandaging, and tries to wipe away the blood for a clear view of the cut.
Except that isn’t what happens. The moment that the cloth brushes Van’s ruined flesh, something deep within Millerna pushes, and the water responds like the tides to the moon and pools above the wound. She can’t see the water coalesce, but she can feel its shape like a balloon beneath the cloth in her hand.
And then it starts to glow.
Dimly, Millerna registers the startled gasps as everyone around her turns to stare in shock and awe. A luminescence as pure and white as moonlight floods her hand and the rag within her fingers. The water is glowing. The water is glowing. And, she realizes after the numbing shock has passed, that isn’t all the water is doing.
She can feel the wound stitching together.
Or trying to, at least. The water struggles with the damage; Millerna can feel the muscle and skin resisting, held back by an alien, unidentifiable force. The source of this damage, she realizes, isn’t even in Van’s body. It’s somewhere else.
Eventually she draws the water back—push and pull—and lifts the cloth away. The wound is half-closed, but it re-opens—a bloody flower blooming before everyone’s stunned gaze.
“Hitomi! How did you do that?” Allen asks, and suddenly everyone is looking at the girl from the Mystic Moon, who in turn is looking just as baffled as Millerna feels.
Hitomi? she thinks. But it wasn’t her…it was me! Even as she thinks it, the strangeness of it weighs unsettlingly in her chest. Of course they would think Hitomi’s responsible; brilliant white lights and miracles are always connected to her.
But Hitomi is already denying it, shaking her head and raising her palms, her green eyes wide and confused. “No! No, that…that wasn’t me.”
And slowly, all eyes shift from Hitomi to Millerna.
How strange, Millerna thinks, distantly. I wonder if this is how Hitomi feels all of the time. But even stranger is how none of this—the water and the push-pull-glow-feel and mend—felt alien to her at all.
Out loud, she says, “fill a tub with water and put the King in it. I can keep him stabilized until the source of his injuries is found.”
A second ticks by, and then the Crusade erupts into motion and sound as people stumble to follow her orders and fill the room with questions. For a moment, Millerna doesn’t even hear the noise. She remembers the water’s push and pull and how it swayed in harmony with her. She doesn’t feel as though she has gained something new, but rather that she has found a missing part of herself.
Deep inside, Millerna feels whole.
Re: Millerna heals with waterbending for the first time (2/2)
I love this, how natural it feels to her despite its total newness.
(Also, people whispering in the background and gossiping? Excellent.)
Re: Millerna heals with waterbending for the first time (2/2)
Thank you!
Re: Millerna heals with waterbending for the first time (2/2)
Re: Millerna heals with waterbending for the first time (2/2)
Now you made me want to see more of Hitomi in this story arc ;)
Re: Millerna heals with waterbending for the first time (2/2)
I was at first going to have everyone be shocked and startled at Millerna, but then realized that no, they really would think it's all Hitomi. Hitomi does that sort of thing on a daily basis.
I will eventually get around (hopefully soon) to filling your prompt request, so you can always ask for one about Hitomi ;) Her role is pretty important in this world.
Glad you liked this!