Drabbles: Pain Shared Is ... (A:tLA; PG)

[jedibuttercup]

PG; Avatar: the Last Airbender. Reaction drabbles #4. Up to 2.13 "The Drill"; 2x100 words.

---

Pain Halved

Of all the landscapes Katara has seen since leaving the South Pole, she likes the desert the least. If she squints, the arid sea could almost be the ocean of her childhood, but there's no life beneath its sandy waves; its winds steal the breath from her lungs.

Worse, it's utterly Earth: the element most opposite to Aang. After he loses Appa, it's as though the desert has stolen him, too; as though he's buried his heart-- pain and joy alike-- in its impassive, alien strength.

She breathes a sigh of relief when a baby's smile washes him free again.

---

A Sign of Weakness

The moment Jet meets the boy with the scar, he feels as though he knows him: like recognizing like. Somewhere, somewhen, Lee lost something important; something more than just his pretty face.

Jet's hoping to turn over a new, constructive leaf in Ba Sing Se. The urge for revenge and destruction hasn't wholly left him, though, and the scorched edges of that emotion resonate with the bitter corners of every smile Lee fails to make.

They'd be stronger together; Jet knows it. So why doesn't Lee?

Nursing the burn of rejection, Jet decides: there must be something else going on.

Comments

[irisbleufic.livejournal.com]

something more than just his pretty face

Oh, Jet. My heart still aches over him (and Zuko, maybe, a little).

[jedibuttercup]

There could have been a real connection there; but both of them were too damaged at the time, alas.

.... Do we know for sure if Jet died? I was kind of surprised when I just watched "The Ember Island Players" and no one seemed surprised that everyone knew who he was, despite Zuko having met him in totally separate circumstances from the others.

[anotherdreamer5.livejournal.com]

I like that Katara's section is about the lack of life in the water, but then focuses in on Aang. She views the world through the eyes of someone taking care of him, looking out for him. She herself is secondary.

And Jet and Zuko! I like that it was rejection that made him look deeper.

[jedibuttercup]

Katara was a problematic character for me, but that's often a good excuse to write... exploring her POV clarified her for me a lot.

It was the same, here, with Jet. I wanted to find an explanation that made him more than a paranoid git who saw smoke everywhere regardless of actual Fire. =)

[anotherdreamer5.livejournal.com]

Katara is one of those people I really didn't get, either. Your writing actually helped me with that, especially when you highlighted the way that she's always put herself second. Not really. She's pretty stubborn. But her PURPOSE has always been about someone else. Everyone else had something that they wanted--Toph wanted sovereignty over self, Aang needed to find a way to bring balance to the world, Sokka wanted to end the fire nation. Katara didn't... I don't know. It was weird.