comment_fic 661-665: Avatar the Last Airbender, Inception/WC, HL, SN, Sherlock
Title: let it burn while I cry
Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender
Disclaimer: not my characters; title a misquote from Adele; one idea borrowed from Vathara's 'Embers'
Warnings: AUish
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 245
Point of view: third
Prompt: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zuko, I set fire to the rain
His father is the Phoenix King. His sister is the greatest firebender in the nation. His uncle is the Dragon of the West. His mother is missing.
Zuko plans with the Avatar, with the greatest earthbender in the world, with a waterbending master, and a nonbender who thinks so oddly Zuko can't help but be impressed.
He's not sure what he offers them. Yes, he is a firebender; but he was never the best. He's always been adequate. Surely, the Avatar needs something better than merely adequate.
He stands in the rain, breathing slowly and surely. Katara is making the rain dance; Toph's face is upturned to catch the water on her tongue. The nonbenders they seem to have adopted are chasing each other, flinging handfuls of rain. Sokka laughs at the shapes Katara contorts the rain into.
And Aang, the most powerful bender in all the world, is watching Zuko. "I remember something Gyatso told me once," Aang says softly, stepping up to Zuko's side. He holds out a hand, calling water and wind, making a little storm in his palm. "There's lightning in every raindrop."
"Really?" Zuko murmurs. Uncle mentioned something like that once; it was long ago, before his mother left, before Azula went from his baby sister to his enemy.
He cannot control lightning yet, not like Uncle, not like Azula. But now that he's feeling for it… yes. there.
Zuko opens his eyes and watches the rain in Aang's hand burn.
Title: Summer sun was on their wings, winter in their cry
Fandom: White Collar/Inception
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Rachel Field
Warnings: AU for both fandoms; dark; mentions of child abuse and non-con
Pairings: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 560
Point of view: third
Prompt: White Collar, Neal, they really shouldn't underestimate him
Neal Caffrey is a pretty-boy. Neal Caffrey is a thief who wouldn't know what to do with a gun if his life depended on it. Neal Caffrey is the FBI's bitch, and tricked his way out of prison on his knees.
Neal Caffrey is a gorgeous mask, and the pay-off will be glorious.
.
"How much longer? You know the Boss hates waitin'."
Neal smiles at his contact, holding out the tiniest of USB drives. "Your Boss'll wait for me, Porter."
Porter glares and his fingers close into a fist, but he takes the drive.
Neal's off limits to everyone.
.
Mozzie asks him, "What's the angle here?"
Elizabeth invites him to dinner.
Peter trusts him with confidential information, his house, his dog, his wife, and his life.
.
"If I granted you one request," the Boss muses, watching Neal strip and clean their favorite gun, "you'd ask for the Burkes to be left alive."
"And unhurt," Neal clarifies. "June too, if I could get that."
The Boss nods. "Done."
.
Neal Caffrey dies in a shootout, shielding one of his team members. He gets a hero's funeral.
Peter and Elizabeth Burke cry in each other's arms for days.
.
"You ready?" the Boss asks. "You've been out of the game for awhile."
"C'mon, Arthur," one of the best undercover men in the world says. "You need better people at your side."
"Hey, now," the Boss's lover and right-hand exclaims. "I'll have you know, I take wonderful care of 'im."
"Eames," the Boss says.
He subsides, glaring, and the Boss asks, "What name would you like now?"
Smirking at Eames, he says, "Nathaniel, I think."
The Boss nods.
.
Nathaniel Calton is one of the greatest assassins in the world. It doesn't matter what the job calls for; he excels. The Boss trusts him, and everyone is too afraid to ask why.
.
"What should we be when we grow up?" Noah asks Aidan, as they're curled up together beneath the covers, all of seven and shivering. Daddy is still throwing things downstairs. Mama's gone again.
"I'm gonna rule the world and make sure no one hurts us ever again," Aidan says, listening to his brother breathe. "And you're gonna be my secret weapon."
"That sounds nice," Noah whispers, hissing in pain when Aidan accidentally shifts his arm.
"It'll happen," Aidan promises. "I swear."
His twin nods. "It will."
.
The Boss says, "Well done, lil'brother."
He nods, grins, and offers the Boss his knife, so the Boss can take out his own pound of flesh.
Eames mutters, "Darling, this should not be as hot as it is," and he gets identical, blood-soaked smiles in response.
The traitor screams louder and louder, until the Boss finally shuts him up with a cleverly-turned slice.
.
No one knows where the Boss came from. His lover, a forger and con-man called Eames, was small-time until the Boss took a liking to him. (He's actually ex-military, and just as dangerous as the Boss, but only a handful of people in the world know that, so keep it to yourself.) And the Boss's favorite assassin, well.
A few of the more trusted lieutenants notice that the Boss and his pet killer have the same grace, the same turn of phrase, the same grin when they kill. But they never mention it, so the Boss and Nathaniel let them live.
(For now.)
Title: If you want, I'll tell you, but nothing I say will be enough
Fandom: Highlander
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Carolyn Forche
Warnings: Methos being vague
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 165
Point of view: third
Prompt: Highlander, Methos, "While I can honestly say that I told you the truth, but I may have told you not all of it."
Methos was Death on a Horse. He doesn't deny that (well, not any longer). Methos has put kings on thrones, given warlords vast empires, and crowned emperors of a dozen nations.
Methos has destroyed even more than that.
Let the children ask their questions. Let them wonder, let them rage, let them demand vengeance for people long dead, who screamed in languages no one alive can speak.
Let come who may. Methos was Death on a Horse for a thousand years, and he's been a thousand other things besides.
The truth? you ask. Dear child, there is no truth. Only shades of a lie.
Death doesn't change, no matter how many eons pass. Death with a rock, a sword, a bow, or a gun. Death with nuclear bombs and poison gas and any other thing humans can invent.
Death no longer rides a horse, and that is a truth.
Death is dead. That's what he promised young MacLeod, and that is a lie.
Title: I shall remember you with love
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Edna St. Vincent Millay
Warnings: AU during Hammer of the Gods
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 240
Point of view: third
Prompt: Supernatural, Gabriel, when he sees that the pagans have a real chance of killing Lucifer, he knows on which side he stands … because it will always be his family and its his big brother they're talking about
Gabriel meets Dean Winchester's eyes, as Kali and Baldur and all the rest talk about killing his big brother. Then he looks at Sam.
Sam looks away, at his own brother, and Gabriel knows they know.
Neither of his brothers' vessels says a thing.
.
Gabriel is an archangel. Before he was Anansi, Coyote, or Loki, he had been God's Messenger.
Before he was God's Messenger, he had been Sammael's littlest brother. Before he was God's Messenger, Michael had taught him to fly and Sammael had taught him to prank. All of Heaven was their playground, the first three, the greatest -
Castiel has chosen humanity over his brothers. He does not yet seem to understand that his pet human will choose his own brother over everything else.
.
"Brother," Lucifer says, stepping into the room, the blood of gods on his hands.
"Brother," Gabriel replies, bowing his head.
.
Michael looks at Lucifer, at Gabriel, and asks, "Brothers?"
Lucifer nods, smiling, and eons fall away.
He is Sammael, the first and the best, and Michael is at his side, shining and glorious, and Gabriel is home, he is free, his brothers are laughing together again.
"Come, my brothers," Sammael says, holding out a hand. "I have missed the sky."
.
Gabriel meets Dean Winchester's eyes. It was never a choice, he whispers directly into the boy's mind. You understand.
Dean looks at his baby brother, and deep inside, he admits, Yeah, I do.
Title: run red
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AU for The Great Game
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 42
Point of view: third
Prompt: Sherlock (BBC), John +/ Sherlock, war
Moriarty doesn't yet know what he's done.
John had been retired, happily so. He'd been Sherlock's friend, Sherlock's keeper.
Without Sherlock to follow and protect, he is simply a weapon seeking war.
Moriarty stole Sherlock away. For that… John goes to war.