Prompt 28: "the way it crumbles", honestly_sangi, rated t
Title: the way it crumbles
Author: honestly_sangi
Rating: T
Words: 500
Genre: Gen, tragedy
Char/Pair: Toph, Katara, Zuko, Iroh, Suki, Azula
Warning: Character death.
Summary: The war is lost.
0.
The war is lost.
1.
Toph’s blind seafoam eyes stare blankly at the fire. The air is warm, but her body still shivers uncontrollably from time to time. There is blood on her cheek and arms and everywhere that she has not washed off.
Hesitatingly, Katara sits down and wraps her arms around the earthbender. After a long moment Toph hugs her back, breathing in blood and death, putting her ear next to the other girl’s heart. It beats.
“Do you think the others got out?” she asks, so quietly the wind swallows it.
Katara strokes her hair. “Yes,” she lies. “I know they did.”
2.
Zuko’s hands are wrapped in bandages, but that does not stop him from steering the ostrich horse carefully through the forest. Two swords are strapped across his back.
Iroh watches him carefully. “It was not your fault, Zuko,” he says comfortingly.
The young firebender closes his eyes and thinks, this is all wrong.
The Dragon of the West continues, “There is nothing we could have done to stop them.”
Zuko says nothing. Maybe this is his destiny, his kismet: watching the world die.
Finally he speaks. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
Iroh blinks slowly. “I know.”
3.
Suki’s eyes search the horizon as she stands on a hill, green-blue orbs desperately looking for something she has not found. The wind rustles her clothes; she shivers as it touches her open wounds.
Another Kyoshi warrior moves forward and touches her shoulder. “Suki,” she says in a low tone, “we need to move out.”
Suki shakes her head, eyes still searching. “Just a bit longer,” she says. “We were going to meet here.”
The girl moves back and shakes her head slowly. The horizon remains empty; he never arrives.
Suki cries. They leave.
She does not look back.
4.
Azula ignites the world and watches it burn, burn, burn.
She slashes at her brother, her uncle, the Avatar. She tastes blood.
Azula watches the world burn and wipes blood off her cheek absently.
Her father, placing his hand on her hand as a child, saying he is proud of her firebending.
Azula watches the world burn and smirks with malice.
The body of the Avatar, lifeless, on the floor of the throne room. His blood - red, red, red - stains the marble slowly, as if seeping into the tiny spaces between particles.
Azula watches the world burn and laughs. She is lost.
5.
The woman trembles, her face covered in sweat. Her eyes are closed and she is panting, but when one of the midwives nudges her she wakes quickly, opening her blue eyes. Her husband is not in sight, so they have not called him inside.
She looks over next to her, and there is a younger healer, her arms containing a small bundle. The sweaty woman reaches out her hands instinctively, and the healer places the blankets firmly in the circle of the mother’s arms.
The child blinks sleepily; her eyes are bright, newborn blue.
She is their unknown salvation.