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Separation VII
Title: Separation
Rating: PG-13 for language
Genre: Crossover fusion
Fandoms: Avatar: The Last Airbender and His Dark Materials
Timeline: Season One, immediately following 1x09, The Waterbending Scroll
Summary: Returning to his ship after the fiasco with the pirates, Prince Zuko stumbles across the body of a boy in the river. Quickly it is determined that the boy is alive, but that something is terribly wrong...
Warning: Inspired in part by avocado_love's Inner Nature but completely different from her story, I promise you. Original characters, who will be familiar faces for those of you who've kept up with my other works. Some foul language.
I | II | III | IV | V
VI
VII
Even Sokka had to admit that having a firebender along, temporary as it was, had its uses: Ichiro by necessity knew a lot about fires and building them, and was willing to share his knowledge with the Water Tribe siblings. It helped there that Akiak and Mei Lei seemed to get along, making it hard for Sokka to continue to dislike the older boy.
Katara, on the other hand, had initially been leery of Yui when it was found out that the Fire girl's dæmon had recently settled. Not only was this uncommonly early (Yui was only ten) people with minksnake dæmons had a certain… reputation in the Four Nations. On the other hand, dæmons were known to settle around puberty, and Yui was obviously making the transition from girl to woman early… Yui, for her part, followed Katara like a turtleduckling. She was clearly thrilled to have picked up a sisterly figure.
Now, the five of them — eleven including the dæmons — were gathered around a fire, swapping childhood stories. By unspoken agreement, the Water Tribe pair and the Fire Nation pair didn't speak of the attacks on their homes. Somehow, however, the talk had turned to their hopes for the future, and Sokka was expressing his disbelief with Ichiro's chosen profession. "So, how long have you been crazy?"
Ichiro arched an eyebrow at the young warrior. "What brought that on?"
Akiak shook herself before answering for her human. "You're freakishly talented as a firebender—"
"The correct term is 'prodigy'," Mei Lei interrupted proudly. Akiak ignored her.
"—and you can make blue fire. Why in the world do you want to be a farmer?"
Ichiro smirked. "For starters, I wasn't raised as a firebender. I threw the tests when I was a kid — my best friend turned out a firebender when they tested him, and they took him away. All colony-born firebenders ripped away from their families to get trained in the homeland - by law."
Katara looked dismayed by his words. "That's horrible!"
"That's the way it is," Yui replied with a shrug. "I'm sure at least part of it is that bending teachers don't often leave the Fire Nation."
"And the other part is making sure colony firebenders don't get too attached to the people and lands of the Earth Kingdom," grumbled her dæmon, Tasuke.
Ichiro grinned and ruffled his sister's hair. "Anyway, back to the matter at hand — the twins had just been born when I was tested. I wanted to retain my position as oldest and firstborn, so I threw the tests." Noting their looks, he shrugged. "Hey, I never said it was a particularly good reason. I was six, what do you want from me?"
"So you taught yourself firebending?" Aang asked incredulously. "That's really dangerous!"
Ichiro shrugged and let Mei Lei speak for him. "It was our only choice. And because he did it, we were able to protect Kouji for five years…"
The mood around the campfire plummeted, and all eyes turned to Ishiko, who slept under Siku's wing in her hedgepuppy form. Sokka directed attention back to his original argument. "Okay, fine, but seriously, farming?"
Ichiro raised an eyebrow at him. "Would you prefer that I like fighting and enlist in the Fire Nation Army?"
Sokka immediately raised his hands. "No, no, no! Farming is good!"
Again that smirk, but there wasn't much heart to it. "Yeah, I thought you'd see it my way."
Katara swatted her brother. "Stop that, Sokka. What if he changes his mind?"
"Unlikely," snorted Mei Lei. "If there's one thing 'Chiro picked up living in the Earth Kingdom, it's the tendency towards stubbornness."
Ichiro pointed at his dæmon. "You can shut up now."
"Can't take the truth?" teased Akiak.
"I am not stubborn!"
"Two words," replied Tasuke, draping himself around Yui's neck like a sensuously furry necklace. "Lead weights."
Yui burst into a fit of the giggles. "He's right, and you know it."
Aang raised an eyebrow at her. "Lead weights?"
"Oh, it's a good one," Yui promised the Avatar. "See, Ichi-ni—"
But Ichiro had covered her mouth with one hand. "I will thank you not to be spreading my secrets, Yui." She glared at him briefly, but then her eyes went wide and she let out a yelp. Hastily Ichiro removed his hand. "Are you okay?"
Her eyes were slightly glazed over. "Kouji— Kouji's been—"
Ichiro swore and rose to his feet. "I think we may need to go."
"More of this freaky twin stuff?" Aang asked.
"In spades." Quickly, they began breaking down the camp — but then Ishiko began to scream, her cry overflowing with anger, sorrow, and pain. It was an unearthly sound, and for a moment the children thought they heard an answering call. Then she was scrambling out from under Siku's wing, taking the form of a Needletailed Frigatebird, and launching herself into the air as fast as she could get. Yui cried out, reeling, and then bolted for Appa.
"Sozin's balls!" Ichiro exclaimed, taking off after his sister.
He reached the bison just as Yui grabbed its reins and leapt as the younger girl cried, "Yip-yip!" Only barely did he manage to grab hold of the saddle with one hand, holding onto his dæmon with the other.
"…that can't be good," Sokka observed.
"I'm going with them," Aang declared. "Asia! See if you can catch up with Ishiko!"
"I'm on it!" his dæmon agreed. She, too, took the Needletailed Frigatebird form and arrowed off as Aang snapped his glider open.
"We'll be back!" he promised the startled Katara and Sokka, then took to the air himself, focusing on catching up to Appa and the rogue colonists who had…
Was stolen really the right word? Aang had seen the expression on Yui's face just before she took off — it had almost been as if he was looking at someone else.
Ahead, he could see Ichiro finally managing to haul himself onto the saddle itself and crawl forward to yell at his sister. The wind carried some of the words back to the Avatar: "…hell are you… ask before you take… WHAT!?"
Aang frowned and circled up, then down.
"Hey, Aang," said Ichiro calmly as he landed lightly on Appa's saddle. Too calmly, given his earlier yelling at his sister. Aang looked closely, and noticed that Ichiro's eyes were blazing, his face set, his lips pressed into a thin line. It was enough to give him, used to Zuko's passionate temper as he was, pause.
"Hi," he said at last. "Um. What was that all about?"
"Kouji just freaked out," Ichiro replied. "Enough that Yui as well as Ishiko picked it up. And their freaky twin thing doesn't cover emotion all that often."
Aang sucked in a breath. Young benders freaking out was never a good thing. "How bad—?"
"Bad enough that Yui did this," Ichiro snapped, and a small tongue of flame licked out from between his teeth. The firebender was pissed.
There was something much deeper going on here, something the colonist siblings hadn't told them. Aang mentally went over their story, and realised that no mention had been made of their parents. "…Ichiro?" the Avatar asked tentatively. "Who attacked him?"
Ichiro's right hand clenched into a fist, and he turned away. It was Mei Lei, quivering with the firebender's fury, who answered. "It was their father."
Aang's eyes went wide. "Your… father?"
"He doesn't deserve that honour!" snapped Ichiro. "That bastard sired us and nothing more!"
Mei Lei sighed and crawled over to Tasuke, who was wrapped around Yui's arm and trembling. "I think that their father would have disowned 'Chiro if he hadn't disowned himself first," she said, stroking the minksnake's head with her face.
"Any man who would try to murder his own son for being the wrong kind of bender doesn't deserve children!" Ichiro growled. "There's xenophobia, and then there's utter insanity." Blue flames escaped his mouth with every syllable.
Aang hesitated, and then touched Ichiro's arm. "Not everyone in the Fire Nation would be like that," he said. It felt… odd, almost, to be defending Prince Zuko's homeland to someone who shouldn't need it. "I… know someone from there. Kind of. I don't think he'd ever do something like that…"
"That doesn't help Kouji now!" Ichiro snapped. "That doesn't change the fact that I was fucking arrested for trying to defend my little brother!"
Aang's eyes widened. "Arrested?"
Mei Lei, who had returned and was rubbing her face against Ichiro's cheek in an attempt to calm him, explained, "Ichiro's good. His father—"
"He is not my father!"
"—his sire," Mei Lei corrected herself, "was no match, bending-wise. But he was clever. He managed to knock Ichiro unconscious, then lied to the people who came to investigate the fire battle. Said he was a traitor, harbouring the enemy, and in violation of the Firebending Law." She hissed. "He accused Ichiro of murdering Kouji."
Aang's eyes couldn't grow any wider, but his expression could and did grow even more horrified. "And they believed him?" The air around Ichiro was distorted now, wavering in the heat the firebender was putting off.
"Of course they did," he growled. "The bastard is a member of the community in good standing, one of the highest-producing farmers and a leader. Me, I'm obnoxious and disliked, rude, and generally a loner."
Aang couldn't at all hide his dismay. "That's not fair."
"No," agreed Mei Lei. "It isn't."
Silence stretched for several moments, during which the heat emanating from Ichiro slowly died down as he regained control of his temper. Finally, Aang asked softly, "How did you get out?"
A small smile curved the older boy's lips. "Yui," he said softly, looking over his shoulder to where the girl had a death grip on Appa's reins, clearly knowing exactly where she was going. "She may not be a bender, but she's got her own talents." He didn't elaborate on that, to Aang's irritation, but now was certainly not the time to press.
"So… when you find your brother, what will you do?" the Avatar asked.
Ichiro's eyes glittered, and the small smile turned into a vicious predator's grin. "I'm going to clear my name."
Current Location: my bed
Current Mood:  content
Tags: character: aang, character: ichiro, character: katara, character: sokka, character: yui, crossover, fandom: avatar, fandom: his dark materials, story: separation
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