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teacupfulofstarshine · 5 years

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the crossroad of our destinies book one: earth

summary: virgil isn't sure how he got roped into this crazy adventure. somehow, he's traveling around with the avatar, his blind earth bending younger brother, a chipper air bender, and a banished fire bender prince, and they're supposed to save the world? virgil can't even tell them he's a water bender. he's not cut out to save anyone. little did he know, they're cut out to save each other - and maybe the whole world in the process.

(OR: an avatar the last airbender!au, centering around a water bender virgil)

a/n: i . . . wrote the entire first chapter in one day . . . how i still do not know . . . the confusion is real. huge, huge, HUGE amounts of thanks goes to @lovelylogans for cheerleading me through this and also beta reading the first chapter. this wouldn't exist without her, and i love her, and i am so eternally grateful

CW: atla-typical fantasy violence, brief nonspecific allusions to child abuse, angst, background death of minor unnamed OCs, family angst, mentions of burns

wordcount: 5882

read it on ao3!

“This is gonna be so interesting!” Patton says, draping himself on his belly over the ball of air beneath him. “I’ve never seen real earth bending before!”

“That would imply that there’s such a thing as fake earth bending, which there decidedly is not,” Logan says, adjusting his shirt with a huff. Virgil glances up from where he’s sharpening his knife next to the fire, raising an eyebrow.

“I’ve done all kinds of reading about earth bending!” Patton says, seemingly oblivious to Logan’s indignation. “There are scrolls about it all over the Air Nation temples, but I’ve obviously never seen one! Earth benders went extinct so long ago that -”

“What?” Thomas says, lifting his head to stare up at Patton.

“The Fire Nation desecration reaches beyond our home?” Logan asks, one hand curling into a fist at his side. “They have burned more villages to the ground than ours?”

Roman pokes at the campfire with a stick, keeping his eyes cast to the ground. “The Fire Nation is trying to wipe out all other benders. They don’t want anyone left but us. Why do you think I ran away from home? My father told me that the other nations attacked us first, but . . .”

“Falsehood,” Logan snaps. The earth begins to shake beneath him. “We would never do something so horrendous! The Earth Kingdom is a peaceful settlement, we - we would never -”

“Calm down, Rocky, I’m not accusing you,” Roman says. The campfire flares up, and Virgil’s eyes flicker to the waterskin at his side. His hands won’t move fast enough if Roman’s temper causes him to lose control. Something else might, but he refuses. “I’m just saying, there’s a lot of propaganda in the Fire Nation. We’re not all heartless evil bastards. Some of us are just trying to protect our homes. I abandoned a lot when I saved you and your brother from my father’s army.”

“Oh, yes, like what?” Logan snaps. “Like a cushy life in the palace? Like your status as the next in line for overlord of us all and destroyer of my people? Like -”

“Like my twin brother,” Roman says coolly, tone betraying the way the fire surges and sinks in time with his heavy breathing. “Like my best friend, the boy I was to marry. I loved him so much, and he helped me escape, and - and my father probably killed him for his insubordination. I’ll never see him again, and whose fault is that? Mine!”

The fire surges up in a pillar. Before anyone can react in a meaningful way, a vortex spirals to life around the flames. In a flash, all the oxygen is sucked out of the fire. It dies instantly, leaving a pile of half-charred twigs. Patton lets his bending stance drop, and the vortex falls away.

“Everyone,” he says quietly, “needs to take some deep breaths. It’s going to be okay. Everyone here has suffered at the hands of the Fire Nation. Everyone here has lost something. It’s okay to acknowledge that pain, and hurt, but it’s not okay to blame each other or ourselves. Roman, you can’t control what your father did to you any more than Thomas and Logan can control the fact that they’re earth benders.”

“I am an earth bender,” Logan says quietly. “Thomas is -”

“The Avatar,” Thomas says. He studies his hands in silence, and Virgil slides his knife into his boot.

“Yeah, well, Avatar or not, you were born an earth bender,” he says. Everyone looks at him in a surprise that he mirrors internally; he’s not really one for speaking up during moments like this. There have been plenty since they all started traveling together, but Virgil typically keeps his mouth shut.

“What?” Thomas asks. Logan turns his head towards Virgil’s voice. His unseeing eyes bore right through Virgil, as though they’re peering into his soul.

“You were born an earth bender,” Virgil repeats. “That’s the whole damn point of the Avatar cycle, isn’t it? The Avatar spirit gets cycled through all the nations so that each Avatar gets a new and different experience to the one before. No matter what anyone says, you’re an earth bender. Just ‘cause you’re the Avatar too, that doesn’t change your birthright.”

His voice slips away from him, falling into the familiar cadence of his grandmother telling him stories as a young child. “You are an earth bender. You were born with the pull of Mother Earth in your bones. The Lion-Turtles have gifted you with an awareness of what is beneath us, always, a firm and unyielding constant in a world too fluid to appreciate it. You must hold steadfast to what is right and true, because no one else will do it for you. Air, flighty and fluid; fire, scorching and shifting; water, rapid and raging; all these will move from one form to the next as it suits their needs. You must anchor them, or no one will.”

He blinks, snapping himself out of the strange trance he lulled himself into, and becomes aware of the other three staring at him. “What?” he snaps defensively.

“That was . . . something,” Thomas says. “Where’d you get a story like that?”

“My grandmother,” Virgil says, pulling a knife from inside his robe. He makes sure that everyone catches the sharpness of its edge glinting under the half-full moon before he goes back to sharpening it. “She would tell me stories of the other benders all the time, how every element has its strengths and drawbacks. She told me that every element plays a role in keeping the world balanced, and that someone would have to repair what the Fire Nation was breaking without destroying the Fire Nation in the process.”

“And why not?” Logan asks - not accusing, genuinely curious. He shifts one foot a couple of inches and a rock springs from the ground next to Thomas, allowing Logan to sit down.

“Because if we lose fire benders completely, we lose everything we worked to rebuild. We need harmony between all four elements. That includes Princey and his fire bending.”

Roman thrusts a fist forward, and the campfire reignites itself as a small fireball bursts from his fist. “Thanks, Waterboy.” Virgil flinches a little. “What? You’re from the Southern Water Tribe, aren’t you?”

“What? Yeah. What about it?”

Roman just shrugs and goes back to the campfire.

*~*~*~*~*

Logan is amazing at earth bending.

Granted, Virgil knows next to nothing about the techniques, other than the fact that they involve a lot of foot movements and heavy grounding. It seems to be the complete antithesis of Patton’s air bending and Roman’s fire bending, both of which appear to center heavily on movement. Still, it’s plain to see that Logan is something of a prodigy. He moves as though the earth he bends is an extension of his own body, controlling it with an easy, fluid grace that belies his solid stances.

It’s hard to believe, watching him, that he’s the younger brother. It’s hard to believe that he can’t see anything. Roman comments as much, and Logan sends him flying with a blunted earth spike without so much as turning to face him.

“Ow!” Roman shrieks. He’s unharmed, of course; Patton had swiftly leapt into the air to catch him and return him to the ground. “What was that for?”

“I can so see,” Logan retorts. He barely comes up to Roman’s shoulder, but he’s solidly built, despite his young age.

“I thought you were blind!”

“I am. My eyes have never seen a day of my life. That does not mean I cannot see, you moron. I simply do not see with my eyes. I use my feet to see. The ground tells me everything I need to know. You, for example, are currently clinging to Patton like a terrified lemur, and he is hovering approximately as far above the ground as my forearm is long.”

“How do you do that?!” Roman says, dropping from Patton’s arms to land on the ground. “Also, there’s no way that you’re strong enough to take me down.”

“And why not?” Logan asks. “I could so take you down.”

“This is a bad idea,” Virgil says.

“You could not!” Roman boasts.

“This is a bad idea,” Virgil repeats.

“That sounds like a challenge,” Logan says, turning in Roman’s direction and tilting his head in a clear act of dismissal. “Unless you are afraid to face a young, blind earth bender, Prince Roman?”

Roman’s face changes from pride to ice in a split-second. He’ll tolerate Virgil’s “Princey” jabs, but he hates being called by his proper title. “You’re on.”

“Not here!” Thomas yelps. “We are standing in a very flammable forest, and none of us can water bend!”

“Aren’t you the Avatar, master of all elements?” Roman says testily.

“Only in the Avatar state, at the moment, which I cannot trigger on my own! If you guys set the whole forest on fire, people will come and investigate! We can’t risk being found - I can’t risk being found!”

The sound of his older brother’s voice seems to snap Logan out of it, at the very least. He shifts his left foot, and Virgil shivers as a small earthquake rumbles through the ground. It’s low-scale enough that anyone else who notices it will pass it off as normal seismic activity. For their little group, however, it’s much more than that; it’s Logan checking the nearby terrain.

If that isn’t enough to terrify Roman into surrender, Virgil seriously worries about the state of his brain.

“There is an isolated rocky plain not far from here,” Logan says. “I suggest that we have our battle there. Will tomorrow suffice?”

“Fine by me,” Roman spits, stalking away. Patton drops to the ground and begins to croon to his giant sky bison Remy, stroking his nose. Remy huffs out a breath that rustles the trees around them. Virgil is inclined to agree.

*~*~*~*~*

“I have said it before, and I will say it again. This is a BAD idea.”

Virgil tugs his thick jacket on over his loose tunic and pants. Logan sits next to him, controlling a small mound of earth like it’s wet clay. With every shift of his perpetually-bare feet, he changes its shape.

“I will not be injured,” Logan says. “Roman will not intentionally injure me. He considers me an opponent beneath him, and he is too gallant to harm a child.”

“How old are you, anyway? Not judging or anything, I’m just . . . curious.”

Logan’s earth mound trembles. “I am . . . twelve years and six months old.”

Virgil just blinks at him. He’d thought that Patton, newly fourteen, was the youngest member of their crew; he and Roman are both sixteen, and Thomas is seventeen. He’s assumed this whole time that Logan is around Patton’s age, maybe a few months older, despite his slight stature. “That’s . . . younger than I was expecting.”

“Are you going to remove me from your expedition?” Logan challenges. He clenches his fist, and the earth mound shatters into dust. “I will not abandon Thomas. He is my brother, the only remnant I have of my family. Of my village, my people, my culture. He is everything to me. I will not return to an ashen husk of my home because you do not consider me mature enough for this journey.”

“You’re the most mature person here, and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot,” Virgil says, holding up his hands in an “I-mean-no-harm” gesture. He says it because it’s true, because he believes it, but he also says it because he can see the way the earth trembles below Logan. It reminds him of the sea, in a way - calm and quiet, but constantly roiling beneath the glassy surface.

Logan takes a deep breath, air in and out, and the earth calms to stillness on his exhale.

“Thank you, Virgil.”

“You’re welcome. Now that the mushy shit’s out of the way - this is a terrible idea and you shouldn’t fight Roman. Not because you’re young or weak or anything like that, but because if one of you gets seriously injured, it’s not like we can waltz into the nearest village and ask for help.”

Logan shakes his head, smiling. He looks much older than twelve and a half.

“Trust me, Virgil. This will not be much of a fight.”

*~*~*~*~*

“If I could talk him out of this, I would,” Thomas tells Virgil. They’re sitting on a tall mound of earth that Thomas had bended up from the plain. Patton hovers casually behind them, sitting cross-legged on a ball of air. Logan and Roman stand facing each other, arms at their sides.

“The duel will end when one of the participants is unable to bend, or when one participant cedes to the other,” Virgil announces. He’s still not sure how he got roped into refereeing this crazy death match. Patton bends the wind so that his voice carries down to Logan and Roman, but he doesn’t have to. It’s so silent that Virgil could hear for miles. “No attacks shall be permitted which may result in death or grievous bodily harm. Are these rules understood by the participants?”

“They are,” Roman says. They’re different than the rules to a Fire Nation duel, Virgil thinks, judging by the slight confusion that crosses Roman’s face before he settles back to cool indifference.

“They are,” Logan says. He and Roman are an arm’s-length apart.

“Bow!” Virgil calls. Logan and Roman each take a step backward and bow from the waist, a sign of respect between duel participants. Despite their bickering, they do respect each other. (Virgil thinks.)

“Turn and walk! Ten or fifteen paces!” The traditional standard is ten paces, but Logan’s legs are much shorter than Roman’s, so he has to walk fifteen paces to cross the same amount of ground that Roman does in ten. They turn around and walk, and once they’ve made it the designated distance they turn back to each other.

“Ready your bending stances!” Roman squares his shoulders and lifts his hands, curling them into fists. Logan spreads his feet apart, planting them shoulder-width apart. Virgil raises a hand up high, bringing it down sharply to connect with his palm like a knife slicing through a fresh kill.

“Begin!”

Roman immediately launches a huge fireball at Logan. It’s red, the lowest intensity Roman is capable of producing. Virgil laughs internally; Logan was right. Roman is holding back. Thomas makes a worried noise, but Logan is unaffected. He shifts one foot, thrusts his hands out and flicks them up, and suddenly a massive wall of earth rises in front of him. Roman’s fireball slams harmlessly into it, singing the upper layer of dust but otherwise having no effect.

“I knew you would temper your attacks for me!” Logan shouts, dropping his wall. “If that had been your usual strength, my wall would have disintegrated!”

“And you took that risk?!” Roman says.

“Because I knew you would go easy on me! That is not the point of this duel, Roman! Fight me like you mean it!” Logan stamps his foot, and two massive pillars of earth rise up beside him, one on either side. Another stamp, and the pillars segment into disks. Logan begins to move, still between the pillars as he hurls the disks of earth at Roman.

Roman dodges the first few disks easily, but Logan is relentless. For every few disks he throws, he stamps his food again, and the pillars rise up again. He draws more and more earth up from beneath him, and it’s all Roman can do to keep himself from being crushed.

“Are you trying to kill me?!”

“I thought you were a prince! You should be stronger than this!”

Roman stands perfectly still, and Logan sends a disk hurtling towards him. Roman screams and throws his hands forwards, and a massive burst of golden-orange fire roars out. It engulfs the disk, pushing it backwards and melting it. Molten rock splashes to the ground, and Roman runs forward. He has twin flames clenched in his fists, like knives, and Logan grins wildly.

“Finally!”

The ground grows soft beneath his feet. Roman yells, thrusts a fire-knife forward like he’s going to stab Logan in the head, and Logan vanishes. He drops down, sinking below the earth, and Roman whirls around, confused. The pillars sink down into the ground, and Roman growls.

“Get up here and fight like a man!”

The ground rumbles beneath him, almost like Logan is laughing, and then a pillar of earth bursts up beneath Roman and sends him flying into the air. As he falls, another pillar flies up, smashing into him, and then another and another and another. Roman is knocked around like a ragdoll; he fire bends in the air, hurling jets of flame at the earth, but Logan is apparently so far underground that he is unaffected.

Finally, he slams onto the earth, flat on his back. Logan pops up from underground, covered in a layer of dust, breathing heavily. He takes a single step towards Roman and collapses.

“Logan!” Thomas shouts. Roman pushes himself to sit up, placing a hand along Logan’s neck. The earth bender doesn’t stir. Roman says something, but it’s inaudible. “Patton, please!”

“On it,” Patton says, bending Roman’s words toward them.

“He’s alive,” Roman rasps in their ears. Thomas stands, slamming his foot into the ground, and a curved chute carves itself into their observation mound. Another stamp, and a flat piece of earth appears at the mouth of the chute. Thomas leaps onto it and begins to surf down towards Roman and Logan.

“A little help?” Virgil asks Patton dryly. Patton offers his hand, pulling Virgil up into his arms, and then they’re flying.

*~*~*~*~*

Logan sleeps for about six hours before sitting up, rubbing at his eyes. “What hit me?” he groans. “Did I lose the duel?”

“You both lost, morons,” Virgil says shortly.

“You and I are the only ones here - no, wait, someone else is laying by the fire. Roman?”

“Yeah. He’s sleeping off what you two did to each other. Patton and Thomas are off by the river getting water, because if I have to watch Thomas mother-hen over you two anymore I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.” He stabs angrily at the fire. “You over-exerted yourself with that crazy tunneling move.”

“I . . . have never tried it on that large a scale before,” Logan admits, shakily sitting up. “Even now, my bending feels . . . exhausted. My vision is foggy. I - for the first time since I learned to bend, I feel truly blind.” He sounds like a scared kid, and it’s enough to evaporate what’s left of Virgil’s anger.

“Hey, you’re alright,” he says gruffly. “No one’s dead, and you two hopefully have a better understanding of each other’s power now, right?” Logan nods, silent. “Good. Just know that if you ever scare your brother and Patton -” ( and me, he doesn’t say) “- again, I’ll drown you in the fucking river.”

Logan cracks a smile at that, and it doesn’t fade, even when Thomas returns from the river and practically tackles him into a tearful hug.

*~*~*~*~*

Sometimes, Virgil has regrets.

Remy coasts through the sky, Patton seated on his head with a loose grip on the reins. Logan, Thomas, and Roman all huddle together, Roman in the middle so that his warmth exudes out to encompass them like a bubble. Virgil is starfished on his back, staring up at the sky. It’s so different to the one that he’s used to seeing over the Southern Pole.

He misses home.

He misses the familiar sting of ice and snow against his skin. He misses the scent of seal jerky drying out next to the campfires. He misses packing down the firm snow to create walls for the igloo, misses hunting with his friends and family.

He misses bending.

The Fire Nation thinks that they have eradicated water benders from the Southern Pole. They believe that Virgil’s father, whom they cruelly killed on their last raid, was the final water bender.

They think incorrectly.

Virgil’s father sacrificed himself to save his son. The pendant Virgil wears around his neck, carved from the rib bone of an ancient and mighty Lion-Turtle, was the only thing he was allowed to keep when his father’s body was prepared for burial. His mother gave it to his father when they were married. She died bringing him into the world, and the Fire Nation made him an orphan.

“Virgil?” Thomas asks, shifting on Roman’s chest. “Are you okay?”

Virgil exhales, rolling over so that he’s facing his sleepy friends. “Yeah, Thomas, I’m okay. Just homesick, you know?”

“I get that,” Thomas says. He reaches over and gently touches his sleeping brother. “At least I have Lo with me, to remind me of home. You don’t even have that. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Virgil says easily. “It’s not like I have a family to go back to, anyway.”

A sad look crosses Thomas’s face, but he doesn’t push. Virgil can’t decide if he’s grateful or disappointed.

*~*~*~*~*

It’s amusing to watch Logan drill Thomas in earth bending. Every time Thomas messes up, Logan throws a pebble at him, and not with his earth bending, either. He will literally pick up the nearest chunk of rock and throw it at Thomas. He hits him in the arm without fail.

Virgil snickers from where he’s darning a tear in his pants. He has a bone needle in his pack, and it doesn’t take a lot of skill to find plants that he can twist into sturdy fiber thread. He’s already got a pretty sizable ball of thread rolled up beside him.

“You can sew?” Roman asks.

Virgil flinches at the sudden noise, nearly pricking his finger with the needle. “Don’t scare a guy like that, Princey!”

An upset expression crosses Roman’s face, but he brushes it off. “Still!”

“Yeah, I can sew. In the Water Tribe, you have to learn to do stuff for yourself.” Especially when the Fire Nation kills your parents, he doesn’t say.

Roman bounces eagerly. “Do you think you could teach me to do that?”

“Why the hell do you wanna know how to sew?”

“If something rips, I have to be able to fix it myself,” Roman says firmly. “Teach me, please?”

Virgil sighs. “I only have one needle, so you have to wait until I’m done with this actual work before I start teaching you. You will prick your fingers a lot, and you are not allowed to bitch at me for this. You brought this upon yourself.”

Roman just grins, sharp and wild. It’s the grin of a Fire Nation child, and it should strike terror into Virgil’s heart. He’s almost more terrified by the fact that it doesn’t.

*~*~*~*~*

Virgil quietly creeps away, after ensuring that everyone else is soundly asleep. They’re fortunate enough to have camped near a river this time, despite the fact that they’re still in the middle of the woods as they travel. What their endgame is, Virgil doesn’t know. For now, they’re just traveling so that the Fire Nation doesn’t catch them off guard, complacent in one place.

He steps into the river, and the feeling of water around his ankles is soothing. “Hello,” he breathes.

Virgil knows that his father wasn’t a water bender. He doesn’t think his mother was a water bender, either, although it’s impossible to say. The pendant that she gave his father was carved by water bending, tiny thin streams of water manipulated skillfully along the surface until they etched grooves. It doesn’t make sense that she would have trusted its creation to someone else, but if she had no choice . . .

Despite his insecurities, being in the water always makes him feel closer to both of them.

He slowly lifts a hand, and a stream of water coils up to meet him. It wraps around his wrist, like a vine, like a friend, coiling up towards his neck. Virgil exhales, tips backwards, and lets himself fall into the water. He moves his hands as he falls, bending the river water so that it flows around his head. The water rushes through his ears, and Virgil is at peace.

He stares up at the full moon, pretending he can see his father’s smile staring back at him in the craters on its surface.

*~*~*~*~*

“There are spirits in this place,” Thomas says. His eyes aren’t glowing the way they do when the Avatar State overtakes him, but there is an unnatural shine to his irises. “They are here, and they are angry.”

“Why?” the village leader asks. Thomas turns his head towards the village leader’s young daughter, sees the way she cowers away from her father. Virgil doesn’t have whatever supernatural perception Thomas does, but he doesn’t need Avatar State eyes (or whatever the fuck is going on) to see the bruises that litter her arms under her tight sleeves.

Thomas takes a step forward. The earth shakes beneath him. Logan shifts to a bending stance in a single breath, but Thomas puts a hand out to stop him. Ice-blue wisps of fog coil up around him, and Virgil takes a step backwards as a massive spirit-dragon appears in the village square.

“They are angry,” Thomas repeats, and his voice reverberates with a power well beyond his years.

Yeah. Virgil’s pretty angry, too.

*~*~*~*~*

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Logan comments idly, as they fly away from the village. He’s holding tightly to his brother; without the ground to, well, ground him, he tends to cling to Thomas. “With the spirits.”

“You could sense them?”

“Not with my earth bending. They’re not solid. But I could feel them. I knew they were there, and . . . and once you spoke, I knew they were angry.”

“No child should be hurt,” Roman says darkly. He’s slumped over the side of the saddle, watching the ground pass by below him. “No - no child. No child should be hurt.”

Patton is silent, clutching Remy’s reins with white knuckles. He’s been silent since they left, but Virgil is too attentive to miss the tears streaming down his face. They’d saved the day, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a pit in all their stomachs.

*~*~*~*~*

When the Fire Nation soldier bursts through the bushes, everyone moves in an instant.

Patton and Logan spring in front of Thomas immediately; Logan is in an earth bending stance and Patton has wind spiraling around his fingertips. Virgil draws a knife from his sleeves and grips it tightly. The soldier looks to be in his mid-sixties or so, with gray-white hair pulled back in a topknot and a beard flowing down his front. He has a round potbelly, but there is something sharp and militant in his eyes.

Roman is the only one who hasn’t moved. “U - uncle?!”

Everyone stops and stares at him. “Uncle?” Patton echoes. The Fire Nation soldier blinks at Roman, and his entire face softens.

“My beloved nephew.”

Roman throws himself at the strange soldier, and the soldier catches him, hugging him and holding him close. “Uncle! Uncle, you - what happened?! After I left, Remus, Dee - what happened to them?!”

“I will explain all in time,” the soldier (Uncle?) says. “But first, perhaps you should tell your new friends that I am not a threat before they kill me?” There’s a wry smile on his lips as he looks at them all, a bedraggled group of teenagers ready to fight and kill.

Roman just hugs the strange man tighter, and Virgil sheaths the knife when he hears Roman’s muffled sobs. Despite their constant bickering, he knows that Roman really, truly does miss his home, and now he has a small piece of it back. Virgil imagines he’d react in a similar way if a member of his family showed up right now (even though he has no one to show up). He can’t begrudge Roman this little scrap of comfort.

*~*~*~*~*

The Fire Nation soldier is revealed to be Roman’s Uncle Emile, brother of the current Fire Lord. “My brother,” Emile says, stroking his beard slightly, “can only be described as . . . a little bitch.”

“Remus,” Roman repeats, sitting next to his Uncle and gripping his hand. “My brother, Uncle, what happened to him? What happened to Dolos?”

“Your father was furious at them for letting you and the young earth benders escape the capital,” Emile says. “He dared not wound Prince Remus, but Dolos is only a noble’s son. He was spared no such courtesy.”

“Is he dead?” Roman whispers. He’s shaking; Virgil wonders if he should attempt to offer some sort of comfort.

“He is not dead,” Emile says. “Your father challenged him to an Agni Kai - a traditional fire bending duel. Dolos barely fought back. He knelt, prostrated himself, begged for forgiveness. The Fire Lord did not grant it. The left side of his face and torso are badly burned. But he will survive.”

Roman blinks, and tears pour down his face.

“Your father banished him, and you as well,” Emile says. “Remus has been sent on a mission to capture the Avatar - to capture you.”

“Where is Dolos?” Roman rasps.

“Remus insisted on taking him with him. He told your father that he would leave Dolos in an outlying colony somewhere, but he remains below deck on the ship. He is healing from his wounds. He will be scarred for life, but he will still have a life.”

“I want to see them,” Roman says.

Emile shakes his head. “Prince Roman, no. It is a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“If you are spotted on board the Fire Nation ship, the crew will have no choice but to take you back to the Fire Nation as a prisoner. You are a fugitive. It cannot be risked.”

“I’ll risk my own safety if I damn well please!” Patton flinches at Roman’s shout, but Emile remains calm.

“I will not risk your safety, Nephew. Will you risk the safety of your twin? Your betrothed? Your new friends?”

Roman’s fire-angry glare shifts to them, to Virgil, who meets his eyes coolly even despite his terror. He won’t let Roman know that he’s afraid. He knows how much Roman hates it when they look at him as though he’s a fire bender to be afraid of. Roman exhales, and the campfire flares but he remains calm.

“I . . . I won’t. But I miss them, Uncle.”

“I know you do,” Emile says. “My status as a disgraced general has finally come in handy, for I have been assigned as your brother’s advisor on this so-called fool’s errand. I will do my best to keep him safe and out of trouble.”

Roman fidgets with his hands. “Could . . . could I write them a letter?”

Emile hums, considering. “I suppose that could be arranged.”

Roman scribbles down two scrolls and passes them to his uncle. “Please take care of them for me, until - until I can come back and take care of them myself.” Emile nods, kissing his forehead.

“I am proud of you, my nephew.”

He disappears back through the bushes he came from, and Roman stares longingly after him. “Roman?” Patton asks. “Would - do you want a hug?” Roman stands stiff, back straight, shoulders pushed back. For a moment, he doesn’t look like their friend. He looks like a soldier.

Then he turns around, and his eyes are wide and wet, and there’s snot dribbling down one corner of his face. “ Yeeeeeeeees,” he wails. Patton smiles, opens his arms, and lets Roman come crashing into them.

*~*~*~*~*

Before they head out the next morning, a bird flutters down to land in front of Roman. He gasps when he realizes what it is, gathering the sharp-taloned bird into his arms and crooning over it. He showers its head in kisses. Virgil is lost.

“This is Dragon! He was my pet back home, he’s a messenger hawk!” The bird chirps, nibbles on Roman’s ear lobe, and presents him with the parchment tied to his leg. Roman snatches the scroll, unrolling it eagerly, and Virgil peers over his shoulder.

The upper half of the scroll is a near-illegible scrawl, with a splotched signature that Virgil can barely make out as “Prince Remus” accompanying some doodles and a splatter that looks almost like blood. The lower half is in shaky but beautiful calligraphy. The opening address is “My darling flower,” and the ending signature reads “Yours forever, Dolos.”

“My love,” Roman whispers, tracing his fingers over Dolos’s signature. “And my brother . . . I love them . . . so much.”

“You gave up a lot to be with us,” Thomas says. “I appreciate everything that you’ve sacrificed. Logan and I would be dead without you.”

“I’m glad no one is dead,” Roman says softly, voice wavering. “I just . . .”

“You love them,” Patton says. “We understand.”

Roman strokes the parchment. His fingers come away slightly black with ink from the upper portion that his brother scrawled, and he exhales. “I am going to write them back. I’ll send Dragon to them. I’m not losing touch with my family, not again. Not this time. Remus and Dolos aren’t going to leave my life, not this time. They’ve got just as big a bone to pick with my father as we do. They can give us usable information.”

“Will that endanger them?” Logan asks.

“Uncle Emile is there, too. He can help them be discreet. I’m not abandoning my old family for this one, but - but I won’t betray you to my father, either. That’s not what a prince does.” Roman squares his shoulders again, and Virgil blinks in surprise. Roman doesn’t look ridiculous, like a child-soldier, or militant, like an enemy. He looks proud and strong and regal.

He looks like a real prince.

“I support you,” Logan says, startling all of them. “You are a prince, even if you are not our prince. I trust your judgement.” Roman seems the most shocked of all of them by Logan’s bold proclamation, especially considering the heated duel they’d had just three weeks ago, but Logan’s milky grey eyes look like they’re staring into Roman’s soul.

Virgil is familiar with that look.

“If Lo trusts you, I trust you,” Thomas says, and he smiles widely. Patton nods, smile bright and bubbly, and Roman looks to Virgil. He offers a thumbs-up and ruffles Roman’s hair. Roman squawks and bats at him, pushing him away. Virgil laughs and falls over easily into a back-bend.

“Once you’re sure Thomas is solid on his earth-bending, we’re going to a sacred Fire Nation site on the fringes of the empire,” Roman tells Logan. “Fire comes next in the Avatar cycle, right? After earth?”

“I think so?” Thomas says.

“I know so,” Logan confirms. “And I think he’s ready.”

Roman nods, and the fire blazing in his eyes is the most reassuring thing Virgil’s seen in quite a while. (It’s strange to say, considering Roman is a Fire Nation prince, but Virgil’s used to people judging him by appearances. He’s learning to reconsider his assumptions.)

“Alright then,” Roman says. “I’ll write back to my brother, try and find out what sites might be relatively empty so that we can camp ourselves out there. Fire Nation, here we come.”

#starshinewrites #avatar!au #platonic TLAMP #sympathetic remus #sympathetic deceit #romantic roceit

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elym13 · 6 years

Text

A day in the life ...

They do say better late than never. So here it is, my contribution to the OC exchange, a brief narrative starring Bit Lockhardt, former Green Beret, current babysitter to the Princess. My thanks to Geekogecko for the loan.

A day in the life ...

“The PROBLEM is you told her boxing was the road to ‘the aviation attitude.’” Bit Lockhardt let his annoyance show as Fitz’s smug face grinned back at him through the Skype connection. “Now she’s all obsessed about learning to box.”

“And it is.” Fitz leaned back in what looked like an office chair. Clearly she wasn’t on a mission, her missions didn’t involve clean hotel rooms and Skype. Of course, neither had his. “Nothing like being up close and personal with someone who wants to cause you pain to test your poise under pressure.”

“But she’s the ef —” He bit back the curse, then he remembered who he was talking to “ —fucking Princess. She needs her face unbruised — unbroken. And all of her brain cells healthy.”

“Boxing didn’t hurt my stunning visage.” Fitz drew a circle in the air around her face and then posed with her hands under her chin. Damn woman even batted her eyelashes.

“Because you have those long monkey arms and no good sense anyway. Arendelle’s what? Tit high on you?”

“At least shoulder.”

“And God help me when Queen Elsa finds out,” Bit moaned.

Fitz expression turned from a smirk to earnest excitement faster than Bit could blink. She even blushed a little. It was an unnerving sight on the cockiest woman — no person — he knew. “Speaking of ….” She started hesitantly.

“No. I am not funneling you any “candid pix” of the Queen of Arendelle for you to decorate your locker with or — or god knows what.”

“I am not that sort of woman,” Fitz sniffed. “Besides it’s better if you get a real person to wear a blonde wig.”

Bit nearly swallowed his tongue. “And now, I can NOT unsee that.”

“Love you like a brother. And if I had one I might share with him, too.”

“Why do I even answer your calls?” Bit reached his hand toward his touch screen. “Listen, I gotta go. There’s a state dinner tonight. Duty calls.”

“You mean you didn’t wear that tux just for me? Now I’m wounded.”

Bit shook his head. “Goodbye, Fitz.”

“Wait, wait — just, you know, let her uh, Elsa, know I would be happy to give the LT some personal flight training. Training from the best damn helicopter pilot in the whole wide world. She just has to say the word and maybe put in for a TDA request.”

“Hang it up and goodbye, Fitz.” Bit answered.

“Night Stalkers never quit!” Fitz shot back as the screen went black.

Bit chuckled to himself as he closed up his laptop and finished getting dressed. He had learned that once you put on your pants and your jacket sitting was no longer an option, not if you wanted to remain wrinkle free. And he would be damned if he let Revel look more put together than he did. It was a point of pride. He might have the active get-into-trouble-while-running-through-Arendelle’s-countryside Princess while Revel’s job came with permanent air conditioning, but Anna’s “special attache” as they called him, would look just as good as the Queen’s.

This job, special attache, or really babysitter in chief for the Princess of Arendelle, wasn’t the hardest job he’d ever had, if hard meant risk of dying or worse. But it was the strangest and possibly the roughest on his nerves. Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, CAR, none of his previous duty stations had held the challenges that came with keeping up with and not losing sight of one short red-headed princess. Plus there were things he would never get used to like the fact that he owned two tuxes now. The suits that he wore every day weren’t bad, like a uniform of sorts. In fact Anna had laughed when she saw his closet of six identical gray suits each a hand’s width apart from six identical blue shirts. He also had drawers full of blue polos and matching khakis for days when Anna was letting her hair down or just moving at her normal faster than light speed. Fortunately blue socks and well-shined black oxfords went with everything. Well, tonight he had on black socks.

Bit gave himself one last look in the mirror and nodded. He did look good in this suit, though.

His room was on the same hall, almost next to Anna’s, so it was a short walk to knock on her door. He glanced at the expensive gold watch on his wrist, a gift from the Queen and valued at more than his yearly salary, and headed out into the hall to get the Princess going.

This was the reason Elsa had given him the watch, or at least what she told him. Royal protocol required that the Queen be the last to enter any room or gathering so that everyone in attendance could stand and bow if appropriate. Apparently Elsa had gotten very tired of waiting somewhere out of the way but near the engagement she was supposed to be at for her sister. Even now it took Bit’s best efforts to make that wait shorter if not exactly non-existent.

He knocked and immediately one of Anna’s lady’s maids opened the door.

“It’s Sir Edward, Your Highness,” she called back over her shoulder. The first time someone had called him “Sir Edward” he had spent a good five minutes looking around to see who that was. “What shall I tell him?”

“Tell him to get his butt in here and help!” Anna sounded frazzled and distracted even for Anna.

“Your Highness, it’s ti …..” Bit stopped mid sentence as he took in the sight before him. Anna wasn’t fully dressed, in fact she hadn’t even put on her dress yet. He knew that because one maid was holding it out for her. Another maid was rummaging through Anna’s closet, at least that’s what he thought was happening. Anna’s closet looked like someone had taken a store full of dresses and stuffed them all in at once. One pair of sensible shoes and one pair of stocking feet protruded from under the bed.

“Hey, Sergeant!” Anna’s voiced called out. Then there was an audible clunk and the bed jerked upward. “Ow! Shit! Fuck!”

“Your Highness,” one maid answered, “Language.”

The one in the closet added, “Your hair, watch your hair. Please.”

Anna shimmied out from under the bed holding her head. She was in a variety of constraining undergarments and a slip. She thrust the top of her head toward Bit. “It’s not bleeding is it? Tell me it’s not bleeding.”

“It’s not bleeding, Your Highness.” Bit was torn between laughter and tears. Elsa was no doubt already downstairs waiting.

“Oh, stop. Everyone calls me that here.”

“It’s still not bleeding, LT.”

“Better.” Anna whirled around and helped up the maid who had just emerged from under her bed. “Listen. I don’t know where I left them, and we can’t find them, but Elsa has a great pair of green heels, and I know she’s not wearing them tonight. Go run down and ask her if I can borrow them, please.”

“Um, I don’t think she’s …” the maid looked to Lockhardt for help.

“The Queen is not going to be in her room.” He pointed at the time on his watch.

“It’s that late, oh shit, shit, shit!”

“Language.”

“Put your arms up, and we can put on this dress.”

Anna came to a decision and put her arms up. “OK, run down and get them.”

“Your Highness?”

“What? It’s not like she needs them now. I need them now. This is about the greater need. And besides if she tries to execute you for stealing from the crown, I’ll pardon you or something. Just go. Go. Go. Please.”

“I’ll go.” Bit was more than willing to risk execution, or more likely the Queen’s frosty ire, to get his charge down where she needed to be sometime before midnight.

Elsa’s suite wasn’t much farther away from her sister’s than his own, and he moved briskly. He knocked on the outer door. When no one answered, he opened it and walked through the sitting room to the door to Elsa’s bedroom. He knocked again. He was just opening it when he felt the temperature drop. He turned smoothly and gave a short neck bow.

“She’s not ready is she?” Elsa was smiling, but she was also throttling the itinerary she had in her hand like she was wringing a chicken’s neck. Except Lockhardt figured she wasn’t thinking of a chicken.

“No, ma’am.” He took a breath. “And she was hoping to borrow your green heels.”

“Again!”

“It’s probably not completely necessary.” Bit answered deadpan. “I did see her combat boots near the door, ma’am.”

“Right.” Then Elsa laughed. Bit never did see why people found the Queen so intimidating, but he did love to hear her laugh. “Fine.” She turned to her maid. “Third pair on the left on the second shelf.”

As Bit carried the petite heels back to the Princess’s room, he thought again. Definitely the strangest job he had ever had.

#frozen oc exchange #thegeekogecko #shardsofarendelle #my fic #grrlgeek72

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