Avatar // By the Final Count // Part 1 of 1
Title: By the Final Count
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Rating: K+
Word Count: 250
Summary: Four ways we lost and one way we didn't.
Other: 31_days 10/09/06. Also, because I'm a geek, each section title is a prepositional phrase.
every day is the end of the world
*
i. with a whisper
"There goes our biggest advantage," Sokka told one Earth Kingdom general while the sky blackened overhead; they were still days outside of the Fire Nation. The man scuffed his foot on the deck as he walked off, an irritated set to his armored shoulders.
ii. before beginning
Katara preferred to bed down before the streetlamps were lit - they always left a strange, twisting feeling in the pit of her gut, one she found entirely unpleasant. That was silly, of course: she and the others were honored guests of the Dai Li; they were being put up in the best quarter of the city; they were all absolutely safe in Ba Sing Se.
iii. at the hands of a traitor
"Father," Zuko said, "I have brought you the Avatar."
Azula was tied up and stuffed into a ventilation duct; he was delightfully proud of that one.
... So why was it that he father still said nothing? Why did he have the creeping sense that he had managed to fail, even in his final victory?
iv. in the avatar state
He did not feel the kick of plasma as it rended through his body, did not smell the scorched wool of his shirt or see his friends cluster around his body, one by one, as they realized.
But he breathed for the first time, really breathed, and as the glow faded he rested in the most magnificent way.
v. by the final count
Iroh remarked solemnly, when it was over, that it was not the number of bodies left at the end of a battle that defined victory, but whom those bodies belonged.
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Rating: K+
Word Count: 250
Summary: Four ways we lost and one way we didn't.
Other: 31_days 10/09/06. Also, because I'm a geek, each section title is a prepositional phrase.
every day is the end of the world
*
i. with a whisper
"There goes our biggest advantage," Sokka told one Earth Kingdom general while the sky blackened overhead; they were still days outside of the Fire Nation. The man scuffed his foot on the deck as he walked off, an irritated set to his armored shoulders.
ii. before beginning
Katara preferred to bed down before the streetlamps were lit - they always left a strange, twisting feeling in the pit of her gut, one she found entirely unpleasant. That was silly, of course: she and the others were honored guests of the Dai Li; they were being put up in the best quarter of the city; they were all absolutely safe in Ba Sing Se.
iii. at the hands of a traitor
"Father," Zuko said, "I have brought you the Avatar."
Azula was tied up and stuffed into a ventilation duct; he was delightfully proud of that one.
... So why was it that he father still said nothing? Why did he have the creeping sense that he had managed to fail, even in his final victory?
iv. in the avatar state
He did not feel the kick of plasma as it rended through his body, did not smell the scorched wool of his shirt or see his friends cluster around his body, one by one, as they realized.
But he breathed for the first time, really breathed, and as the glow faded he rested in the most magnificent way.
v. by the final count
Iroh remarked solemnly, when it was over, that it was not the number of bodies left at the end of a battle that defined victory, but whom those bodies belonged.