Fanfic Mini-Meme: Character Swap

[lavanya_six]

I've spent most of the last two weeks dealing with visiting family, leaving me too tired each night to do much creative writing, so I could use something to get the juices flowing again on my Help_Japan Commissions. So it's time for a fanfic meme...

AtLA CHARACTER SWAP FANFIC PROMPT POST

What's a character swap? Well, it's a trope that occasionally pops up in fanfic. Basically you take two characters and swap them, so that each takes the place of the other person. The most famous AtLA example of this would be "Reconstructed Destinies", where Aang and Zuko swap places, so Aang is a Fire Nation prince and Zuko is an airbending Avatar who was frozen for a hundred years. Swapping allows you to explore characters in situations and relationships, romantic or otherwise, they would otherwise not find themselves in, and explores the interplay between nature and nurture.


RULES:
* Each person can have one to three prompts. I may only pick one out of three given, or do all three. It depends on how they strike me.
* The prompts can range from one word to a whole situation. However, please try not to get overly complex.
* It has to be a character swap involving only two people. Everything & everyone remains as per canon. Time, place, or situation is all up to you.
* Pretty much anything goes, but if it doesn't, I'll let you know and you can prompt something else.


This post will have 5 requester slots, with 5/5 filled. Each prompt will be written in the comments. Once the post is finished, there will be a complete list of each filled prompt in an upcoming post.

Go nuts. 

MEME CLOSED AT ELENAFIC

Comments

Refining Fire [1/1]

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

They collected the traitor at Sozin's Bay.

Jeong-Jeong, acting as both grand admiral and crown prince, oversaw the transfer of custody from the Judicial Soldiers Crops. The dock churned with a human tide held back only by soldiers too free with their firebending. Undeterred, a few threw produce, pelting the prisoner's bodyguards. Only when their crown prince appeared did the tumultuous crowd quiet.

Just as tanned, leathered skin did not suit a prince, the polished armor Jeong-Jeong wore was equally ill-fitting. It pinched uncomfortably in odd places. Golding trimming he had idly adored as a boy was now needless opulence to his eye. Worst of all were the unbroken boots. Polished to a mirror shine, they squeezed his feet like a vice. He longed for his normal uniform, not this costume he wore in public.

Whatever discomfort he felt mounted at the sight of the traitor general. Iroh looked so small now, weighted down by chains that were infinitely heavier than the irons clamped around his ankles and wrists. Until he had seen Iroh for himself, a part of Jeong-Jeong couldn't believe a man so blandly accepting of war's cruelties had become a self-professed traitor of conscience.

If the Dragon of the West himself could turn...

He left that thought unfinished.

* * *

Years ago, Jeong-Jeong had ordered two coolers specially built into his flagship's brig. A day inside for the unprepared meant a week without firebending. The prince ran a tight ship, so rare was the occasion when a crew member committed an infraction that merited such harsh punishment. Mostly Jeong-Jeong used the coolers for his personal meditations.

A bender of Iroh's skill would be undiminished by the cold. To cage him inside a cooler would be simple sadism.

If anyone complained about his softness, Jeong-Jeong will tell them that, after his son Lu Ten's death, anything more would be paltry. He understood, having long-ago lost his wife in childbirth. Iroh's world had ended. He would not be given time to construct another.

* * *

Ba Sing Se was lost, the army withdrawn by a heartbroken general. So in lieu of the city, a man burned.

The Firelord showed no hesitation towards the last Dragon. It took twenty-seven lashes of Azulon's fire to Iroh's back to kill the man; an endurance record, he later learned. Jeong-Jeong had seen men killed before, had spilled blood and charred flesh himself, but never for an audience. With twenty-seven lashes, the mind has time to indulge its distaste in order to let the eyes wander.

Ozai never looked away. Neither did his sister-in-law, or his niece. No one would, except for his nephew, pale and shaky at the blood and smell of cooked meat. And he was the only one! How... how could everyone else not be...

* * *

The breakthrough in Ba Sing Se was lost. Everyone knew it. So the assembled staff in the War Room planned its next campaign. Sitting silently beside his Lord father, Jeong-Jeong took care to observe everyone's face as they blandly discussed kill ratios and causality estimates against the North, against Omashu. They had looked no different than they had while watching a man they had known all their lives being scourged to death.

He tried to imagine his nephew sitting in at this meeting and felt nauseous.

Finally, perhaps noting his long silence, the Firelord asked him, "What do you feel is the best use of my navy, Prince Jeong-Jeong?"

Almost on reflex, he replied, "Finding the Avatar."

* * *

"Uncle." Jeong-Jeong gave the boy leave to rise from his kowtow on the docks. His mother and father followed suit behind. Stiffly, likely drawing from some memorized script, he added, "I am honored to join you on this great mission, just as I am honored to be chosen as your heir."

Ozai couldn't contain the smothered rage in his eyes at that. Since Jeong-Jeong had made his nephew the inheritor of his estate, the Firelord had blessed the tact endorsement by shuffling the boy ahead of his father in the chain of succession.

Jeong-Jeong bowed slightly. "The honor, Prince Zuko, is mine."

Re: Refining Fire [1/1]

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is wonderfull. Love how you use the canon in the story