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b-else-writes · 3 years

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the tiger shark and the sun

New chapter posted for my Star Wars/Avatar the Last Airbender-RebelCaptain fusion AU! Feat: Jyn calls Obi Wan an old fart, Jyn tells Luke and Leia to stop being melodramatic about becoming evil, dragons, and me ranting about the “evil sexy matriarchy” fantasy trope.

Read on AO3 | Read from start

Pairings: Jyn/Cassian, minor Han/Leia and Baze/Chirrut, random minor background pairings

Rating: T

Summary: Star Wars/Avatar the Last Airbender fusion AU. The Fire Nation, under Fire Lord Palpatine and Lord Vader, has been at War with the world for the last twenty years. When Jyn Erso lands on his doorstep the day Cassian, last southern waterbender, is assigned to protect the Avatar, she seems just another obstacle in ending the War. An obstacle he would willingly remove. For exiled firebender Jyn, the Avatar is her last way home - and to her hostaged father, never mind her own conscience. But as their paths keep crossing, and the Avatar needs all help in saving the world, Jyn and Cassian find they are more alike than they ever thought possible.

Snippet under the cut!

Jyn woke with a start, rapidly trying to figure out where she was. She was lying on a straw mattress in a stone room. The early morning light filtered in through a low window. On the ceiling were carvings of circling sky bisons.

Slowly, her memory returned. Jyn sat up, taking in the small room in Hynestia, the Western Air City. Cassian and Kay were nowhere in sight. He had removed her bracers and her boots sometime after she’d fallen asleep, and left then. But there was a dent on the mattress from where he’d been. She could still smell him – and his horrible lizard – and she gave herself a moment to imagine a world where someone like her…

She hastily shoved the thought aside. Another, more pressing concern than her unrequited feelings had emerged. She was supposed to teach. Jyn buckled on her bracers and slid her boots on quickly. She combed her fingers through her hair, repining the bun, and set about finding Enfys.

It took her a surprisingly short time to get around: the entire city seemed to have been developed and built for easy accessibility, with lifts, railings, and maps everywhere. Enfys, after she’d shown Jyn her room, had said she was going to the temple. Jyn found her and Luke curled up on the temple floor, fast asleep.

Jyn crouched and poked her. “Wake up!” she hissed.

Enfys groaned, red braids falling in her face. “Jyn, it’s only dawn…”

“Enfys, I need your help.” Luke made a noise but continued to snore. Jyn pursed her lips. “I’ll make you those wheat pancakes with dates and honey you love,” she said in her sweetest voice.

Enfys cracked one eye open. “We don’t have honey or dates.”

“I brought a jar as a peace offering,” she admitted. There was a pause. With a groan, Enfys extricated herself from Luke’s arms, pulling her cape on. Luke made a little grumble and rolled over. Jyn refrained from commenting as Enfys trailed after her to the central atrium. Enfys was perfectly liable to turn it right back on her.

As Jyn got the ingredients out from her satchel on the war balloon, Enfys asked, “So, what’s the issue?”

Swallowing her pride, “How did you teach the twins?”

There was another long pause. “You didn’t think this through at all, did you?” Enfys said, covering her mouth with her hand. Jyn glared. “I’m not laughing, I’m not!”

“I hate you,” Jyn said, swatting the date jar away from Enfys’ grip.

“No, you don’t,” Enfys said happily, dipping one finger in the honey jar and licking it. Jyn crouched to light the cookfire. It took a moment for the flame to appear on her fingertips. She frowned, but Enfys continued to speak, refocusing her attention. “Well, for me it was simple – I just followed how I was taught by my mother and aunts and elders. I already had a lesson plan ingrained in me.”

Jyn shook her head, feeling her pulse race, though it had been a decade since Master Jorus had backhanded her to perform better. “That…is not going to work.”

Enfys’ face clouded over. She stood from her perch and began to help Jyn, brushing her hands against hers. “Well, then, start simple. Like how to produce fire. And go from there. Basic punches and blocks, you do that a lot, don’t you?”

“They’re called fire fists.”

“My mistake,” Enfys said, her eyes sparkling with mirth, “Fire fists and fire kicks and fiery-ness and aallll that.”

Jyn bit back a smile, extending the plate with honey-drizzled wheat pancakes. “For her highness, the Queen of Mon Cala.”

Enfys immediately grabbed it, digging in with a moan of delight. “One of the few things from the Fire Nation worth saving,” she said, her mouth full of food.

“What’s the rest?”

“Don’t fish for compliments,” Enfys said easily, making Jyn grin. As Baze and Chirrut came in, Enfys added, “Just remember to be patient.”

“I am a beacon of patience.”

Enfys laughed. “I meant with yourself, Jyn. You’re doing something new and difficult. So be kind to yourself as you figure it out.”

She sighed, resting her head against her best friend’s shoulder. “And yet you won’t share your portion with me?” she asked, fighting down her own rising panic.

“You’re impossible,” Enfys laughed, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Now eat up for your first big lesson, Master Jyn.”

Jyn stretched and popped out her muscles. She, Luke, and Leia stood in a beautiful courtyard of cream and white clay and wood. She imagined it must have been a communal space when Hynestia had still housed Air Nomads. She didn’t like dwelling on that too long. She could still feel…something clinging to the place. Fire child, they whispered, stroking her face and hair, this is what your people did.

She would have preferred pure hatred, but she felt that was not their way. It would have been easier than guilt. Especially when she saw the sadness in Enfys’ eyes.

Jyn focused back on the twins. Both wore expressions of trepidation, Leia in particular throwing her suspicious looks. Jyn tried not to take it too personally. “Have either of you ever firebent before?”

They exchanged a look. “Once,” Luke said, shifting a little, “We… we burnt Cassian by accident.”

Multiple statements immediately became clear in Jyn’s head. She pushed aside her own empathy for Cassian – and her instinctive urge to get angry on his behalf. Cassian held no grudge about it. Patiently, she said, “Most firebenders accidentally burn themselves or others when they’re starting out as children. It’s…normal.

“Alright then, let’s see what fire you can produce,” she said, folding her hands behind her back. Keep patient. Don’t be like Master Jorus. Don’t be what the Air Nomads know you could be. The summer heat touched the scars on her arms.

Exchanging another uneasy glance, the twins sank into a low hot-squat, good form, and punched.

A puff of smoke came out.

“That’s it?” Leia glared. Jyn resisted the very powerful urge to groan. “Let me demonstrate,” she said. Her muscle memory was so honed that Jyn didn’t even need to think. She sank and punched, sleeves billowing.

She produced a tiny gasp of flame.

Leia began clapping. Jyn scowled. “Don’t patronize, you know what it’s supposed to look like,” she grumbled. Jyn punched again. She slid into various forms, again and again. Only wisps of flame. “What in the…”

“Maybe you were never as good as you thought you were,” Leia said, grinning slightly.

“Oh, you’re hilarious,” Jyn snapped, trying in vain to produce more flame.

“Maybe it’s the altitude?” Luke suggested, though he didn’t look convinced. Jyn stared at her hands. Her inner flame felt cold and dull in her chest, despite the sunlight pouring over her skin. Sól, give me power, she thought, but none came.

Her firebending was gone. Somewhere, she could feel Master Jorus laughing.

The group sat around the cookfire, eating and chatting. The summer days were long, Chirrut knew. He could still feel heat despite the dinner hour. Baze had passed him his bowl, their fingers brushing. He smiled, gripping Baze’s fingers momentarily and grounding them both.

He heard Jyn clear her throat to speak. “There’s…a problem. I’ve lost my firebending. Well, not lost…but it’s weaker now and I can’t figure it.”

Chirrut considered as he munched. Bending was inherently spiritual, something that many had now forgotten, preferring to use as a blunt instrument. Jyn had never struck him before as someone who wanted to look within herself.

“Maybe it’s because you changed sides,” Cassian spoke up. Chirrut’s seismic sense could feel Jyn immediately perk up and orient towards him. Oh, young love. “Your firebending used to come from anger and desperation. Now you have none.”

“So, what? We piss Erso off?” Han asked, poking Erso with his sword butt.

Jyn kicked him in the shin. “Cut that out! It’s not an option.”

“What you need is a new source,” Chirrut said. “And by that, I mean an old one. The original. For earthbending, the first earthbenders were the badgermoles. When I was young, I ran away and hid in a cave. A blind child was better off gone.”

He still remembered the pain and fear as he had fled Jedha’s orphanage, stumbling through the crowds of people out into the scorching, shifting ground he had learnt was sand. Finding his way into the Catacombs. Surrounding by the dead, as he imagined he would soon become.

The Spirits had other plans. There had been a great crunch of rock, and a soft, wet snout had nosed him. They had recognized him as one of their own. “The badgermoles are also born blind. I learnt earthbending as an extension of my senses. Earthbending is not a martial art – it is a way of interacting and moving through the world, and that is the form I taught Luke and Leia.”

The wonder he had felt as he began to feel the world expanding outwards beneath his palms and feet. The grubs and creatures that lurked beneath the desert sand. The hardy plants that nourished from the earth. The secret oases. The possibilities that had exploded to him. His only regret was that it was no help to non-benders and other benders, but Chirrut was nothing if not stubborn. He had tried to help them too, as a Guardian of the Whills.

“Firebending isn’t like that,” Jyn said quietly, standing up and pacing.

“But surely you must know who the original firebenders were,” Enfys said, “I learnt from my Tribe, but the first airbenders were the sky bison. That’s influenced our bending to use gliders to fly, to our culture!”

Jyn walked over to Chirrut. He felt the same turmoil of his childhood self, in her. “It won’t work. The first firebenders were the dragons, and they’re extinct. There’s no other way.”

Baze squeezed Jyn’s hand. “There is always another way.”

Jyn was silent for a moment. When she spoke, he felt the vibrations. There is something she is concealing. “We’re not far from the island of Dathomir. The witches of Dathomir were said to be the first to learn firebending from the Dragons. They were killed off thousands of years ago. You still hear stories, but there’s no proof their society still exists. We might find something. Otherwise…”

“Sometimes the shadows of the past can be felt by the present,” Chirrut said. Several of the group shifted uncomfortably.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Luke said, “Han, can we borrow the Falcon?”

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#rebelcaptain #rogue one #jyn x erso #star wars #jyn erso #cassian andor #atla #au: atla #zutara #my fic

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