omnicat | FIC: Succession [Avatar, Zuko & Azula]

Title: Succession
Author: Omnicat
Rating: T
Genre: Tragedy, Angst
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: No specific details, yes important themes.
Warnings: Insane amounts of symbolism. Character Death.
Pairings: None.
Disclaimer: I hold no rights to anything Avatar related. Please don’t tell the owners I’m here.
Summary: A small AU Zuko/Azula siblingry ficlet set during the finale. Even her last breath he can’t believe.
Author’s Note: Enjoy!

Succession

This corner of the battlefield is littered with bodies, prone and scorched. Some felled by him, others by her, but all sprawled in the same unnatural, humiliating pose of defeat, grating on the eyes of the proud.

Only the pair of them is left standing upright, as still as the corpses kneeling around them while fire and danger thrums through their veins at every heartbeat, awaiting the catalyst of action to distill just one more death.

Black hair, white skin, golden eyes and red armour; like mirror images of each other. When lightning finally strikes it comes and goes between sun and moon, thundering through the barrier between yin and yang that has separated them for so long.

He rises, she kneels.

And balance is restored.

Watching the dust settle does not release the tension from his muscles; laying eyes on her buckles his knees, thrusts him stumbling forward.

He gathers her spastic limbs in his powerless arms, feeling her slip away like water through his fingers. She does not see him as her body twitches and writhes, the claws of death tearing her bit by bit from life’s lingering hold.

Then her struggles through purgatory cease and her eyes meet his in a last moment of clarity. Gold against gold as it has always been, his uncertainty and her confidence marking the transition into a new era.

"I’m proud of you, Zuzu."

Yet when she of blue eyes hauls the next Fire Lord to his feet with dark-skinned hands under his numb arms, he still clings to the one certainty he thinks to have left in this strange, changed world.

"Azula always lies."

Sozin’s Comet comes and goes, the Bridge Between Worlds is restored. Balance reigns.

And in the aftermath of peace, wrought by his hands and the Avatar’s and those of many others, Zuko finally believes in victory.

PSAN: One day I will write a proper action scene. Just not this day. Also, for someone who claims to dislike poetry, I seem to be strangely prone to poetic prose.