#i hope you'll be forgiving of my egregious bending of the 'rules'

[moonsugar-and-spice]

For the Prompt Ask:

Lu Da, recollection of childhood

“C'mooon, Soraya, just one little peck—" Lu Da taunted, wiggling the fat bullfrog in her face, “—maybe he’ll turn into a prince and finally take you away to live in his palace,” and despite her squeal and the wrinkling of her nose, he expected her to laugh or retaliate with a fistful of mud, but his sister had seemed different lately, distant, her smiles never quite reaching her warm brown eyes anymore, and instead she lashed out and kicked his kneecap; the blow jarred the frog from his hand and it hopped away, wriggling itself back down into the mud.

The pirate felt his steps slow, his gaze lingering on the dry, cracked basin, now overgrown with weeds, that rested at the foot of a small valley separating his childhood village from the next; they had skipped rocks in that pond, the two of them, caught the frogs that droned and peered out from their muddy burrows – it had been their escape from the world, during those times when their father would resurface in their lives, their comforting solitude like a balm until the sun went down and there was nowhere else to go but home again; he brought income, their mother would defend wearily, his visits ensuring that for a time they would not have to go hungry or pinch every copper… but he took so much more.

They’d always set off running to their pond, but that day, Lu Da had turned to see Soraya trailing behind with a gingerly gait, a strange look to her flushed face, as if it hurt to walk, and in the months and years that followed he would come to understand why, would watch his sister slowly fade one piece at a time, the sunshine that spilled out of her cloud over.

The first time she’d disappeared was his first taste of what it meant to feel truly alone, the gangrenous gnaw of fear eating him away and wishing the ground would swallow him whole before his father’s next visit, when she had finally stumbled home again, disheveled; alive at least, in the sense that she’d still had a pulse, but her eyes were empty and expression hollow, like a well that had run dry, and she’d met his relieved concern with a terse word and a slammed door… it would happen without warning after that, her unpredictable vanishing acts, each time longer before she returned again, until finally one day, she didn’t – an eleven-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old girl, forever suspended in his memory.

Nearly twenty years it had been, and Lu Da had always told himself that one day he would try to find her, if she was still alive, but he had never imagined it would lead him back here, after all this time, and his eyes slid away now from the corpse of what had once been their pond to the border of the next village… a breeze was kicking along a scrap of debris as he finally came to stop before a house, sagging and blistered with neglect, ignoring the steel-honed gazes that followed him from the streetsides as he checked the scrawled scrap of paper in his pocket to the number nailed to a post; taking a breath to silence the voice of hesitation, he thudded up the bowed steps, the porch creaking under his weight, raised a tattooed knuckle to the door, and knocked.

Send me a prompt and I'll write you a "five-sentence" fic

#thank you! #prompt ask #lu da #atla oc #cw: abuse #apologies 😅 this one really got away from me and not one of them can called a sentence #i hope you'll be forgiving of my egregious bending of the 'rules' #this was the story that bubbled up in response and it was a challenge to do it justice within these limits #but i wanted to try given that it's pretty pivotal to certain aspects of his character #maybe i'll write more to it in the context of an actual drabble later #yes he named he crossbow after his sister #with the intention that if he ever sees his father again he will put a bolt in his head #this likely takes place in the short limbo between when he splits off with Bao #and when he's in the Fire Nation collecting a bounty and his path crosses with Prince Ozai #though the memory itself ends 1 year before he too runs away and ends up starving and homeless and picks the pocket of a man #who would later become a sort of father figure in Lu Da's life #Po Jiang - leader of a prolific thieves guild known as the Shepherds who front as altruists that help the less fortunate #and unknowingly thrusts himself onto the path that would land him a notorious reputation #and much later ultimately lead him to a place of atonement #(which blows hard when he learns the man who was like a father to him has just struck a merger deal with Bao who he's trying to take down) #ahh i'm sorry i'll stop rambling now! #i'm like the overly proud parent who whips out pictures of their kid and never shuts up about them when someone asks #thank you anon #anonymous #moonsugar writes