Status: Closed
This round has closed. It remains open for fills, comments and remixes, but prompts are no longer accepted.
About
"Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time."
"How inconvenient to be made of desire."
"It's me, hi, I'm the problem its me."
Calling all readers, lovers of poetry and music, screen and stage. Quote collecters and lyric hoarders, unleash your archive. For this round, every prompt must contain a quote - you can combine them, add commentary, link to articles, do whatever. Steal from a literary classic, or copy WeVerse drama.
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the sixth love language is combat
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: (all just for insp, go wild if u want!) pacrim!au?? apocalypse!au? it's ur city now, stabbing is romantic, not enemies to lovers but enemies AND lovers
Do Not Wants: nsfw/smut
Prompt:
― José Olivarez, Citizen Illegal
[FILL] burn it down
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Avatar: The Last Airbender AU; violence (war)
Permission to remix: Yes
***
At dawn, Mingyu comes across a body.
Yesterday this was a town: square brick houses inside a set of white stone walls. Today he walks through a smoldering wasteland, wreckage of a Fire Nation battalion who took no prisoners and let it all burn.
But there is a body: bony, malnourished. Alive.
Mingyu stops and kneels beside the boy. He looks no older than Mingyu, and he’s badly burned. He may not live through the night, may not live another hour.
Mingyu lifts him up anyway, and carries him away.
—-
The boy lives. He says his name is Myungho with sharp eyes that focus on the fire in the hearth, which makes Mingyu wonder if he’s lying, but he decides not to press the question. After weeks of silence, he’s just glad to hear Myungho’s voice.
His burns are deep and angry red, in spite of the salves Mingyu applies liberally every few hours. But he begins to eat, and if nothing else, he listens to Mingyu talk.
“My friends wanted to go to Ba Sing Se,” Mingyu explains, picturing their faces. “I wanted to go home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Pohuai,” Mingyu answers.
“It’s under occupation.”
Mingyu scowls. “I know.”
“Why go back, then?”
Mingyu looks over at the boy in bandages and says, “I had to see what was left.”
—-
A few weeks go by. An Earth Kingdom battalion passes by a few miles away. Mingyu goes through the forest to look at them march, unwilling to show himself. He would enlist if it weren’t for his own mission, or for the boy currently asleep in the abandoned house where they’ve been squatting for the past month. In the sunlight, the soldiers’ uniforms ripple like green blades of grass in the wind.
“We need to move,” Mingyu says when he returns to the house.
“Why?”
“Why? We’re in a war zone, Myungho.”
Myungho looks at him with a vague scowl. “Everywhere is a war zone. The Fire Nation wants everything.”
Mingyu looks at him carefully. Scarred and thin, Myungho’s body is a symbol of the Fire Nation’s ravenous bloodthirst. He looks back at Mingyu, defiant. Unbending.
“Even so,” Mingyu says, “I’d like to live another day.”
—-
“My mother taught me to earthbend,” Mingyu says, gesturing to the shelter overhead. Rain patters against the roof, but inside, they are warm and dry.
“What happened to her?”
“She died in the siege,” Mingyu answers. He tries not to think of those weeks, the sky red with ash and smoke while he waited in his home, too young to fight but old enough to want to. “A Fire Nation soldier killed her with two hands. Like a demon.”
Myungho says nothing for a moment, staring into the campfire. “And your father?”
“Starved to death during the occupation,” Mingyu says bitterly. He throws the bones of their dinner into the flames. “Didn’t even know until it was too late that he was giving me and my sister all his rations.”
“What about her?”
“She’s why I have to go back to Pohuai,” Mingyu admits. “I have to try to find her.”
He’d still been a child when Seungcheol knocked on his door and asked him if he wanted to fight, murder in his eyes. Mingyu hadn’t hesitated to walk out the door, only glancing back to tell his sister to stay with their aunt, he’d be home soon. Five years later and Seungcheol’s Freedom Fighters turned out to be a big joke. Kids couldn’t win wars. No matter how violently they fought.
“I hope you do,” Myungho says, quiet.
“What about you?” Mingyu asks.
Myungho shakes his head. “I don’t have anyone,” he says. Mingyu hears horrors unknown in the silence that follows.
“Hey,” Mingyu says, putting his hand on Myungho’s shoulder. “You have me now.”
He grins. After a moment Myungho looks back at him, firelight reflected in his eyes, and almost smiles.
—-
A week later they come upon the rubble of a town. Charred beams of burned down houses stand like needles piercing the gray sky. Skeletons rest in the ash. Above the town flies a Fire Nation flag, red as blood.
“I hate them,” Mingyu breathes out, his voice hoarse. His hands curl into fists and he feels the ground beneath his feet tremble under the weight of his rage. “I hate them all.”
Myungho says nothing, silently surveying the remains before them.
“Are they monsters?” Mingyu asks. “How could anyone do this?”
When Myungho speaks, his voice is as dry as ash. “Most of them are just following orders,” he says. “That might be the worst part of all.”
—-
They make camp ten miles outside of Pohuai. Mingyu is on edge, nervous to be so close to home and yet uncertain of what he will find. He doesn’t light a fire and they sit in the dark under the shelter of a hole Mingyu cracks in a boulder. With his back against the earth, Mingyu lets himself breathe.
“Myungho,” he says into the dark, “will you stay with me?”
“Of course,” Myungho answers. “I’ll stay with you to the end.”
A while later Mingyu wakes to the smell of smoke and the crackling of fire in the sky.
He leaps to his feet, barely awake but moving on instinct. Soldiers advance like ghosts, their flames catching on the dry branches of surrounding trees and grass. Suddenly Mingyu stands in a circle of fire, Fire Nation soldiers cutting off every possible escape, and he realizes he is going to die.
He digs his feet into the earth and feels its familiar tremor in his bones. “Myungho,” he says quietly, “it’s been a good run.”
He feels Myungho approach his side. In his peripheral vision he sees Myungho’s scarred hand reach up to grip his shoulder.
“You’re not done yet,” Myungho whispers.
With a shout, the soldiers throw fire toward them. Before Mingyu can move, Myungho jumps in front of him.
He catches all the flames in his hands.
Myungho blazes, a comet rising from the earth. Mingyu watches in horror as Myungho turns to look at him, his face lit up like the sun.
“Xu Minghao?” cries one of the soldiers.
Minghao, a demon in the night, burns bright.
Re: [FILL] burn it down
Re: [FILL] burn it down
Re: [FILL] burn it down
the dialogue between gyuhao then builds the connection between them so deftly and efficiently. “I don’t have anyone,” / “You have me now.” OKAY!!! Then "I hate them all" / “Most of them are just following orders,” I'LL JUST DIE THEN!!!! minghao's “I’ll stay with you to the end.” HOLY SHIT
minghao saying “You’re not done yet,” then CATCHING THE FIRE like holy hell you're so cool minghao you're soooo cooooool,,, and the use of myungho / minghao you're so clever you're SO CLEVER
Minghao, a demon in the night, burns bright. - pulling it back to mingyu referring to the soldier who killed his mom as a demon oh NOOOOOOOOO ellie this is so excellent I'm shaking
Re: [FILL] burn it down
Re: [FILL] burn it down
Re: [FILL] burn it down
Re: [FILL] burn it down
“I’ll stay with you to the end.” & “You’re not done yet.” oh I’m knocked out by these lines!! The minute Mingyu decided to save this boy he didn’t know, that was it—they were devoted to each other. He has no idea what it means to have Xu Minghao in his corner but HE’S ABOUT TO FIND OUT! I LOVE the possibilities here, the whole universe you’ve opened up, and the characterizations you’ve established. I know I’ll keep thinking about this one. Thank you so much for sharing!
Re: [FILL] burn it down
Re: [FILL] burn it down
Re: [FILL] burn it down