fic: Solar Winds (7/?)
~~~
In the shade of a small overhang, Finn happily leans against a post and absorbs the not-sun shining down from above. The Fire Nation is freaking hot. Artie was waiting with him, but he carted himself off a few minutes ago to look at flowers or something. Kurt and Mercedes were supposed to meet them here, but Finn is willing to bet they got sidetracked by some kind of shiny new fashion thing. Ear buttons, or neck bracelets or something like that.
“Finn! Oh, good, you’re here,” Mercedes says as she rounds the corner, casually tossing a basket of little pea-looking things at him like she just expects him to catch it or something, like he’s not even doing or thinking about anything else. He’s not, but still. “My arm bones are about a minute from turning into noodles.” She follows this up with basket of grey bananas, barely giving Finn time to slip the first basket onto his shoulder before he’s flailing for another one. “Don’t spill those,” she warns. “They bruise easy.”
The tall boy barely has time to look put-out before Kurt appears, holding a bushel of purple berries. “Oh, thank Tui. I swear, these things are fermenting or something because this basket is twelve times heavier than when I picked it up.” He shoves the basket into Finn’s chest without looking and just barely manages to catch it before it falls to the ground. “Finn! Be careful with those!”
“Uhhh, dude,” Finn says, shrugging both of his fruit-burdened shoulders. “Kind of out of arms, here.”
“Oh,” Kurt says, looking thoughtful for a second. “Well, in that case…”
The tall boy lets himself sag with relief as Kurt seemingly prepares to shoulder the bushel himself. This is his fatal mistake; Kurt immediately seizes the opportunity to toss the strap over Finn’s head while it’s low enough to reach. “GACKT,” he chokes, trying not to fall over under the sudden added weight.
“Oh, Finn,” Kurt says fondly, patting him on the shoulder. “You’re the best pack mule an Avatar could ask for.” With that benediction, he saunters off to join Mercedes, the two of them making weird happy noises at some stripy, scarfy thing on display in a store window. Finn feels himself teetering just a bit, and tries to adjust the weight so that it’s a little more even, to no avail. Whatever. He’s fine. He can totally do this. He’s got great balance. He’s, like, Mr. Balance. He’s part of a balanced breakfast, with turducken eggs, sausage, boar bacon, milk-
Uh oh. The world is tilting. The world doesn’t usually do that, so it’s probably Finn. Except Finn doesn’t really know how to stop tilting, since he doesn’t remember starting. He needs time to think, but gravity is totally refusing to cut him a break here, and he can already hear stuff hitting the ground. It’s a slow death, measured in degrees, and it is only going to take a couple more before… crap, crap, crapcrapcrapCRAAAAAAP-
~~~
CRAP. Oh, crap, crap, crap. Oh, great flaming dragon dong, he is so fucked. His dad knows. His dad knows. He’s standing right there, looking at him like he is not even the tiniest bit surprised and oh, fuck fuck fucking fireballs FUCK. How much does he know?
Steeling himself as best he can, Blaine takes a deep breath and jumps out to wrap himself around the pillar, sliding easily down to the floor, where his father regards him with a sort of casual amusement. Probably imagining creative ways to ground him or force him to remain in sight at all times. Blaine imagines himself being forced to wear soft, fluffy mittens that would make climbing next to impossible. Oh, and a hippocow bell so that people always know where he is. Why? How? He was being so stealthy…
“So,” the Fire Lord begins, “did you enjoy the meeting, son?”
What? “What?” Blaine’s mouth echoes his mind. Because that was a little out-of-nowhere. “I mean, ummm…” he stammers, trying to come up with an answer. Well, honesty is probably the best policy at this point. “I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but it was… surprising?”
A raised eyebrow represents his permission to continue.
“Because… well, you reacted pretty badly to news of the plague when Councilor Grothman brought it up a few months ago,” he says. And then he realizes what he just said. “I mean… ah, not that I was… there for that, I just heard it… from the other Councilors, who I… talk to, and I’m just… I’m… I’m boned, aren’t I?” he finishes, looking down at the ground.
To his surprise, his father responds with a soft chuckle. The shock must be pretty clear on his face, because the Fire Lord elaborates fairly quickly. “Blaine, you’ve been sitting in on these meetings for three years now,” he says casually, and Blaine’s eyebrows and jaw must have suddenly decided that they hate each other, because they move as far away from each other as is possible while still technically remaining part of the Fire Prince’s face.
“You’ve known? The entire time?” he asks.
A single nod. Stupid unflappable Father Lord. Fire Lord. Whatever!
“How?” he asks.
“You’re my son,” the Fire Lord says simply. “Parents have an instinct about these things. And thanks to your brief ‘I am the Great Comet’ phase, mine is honed to perfection. I always know when you’re around.”
Oh yeah. Blaine remembers that phase. For some odd reason, when he was about seven he had taken to pretending to be the Great Comet, which mostly involved falling on people from space, or the nearest approximation Blaine could come up with. He also remembers how it ended. Last he had heard, Commander Farnsworth’s neck only ached when it was about to rain, so at least he didn’t cause permanent damage. “But… why didn’t you say anything?” Blaine asks.
Lord Anderson gives a facial shrug, as if the answer is obvious. “Blaine, you willingly attended Council meetings. Under absolutely no obligation, I might add. There are Council members with worse attendance records than you. Your interest in these matters is not something I intend to discourage.”
“…oh,” is all Blaine can initially come up with in response to that.
“You will be doing this yourself one day, after all,” his dad smiles.
Blaine scoffs. “Well, yeah, but that’s not for a long time. Fire Lords live insanely long lives. Didn’t grandpa live to be like a hundred and thirty?”
“One hundred and thirty-two,” the Fire Lord corrected.
“Yeah, so I’ve got plenty of time to learn the tricks of the trade, right?” Blaine grinned.
“Ah, but what did Infernicus say?” Blaine’s father adopts his ‘teaching’ posture, and the Fire Prince clamps his throat shut to stop an escaping sigh.
“…you’ll have to be more specific,” Blaine prods. “Infernicus said a lot of things.”
“On the subject of time,” Lord Anderson clarifies.
His memory banks are subjected to a quick search before Blaine finds the answer (he thinks). “A flame burns not for the past or the future, but for the moment?”
“Exactly,” his father nods. “There is no time like the present to teach you, so let’s get to work.”
The Fire Lord gestures to the table. Puzzled, but ever-so-slightly intrigued, Blaine decides to play along. He confidently strides over to one of the council chairs, and sits. The Fire Lord moves next to his customary position at the largest chair, standing next to it and looking at Blaine as if he is waiting for something.
Blaine raises his eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“All rise for the Fire Lord?” his dad says.
“Oh,” Blaine says, standing up with a quick grin before schooling it into the most pompous expression he can manage. “Right, right. Terribly sorry, my Lord.”
“You are forgiven,” the Fire Lord says with a gracious, imperious air as he sits and nods to his son, who sits in response. “So, Councilor Blaine,” he begins, and already Blaine is having to fight off the urge to grin like an idiot. “What is your opinion on the matters discussed in today’s meeting?”
“Well, my Lord,” Blaine says, but his father interrupts him.
“Stand up when you speak.”
“Ah, of course, very good then,” Blaine says as he rises to his feet. “Like so?”
“Excellent,” Lord Anderson says with mock-seriousness. “Flawless posture, my son. Continue.”
“Well, my Lord,” Blaine says. “I must admit I was taken aback by your sudden reversal on this matter. If I recall correctly, it was your decision to instate the quarantine to begin with. I suppose I would like a little more insight into the thought process that lead to this decision.”
Blaine sits down, and his father gives a brief nod of approval before speaking himself. “An entirely reasonable request, Councilor Blaine. When I spoke of the Sun being restless, I was not merely being mystical or metaphorical.” He gestures out one of the chamber windows, where the sun burns bright in the morning sky. “Firebenders have a primal connection to the Sun. We grow stronger and bolder in its light, and we are happiest when it is close. But this connection does not always play out in our favor, Blaine. The Sun is distant, impossibly powerful and complicated, but there are those who study it. One such scholar is a friend of mine, and he has helped to confirm what I have already felt in my heart. The Sun is restless, Blaine. It churns and thrashes, like the sea in a storm. Have you not felt it? An unexplained foreboding… a growing sense of unease?”
Blaine attempts to remember any kind of unsettling feelings he has felt recently, but all his emotions of late amount to a small hurricane of thrill and excitement and attraction, with an impossible, beautiful boy standing dead center in the eye of the storm. “No, not really.”
The Fire Lord gives a small but fond smile. “Hm. You never were much for fear, were you?”
“I much prefer courage, my Lord.”
“Admirable,” he smiles. “At times, I myself fear that I have not displayed that quality near enough. Especially,” he says, growing quieter, “in matters concerning you.”
Blaine isn’t quite sure what to say to that, so he remains quiet.
“Nonetheless… as I was saying, this is not the first time such an event has occurred, but it is the first in my lifetime, and the first time the Fire Nation has faced such a great crisis. In the past, the Storming Sun has heralded times of great upheaval for our people, and I wish to avert such upset as much as possible. To ease the heart of my nation is my goal, and if I must face and overcome my own fear in order to accomplish this, then so be it.”
The Fire Prince sits in slightly stunned silence for a moment, attempting to take in everything that was just said. If his father was overprotective normally, the second news of the plague hit, it was like the Great Comet had arrived to enhance the man a hundredfold. It was an instinct Blaine could understand, to a degree-to imagine his son, suffering the same slow, unavoidable demise that his wife suffered… he couldn’t imagine what that would be like. “I see,” Blaine says, though he isn’t quite sure that he does. “Well, I cannot argue with your logic, my Lord. With proper precautions, I fully support your decision.”
“Thank you, Councilor Blaine,” the Fire Lord says. “I appreciate your input.” The air of official business is broken with a warm grin. “There. Was that so difficult?”
“Psssh,” Blaine waves him off easily. “Not at all.”
“Good,” his father replies. “Because that is how you will be expected to behave in these meetings from now on.”
The nonchalant attitude Blaine has adopted does not survive that announcement. It dies a messy death as he nearly flips out of his chair with shock. “Wait, what? Are you serious?”
“Of course,” he replies. “You are not the Fire Lord yet, of course, but I believe it is time you were trusted with some real responsibility. As of today, you have full standing as a Council member, so you will be expected to attend meetings, cast votes on various issues, and to participate in discussions. I expect you will have much to contribute.”
“I don’t… I… you’re… you’re trusting me,” Blaine stammers, “with a Council position?”
“Well, I don’t know how you expect to learn otherwise,” the Fire Lord replies.
Blaine is utterly stunned. “Dad, I… this is… this is… awesome.” With that, he abruptly launches himself over the table, runs along the top and grabs his father into a crushing hug. The Fire Lord is only shocked for a few seconds.
“Always when I least expect it… there is no place safe from you, is there?” he laughs as he returns the grasp.
Blaine chuckles into his shoulder. “I can strike from any direction, at any time. I am the hug ninja.”
“I hope you can restrain yourself during the meetings. Wouldn’t want to give the impression of bias, after all.”
“Right,” Blaine says, breaking the hug, and making an exaggerated return to prim-and-proper mode. “Of course.”
The two of them rise and begin to exit the chamber, Blaine fighting a losing battle against the urge to grin like a catgator presented with a five-course dinner. His father is trusting him-really trusting him with an actual responsibility. This is huge. This kind of trust… this is…
This isn’t something he deserves.
“Something on your mind, son?” the Fire Lord asks, as apparently, Blaine has the worst game face in the history of game.
“I was just thinking,” Blaine starts to reply.
And suddenly it occurs to him that this is the time to earn it. If there was ever a time to come clean to his father, ever a door opened for him to walk through and lay everything on the table, this is it. ‘Dad, I’ve been sneaking out from under your nose for years now, going into town and doing incredibly dangerous things even when you expressly forbade me from leaving the palace and I knew how much you would freak if I ever went missing. I’ve been doing lots of stuff like that, pretty much subverting your authority and disobeying you at every opportunity. Oh, also? I met the Avatar and befriended him. I’ve been teaching him firebending despite rumors that say he is the source of the plague. I think I might like him.’
Whoa.
Wait, where did that last part come from? That’s just… well, whatever.
In the end, he looks at his father and he just… can’t. He can’t bring himself to ruin this moment. He loves his dad, he really does, but it’s felt like they’ve been growing apart for years, despite the man’s best efforts to keep him close. This is something rare and incredibly valuable, and he doesn’t want to sully it. Even though he knows his father would see reason eventually, Blaine just doesn’t want that shoe to drop yet.
Maybe he isn’t as courageous as he thought.
“…Sue Sylvester is kind of a smoke-spewing bitch, isn’t she?” he finishes at last, turning his charm smile to its brightest setting.
The Fire Lord frowns. “Now, Blaine…” he starts, voice low and disappointed. “…that’s ‘Lady Sue Sylvester is a smoke spewing bitch.’ It’s important to use people’s proper titles. They like that.”
The Fire Prince gives a slight nod. “I’ll try to remember.”
~~~
Sue Sylvester’s office is filled with things that want to eat you. Or, at least, they would want to eat you, if any of them were actually alive. Dragon statues, stuffed moose-lion skins, a nastily vivid painting of a platypus bear satisfying his munchies on a bunch of unsuspecting picnickers… it’s giving him the shivers. He’s into cougars and all, but not the kind that might actually eat him.
Puck’s just started to doze against the doorframe when Sue Sylvester enters the room like a fucking avalanche, bitch-gliding through the door without even bothering with the knob and still nearly killing him with the force of it. “Hey, watch it, lady!” he says, and immediately, her crazy fire-bitch claws are grabbing him and forcing him to look her in the eyes.
“That’s Lady, with a capital L. Don’t think I can’t hear your lack of proper capitalization, you uneducated, unhygienic mudskipper.”
“Damn,” he says after she lets him go. “Who put chilli peppers in your-”
“If you value the nerve endings in your man-parts, I recommend you do not finish that sentence,” she says, storming over to the other side of her giant desk and sitting in the chair like it flipped her off and shat on her doorstep. “And if you must know, it was the incompetent, simpering boob that I am required by law to refer to as the Fire Lord. The man makes me want to cut off my own face and sew it on backwards just so I don’t have to see, hear, smell, or taste anything associated with him.”
Santana barely looks up from filing her fingernails. “We’ve been waiting here for three hours.”
“Well, I must apologize for your incredible hardship. I understand that Neanderthals such as you have difficulty with the complicated, intricate muscle control required to engage in sitting down and standing up. If you’d like, I can call a few of my Chi-Ryu’s in here to give you a hand when it comes time to switch from one to the other.”
Santana looks vaguely interested in that, but she gets down to business pretty quickly. “Look, you hired us. You set up these appointments.”
“Exactly,” Lady Sue replies. “I created them; therefore it is my divine right to destroy them at my pleasure. I owe you no explanations and I am dangerously close to cutting your pay because of your foul attitudes. Report on your findings!”
“We found him,” Santana says. “Confirmed his identity, and everything.”
“Inadequate,” Sue yawns. “Give me something more substantial.”
“We have a confirmed location where he went last night, and a fine reason to believe he’ll be going back there.”
“Better,” the Lady allows. “I’m still debating taking this information and having the two of you sedated and shipped to the South Pole.”
“Alright,” the dark-skinned girl says with a smile. “How ‘bout this; His Royal Highness? Is training the Avatar.”
At this, Sue’s eyebrows rise in an expression of intrigue. Which is kind of a surprise to Puck, as he was pretty sure she was one of those people who felt nothing but differing amounts of rage. “You’ve caught my attention. How do you know it’s the Avatar?”
“Homeboy was getting his bend on,” she smirks. “Fire and water. I saw both. And furthermore, I’m thinking there might be a little somethin’-somethin’ between the two of them.”
The Lady looks pensive. “Well,” she says after a few moments. “This might make things a little easier. I’m still not satisfied, but I’m as close as unevolved lifeforms such as yourselves could hope to make me, so that’s something. I have three days to avert certain disaster for this country, so I’m going to have to up my operations. In the meantime, the two of you are on Prince duty. The next time that sneaky gay pops his curly little head out from behind the Palace walls, you,” she says, pointing to Santana, “send me a messenger hawk. I will reply. When I do, you,” she says, pointing to puck, “will take him somewhere quiet and pound him into hippoburger meat. I mean it-I want him so thoroughly tenderized that even the fussiest of octogenarians will be able to gum him down and digest him without even so much as a burble of complaint from their decaying intestines. Do I make myself clear?”
“Finally,” Puck grunts. “I get to hit something.”
“Yes, my Lady,” Santana says.
“Excellent,” the Lady smiles. “Now get out of my office.”
She doesn’t have to tell Puck twice. He’d call her a maneater, but he’s pretty sure she’d readily devour anyone or anything that stood in her way, regardless of gender, age, status, or species. She seems hardcore like that. As he heads out, he hears her bark from behind him. “BECKY,” she says. “Send in my next appointment.”
And then he sees her. A blonde chick so hot, she probably takes fucking lava baths. She’s wearing her red-and-white school uniform, upping the hotness factor by about a billion, and walking toward Crazy Lady’s office like she owns the place. There are HBIC vibes radiating off of her so hard he half-expects her and Santana to lock eyes and launch into a catfight right then and there, and he’s seriously disappointed when they just settle for glaring at each other. Puck raises one eyebrow as she passes, an open invitation, and he doesn’t miss the flare of interest in her eyes in the second-long window before she flicks her hair at him to blow him off.
Oh, Hells yes.
As she closes the door, Puck finds the short little assistant girl sitting at her desk, and slips her a little card. “Hey, when hottie gets done with her meeting, give her this. It’s the hotel I’m staying at, room number included. She’ll know what to do.”
The creepy little lady takes the card from him without a word, so Puck can only assume she got the message, which means hottie is going to get the message, which means he is going to get something else entirely. If everything goes according to plan, he’ll get to bone a hot chick and make Santana jealous as fuck.
Maybe then they’ll get into a fight.
~~~
Becky waits until the guy with the Mohawk rounds the corner before incinerating the card and sweeping the ashes into a trashcan without even looking up from her paperwork.
~~~
“You sent for me, Lady Sylvester?”
Sue eyes her protégé as she walks through the door with no small amount of (very secret, well-hidden) pride. Her poise is impeccable. She radiates confidence and command simply by existing, so deeply has she imbibed the teachings of the Chi-Ryu way.
“Have a seat, Q,” the Lady says after a moment.
Quinn does as commanded.
“First, I’d like a progress report on Operation Wonderful, Benevolent Lies.”
Her star pupil nods, adopting a small smirk of triumph. “It’s moving along perfectly, my Lady. The agents are deployed throughout the City, spreading rumors as we speak. The men hang on to their every word,” she says, pausing to let her smirk grow a little wider as she flips her hair over her shoulder, “for obvious reasons. The women are a slightly harder sell, but we have our ways.”
“Outstanding. I expected no less,” Sue says. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to turn it up a notch.”
Quinn arcs a perfectly trimmed eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Oh, indeed.” Sue leans forward, steepling her fingers into the pyramid of evil contemplation. “The Fire Lord’s stupidity is forcing my hand. There’s been a change of plans, so listen carefully.”
The Chi-Ryu leans forward slightly, absorbing her Master’s every word.
“In three days…”
~~~
Coming Up Next: Kurt and Blaine reunite at last, oblivious to the wheels of political intrigue a-turnin’ all around them. This will not work in their favor. The tension in town is rising, the Sun is restless, and the Sue is hungry for power. One way or another, life for our heroes -and for the Fire Nation- is about to be turned upside-down…
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