Drabbles: Family Sticks Together (A:tLA; PG)

[jedibuttercup]

PG; A:tLA. Spoilers through 2.2 "The Cave of Two Lovers"; 2 x 100 words. Reaction drabbles #2.

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United We Stand

There are times when Sokka wonders whether bending ability somehow cancels out common sense. Trying to keep Katara and Aang on task when they're caught up in training or snared by someone else's cause is like trying to keep Momo out of the food. Better to just chip in so they get back on track more quickly.

Sokka can handle being plan guy. Really; he's been training for that his whole life. It's just-- what if he screws up bad enough they get caught? Or hurt? ...Or worse?

He's going to do his best to make sure that doesn't happen.

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Divided We Fall

Three years, he has spent traveling with his nephew. Three long years, playing the part of baggage as much as advisor, careful of Zuko's savagely scarred pride. Hot springs by lotus tile by White Jade bush, Iroh has slowly coaxed the boy toward a path of healing.

But Zuko is not his brother's only damaged, dangerous child; and now Iroh has been forced to start over from the beginning. The curdled bitterness in Zuko's eyes since Azula's betrayal hurts more than his response to Iroh's cautions beforehand: lazy, mistrustful, shallow old man.

Someday, Iroh vows, there will be a reckoning.

Comments

[irisbleufic.livejournal.com]

Trying to keep Katara and Aang on task when they're caught up in training or snared by someone else's cause is like trying to keep Momo out of the food.

Ahahahah, this is TRUE <3

Iroh: one bad-ass mofo. He and Zuko are the best things about the series, I think.

[jedibuttercup]

One of the few things that frustrates me about the show is that so much would have been different if only the Avatar's group had traveled with sane and sensible adults all along; but being a kid's show, and Teaching Lessons along the way, I understand why that wasn't allowed.

♥ Iroh.

[anotherdreamer5.livejournal.com]

Argh! You do tone so well! I love this:

There are times when Sokka wonders whether bending ability somehow cancels out common sense. Hilarious. I just really like the exasperation of Sokka. And I like that he's okay being normal, but still feeling the heavy burden. (I read your other comment about the frustration with the show because it would have been different with a sensible grown up, but probably my favorite scene was Katara confronting her father and saying she expected that finding him would solve everything, and how devastated she was that that hadn't happened; I loved that they all grew up on the show (mostly... Aang's last of growth was weird, especially when contrasted with Zuko). BOY DO I HOPE YOU DID MAI!)

And Iroh! You did so much there. You used punctuation to capture his tone, right from the beginning. "Three years, he has spent traveling with his nephew." The syntax there, bending and twisting. The incomplete sentences. Just loved that entire section. And then the way that he reflects on his brother's other broken child, and you have to wonder if the reckoning is with her who betrayed them, or the brother who broke them. I would think the second.

Anyway. Love. Off to read more.

[jedibuttercup]

Sokka is awesome! And I adored Iroh. I've been told more than once that once of my strengths in writing is mimicking voices; but it's hard not to with such a strongly characterized show.

I left some things a little elliptical because I literally wrote these as I watched (without reading spoilers) and wasn't sure how it would all play out yet, but as it happens, the reckoning did end up being more of the second. =)