The ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
queer_fest fic is a mess.
May. 29th, 2011 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terajkBut it is not as much of a mess as I thought. This is what I have so far:
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Characters: Azula, Mai, Ty Lee
Rating: PG
Word Count: 400-ish
Prompt: "Azula doesn't like the mind-healers, but trying to 'fix' her attraction to women is going much too far." (The prompt has not actually come up yet. But I did broach something related to/important for the prompt. Um).
“I wonder,” she says, examining her nails, “what it would be like to kill you.”
Mai sips her tea--something fruity and sweet, probably. “I wonder what it would be like if Zuko’d put you in prison like I told him to.” She raises her teacup again; the muscle pulses in her wrist, like the small spasms of feeling that have always flashed across her face. It is utterly, perfectly backwards, the flicking up. (”Like this,” Mai had said in the gardens as the shuriken flew.)
But Azula knows the parry of Mai’s blade when she feels it.
"If there's no war anymore, Azula," Ty Lee asks softly, pulling the comb through her hair as if she's weaving on a loom, "is the War Room still the War Room?"
"Really, Ty Lee. Obviously--" She’d been ready to say “Zuzu's too stupid to change it,” but then she wonders if perhaps he's too stupid not to. What ridiculous name would he give it? The Fun Room? The Friendship Room? The Room Where Nothing Gets Accomplished Because I Am the Worst Ruler in Fire Nation History? Maybe he calls it nothing at all because he’s shut it up, leaving centuries of achievement cold and empty. And then she’s thinking of--
The ungrateful, traitorous bastard. That is all.
"Obviously what, Azula?"
"Obviously, it's a ridiculous question." Azula doesn't like not knowing what Zuko would do, and she especially doesn't like the way Ty Lee's voice creeps forward, like a child crowding a baby ostrich-horse to see if she can ride it. She is tired of people examining her from all angles like a new species of beast: Is she crazy right now? How about now? I don't think that made sense--should I report it to the Firelord? It was amazing how fascinated the sane were with madness, yet how clueless about it they were: they were always hoping to find it, and congratulating themselves on spotting it when they hadn't. (Did they not stop to consider a question before answering it? Or pause to make the question-asker squirm?) It would amuse her if their need didn't force her to think about everything she did: where to look, where not to look, how to hold her head, how long to wait before speaking. Sometimes, like right now, she had to strangle her thoughts altogether. This sort of curiosity, this invasiveness, doesn't suit Ty Lee at all.
Ty Lee agrees. "Sorry, Azula." Then she goes silent as the comb keeps pulling, and Azula is glad she doesn't have to command her thoughts like wayward soldiers, line them up into sentences or beat them into words. Instead, she focuses on the rhythm of Ty Lee's combing and feels her thought-armies gather close. She wonders if she could follow Sozin's Subjugation of the Air Nation now, were someone to read it aloud.
“Subjugation,” she says quietly, feeling the shape of the word in her mouth.
“What did you say, Azula?”
“I said nothing.”
“Oh.”
Azula doesn’t think of how soft Ty Lee keeps her voice, how she snips her sentences like silk. Instead, she focuses on her eyes, kept low and out of the way, the way her jaw curves like a ripe peach. She tolerates the flashes of light in the mirror (silver knives in the sunlight) because Ty Lee is the same as she always was. Except that she isn’t.
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Characters: Azula, Mai, Ty Lee
Rating: PG
Word Count: 400-ish
Prompt: "Azula doesn't like the mind-healers, but trying to 'fix' her attraction to women is going much too far." (The prompt has not actually come up yet. But I did broach something related to/important for the prompt. Um).
“I wonder,” she says, examining her nails, “what it would be like to kill you.”
Mai sips her tea--something fruity and sweet, probably. “I wonder what it would be like if Zuko’d put you in prison like I told him to.” She raises her teacup again; the muscle pulses in her wrist, like the small spasms of feeling that have always flashed across her face. It is utterly, perfectly backwards, the flicking up. (”Like this,” Mai had said in the gardens as the shuriken flew.)
But Azula knows the parry of Mai’s blade when she feels it.
"If there's no war anymore, Azula," Ty Lee asks softly, pulling the comb through her hair as if she's weaving on a loom, "is the War Room still the War Room?"
"Really, Ty Lee. Obviously--" She’d been ready to say “Zuzu's too stupid to change it,” but then she wonders if perhaps he's too stupid not to. What ridiculous name would he give it? The Fun Room? The Friendship Room? The Room Where Nothing Gets Accomplished Because I Am the Worst Ruler in Fire Nation History? Maybe he calls it nothing at all because he’s shut it up, leaving centuries of achievement cold and empty. And then she’s thinking of--
The ungrateful, traitorous bastard. That is all.
"Obviously what, Azula?"
"Obviously, it's a ridiculous question." Azula doesn't like not knowing what Zuko would do, and she especially doesn't like the way Ty Lee's voice creeps forward, like a child crowding a baby ostrich-horse to see if she can ride it. She is tired of people examining her from all angles like a new species of beast: Is she crazy right now? How about now? I don't think that made sense--should I report it to the Firelord? It was amazing how fascinated the sane were with madness, yet how clueless about it they were: they were always hoping to find it, and congratulating themselves on spotting it when they hadn't. (Did they not stop to consider a question before answering it? Or pause to make the question-asker squirm?) It would amuse her if their need didn't force her to think about everything she did: where to look, where not to look, how to hold her head, how long to wait before speaking. Sometimes, like right now, she had to strangle her thoughts altogether. This sort of curiosity, this invasiveness, doesn't suit Ty Lee at all.
Ty Lee agrees. "Sorry, Azula." Then she goes silent as the comb keeps pulling, and Azula is glad she doesn't have to command her thoughts like wayward soldiers, line them up into sentences or beat them into words. Instead, she focuses on the rhythm of Ty Lee's combing and feels her thought-armies gather close. She wonders if she could follow Sozin's Subjugation of the Air Nation now, were someone to read it aloud.
“Subjugation,” she says quietly, feeling the shape of the word in her mouth.
“What did you say, Azula?”
“I said nothing.”
“Oh.”
Azula doesn’t think of how soft Ty Lee keeps her voice, how she snips her sentences like silk. Instead, she focuses on her eyes, kept low and out of the way, the way her jaw curves like a ripe peach. She tolerates the flashes of light in the mirror (silver knives in the sunlight) because Ty Lee is the same as she always was. Except that she isn’t.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-03 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-03 06:45 pm (UTC)\o/
Should I tell you that I needed this this morning and it's 1200 words now? :D :D :D (It's not finished or anything yet, but I have til the 10th and I'm feeling a lot better about it. \o/ \o/ \o/
I think it is time for tea and pastries.