AtLA crossover: Breaking, Bending, Misunderstanding
Title: Breaking, Bending, Misunderstanding
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Anne Bishop owns almost everything in this story, and a variety of other people and organisations own the rest. None of it's mine.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Chaosti and Sceron make a mistake. Katara makes them pay for it. Daemon's not happy to have been involved.
Author's Notes: This is also a one-shot, like the first chapter. This basically means, as with most one-shots that I write in this way, that if someone wants to write the rest of the story, they are absolutely free to.
In spite of how completely insane everything was, Zuko felt rather relaxed. Sure, his sister had found some weird gateway to some world on the far side of the spirit realm and tossed him through it along with Katara. Sure this crazy place had no benders and people with superhuman crazy magic powers that let them make illusions and walk on water and who knew what else. Sure he and Katara were stuck working at this inn until they made a little more money and could continue their journey to find someone who could get them home.
On the flip side, there was no war here, and he and Katara weren't wanted by anyone, and all that had meant their relationship had taken a turn for the . . . intimate. He grinned as he trotted down the stairs toward the well. Katara hadn't wanted to get out of bed, so she'd sent him out to the well in the middle of the night to refill her waterskin. Zuko didn't really mind, because in exchange for being her errand boy, he got to be her lover.
It also gave him a good excuse to take his blades out with him, just in case he got jumped by some of those upstart locals again. A bunch of boys had taken offense to him for some reason involving Katara that he wasn't really clear on, and had tried to take his head off.
Zuko had responded by taking them out back and thrashing them soundly. He'd wound up pulling out his swords, not because he needed them to fight, but because it was fun and impressive to slice through the various makeshift weapons they'd tried to hit him with, most of which were various wooden farming implements.
He cheerfully pulled up a bucket of water, immersing the skin in it to fill it up, when he heard the scrape of a boot on the cobblestones of the yard. He slowly turned, and found himself faced with two men. One was slender, and Zuko caught sight of pointed ears in the flickering torchlight. The other was human from the waist up, but was entirely one of those 'just-horses' people rode around there from the waist onward.
"Zuko, right?" the horse-man asked.
Zuko raised an eyebrow, but saw no reason to dissemble. "Yes. Can I help you with something?"
"I am Prince Sceron, this is my friend, Prince Chaosti," said the horse-man. "We'd heard some disturbing rumours and it seemed only right that we dealt with them."
"Rumours?" Zuko asked, wondering what it was about him that had the locals so irritable. First it had been those two idiots saying he'd 'shattered' Katara, which seemed to have some local meaning he couldn't understand, and now these two.
Chaosti nodded, a cold smile on his face. "We all tend to take offense to a warlord who breaks a witch on his spear."
Zuko stared at the man. "A what who does what to who now?" he asked, baffled. If he was right, that was a fairly dirty statement and they'd just accused him of raping someone probably Katara. On the other hand, sometimes these people talked so weirdly, he couldn't be sure what they were saying. "Since I have no idea what you just accused me of, I'm going to have to assume I haven't done it." He picked up the waterskin and turned away, planning to head back up. Katara was waiting, and she'd said something about hurrying and a new nightgown. Now was not the time to get into a fight. "If you'll excuse me, my girlfriend is waiting."
It was only because he was used to constantly expecting an attack from his sister or some other Fire Nation flunky that he avoided the first blow. Zuko dove out of the way, and came up with his blades out, ready for the next attack. It came from two different directions and his swords clashed with the blades the other two carried. The sharp kick from a horse's hoof took him by surprise and sent him down, gasping.
Still, he rolled with the blow, kept moving before he got skewered and came up fighting. He was lucky he'd kept his bracers, because he was forced more than once to block with his forearms. He was barely hanging on - these two were both very good, and clearly used to working together. One of his desperate lunges was blocked however, with a glowing shield. The man behind it smirked, and Zuko glared. "That," he snarled, "Is just damn cheating."
He dove and rolled away, got himself enough space, and did a spinning flame kick, hoping it might have some effect on the shield. Oddly, it passed straight through, and slammed into the chest of the horse-man generating it. Zuko felt his lips stretch into a grin as it sent the other stumbling back. "Huh," he said. "Didn't know that would happen."
His attack inflamed the other two, however, and Zuko was caught between two good fighters who were using their magic powers to demolish Zuko. With no idea of what they could do, or how, he was reduced to bending and hoping for the best while he parried with his swords.
It wasn't enough, and soon he was gasping on the ground, cursing the circumstances and the full moon above that had him at his weakest.
"Now," said the ruffled-looking Chaosti, "We will make sure you never do it again."
Katara's voice came clear as a bell in the courtyard. "What is going on here?"
Chaosti and Sceron had heard from the younger, lighter-jewelled warlords about the new warlord in Armdarh. The warlords had explained that they had seen the new one clearly involved with a witch who was far too young to have had her virgin night, and that they were fairly convinced he'd broken her, because of how nervous and flighty she was about her craft.
They'd also explained to the two consorts that the mysterious warlord, whose name was 'Zuko', had defeated them in a straight fight, before any of them had even had a chance to bring craft into things.
The two decided to take matters into their own hands and went to confront the mysterious newcomer. This Zuko had certainly put up a tremendous fight, and his grasp of craft was extremely odd. He seemed to have no counters for anything they threw at him, but they, likewise, could not counter his craft, which seemed centred utterly around the creation of fireballs and waves of flames. He was also an excellent opponent with the two swords he bore, and it seemed fairly obvious that if he had not been utterly unable to predict and cope with the way Sceron moved, as a Centauran, he would have come out of the melee the better as long as craft hadn't come into it.
But this was not the case, and they managed to win in the end. As Warlord Zuko lay on the ground, bleeding and bruised, Chaosti felt some regret that such a fine warrior had to be done away with. All it took to lose that regret, however, was to remind himself that somewhere in that inn was a broken witch. They'd bring her to Jaenelle after. Maybe something could be salvaged.
That was when things fell apart.
"What is going on here?" demanded a young female voice. It was the witch, as she had been described to them. Brown hair, dark skin, dressed in blue. "Zuko? What . . ." She looked up at Chaosti and Sceron and her eyes widened. "What happened to him?" she asked.
Sceron took a step forward, then stopped as she tensed. "We were dealing with Zuko here," he told her. "You have no need to fear anything."
"'Dealing' with Zuko?" she asked. "What does that mean?"
Something about the way she said it made Chaosti uneasy. Still he answered. "We know that he has, at the least, attempted to shatter you. Justice must be served. We know the Prince of Dhemlan, and . . ."
"Break me?" she asked, looking confused. "There was that time when he tried to trade my mother's necklace for Aang when he tied me to a tree but-"
"You're never letting that go, are you?" groaned Zuko from where he was kneeling, clutching his chest.
The sense of unease strengthened, because this didn't sound like a broken witch, and the interchange didn't sound like a rapist and victim. "No," Katara replied. "You're going to be apologising for the rest of your life for that. I had been looking forward to a good one tonight," she said, and the hastily tied sash on her unusual dress gaped a little open to show lacy lingerie underneath before she retied it. "Instead, I find a couple of thugs have beaten you up." Her voice was cold.
With a snap, every bit of liquid in the yard froze solid, and Chaosti heard a strangled sort of laugh from Zuko. "You made her mad."
Water erupted from the well, swirled through the air and slammed the two of them into the wall. The water pulled away, and Chaosti pulled himself to his feet, seeing the girl surrounded by a spinning wall of water that morphed into a series of tentacles that whipped through the air, leaving welts on his skin, and the force sending the Dea al Mon prince spinning. He noticed Sceron receiving the same treatment, and instinctively the two sent out a cry for help and heard an acknowledgement on the return thread.
Finally the whirlwind of icy attacks ceased, leaving the two sore, cold and wet. The girl took a deep breath, and when she exhaled, they found themselves encased from the neck down in solid ice, too thick to break through without either fire, time or craft.
A silky-smooth voice cut into the proceedings, asking the question the girl had asked only a few minutes before. "What is going on here?"
Katara had been waiting for Zuko to come to bed and had gotten herself comfortably arranged in a position she hoped was seductive. They'd only become lovers since landing in this strange world, but the tentative friendship they'd had before had deepened rapidly while they'd travelled through the alien landscape until she was fairly sure that she was in love. Zuko had even told her he loved her the night before.
Some sort of fight was going on in the innyard, and she got worried very quickly that Zuko had gotten into another fight. She believed him when he said they'd attacked first and that he had no idea why. She was worried though, that he'd been impulsive and gotten into another fight a little more deliberately.
She'd thrown her outer dress on, and hurried outside to see two men, one part horse and the other with strange ears standing over Zuko, who'd looked pretty badly off, clearly threatening him. It also became pretty clear that they thought Zuko had done something to her. That was when she lost her temper. The fact that they'd had the gall to attack her boyfriend for hurting her without even checking that she was hurt made her see red.
It was a full moon and she clearly took them by surprise (as much as she liked that she could, it was kind of annoying that no one ever saw her as a threat), as she threw them around the yard, then finally froze the pair to the opposite wall. She was just about to start to see to Zuko when a voice interrupted, wanting to know what was going on.
At the entrance to the yard, stood a man. The man stood with a sort of lazy, easy sexual confidence that made Katara think about the fact that Zuko still owed her a night of dramatic lovemaking and didn't seem likely to pay up that evening.
The two on the wall opened their mouths, probably to state their case, and Katara, not wanting to hear whatever stupid thing they were going to accuse Zuko of, slapped gags of ice over their mouths. She said, "Apparently they decided that Zuko had hurt me or something and decided to beat up my boyfriend without even checking to see if I actually was hurt."
"They said I raped her," Zuko corrected from where he had pulled himself to his feet.
"What?" Katara snapped.
Zuko shrugged and then winced. "Well, it's that, or I don't know what they're talking about."
Katara turned to the idiots on the wall. "Do I look like a rape victim to you?" she demanded. "No, don't answer that. You thought the same guy I had to crawl naked into bed with to get him to do anything with me would have raped me."
"That was an experience," Zuko commented.
Daemon had been relaxing in the library with a nice book, enjoying a quiet evening by the fire. As much as he loved Jaenelle, he had come to relish those evenings of certain peace and quiet and knowing that she wouldn't say or do something to make him want to bang his head on a wall and whimper.
So he was a little irritated to be interrupted by a sudden thread of communication from Chaosti. Daemon!
What? he asked, knowing the Dea al Mon prince wouldn't have bothered him over nothing.
A sense of anger infused the thread, and Daemon felt The Sadist rise in response to the words, We'd heard there's a warlord in town and he's been trailing a witch after him. By all accounts he's been . . . forcing her.
I'm on my way, he told the prince.
We're going to confront him now, Chaosti said. We'll leave some for you, I promise.
Who's 'we'? he asked.
Just Sceron and myself, responded the other.
Daemon was on his feet and his way to Armdarh in moments. His temper on edge from the news. The very notion that some warlord was tracking all over Kaeleer, and taking some broken witch with him was simply intolerable. He caught the black wind and was on his way when he heard Chaosti's voice again, this time not angry, but frightened. Daemon! I think we miscalculated.
I'm almost there, he sent back.
When he arrived at the inn, what he saw took his temper and his breath away. Raging in the courtyard was not a battle between warlords, but one slender witch was tossing around the two warlord princes as though there were a child's toys. On the far side, against the wall, was a much-damaged young man, that the witch was clearly defending. With one final gesture, she sent the two into the wall away from the boy, both of them soaked to the skin, and then breathed at them. Daemon raised an appreciative eyebrow as her breath turned into a white mist that crawled up their bodies, and left a foot-thick layer of solid ice behind. Chaosti and Sceron were quite solidly restrained by it, and she immediately turned toward the boy. Before she got more than a few steps, Daemon asked mildly, "What is going on here?"
Before either of the princes could respond, the girl gestured sharply, and sparkling gags of ice were over the men's mouths, preventing them from speaking. It was really a fascinating piece of craft, and Daemon wanted to make her acquaintance now for the nature of her craft alone.
The exchange between the two that followed told Daemon rather a lot about the pair, not least of which that the girl was clearly not anything even remotely like broken, and that whatever was happening between the pair was completely consensual and wanted. In fact . . .
"You thought the same guy I had to crawl naked into bed with to get him to do anything with me would have raped me," the girl was saying.
"That was an experience," Zuko commented. The smile on the boy's face said everything that Daemon could have wanted to hear.
He asked Chaosti, "What, exactly, did you hear that led you to the conclusion you'd reached?"
The gag was still in place, and when he turned to the girl - it was her craft he was going to unravel after all, it was only polite to ask her to do it herself - she just got a stubborn look on her face and harrumphed. The boy sighed. "Katara . . ."
"No. They can just thaw."
The boy sighed, straightened up, held out a hand, and a finely tuned jet of flame arced across the space and melted the ice gags away. The girl, Katara apparently, pouted.
"Chaosti?" Daemon asked.
The prince looked away. "A couple of the local warlords said they'd seen another warlord forcing a witch to sleep with him. They tried to confront him, but he fought them off, so they asked us to . . ." he trailed off as Daemon raised an eyebrow at him.
Wanting to clear things up, he turned to the couple. Katara was now prodding at Zuko's injuries while the boy was trying to fend her off. "What do you have to say about that?"
They both looked at him, Katara looking irritated. She was about to say something, no doubt cutting, when the boy got a startled look on his face. "I think they were watching. I mean, that time that you let me tie you up," he told her.
She froze, and then her eyes narrowed. "They were watching?" she asked.
"It's the only explanation," Zuko said. "I mean, we were pretending I had you tied to the tree again, remember?"
Daemon tuned them both out, uninterested in the sexual dynamics of two teenagers, and turned to Jaenelle's friends. "You based your assumption entirely on rumours perpetuated by two warlords who lost to this young man?"
They both flushed. "Umm . . . yes," Sceron said, abashed. Chaosti seemed defiant, but Daemon was able to read that he too was embarassed at having made such a grievous error.
Shaking his head, Daemon chose to leave them both there as an object lesson in not leaping to conclusions, especially since their assumption that the girl was broken in any way had just been violently disproven by the witch in question. He walked over to where she was leaning over her lover, clearly examining his injuries, then saw a blue glow appear where her hand was resting on his chest. Zuko seemed to relax as the glowing hand moved over his skin, and Daemon was intrigued to see the boy's bruised and cut face knit itself back together under the girl's hand.
"Thanks, Katara," he said.
She ignored that and asked him, "Can you stand?"
He winced and started to pull himself up before folding over with a cry and clutching his ribs. "Give me a minute," he told her.
"So you can't get up," she told him. "Fine. Lie down."
"Wha-?" She efficiently pushed him flat on the cobblestones, held out a hand and the water soaking the courtyard came at her command, pooled under the boy, then wrapped around him, and started glowing a blueish-white. In short order, it was apparent she had healed the injuries, and Chaosti and Sceron had both managed to make their way free of the ice.
The pair got to their feet, and Katara shot the two princes an imperious look of sheer disgust before storming up the stairs, followed by Zuko. She groused the whole way in a very familiar litany on the idiocy of men. Daemon sighed and turned to Jaenelle's friends and former first circle. "Next time you decide on punishing someone, make sure he's actually guilty first, would you?" Before they could reply, Daemon left and caught the black wind home. He was going to need rest because Jaenelle was sure to drag him into something crazy after he told her about the witch's unusual healing skills.
Other Fandoms archive page
Go to the AtLA Archive Page