Prompt #15- Defeat: "Hope Burns Eternal" by bombalurima (Rated K+)
Title: Hope Burns Eternal
Author: bombalurima
Rating: K+
Words: 485
Genre: Gen
Characters: Roku and Sozin, brief mentions of Aang.
Summary: "Roku had never believed that it would come to this. Time, space, everything around him was a blur, the entirety of his very conscience smothered in engulfing, smoldering flames. The sky was raining ash. The earth was crumbling to pieces. The world was falling apart......"
Roku had never believed that it would come to this.
Time, space, everything around him was a blur, the entirety of his very conscience smothered in engulfing, smoldering flames. The sky was raining ash. The earth was crumbling to pieces. The world was falling apart.
“Sozin?!”
There rode the Fire Lord himself on a magnificent blue dragon, appearing oddly cool and collected given all that was happening around him. “Then there’s not a moment to waste.”
Sozin slipped as another surge shook the now-trapped magma, and would have tumbled off of the mountain, had Roku not Earthbended a chunk of rock to catch him. Together, the two old men then turned and raced away, away from the brewing destruction behind them that they had been ignorant enough to believe they could stop.
Roku was halted in his tracks by a blast of noxious gas straight to his face-had he been a younger man, he might have been able to keep running. But he was no longer the hale, hardy male he had been in his youth. The years had performed their terrible dance on him, and he was already severely weakened already.
Coughing, he fell to his knees, his lungs burning, eyes stinging and his vision blurred as he managed to lift one trembling hand up to the only person he could turn to now.
“Please…” The single word fell from his dry, chapped lips as he outstretched his hand towards Sozin, the Fire Lord, his former best friend.
For what was surely the first time in his life-Roku was begging.
“Without you, all my plans are suddenly possible,” Sozin began in a slow, measured voice, watching Roku without the slightest trace of pity in his hard gaze. “I have a vision for the future, Roku.”
He flew off on his dragon then, the man Roku no longer recognized-and did not look back once.
Roku heaved another terrible, racking, cough as he slumped over onto the ground, tears pricking his eyes again-whether it was from the heat or the sorrow, he did not know.
A familiar screeching noise came from above the sound of the volcano and the rocks crumbling, and Roku lifted his head only to see Fang, brave Fang, come soaring through the smoke and curl around his master, willing to protect him till the end.
That was what this was now-the end. He, Avatar Roku, who was supposed to keep the planet in balance and protect it from any harm, was leaving it right as its time of need began.
There would be a successor, he knew. Someone would have to come after him.
But would they be enough?
Roku did not have time to ponder the thought-there was one last surge of smoke, one last eruption of fire, and he breathed in---
Thousands of miles away, in a warm, sunlit room, a newborn baby cried.