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I bring you Doctor Who PODFIC

_rubber_chicken@livejournal.com — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:59:24 GMT

So, podtor_who is doing a month-long challenge in which people sign up, record, and then post as many newly recorded, non-crossover Doctor Who podfic as possible. I got bitten by the podfic bug (it is so much fun omg), so I wound up doing no less than three days and four podfics (one of which is quite short). The last one I will wait to post, as I haven't heard back from the author on if anything needs fixing with it.

So, without further ado, I give you....PODFIC.

Title: The Sea Devils and Mrs. Pond
Author: dragonofmemory
Reader: _rubber_chicken
Length: 41:50, 6969 words
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Third Doctor, Amy Pond, and minor appearances by the Brigadier, Sgt. Benton, and Rory
Summary: This is the first story in the "Amy Pond in Three-Era" verse. Mrs. Pond gets stranded in the 70s and winds up captured by the Sea Devils, only to be rescued by the Third Doctor and unleashed upon UNIT.

Beware of my Sea Devils impersonation.

Links: audio (megaupload) (mediafire) // text

Title: Zombie Plan
Author: dragonofmemory
Reader: _rubber_chicken
Length: 13:30, 2114 words
Rating: G
Pairing/Characters: Third Doctor/Delgado Master, Jo, the Brigadier
Author's Summary: Written for the best_enemies anon meme. Three/Delgado. The Master has once again attempted to Summon Stuff, and it has once again gone wrong. Except that this time he was attempting necromancy, and as a result, a plague of zombies is sweeping England. He and the Doctor have to work together to overcome the zombie hordes. Extra points for Jo and the Brig, and as much crack as you can cram in at the seams.

Links: audio (megaupload) (mediafire) // text

Title: A Car with Character
Author: dragonofmemory
Reader: _rubber_chicken
Length: 2:15, 329 words
Rating: G
Pairing/Characters: Bessie, Third Doctor/Delgado Master
Summary: Bessie is a car with character, and she is not going to put up with these shenanigans.

Links: (megaupload) (mediafire) // text

Fic: Red is the Color of Laughter (Part 1)

_rubber_chicken@livejournal.com — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:22:15 GMT

Title: Red is the Color of Laughter (Part 1)
Prompt: knightvsanarchy: red
Word Count: 1043
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jokester, Owlman
Summary: Jokester sometimes thinks that if he'd had the misfortune to have lived in Gotham all his life, he wouldn't know what color is.
Disclaimer: This work is based on characters and concepts created and owned by DC Comics, Warner Bros. and other entities and corporations. No money is being made and no copyright and/or trademark infringement is intended.
Warnings: Disturbing imagery. Earth-3 alternate universe.

Red is the Color of Laughter: Part 1

Jokester sometimes thinks that if he'd had the misfortune to have lived in Gotham all his life, he wouldn't know what color is. Gotham is grey in every sense: in sight, in sound, in smell, in taste, and in touch. Even when the sun is bright and not smothered by stormclouds or haze, all the light does is bleach the streets and smog-stained buildings like a spotlight casting over rubble while the cockroaches and spiders scuttle into deeper black cracks where the brightness can't reach them. The stains just stand out more starkly during the day than they do at night.

Even death is without color, Jokester has noticed. People don't die with loud shrieks of bursting crimson; they die with quiet gurgles burbling black from their throats, or with shredded screams that sound like rotting cotton being ripped apart. They die in dank, filthy alleyways, blood oozing down nearby drains like thick ichor. They die with their bellies opened and smelling like sewers. They die feeling cold and with greasy grit roughening the pockets in their skin.

Jokester is different. When he drops down onto the streets of Gotham in his bright clothing and circus smile, he looks like a hole in the universe. He wears the vibrant Phoenician purple of ancient royalty, but he laughs and dances like a court jester. His scars aren't black and rotten with the smell of fear; they're painted brilliant red and they laugh even when Jokester cannot.

Jokester remembers believing that life in Gotham would be freer, that he could start over once more and finally escape the bullies and bad luck that had diseased his life up until then. Everyone had said that college is incomparably better than high school, and that big cities afford opportunities that he would never see in a small, quiet town on the outskirts of Arkham.

Maybe that was true for other big cities, but not for Gotham. The bullies are just bigger, and armed, and they don't stop chasing you once you make it home from school. No one can stand on the sidelines, and no place is safe. Everyone knows it, so everyone who stays in Gotham buries their dreams beneath the dust.

Well, not everyone. There had been Eve.

But Eve is gone, Jokester thinks. Eddie is gone, and Duela is never coming back. Stop dwelling. It's almost showtime.

Jokester slinks down the alleyway, ten feet above the ground and boots silent upon damp roof shingles. He can be as stealthy as shadows when he wants to be; the would-be muggers are closing in on a young couple who had thought to take a shortcut through Gotham's back alleys. Stupid move, even in the middle of the afternoon. They must be new to the city.

Thanks to Jokester, they'll live to learn not to make the same mistake again. He drops down mallet-first into the midst of the muggers and whacks their skulls until they see blinding white stars and nothing else. No blood--only bruises. Jokester doesn't kill--not because he doesn't want to, sometimes, but because he wants to prove to Owlman that he can survive without shedding his colors, without becoming as black and dirty as everyone else.

Maybe he'll have to break that rule someday, but he's not going to break it for mere alley trash.

He ties the muggers up while they're still unconscious and pins a dandelion-yellow smiley button to each of their shirts. The couple is gone; they'd darted away the moment that the fight had started. Jackie can't blame them. The guy that beats up the people who attack you is more likely to be the new crime management than your savior. And besides, even people who know Jokester is the good guy don't hang around long enough to thank him; where Jokester goes, Owlman is likely to swoop in.

Where is that flying rodent-eater, anyway? Jokester wonders as he monkeys back to the rooftops and darts in search of more crime to bust. He hasn't seen or heard of Owlman in days. That makes Jokester nervous. It means that Owlman is planning something big.

But there's no sense worrying about that, either. Jokester has no one to go to for leads. Not even a crazy person would spill information about Owlman, no matter what Jokester threatened to do.

A sharp, strangled noise catches Jokester's attention. He veers towards it and perches over the rain gutter to squint down into the darkness. The daylight doesn't reach this deep in the Narrows, so he can't find the source at first. He listens, and then he hears it again: a small child's burbling sobs. He sees the kid's shape in the the shadows as a quivering blotch of grey that doesn't quite fit into the black around it.

Aw, man, Jokester thinks. That ain't right. He swings himself over the roof edge and lands, polished boots clacking brightly against the dirty concrete. He hears the child's breathing hitch, followed by the scuffle of cloth. "Hey, kiddo, it's okay. I'm not gonna hurt you," Jokester says reassuringly. "Are you hurt? Lost? Where are your parents?" Probably dead, Jokester thinks, but here's hoping otherwise.

He gets close enough to make out details. The child is a boy, no older than seven. He's thin, scraped, and terrified. He has his arms huddled around his chest beneath a worn jacket. Jokester pauses six feet away and crouches down. "Don't worry. I'll protect you. I'm the Jokester. Are you hurt?"

The boy stares at him with wide black eyes. He does not blink. His arms twist beneath the jacket, and Jokester thinks that maybe the boy is hurt after all, so he steels himself for the sight of something ragged and ugly.

Instead, the boy's arm emerges with something small, black, and cylindrical clutched tightly in his fingers. He yanks a shiny metal bit out of one end, hurls the object at the Jokester, and dives beneath a metal box that Jokester hadn't noticed until now.

Jokester has enough time to think, well, I always wanted to go out with a BANG, before white floods his eyes and stinging silence stuffs his ears. Vaguely he senses a strange-smelling cloth pressing against his nose, and then nothing more.

Part Two

Fic: Is this your card?

_rubber_chicken@livejournal.com — Fri, 13 May 2011 04:03:15 GMT

Title: Is This Your Card?
Prompt: calling card(s)
Word Count: 3686
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Batman doesn’t know what the Joker is playing at this time, nor does he care. He isn’t interested in indulging the clown’s twisted mind games. He wants the Joker caught and back in the Asylum before he can destroy any more lives, preferably heavily sedated and with a few broken limbs.
Disclaimer: This work is based on characters and concepts created and owned by DC Comics, Warner Bros. and other entities and corporations. No money is being made and no copyright and/or trademark infringement is intended.
Warnings: Some disturbing imagery. Unbeta'd, mostly unedited, and unfinished.

Notes: This was written for the 18th round of knightvsanarchy . It...is not my best work by any stretch of the imagination. I started it two weeks ago. Then finals happened. Finals are now over, but the challenge ends tomorrow and I am too tired to write any more of this. Also, if I do write more tonight, it'll be even more crappy than what I have now. Eventually I will finish the last half of this and see if my wonderful beta has any interest in reading Batman fic.
ALSO: This fic is intended to provide an unofficial story to THIS BATMAN COMIC COVER. There is not currently any official story to go with this art. This is a CRIME. So I am fixing it. Unfortunately I haven't gotten to writing out this scene yet, but it's coming. I SWEAR. (Also, you will notice that the Joker is using the Ace of Spades here. This is beyond awesome. Some of you will know exactly where I plan to go with this.)

Is This Your Card?
Part One

The sky rains cold needles onto glass shards sharp and slick and warm with blood. Sticky threads well up black against the alley’s grey pavement and trickle towards a gurgling sewer drain buried beneath years of grime and the tattered discards of Gotham’s poor. A streetlamp coughs and sputters reluctant yellow light onto the empty sidewalk beyond—and away from—the alleyway’s maw.

No one is watching.

Batman stares at the tattered and broken carcass by his feet. He does not know this man, though even if he did he doubts he would be able to recognize him anymore; his body is black with blood and burnt bone, buckled and broken and bent like a disjointed wooden puppet whose strings have been cut and limbs cannibalized for parts. The puppeteer has laid him out on glass in the rain and has pinched cloth between slivers of split bone, twisting and wrapping and rearranging until what’s left looks like the body of a bat, wings outstretched for flight.

There is a note, too: a solitary scrap of white somehow unstained by the mess it’s pinned to. Its sibling—the note that had led him to this forgotten hole in civilization—is crushed within Batman’s right fist. He’d found the latter on a henchclown—one of nine sent to terrorize a nursing home. There hadn’t been a point to the raid, other than to catch Batman’s attention and deliver the note.

The second note—the one pinned to the sodden corpse—does not say much. It is a white playing card, one of those blanks sometimes found in Bicycle decks. On the top surface, the Joker has scribbled a question in green ink: Is THIS your card?

Batman bends and unpins the card, flipping it over to the other side where he finds a set of cryptic directions similar to the ones that had led him here. He studies them for a moment, then flicks his eyes back to the twisted display on the ground.

Sometimes Batman wishes he’d let the Joker fall from the Prewitt building.

Arkham hadn’t caged the madman for long. Within five weeks he had driven two psychiatrists into early retirement; one went home to Florida while the other, less lucky, found peace in silence beneath stone (You’re so serious! the Joker had told him. You and the grave are made for each other!). Within two months, the Joker had amassed a following of cronies that surpassed Scarecrow’s. A week after that, the Asylum’s security system had gone down and insanity had hemorrhaged out from the walls and gates into the streets of Gotham.

Batman has been searching for him ever since, trading hours of sleep for the biting night wind and gutter rats that tremble in his fists and swear that they don’t know anything about the Joker, and even if they did, does he really think they’d tell him?

Batman has rules.

Joker doesn’t.

Batman is reminded of this as he stares down at a bat-signal fashioned from bone, tied with flesh and cloth, and painted with blood sluggish and black in the cold, wet, moonless night.

Is THIS your card?

Batman doesn’t know what the Joker is playing at this time, nor does he care. He isn’t interested in indulging the clown’s twisted mind games. He wants the Joker caught and back in the Asylum before he can destroy any more lives, preferably heavily sedated and with a few broken limbs.

The card wrinkles beneath the pressure of his fingers. It’s his only lead. The Joker has learned Gotham’s secrets: her nooks and hideaways and twists and turns. The Joker can run with almost as much skill as Batman can chase, and the Joker has the advantage of a head-start.

Batman doesn’t have a choice but to play the game for now.

He folds the card away in a plastic bag tucked in his belt and sighs. There is nothing he can do about the once-man crumpled on the ground. The murder will be blamed on Batman, of course, thanks to the symbol the victim has been twisted to resemble. Knowing the Joker, that was part of the idea.

They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out…

Batman knows what the Joker is trying to prove. But what the Joker doesn’t understand is that Batman doesn’t need to be loved or accepted by the people he protects. He just needs to protect them.

But, then, sometimes he can’t even do that. Batman thinks of Rachel and Harvey Dent and wonders if the Joker knows how much it kills him that he couldn’t save them.

Batman looks at the corpse one last time. Maybe the Joker does understand after all.

He grapples to the rooftops and uses his cell phone to leave an untraceable, anonymous tip with the Gotham City Police Department. Murder in the narrows is common, but not something as gruesome and vicious as the mess in the alley below, and Batman fears that more of its like will surface soon.

He ghosts across pinched rooftops and slippery shingles through shadows and steam shrouds of rain until he is crouched beneath a sheltering ledge of a tall building, high and far away from everything. Then he takes out the card—still in the sealed plastic bag—and studies what the Joker has written. Later he will return to the Bat Cave and run chemical diagnostics in the hopes that something microscopic will speak to fill the gaps that words have left silent.

But for now he stands sentinel beneath a sky that bleeds needles, and tries to understand the mind of his enemy.

I’ll find you , he swears silently. And when I do…

Batman only has one rule.

~*~

Hours later and somewhere along the greyest edges of Gotham, a man in bright colors paces the splintered basement of a fraying apartment choked beneath dust and soot. He looks out of place: obscenely loud technicolor staining the grainy sanctity of a forgotten silent film. He wears a new coat; his last one had been confiscated and destroyed. His hair is clean from months spent in the Asylum where orderlies scrub dirt away like they think it might fix whatever festers underneath (it never does). Wavy locks freshly dyed a radioactive green brush a painted jaw taut and clenched with concentration.

“Didn’t like the first one, did he? No…too, hnnn, obvious, I suppose,” the Joker mutters, turning on his heel at the edge of the room and pacing back the other way. “Maybe this one…no no NO no, not his style. Hmmm.”

The Joker shuffles through a deck of cards that are as colorless as his surroundings; even the hearts and diamonds are just thin black outlines instead of full red shapes. A number of the cards sprinkle the floor, dismissed and tossed away as unsuitable. A majority of the hearts suit lies there, along with several clubs.

“Orrrrr…” the Joker holds up a single card to the pale light of the basement’s only lamp. He smiles. The corners of his mouth follow the upward curve of the scarlet greasepaint on his ruined lips and cheeks. “THIS one…”

Laughter, high and shrill, bubbles from his lungs in crazed gasps that scrape the brittle air like sandpaper on skin.

“Time for Round Two!”

~*~

Bruce Wayne doesn’t bother to show up to a meeting that he would have just slept through anyway. Instead he keeps himself awake with coffee and adrenaline and stares at the literature search on his computer screen while machines hum in the background, running assay after assay on a tiny corner-edge torn from each card.

Bruce had learned very quickly that the card he had found was actually two cards: one spliced almost invisibly between the cloven halves of another. When he’d carefully peeled the pieces apart, the King of Spades had gazed up at him with black, empty eyes.

Is THIS your card?

Bruce can hear the madman’s low, nasal drawl scraping inside his head. He grits his teeth and imagines breaking the clown’s nose. Then he thinks about Rachel, and then Harvey Dent and everyone else that the Joker has taken away, and he imagines doing worse.

None of it helps.

Bruce forces his focus back to his computer screen. Daydreaming about catching the Joker won’t help anything. Solving the riddle will. He rereads the passage, even though he has the words burned into the hollows behind his eyes by this point, hoping to see something, anything illuminating.

If he should say 'HOW CAME YOU HERE?'

(The way that YOU began, Sir,)

In such a case your course is clear -

'ON THE BAT'S BACK, MY LITTLE DEAR!'

Is the appropriate answer.

The message on the card—easily the worst set of directions he has ever received in his life—had screamed quote to Bruce instantly. A quick internet search had identified the source: Lewis Carroll’s seven canto poem Phantasmagoria. The poem is sprinkled with puns throughout—something that would appeal to the Joker. It’s obvious to Bruce why the Joker had picked this particular stanza as well. What isn’t obvious is the meaning behind it.

Bruce had read and reread the entire poem, looking for context or clues. He had picked the stanza apart line by line and word by word, casting for different angles of meaning and catching only nonsense and frustration.

Bruce sighs and leans back in his chair. He sips a cup of coffee to keep himself from dozing off. On the Bat’s back, my little dear! Bruce thinks that line could be a reference to the next victim. The Joker is probably planning to implicate Batman in his next murder.It fits the context of the rest of the canto, Bruce thinks. A ghost haunts his chosen victim, the victim asks how he came to be where he is, the ghost replies “on the bat’s back”.

It makes sense, certainly, but it doesn’t at all help Bruce narrow down where.

Bruce tips the last swallow of coffee into his mouth and is about to stand up to fetch another cup when he hears machinery grind at the far end of the hallway.

Alfred, Bruce thinks. He imagines the expression on Alfred’s face when he must have stepped into his room with a breakfast tray only to find Bruce’s bed made and un-slept in: a sharp blend of disappointment, exasperation, and resignation.

Bruce turns as Alfred approaches and he sees nearly the same expression still deepening the lines of the old man’s face, only with a little less disappointment and a little more of the latter two.

“Master Wayne,” Alfred greets. “You realize that beds tend to work much better if you actually sleep in them?”

Bruce smiles. Amidst all of the ragged holes in his life where certain people used to be, there is still Alfred. “Good morning, Alfred.”

“Good morning, sir.” Alfred eyes the coffee cup in Bruce’s fingers with disapproval. “May I ask what you’ve been doing down here? I understand that you were missed at the board meeting today.”

“My snoring was missed, you mean.” Even during the months that had spanned the Joker’s trial and brief incarceration in Arkham, Bruce’s sleep had been broken and unrestful—diseased with the sounds of the Joker’s shrill laughter and strangled with all of the what-ifs and maybes stringing around Rachel’s death. More often than not, his body had taken advantage of the quiet hum of voices and shuffling papers in board meetings to snatch an hour or so of dreamless sleep.

“It’s the Joker,” Bruce explains. “The note lead me to a body in the Narrows. The corpse was fixed to look like a bat. He left a card with two more notes.” Bruce shows Alfred the card—still in the bag—and then gestures towards the computer. “I can’t figure out what it means. I’ve been staring at this all night and I still don’t know where he’s trying to lead me.”

“Sleep might help with that, sir,” Alfred replies mildly, bending to peer at the poem on the monitor. “Phantasmagoria. I would have thought he’d have picked something from Alice in Wonderland.”

Bruce blinks. “Why?”

Alfred straightens and turns to look at him. “Well Master Wayne, from what you’ve told me, he’s running with a card theme. If he’s going to quote Lewis Carroll, it would make more sense to pick the work that features playing cards as actual characters. But, this is the Joker…”

Bruce is no longer listening. Sight and sound has drained away from him like blood pouring from a wound, leaving him grey and stunned with shock. Images flash through his mind with the force of lightning and his ears are deaf with their thunder.

Alice in Wonderland.

The Queen of Hearts.

The Gardens.

“Master Bruce!” Bruce snaps back into himself and stares into Alfred’s wide-eyed, concerned face. The older man looks poised as though to catch Bruce if he should topple over.

Bruce takes a slow breath and squeezes his hands to tighten around his coffee cup, only to find that the coffee cup is gone. It had slipped from his numb fingers and shattered on the floor. Little wonder why Alfred is so alarmed, Bruce thinks. Then he says, “The Joker’s clue. I know what it means.”

Alfred blinks. A second passes. “Ah,” he says, catching on. “It is Alice, then?”

Bruce nods and moves to the computer where he types and searches for as many references to the Queen of Hearts as he can find. “The stanza on the card is a smokescreen. He used it because he thinks it’s funny.”

“Wonderful sense of humor, that man,” Alfred says dryly.

Bruce clicks a link. “The real clue was the author. You were right, Alfred.” He scans the text on the screen; Alice meets the Queen of Hearts at the garden entrance. But Bruce only needs to read the first sentence to know where he needs to go, and what the Joker is planning to do.

Bruce straightens abruptly and heads down the hall towards the armory. If he’s quick enough, maybe he can stop the Joker before he kills again.

“Sir, where are you going?” Alfred calls after him.

Bruce pauses and half turns, surprised that Alfred even had to ask. “The Botanical Gardens.”

“Now, sir?”

Bruce stares at the older man. “Alfred, it may not be too late to stop him.”

“Sir, it’s the middle of the afternoon,” Alfred explains patiently. “What are you going to do? Stalk the grounds in plain view for several hours? Even you can’t watch the entire Botanical Gardens in broad daylight with people milling about everywhere without being seen.”

Bruce winces. He had thought of that, but… “What would you have me do, then? I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

Alfred walks over to him. “You should eat, Master Wayne. I’ll wager that you’ve had nothing but coffee for the last twenty hours. What’s the point in chasing the Joker when you have no energy?”

Bruce winces again. Food has been the last thing on his mind. His stomach chooses that moment to rumble reproachfully. He sighs and relents. “Fine.”

Alfred claps his shoulder and guides him towards the lift. Bruce reassures himself that the Joker won’t be at the Gardens until nightfall anyway, not if he plans to frame Batman for this next crime as the stanza on the card implies. And once darkness falls, Batman will be there, waiting for him.

The lift takes Alfred and Bruce away. The computer screen is still lit. The cursor highlights a sentence in grey:

“ A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red.”

~*~

Batman is in the Botanical Gardens before their admissions booths shut their windows for the day. He had hacked into their security system earlier so that he could watch the visitors leave. He doesn’t think the Joker will try to use the front door, but Batman can’t forget the attack on the Mayor four months ago. The Joker had been in the front row, armed and faceless, and no one had known.

Batman watches the entrance camera feed on a small handheld device and searches the grainy grey image for scars. He is hidden in the darkest shadows of one of the greenhouses, waiting while caretakers tend to the plants and the custodial staff clean up trash. There are roses in this particular building—Batman keeps watch on that area—but there are roses scattered everywhere else in the Botanical Gardens as well. He cannot watch them all at once.

In times like this, Batman is frightened by the knowledge that he does not know what the Joker looks like without his costume. He has never seen the man without his bright clothing, painted face, or dyed hair. He thinks the hair might be blonde beneath the green and grease, but he isn’t sure. He knows the shape of the Joker’s face, knows its wrinkles and edges, but even though he also knows the color of the Joker’s skin, he still can’t mesh the two together in his mind. The scars are the only defining physical aspects of him that stay when the costume is gone, but even those could be hidden with some theatre prosthetics.

Batman never realized until now how faceless of an enemy the Joker really is.

It scares him.

But he is Batman; he doesn’t show his fear. He is fear, so instead he will show the Joker that he cannot be twisted by the madman’s mind games.

He waits. Darkness pools in corners and under dense foliage, spilling into shadows until they overflow upon the walkways. The last of the staff departs. Batman is alone.

He wastes no time; Batman switches his cowl’s thermal sensors on and sweeps through the building. Finding no one, he takes his search outside and climbs to rooftops for a more encompassing view of the grounds before sweeping through the rest of the buildings. He moves swiftly and efficiently. Each time he clears a location, he leaves behind a concealed motion sensor. Within an hour, the Botanical Gardens are peppered with a sentinel army of mechanical eyes.

Five hours later, the Joker still has not appeared.

Batman pauses in his rounds to pick up a newspaper from the gift shop stands. He puts fifty cents on the countertop in payment and then walks out, sifting through the pages. He scans the headlines until he finds what he’d been looking for.

BATMAN STRIKES AGAIN!

An unidentified man was found brutally murdered in the Narrows this morning, police report. While Police Commissioner Gordon has stated that there are no official suspects yet, other sources have reported that the trademark signal of the Batman was found on the victim. Batman has also been implicated in the murders of District Attorney Harvey Dent and Salvatore Maroni…

The remainder of the article is filled with descriptions of his alleged past crimes as well as speculations on his motives and where he might strike next. There is no mention of the Joker. Batman finds nothing else of interest. He folds the paper up and deposits it on a nearby bench. Then he takes to the rooftops again and wonders where the hell the Joker is.

I can’t have missed him , Batman thinks as he begins another sweep through the grounds and buildings. It isn’t even midnight yet. I have a while.

He waits. Midnight comes and goes without any break in the still silence. Batman goes back to the gift shop and deposits enough coin for a can of coffee.

By 2AM, he’s getting antsy. The caretaking staff might show up as early as five. Surely the Joker will have to make his move before then. Batman frowns. Unless…

He drops to the ground and prowls the area, this time not looking for a person so much as looking for clues that he might have missed. He pays particular attention to every rose bush he finds, especially the red and white ones. He pokes between their thorny arms and sniffs the air for telltale rot and honeysuckle sweetness. He finds nothing but earth and drowsy bees.

He takes his search indoors. Roses are cultivated in two places, he remembers; one of them was where he had hidden himself while waiting for the Gardens to clear. Batman heads to the other building first.

The roses are red and white, growing in a tangled cluster of soft petals and needlelike thorns. They are denser than the other roses Batman has searched through, so he approaches them with caution and increased awareness. Something isn’t right, he realizes. He slows to a stop and stares at the roses. The pattern is strange.

A chill drops his stomach like a stone. He takes two steps forward and catches a red flower in his gloved fingers. When his thumb swipes across the petals, the red smears away with it, revealing pink-stained white beneath.

…the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red.

Batman goes cold. For a moment all he can do is stare at the flower and wonder how the Joker had gotten past him. Then he wonders whose blood has been used as paint, and abruptly he is pushing against thorns and digging between branches, looking for a corpse.

But he doesn’t find one. Perplexed, Batman extricates himself from the bushes and stares at them.

What the…

Batman takes a step back and frowns. He takes another and stops, eyes widening as the entire stretch of roses fills his vision and the pattern fits together like pieces of a puzzle, all lining up just right.

The crude shape of a bat with wings outstretched has been painted onto the flowers, like something from a twisted connect-the-dots drawing booklet. In the very center, Batman spots a card.

Mini-bang fic: The Chains of Honor, chapter 1 (minibang version)

_rubber_chicken@livejournal.com — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:15:56 GMT

Prompt: #21 Zuko In Chains by jin_fenghuang
Title: The Chains of Honor, Chapter 1
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4795
Beta-reader: bluealoe
Warnings/Pairings: Some disturbing imagery. No pairings.
Summary: If the Yu Yan had not stopped firing, if Aang had been a little slower in deciding to take Zuko with him, and if Zhao's garrison had been a little quicker on their feet, then Zuko's rescue of Aang in "The Blue Spirit" might not have gone quite as well.

Notes: This was also written for the avatarbigbang mini-bang challenge! Check out the other stories over there--they are all brilliant!
Also, this was not supposed to be a long story. It was supposed to be short. And then, after the first section was done, I realized that it had grown into a monster that could not be contained within 5000 words. So this is the first chapter of a much larger work. Also, this is missing scenes that I really would have liked to put in but didn't have the room for, so it's plot-holey at the moment. I will be rewriting this with those extra scenes put in, and that will be the full version of chapter 1 of what is bound to be a ridiculously long epic.

The Chains of Honor

~*~

Even after the first one had found its target, the arrows kept coming. Aang airbended three of them off course in the span of time it took for his masked rescuer to fall. It wasn’t easy to see them coming; it wasn’t easy to see anything that small in the dark. But the forest behind them was silent and the Fire Nation fortress they’d fled from was still, at least for the moment, so he could hear them coming, like blades of grass sighing in the wind.

Aang sidestepped another arrow, turned his head towards the sound of a body hitting the ground, and narrowly avoided getting pincushioned by the fifth and sixth arrows. The Yu Yan weren’t aiming for his clothing this time, he realized. They were aiming for flesh, for tendons in his arms and legs, for clusters of nerves that would leave him crumpled on the ground and twitching helplessly in pain.

This is not good.

Aang lashed his arms out in an arc through the air, the riptide current whipping up clouds of concealing dirt around himself and the unconscious swordsman. If the archers couldn’t see, then they couldn’t aim, and that would give the young airbender the few seconds he needed to—

His plans broke apart and fell like sand from his mind the moment he turned to look at the man on the ground. His mask had been knocked slightly askew, leaving a small portion of the left side of his face bare.

The scarred left side of his face.

It couldn’t be him, Aang told himself, even as he moved forward and down and stretched his fingers out to clasp the edge of the mask. Surely there were lots of people with burn scars in the world, even ones near their left eye…

The mask fell away, and Aang couldn’t breathe.

No…

Prince Zuko’s face greeted him like the visage of a sleeping monster.

In two seconds, Aang was already five feet away, facing the forest with muscles tensed to sprint for freedom and away from the enemies that haunted his every footstep. His heart tightened in his throat. Every defensive instinct urged him to run.

He wasn’t sure what made him look back. Maybe it was the gentleness of Aang’s soul that made him pause and look at the other boy’s still form. Maybe it was the monks’ teachings of selflessness, forgiveness, and compassion. Or maybe it was the memory that cut through his vision like the steel of a knife—the memory of Zuko desperately fending off a small army of spears and swords, buying time for Aang to escape through the swiftly closing front gates. Zuko would not have survived if Aang hadn’t turned back and helped him.

So how could Aang leave him now?

He couldn’t. So after a moment of hesitation, he turned back, intending to gather Zuko up and escape with him into the dense forest.

Aang took one step forward before he realized that the dust cloud—the cover that had protected them both from the Yu Yan—was gone. Aang froze, and in that instant he took in all of the sounds that panic had numbed his ears to: the trample of approaching boots on the road, a man’s distant shout, and then sharp, hollow whistles like razors in the air.

Aang dodged to the side. Four wooden shafts buried—*THOK*—in the road a foot behind where he’d been standing. Cover. They needed more cover! Aang raised his arms to whip up another miniature dust storm, but the brief pause nearly cost him; before he could follow the motion through, arrows sprouted in the forefront of his vision, too fast and too close and too many. He flung himself sideways, and the jerk at his shawl along with the sound of an arrow tearing through fabric told him that he had just barely been fast enough.

Aang dodged another flurry of arrows, then spun and ducked to avoid a pair aimed at pinioning his arms. Now that Aang was no longer disadvantaged by an armful of frozen frogs, the Yu Yan had little hope of pinning him down. He could deflect or evade their combined attacks as long as that was all he did, but…

…But he would not be able to lower his defenses for enough time to save Zuko.

This is bad. This is really, really bad!

He could hear voices now above the trample of approaching feet, loud and triumphant and near. The Fire Nation soldiers had almost reached them. More whistles cut through the air, and Aang instinctively dodged, only to find that the arrows hadn’t been aimed for him. He watched, horrified, as a thicket of crimson flowers blossomed around Zuko’s body, their straight wooden stems anchoring the boy’s clothing to the ground.

There was nothing Aang could do. He had to leave Zuko behind. But, Aang told himself firmly, he wasn’t abandoning him.

“I’ll be back for you,” he whispered. Then air ballooned beneath his feet and launched him high out of sight.

~*~

When Zuko had been seven, Blood-bone Fever had nearly stolen his life. He couldn’t remember much from those two weeks: only vague impressions of his mother hovering, of doctors drifting in and out like a cool wind that sometimes brought relief from the inferno that ravaged his muscles, head, and throat. He remembered wondering why he couldn’t bend the fire away, and then thinking that Azula probably would have been able to if it had been her in his place. Maybe that was why Azula never got sick.

Most of all, Zuko remembered how it had felt to wake up.

There was a very brief thread of time between dreams and wakefulness when he was not quite conscious enough to feel the pain but was aware enough to appreciate its absence. Whenever he tried to hover at that thread, reality always pushed inward like a razor and severed him from the cocoon of his subconscious. Waking up during a sickness was like being born; his thoughts had felt wrapped within soiled cotton, and his nose and mouth had been clogged with the afterbirth of sleep. It had been hot and sticky and miserable, and it was exactly how Zuko felt when he came to in a Fire Nation prison cell.

At first, he thought he must be on his ship. The hard surface pressing against his legs and back felt like metal: smooth and cold against his bare, firebender-warm skin. But as his awareness spread, he realized that couldn’t be right. His body was sore and twisted and he couldn’t move his arms. Why couldn’t he move his arms?

A twist of his hands drew the faint clink of irons to his ears, and tiny needles of pain flared in his blood-starved fingers. Something sharp cut into his wrists.

The creak of leather and the sandpaper skiff of cloth caught his ear. “Ah, Prince Zuko…”

He knew that voice. Command—no, Admiral Zhao. Why was he here? What was—

Oh, no...

He remembered. Clarity flooded, sharp and icy, though his veins, and horror pooled like cold stones in his gut. He remembered freeing the Avatar, remembered the clang of the alarm as their escape was discovered, remembered the liquid silver blur of his broadswords and the whistle of the Avatar’s makeshift staff, remembered backing out the front gates with his swords crossed over the Avatar’s throat, remembered being almost into the tree line…

And then nothing.

He didn’t want to open his eyes. He still felt disoriented enough that he could pretend this away as a dream so long as he didn’t look. The moment that his eyes opened he would make it all real.

But then Zhao spoke again, and his voice was more than real enough.

“Everyone knows what a failure you are, but I confess…” Zhao trailed off for just a moment, and Zuko could imagine his smirk, could hear the bitter wine of triumph flavoring his words, “…I had never imagined you to be a traitor.”

Zuko’s eyes flew open and he snarled, the denial already searing past his lips. “I am not a traitor!”

The cell was dark. A sputtering torch on the wall beyond the bars reluctantly coughed light down upon Zhao, who stood just beyond the bars with his arms crossed, facing Zuko. His smirk was even more infuriating on his face than it had been in his voice.

“Really?” Zhao purred, and he leaned inward. “Then why did you free the Avatar?”

Zuko took it back; Zhao’s smirking voice was maddening.

“I had no choice!” Zuko hissed.

“Yes, yes, we all know; your ‘honor’ depends upon your capture of the Avatar.” Zhao shifted his stance and began pacing slowly back and forth before the cell, but his eyes remained fixed on Zuko. “Did it not occur to you that in aiding the Avatar—in stealing him from a Fire Nation Admiral—you would lose all of the honor you had left, without even the right to earn it back?”

Zuko was silent.

After a short pause, Zhao continued. "Not that you had a chance to begin with. Your father doesn’t want you back. He’s wanted you gone for years—“

“That’s not true!”

But the words kept coming, and even though Zuko’s heartbeat boiled in his ears and rage stained his vision and distorted his thoughts, he still couldn’t drown out what the Admiral said next.

“—and now he has a reason to have you executed. And he will, Prince Zuko. The Fire Lord does not tolerate failure. And for his own son to have committed treason? Do you really believe he will show you mercy after you have shamed yourself, your father, and your nation again, this time by directly aiding the enemy?”

Zuko stared at the Admiral. The thunder was ebbing from his ears. He tried to find the words to deny Zhao’s accusations, but every thread he pulled led back to his father. He had disrespected the Fire Lord, and for that alone he had lost his honor. He had been given a chance to redeem himself, and he had failed.

But I had no choice! Zuko thought desperately, furiously.

But then he imagined kneeling before his father with that excuse, and the idea crumbled like ash in his mind. He knew what the Fire Lord would think. Zhao was right. Spirits, Zhao was right.

Zhao stopped pacing and faced the cell door again, leaning in close to the bars. He watched the horror sink into Zuko’s eyes for a moment, and then dealt one last blow in the form of a soft whisper: “For three years you’ve wanted nothing more than to return home. How ironic that, disgraced and dishonored, you will get your wish after all…just before you die.”

Zuko didn’t respond. His vision boiled and the shadows of his cell curled and churned like smoke until the sharpness of the now blurred and bloomed into faded watercolor memories. He saw turtle-ducks dive to catch the crumbs he tossed into their pond. He saw the Fire Lord’s throne and the seat at its right-hand side—empty and waiting for him. He saw the harbor at the base of the capitol, the sun melting like butter on the sand and the water glittering so bright that it looked like a thousand white fires all pulsing with the ocean’s heartbeat.

He had dreamed every day and every night for three years of returning to those warm shores. He had dreamed of presenting the Avatar—chained and defeated—to his father, of standing before his father’s proud gaze and feeling the forgiveness and acceptance in his voice wash through him. And now that the Avatar had a body, a face, and a voice, his dreams felt so much more real, so much more tangible than they had ever been before.

He would not let Zhao take his dreams away from him.

When the images faded and his eyes focused again, what he noticed first was how close the Admiral was to the bars.

Zuko filled his lungs, deep and slow.

And then he breathed.

An inferno cascaded past his lips and flooded up to the prison bars. Zhao’s eyes flashed wide in shock. Instinctively he jerked backwards, fast enough to avoid getting burned but not quite fast enough to prevent the tips of his sideburns from catching fire. The Admiral was quick to snuff the tiny flames, but his dignity and composure had already been destroyed.

Now it was Zuko’s turn to smile grimly while the other man snarled and reddened with rage. Zhao jabbed a finger at his captive, carefully keeping a safe distance away. “Your uncle’s flashy tricks won’t get you out of this cell,” he spat. “Not with your hands chained to the wall. And I will personally see you delivered to the Fire Lord in those chains.” Then Zhao spun on his heel and stalked out of the room.

Zuko would have to thank Uncle Iroh for teaching him the Breath of Fire.

~*~

Hours later and miles away, Aang sat cross-legged on the floor next to Appa, and fidgeted.

He’d had no trouble finding enough frozen frogs for Katara and Sokka to suck on. The herbalist might be crazy as a tortoise-loon, but she knew what she was doing; after only the first frog, Sokka’s hallucinations had faded, leaving him lucid again, and Katara, whose sickness hadn’t been as advanced as her brother’s, had been cured completely. After Aang had hastily explained why he’d given them both frogs to suck on, Katara had helped him convince Sokka to try another. Sokka had only relented once they’d pointed out empirical evidence of the frogs' healing powers, but he had drawn the line at two frogs. Fortunately, two had proven to be enough.

But the fever had drained much of their strength, so neither of Aang’s friends were able to travel just yet. And while they slept, there was nothing for Aang to do except think and worry.

He wanted to rescue Zuko. He knew that Admiral Zhao wouldn’t have killed the prince. Zuko was royalty, no matter that he was banished or that he appeared to have committed treason. The Fire Lord would want to handle the matter personally, especially since it was his son involved. Aang didn’t think any harm would come to Zuko from his own father, but he didn’t know when Zhao was planning on sending the prince home…nor did he know what Zhao was doing to him in the meantime. Aang knew that ‘alive’ was not the same as ‘unharmed’.

He wanted to rescue Zuko. But he couldn’t break into the fortress by himself. He needed help. He needed Sokka and Katara.

And that was another problem; how was he going to explain all of this to them?

Aang had no idea. So he fidgeted and quietly practiced speeches.

“So uh…” Aang’s voice cracked and faltered. Oh yeah, that’s a great start. He cleared his throat and tried again. “So remember when I went out looking for medicine? Well, there were these archers and they were really good. I mean, really good. And they kind of shot me when I was collecting frogs—well not shot me shot me, I mean, haha, they just got my clothes!” Aang’s voice trailed from a nervous laugh into a sigh. “Okay, no good. Let’s try this again.”

Aang took a deep, calming breath. He closed his eyes, centered his mind, and lowered his heartbeat. Focus. He tried again. “The important thing is that I’m okay. Everything’s fine. Except, well, not everything, but I’ll get to that. Commander Zhao—you know, the guy with the sideburns—kind of captured me while I was out collecting frogs. But I’m okay! Because um, this ninja with a blue mask came and rescued me, and it was amazing, but he got knocked out by an arrow and now he’s been captured, and I’ve gotta go rescue him but I need your help.” Pause. “Oh, and he’s also Prince Zuko.”

Aang was still for a moment before he groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “This is not gonna over well,” he mumbled, and then peeked between his fingers up at Sokka and Katara. They were still sleeping soundly.

Well, at least he had a while to practice.

~*~

Firebenders rise with the sun. The moment that Agni’s liquid bright fingers reach up from the horizon to warm the sky, Agni’s children feel their own blood thrum with the energy of life.

So even in the cold darkness of his stone cell, Zuko knew when the day had arrived.

And he still didn’t have a plan.

Zuko hadn’t slept. Even neglecting the fact that his arms were stretched uncomfortably with his wrists chained to the wall high above his head, his mind had been too alert, too electric with fears and certainties; he knew that Zhao had likely already sent a messenger hawk to the capitol, detailing the prince’s apparent betrayal. Zhao was an admiral now, which meant that he was high in the Fire Lord’s favor. And Zhao had an entire garrison of witnesses to back his claims.

But if Zuko could escape and make his way back to his ship, he might still have a chance. Uncle Iroh would vouch for his alibi, he knew. And he was fairly certain that the crew would follow his uncle’s example; ever since Zuko had saved the helmsman from falling to his death during the storm, his men as a whole seemed to respect him more. It would, at the very least, cast enough doubt on Zhao’s claims that Zuko would have some time to figure out a better plan from there.

As he had done countless times during the night, Zuko again tested the chains that bound him, trying to wrench or at least loosen them from the wall. He felt something give this time, but not in the metal. His wrists had chafed and swelled and scabbed from his earlier struggles, and now something cracked and slid beneath the manacles, like rotten flesh dripping from bone. He’d sheared the skin away. Pain throbbed from the opened wound, and something hot and slick began trickling down his right arm.

Not good, he thought. A chill sank into his stomach when he thought of infection. Stupid, stupid stupid! Zhao wanted him alive, but there wouldn’t be much he could do if festering poison spread through Zuko’s veins.

He had to get out of here soon.

Ignoring the pain, Zuko relaxed as much as his bonds allowed and closed his eyes. He focused on his breathing, deep and slow, in and out, and felt the ebb and swell of his chi. He needed to calm down and think with a clear head.

Okay, what are my advantages? Zhao hasn’t posted a guard at my cell. Arrogant idiot. If I can break these chains, they won’t know I’m free until it’s too late. How do I break the chains without cutting my hands off?

Zuko called to mind everything he knew about prisons and restraints and Fire Nation steel. He knew that the manacles weren’t coming out of the wall—the bloody ruins of his right wrist testified to that—so he had to find some way of breaking them instead.

But what did he have that could possibly break steel? Or even bend it? Steel was only malleable when it was…hot.

Zuko’s eyes snapped open and his breathing stilled.

If he couldn’t pull the restraints off the wall, he would melt them off.

Zuko pushed himself to his feet. His legs stung, half numb and half needled with lack of blood flow, but he barely noticed the pain. His attention was fixed solely on the steel chain to his left. Zuko considered its length. Metal conducted heat, and if the chain was too short he might end up destroying his own hand.

It should be fine , he decided. Focus on the link connecting to the wall anchor.

Zuko raised his left hand, aimed carefully, and breathed.

Gradually, the steel began to glow.

~*~

“YOU WHAT?”

Aang cringed and tried desperately not to look guilty. He hadn’t gotten past the first sentence of his explanation before two voices had shrieked in unison. Katara looked horrified. Sokka looked horrified and mad.

“You were captured? By Commander Sideburns? HERE?” Sokka’s voice had reached a decidedly unmanly pitch.

“Aang!” Katara wasn’t quite mad yet; she was still more worried that her friend had been hurt. “You said you’d be careful!”

“Well, yeah, I know, but I was trying to get the frogs and those archers were really good—“

“ARCHERS?” Sokka’s arms flailed.

“—But I’m okay now! And I wasn’t hurt! Someone rescued me!“ Aang added hastily. That seemed to give the siblings pause. Two pairs of blue eyes blinked at him with confusion.

“…who rescued you?” Katara asked. “Where are they now?”

Aang fidgeted. “He um, kind of got captured as we were backing out of the gates.”

Sokka’s mouth snapped shut and his nose scrunched. “Gates. You were in a Fire Nation fortress.” It wasn’t a question, and Sokka didn’t look pleased.

“Yeah…” Aang tapped his thumbs together and smiled nervously. Katara’s eyes narrowed and Sokka crossed his arms over his chest. They glared at him and waited for an explanation.

Aang sighed. This was not going well. “Okay, you guys have to promise not to say anything until I’m done. Okay?”

Sokka raised one eyebrow and squinted his other eye almost shut. “Ooooh-kaaay…”

Aang shifted his gaze to Katara. “Please?”

Katara glared at him, motionless, for another second. “Fine,” she relented, although she didn’t look happy about it. Her eyes promised that they would be having words when this was over.

Aang sighed with relief. Breathe. He was in a world of trouble for having gotten himself into so much danger, he knew. But he’d deal with that later. Right now, he needed to think about Zuko.

Start from the beginning, ease your way forward.

“It happened right after I’d left the herbalist’s,” he began. “I was going to find a river to look for frozen frogs…”

~*~

Zuko had decided that the spirits hated him.

He had almost burned the first chain through when he’d heard heavy footsteps rapidly approaching from down the hall. Desperately, he’d tried to snuff the heat out of the steel, but he hadn’t been fast enough. Seconds later, the admiral had marched into the room and stopped completely still.

Zhao had taken one look at the scene—Zuko standing with a poorly-concealed expression of panic while the base of one of the chains glowed orange—and had immediately sent for more guards. Then he’d stalked closer and threatened to have Zuko drugged to the point where he couldn’t even move. Zuko had, somehow, managed to just fume silently in response.

So now two guards were posted at the far end of the room, watching him. He was never alone for even a second.

He spent the rest of the day thinking and trying not to move his damaged wrist. If it re-scabbed and wasn’t disturbed, he might escape infection. While his abused body seemed to benefit from the meditative stillness, his mind was becoming increasingly panicked and frustrated.

Zuko had no idea what to do. He’d blown his only chance for escape. Why didn’t I think of burning through the chains earlier , while everyone was still asleep? he thought, furious with himself. I could have been free by now!

His only hope, it seemed, was to wait for Zhao to have him transferred onto a ship for the journey back to the Fire Nation. An opportunity might present itself…but until then, he had to wait.

Zuko was patient. He’d spent three years at sea, searching with iron determination for a ghost that few people believed existed anymore. And his patience had finally been rewarded. If he kept still and observant and waited, he would find a way.

So he forced his frustration down and channeled his anger into the pool of warmth in his stomach, felt the inner fire flare, and concentrated on breathing.

~*~

Three days later, Zuko did not wake with the dawn. When he did finally wake, he wasn’t even sure what time it was; he couldn’t seem to focus on the sun. His mind felt like rotting cotton, cloudy and tangled and with every thought crumbling at the slightest pressure of concentration. He felt hot— too hot—but not sticky; he had a fever, but he wasn't sweating, and some part of his mind registered that as a bad sign.

Food had been nonexistent, and Zhao was allowing him only the bare minimum amount of water to keep him alive. Zuko was hungry, but the thirst was far worse. His mouth felt like baked sand and his tongue was thick and foreign, too dry to form any moisture.

Zuko couldn’t feel his arms. He couldn’t feel much of anything outside the haze of heat and the ache that tangled his thoughts and throbbed everywhere in his head. His eyes—he couldn’t open his eyes. He felt sure that if he did, they would explode from the pressure behind them.

Zuko drifted, sometimes floating close to dim awareness, other times drowning deep in nightmarish fever dreams. At some point, he surfaced to the sound of voices, very near yet muffled. Whispering? No, he just couldn’t hear them. And it was too much effort to focus. He imagined he heard the words “infection” and “doctor” and an aggravated noise in what sounded like Zhao’s voice before consciousness slipped away again.

~*~

The next time he heard voices, they sounded sharper and more urgent somehow. He struggled to focus. Something about those voices cut through the cotton wrapping his thoughts and demanded attention.

“Oh man, that’s not right.” A man’s voice—no, a boy’s, and irritating, though Zuko had no idea why.

“How do we get him out of those irons?” A younger voice, much younger. He knew that voice.

“I’ll handle that.” A girl’s voice this time. Then the sound of shifting cloth and the clear, bubbling sound of moving water and oh spirits he was so thirsty! Zuko tried to open his eyes, but they felt glued shut. His lips parted and he tried to speak, but instead of “water”, all he managed was a broken whisper, like wind over cracked desert.

They didn’t seem to have heard him. “I dunno…Aang…he looks pretty bad. He might not…” The older, annoying boy trailed off.

Aang…Aang…the Avatar?

“This is my fault,” Aang said, but this time his voice didn’t sound so young; even dazed, Zuko recognized the same unyielding determination that was within himself. “He wouldn’t be here if I’d been more careful. He’s not going to die. I won’t let him.”

Zuko’s mind was a muddled sea of confusion, and all he could think was: why would the Avatar be here?

A liquid whistle accompanied a sharp metallic whine, and something heavy crashed to the ground before him. The sound of flowing water came closer, and Zuko’s mouth burned with longing. But before he could try to ask for some again, his arms jolted and crumpled at his sides, feeling like loose blubber, as the cold steel holding them snapped away. “Okay, got him,” the girl—the waterbender—said.

What? Were they…rescuing him?

“C’mon, they’re not going to be distracted for long. We’ve got to go, now.”

“I’ve got him.” Aang again, but much closer this time. And then there was an arm around his shoulders—cold, much too cold—and then the whoosh of air, and then an alarming sense of vertigo as he was suddenly not quite on the ground anymore.

And then they were off and running with him half-held, half-suspended by the Avatar.

This had to be a dream. But the cold air on his skin felt real enough, and his head throbbed with every quick dodge and jolt Aang made, and he could sense fire being bent nearby, though not at them, and were those frogs he heard croaking?

Had the Avatar really come back to save him? They were enemies! What in Agni’s name was he supposed to do now?

It was too much all at once, and none of it made any sense. And Zuko hurt too much to think anymore. So he let his awareness slip away, promising himself that he would make sense of it all and come up with a plan.

Just not yet.

Mini-bang fic: Ashes to Ashes

_rubber_chicken@livejournal.com — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:02:16 GMT

Prompt: #35 Ashes to Ashes - In Zuko's Memory by teamabodo
Title: Ashes to Ashes
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2119
Beta-reader: bluealoe
Warnings/Pairings: character death, canon pairings implied. TEARBENDING! Also some tense-bending that I have yet to re-organize.
Summary: Zuko does not survive Azula's lightning strike. A year later, those who knew him are still haunted by thoughts of everything that could have been.
Notes: This was written for the avatarbigbang minibang challenge (a reverse-bang in the sense that the artwork came first, and the writers picked artwork to use as their story prompts). This is the very first AtLA fanfiction I've written. All things considered, I'm rather proud of it. Also, I highly suggest taking a look at all of the stories posted for the mini-bang. They are all fabulous!

Ashes to Ashes

~*~

In the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se, a tea house lies empty and silent, collecting dust behind locked doors. It is said that the great General Iroh, the Dragon of the West, had been its owner, and that he had planned to spend the rest of his days there in quiet, dispensing ancient remedies within steaming cups and imparting gentle, wise words to any who stepped across the threshold.

Most people don't really believe it. The doors had only been open for a few scant weeks before they had closed forever. But even a year later, citizens of Ba Sing Se will sometimes pass it by, pause, and point at the darkened windows. "The Jasmine Dragon served the best tea in Ba Sing Se," they tell their companions. "Maybe the best tea in the world. And the old man who owned it--you could talk to him about anything. His eyes had seen the world, and he always knew what to say."

"What happened to him?"

"...no one knows."

~*~

After everything goes wrong and the ashes of your dreams settle like corpse dust at your feet, it's easy to dwell upon the what-ifs, the maybes. Even a year later, sometimes it's all that Katara can think about.

Maybe, if Zuko had been right about Azula, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe if Azula had been...

...a little more unhinged and a little less in control...

...a little more focused on the ghost of her mother's voice and a little less focused on murdering the child she knew that voice loved more than her...

...a little more dismissive of her brother's hidden strength and a little less sure of her own in the face of it...

...a little less angry and a little more scared of just being alone...

...then maybe her lightning wouldn't have struck with the full strength of Sozen's Comet screaming within its crackling arcs. Maybe--and this is the part that twists her heart and chokes her breath--maybe if Katara hadn't run onto the field and inadvertently drawn Azula's strike, maybe Zuko would have been prepared to redirect it, with his feet grounded to the earth and his heart and mind calm.

Or maybe if Katara had been just a little better at healing...

Maybe Zuko would have survived.

But maybes are just dead dreams that sit like ash in Katara's mind, clouding her thoughts with regret as she kneels on the grass next to her brother, staring at stone.

No one can change the past.

~*~

When the news had arrived, Iroh had been serving tea to Aang and his friends in the Jasmine Dragon.

Ozai was being held in Ba Sing Se under careful watch of the White Lotus. He would be transferred to the Fire Nation once Zuko had taken the throne, so they'd all been waiting for Katara to return on Appa and tell them it was safe. The Fire Lord had been defeated. Ba Sing Se had been reclaimed in the name of the Earth Kingdom. Ozai's fleet lay in splintered ruin. They had already won. So Zuko's victory against Azula had just been taken as a given.

But Katara never came. Instead, an Earth Kingdom messenger had arrived on the doorstep with a Fire Nation hawk on his shoulder and a message for Iroh in his hands.

Once Iroh had opened the scroll, he hadn't needed to say a word. Everyone else in the room had understood the moment they saw the slump of Iroh's shoulders, saw the cumulative weight of his years tearing his spirit down.

The moment they saw the fire in Iroh's eyes die into ash.

The days following had been disjointed, tangled with grief and shock, stuttering from moment to moment as they'd all struggled to function and deal with the chaos Zuko's death had left in its wake. With Zuko gone, Ozai defeated and imprisoned, and Azula lost in the shattered fragments of her own mind, it had fallen to Iroh to take up the throne and work with the Avatar towards reconciliation.

Iroh had done so, silently and without protest. He'd devoted himself entirely to his work, spending every waking moment in meetings, drawing up treaties, and travelling from place to place, restoring to the Fire Nation the honour that his nephew had died for. Those around him thought that perhaps it was because this was all that he had left, and it kept him from thinking about anything else. Perhaps he wanted to honour his nephew's memory. And although the latter was certainly true, sometimes it seemed like Iroh was just in a hurry to get it all over with.

Only Toph, out of all of them, had understood. Everyone else in their group would keep going; they had a new world to build, one of peace and love, one that they could all live in. They had each other to lean on, to live for. They all just assumed that Iroh would keep going, too.

But Toph knew that no amount of consolation or support would help Iroh. She'd known the moment that the news had reached them, and she hadn't needed her earthbending to tell her. She'd known from the way Iroh had talked about his nephew when they'd first met. She'd heard it in his voice, how much Iroh had loved him. Zuko was all he'd talked about because Zuko was all he'd had.

Iroh wouldn't survive the loss of a second son.

~*~

The lightning inside Zuko's body had consumed him, burning his core away to nothing. He'd never felt a cold like the one that had followed, not even when he'd been flung into the freezing sea after a bomb had blown away his ship. He'd almost died then, but his wounds hadn't been beyond healing, and Uncle had managed to save him. But this time the ache was too deep, and in the spreading numbness that followed, he knew that he was dying. He had managed to hold on long enough to witness Katara's victory against Azula.

Katara had turned him on his back, and for that he'd been grateful--he'd wanted to see her face, the face of a friend, so he wouldn't be alone.

The healing water on his chest had felt warm rather than cool. Some part of his mind had dimly registered the wrongness of that. He'd thought he glimpsed tears in Katara's eyes, but he hadn't been sure. He couldn't seem to focus on her face. Then she'd spoken, but her voice had sounded so far away, like an old memory almost forgotten.

His last thought had been of regret. He'd tried to speak, and somehow found the strength to do so. The water on his chest had glowed, the only bright point left in his darkening sight, but it hadn't been...it wasn't...

"It wasn't enough," he'd whispered. "Everything I...it wasn't enough."

In the end, it never is.

~*~

Firebenders don't have graves. When they die, if their bodies are recovered, they are given back to Agni. The fire that had flowed through them in life is gifted back to them one last time in death. Afterwards, it is said, the fire will use the energy of its former master to spark a new life, a new firebender. Eventually, that spark would be given back again so that it could continue on to another.

Ashes to ashes.

Sokka didn't know much about Fire Nation culture, but this much had been explained to him before Zuko's funeral. Later, while he'd stood amongst his friends and watched Zuko's body burn, he'd wondered if somewhere a child had been born with the same fire--the same passion and strength and honesty--that had burned within the prince.

Maybe there had.

But there would never be another Zuko.

~*~

Iroh had Zuko's memorial stone placed in the garden by the turtle-duck pond. He knew Zuko would have liked that. He had debated for a long time whether he should have Azula's stone placed nearby as well. She hadn't outlived her brother by very long. Iroh had made preparations to send her to a mental institution where she could be cared for properly, but the day she was due to depart they'd found her body in her cell, cold and pinned with a dozen tiny knives.

In the end, Iroh decided to place Azula's memorial near her brother's. They'd never really been a family in life. At least they could all be together in death.

Iroh worked hard in the following months to find someone he could trust to become Fire Lord. He found such a person eventually--a distant cousin with a quick mind and a smile that almost reminded Iroh of Zuko's: bright and as pure as the sun itself. Iroh trained him as well as he could under the circumstances. The boy got on well with Aang, and perhaps together they would manage to heal the wounds the war had inflicted upon the world.

But the boy wasn't Zuko. He didn't understand the true nature of honour. He'd never fought as hard as Zuko had just to find himself. Zuko had earned wisdom that most men never learn in a lifetime of hardships. Zuko had understood what the Fire Nation truly needed.

This new boy didn't understand. He didn't have the spirit.

But neither did Iroh, anymore. His spirit had gone with Zuko's, and soon his body would follow. The day that he first tasted ash in his tea was the day that he realized it was time to let go.

Iroh's memorial stone was placed next to Zuko's in the garden.

~*~

People die in war. Sokka knows this. He'd known ever since the day he'd first seen the black snow fall gently upon his village from a pale sky.

So he'd known, logically, that there had been a chance one or more of them wouldn't be coming back on the day of Sozen's Comet. He'd been afraid mostly for Aang, and then for Suki as she'd fallen away with half of a burning airship, and finally for himself and Toph. But he'd never worried for Zuko or Katara. Zuko had survived despite the best efforts of the most terrifying people Sokka knew. He had begun to think that Zuko was indestructible.

All of the logic in the world couldn't have prepared him for the writing on the stones in front of him.

Katara and Aang had taken Zuko's death the worst out of anyone in their group, save for Iroh. They still blame themselves--Aang because it's his nature to do so, and Katara because the maybes that haunt her all lead her to believe that it's her fault. Even a year later, the pain hasn't lessened.

Katara stands abruptly after half an hour and flees from the gardens, chased by her own thoughts. Aang goes after her.

Sokka stays.

The worst of the pain, he realizes, is not so much due to how well he'd known Zuko, but rather how well he hadn't known him. Even after Zuko had joined Team Avatar, Sokka had taken a while to warm up to him. Then, after the Boiling Rock, when Sokka had finally been able to label Zuko as Not A Jerk After All, he still had never gotten the other boy to open up to the rest of them. Zuko had kept mostly to himself, hiding his own pain beneath stoic determination. If they'd had more time, maybe Sokka could have really gotten to know him. There had been a good friend in Zuko, he was sure of it. Sometimes, when Zuko had flashed a rare smile, Sokka could see a brother in him.

Sokka leans forward and brushes his fingers over the indented inscription in the cold stone. Zuko's memorial reads "Ashes to Ashes", but Sokka wonders who is left to remember what the fire had been like. He wishes that he could have been one such person.

Sokka bows his head and weeps.

~*~

In the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se, the Jasmine Dragon lies empty and silent. Somewhere, amidst all of the maybes and should-have-beens, there is sunlight, and the sweet smell of tea that Zuko serves to his friends, and laughter as Iroh tells the full version of his tea joke, and teasing when Sokka tries with hilarious inadequacy to capture the moment on paper. There is joy and a bright future where no one is left behind, and where they all have each other.

But maybes are just dead dreams that sit like ash, dusting unused tables that lie forgotten behind the locked tea house doors.

Five Things That Never Happened to Shirou Kamui

_rubber_chicken@livejournal.com — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:52:03 GMT

Title: Five Things That Never Happened to Shirou Kamui
Fandom: X
Characters: Kamui, Fuuma
Word Count: 1,122
Genre: AU drabbles, Kamui and Fuuma centric.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Pairings: F/K
Summary/Author's Note: Response to heavensgardener's "Five things that never happened to..." challenge in togakushishrine. Hope I didn't mangle it too much. ^^;

Author's Notes: Some of these are more AU than other, but none are completely canon, so I hope that this still fits the criteria. I prefer writing more the type of AU that is a deviation from canon, rather than a complete abandonment of it.

I'm not too sure of how this turned out...but I wanted to write it and see. Hopefully I didn't brutalize the challenge too much, and don't make people's eyes bleed out. O_o

Not every Dream a yumemi sees is the future. Some are merely flitting possibilities--perhaps blown in from other worlds, perhaps secret desires of their own hearts. It isn't always the inevitable ones that bring the most pain, that make those so accursed Wish for their own demise. Sometimes merely seeing what might have been and can never be realized before their mind's eye and then torn away is enough to rip out their souls.

And sometimes, it makes them cry with relief.

*~*~*~*~*

He stood atop the cross, the steel beams rust-red beneath his feet, and fingered the wires thoughtfully, violet eyes cold and distant. They gazed down at Fuuma, his twin star pinned by glass and shock into stone, and the wires crisscrossed like the bars of a prison, forever separating them.

"KAMUI! NO!"

Kamui didn't even seem to hear him.

When he plunged the Shinken into the girl's chest, he felt nothing, and his twin star's screams were the music of an old, old record playing brokenly in his ears.

*~*~*~*~*

"You don't like ice cream?"

Kamui blushed and stammered, not sure what to say to this almost perfect stranger who'd pulled him away from the stands after the game and ushered him to a nearby creamery. "Er...yes, but--"

Monou Fuuma, a rising basketball star who was already becoming infamous for his rising cult of fangirl followers, grinned. He knew he'd liked this young reporter the moment he'd laid eyes on him. He was just too cute, and probably pleasant to talk to once he got over his stammering.

"Come on. My treat. I don't bite. Promise." Fuuma winked.

Kamui coughed. "I..er...okay..." he submitted at last, sinking into his seat with the resigned air of someone who knew that they were trapped, and who wasn't altogether sure if they actually disliked it.

"Excellent. I recommend the mint chocolate chip, by the way. So, Shirou-san, you don't look quite like the sports reporter type."

Kamui blinked. "Er..."

"You were fidgeting," Fuuma explained. "And taking notes in all the wrong places. And you clearly didn't have a clue what the commentator was saying half the time." Fuuma ordered his ice cream, and cocked an eyebrow at Kamui, waiting for the other man's choice.

"Oh, uh, same, please. And...er...how did you know that? Weren't you busy playing the game?"

Fuuma chuckled again. "The Tigers aren't that tough of a team. And besides, you caught my eye."

Kamui blushed slightly. "Eh. Thanks. I guess. I wouldn't tell the Tigers that, though."

Fuuma laughed. He had a feeling that they would get on rather well together.

*~*~*~*~*

"Shouldn't you have aimed...here?"

Kamui trembled as strong hands still sticky with blood grasped his own, the cold mockery of golden eyes belying the gentleness with which that hand was held, and placed it over his heart. "This is where the heart is."

Kamui trembled. This wasn't his Wish. This wasn't his Wish!

And yet...he'd come so close... The wound in his twin star's shoulder bled thickly and accusingly.

This is where the heart is.

Did Fuuma even know what a heart was any longer?

"One strike, and I'll be dead."

Violet eyes dilated, and tears streamed down his cheeks. He could see it clearly, feel it even. His hand sliding through skin and flesh, through bone to each muscle, and tearing through as the bleeding remnants fluttered onward in vain, not understanding the truth. He wanted nothing more than to free his hand from Fuuma's chest, but he couldn't move, couldn't move.

And why, why did Fuuma say such things? Didn't he know how they hurt?

"Why...Fuuma why...?"

And then Fuuma was leaning close, warm tongue--feverishly warm against his chilled skin--licking away his tears as if he cared.

"Such a pity..." his twin star's voice murmured, breath over his cheek. Kamui's throat clenched, strangling a sob. "Kamui. You don't even know your true Wish."

Before the younger boy could even process the meaning of those words, much less challenge them, the distance closed between them and Fuuma's lips pressed over Kamui's to shield the world from his cries. Kamui stilled, quiet and unsure, and finally just let go.

He didn't know what he Wished for anymore.

*~*~*~*~*

Fuuma leaned against the door to the study and watched for a moment in silent amusement as his friend beat his head against the desk top, slowly and periodically.

"Kamui, as relaxing as that might be, I can guarantee that it won't make the problem solve itself."

Kamui turned his head to shoot Fuuma a look. "Beating my head is more productive and useful than algebra ever will be."

Fuuma barked a laugh. "Now you're wrong about that." He paused. "Beating something empty rarely makes any difference."

Kamui huffed and raised an eyebrow. "Uh huh. So are you just going to stand there and gloat, or are you going to help me?"

"Depends. Do I get a kiss?"

Kamui rolled his eyes, looking more exasperated and long-suffering than anything else.. "Fuuma! Come on!"

"Aw." Fuuma attempted to pout, and failed miserably. Kamui fought the urge to laugh.

"Fine. A small one. Now get over here and help me with this."

Fuuma laughed, drawing the younger boy in with his lighthearted soul. He drew up a chair beside the desk and began to explain quadratics.

*~*~*~*~*

A machine beeped on inside an cold, sterile room, painful in the blank white that bleached the walls, floor, and ceiling. The only mercy to its sole occupant was that said occupant was too deep in a self-induced coma to notice or care.

The door shifted silently open and a dark shadow crossed the blank tiles towards the hospital bedside. He was a solitary Go piece surrounded by white, and it was his move.

It truly was a pity that the Sumeragi hadn't been able to revive Kamui. His twin star lay in the coma still, and after six months of waiting, he didn't think the boy would ever wake.

Such a pity. Fuuma gazed sadly down at the prone, pale form. Already he was whitening away into the sheets, body disappearing as the sun rose high in the window, disappearing along with his soul.

Kamui never would realize his Wish. And Fuuma would never see his own realized either. The only person he'd wanted to see happy, the person he'd wanted to live through this mess, lying there and refusing to live at all.

The world might as well end anyway.

Fuuma rose the Shinken above his twin star's chest and, after a moment's hesitation, plunged it downward, sealing the fate of the body with the fate the soul had already decided upon.

Kamui had been dead for six months anyway.

As the shadow left the room, Tokyo began to shake.

*~*~*~*~*