foxysquidalso | Fic: Comet

Title: Comet
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Word Count: 3,200
Pairing(s): Roku/Sozin
Rating: R
Notes: As Fire Lord Sozin prepares to take over the world, he remembers his best friend.

Comet.

For weeks before it comes, I can feel it. Like a tug--but no--it does not pull at me. It simply is. A constant presence. Like someone standing in the corner of my room. Watching me night and day.

#

They lay together on the grass, looking up at the stars. The night was unseasonably cool, and a breeze chilled Sozin's face. He breathed in and out slowly, concentrating, until his cheeks were warmed by the fire within him. He was conscious of Roku's warmth as well. His friend was so close to him they were almost touching, their hands but a finger's breadth apart. He turned his head a little to the side and studied Roku's profile. His friend's expression was serious. He seemed to be studying the sky quite intently. It made Sozin smile.

"Look!" said Roku suddenly.

Sozin looked up again to see what Roku saw, and he was in time to glimpse a shooting star, bright for an instant before it winked out of existence.

"Did you see it?" Roku asked.

"For a second."

"Good. I wouldn't want you to miss it."

Sozin shifted his arm, just enough so that one fingertip rested against the side of Roku's hand. He kept his gaze fixed on the sky, though he wasn't looking at the stars. He couldn't see the stars anymore, although he was gazing towards him. All his attention was taken up by the heat beside him. Roku's hand was warm. Sozin hoped his friend would think it was an accidental touch, that he wouldn't move his hand away. Moments passed. Roku's hand remained where it was. Sozin let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in. "I didn't miss it," he said.

Sozin closed his eyes. A shooting star was good luck, so he made a wish. I want this to last forever. He knew that a foolish wish was bad luck, canceling out the good luck of the star, but he didn't care. It was what he wanted.

#

Where does it come from? All those long nights spent journeying through the dark land where stars live. Who sees its bright, blazing body there? I cannot see it yet. I am only aware of someone in the corner of my chamber, someone who isn't there when I turn around.

#

"You have to promise to be my advisor when I'm the Fire Lord."

Roku laughed. "Oh, I have to promise?"

The two of them were in Sozin's room, seated on his bed. Sozin had drawn up his feet; they were crossed under his robes. Roku's feet were on the floor. "Yes. That's an order." Sozin leaned towards him, smirking as he held out his hand.

Roku laughed again, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe it. "Right now?"

"Why not? No point in waiting."

Still laughing, Roku reached out. "Of course I will." Sozin's chest tightened as Roku squeezed his hand. "I promise," Roku said. His palm was warm and dry; Sozin squeezed back. He didn't want to let go, but when Roku made to pull away, Sozin released him at once.

"But it doesn't matter," Roku added. "You know I would have done it anyway."

"I hope so," said Sozin, lightly punching his friend's arm. "What would I do without you?"

"I don't know--make a mess of things?"

Sozin took this good-naturedly. "Maybe." He looked down and ran a finger over the embroidery on the silk that covered his bed, a pattern of intertwined flames. He looked up and smiled. "But I don't need to worry about that."

#

The closer it comes, the stronger I feel. I become a much younger man. Within me, all my old fire and appetite return, although I remain the same without. I begin to eat more. The fire consumes everything I take in. I hear the servants discussing it in the hallways. "I never knew the Fire Lord to have such a hunger," they say. They are too young to know how great my hungers have been.

#

"Have you ever done it?" Roku asked.

Sozin could feel his face heat, and he looked away. "No. I would have told you if I had, wouldn't I?"

"Oh. Right. Of course." Roku pulled his knees up towards his chest, leaning back against the edge of his bed. Sozin was sitting beside him. It was night, and all their court duties were over for the day. They had a few hours to themselves. This was always Sozin's favorite time. He didn't have to answer to anyone, and no one had to answer to him. He and Roku were equals. It had always been that way. "What do you think it's like?"

"I don't know," said Sozin, unaccountably nervous. "Everyone seems to like it--in stories, I mean. And--in real life too, I guess."

"That's true." Roku sighed, wistfully. "It must be nice." He looked down at the robes covering his knees with a small, secret smile on his face, as if he was seeing something else entirely, something Sozin couldn't see, although he knew what--or who, rather--it was. "I wish Ta Min would kiss me," he confessed.

"Why don't you kiss her?"

Roku looked up, blinking in terror at the idea. "I couldn't! I'd be too nervous to try. And I don't know know how. What if I did it wrong and she didn't like it?"

Sozin's heartbeat quickened. Before he could think better of it, he blurted, "We could try it!" Once the words were out, it was too late to unsay it. His face burned. "I mean, just to see what it's like."

Roku laughed again. "Very funny, Sozin."

Sozin's stomach turned at this, and he didn't know what to say. He could have laughed too, as if it really had been a joke. Or he could have teased Roku about Ta Min. He liked doing that. But for some reason he didn't say anything. He stared at the floor as his face continued to burn.

"Oh," said Roku after a minute or two of silence, his voice grown softer. "I--"

Sozin didn't let him finish. "I just thought that if we practiced, then we'd know how. For when we really do it."

"Oh," Roku repeated. He thought this over. "That does--make sense, I think," he admitted finally.

Sozin turned towards him. "Then--do you want to?"

Roku's long hair hung loose around his shoulders, as always. He tugged absently on a lock of it. "We--could."

"All right," said Sozin. "Just to practice."

Neither of them moved. Sozin realized he was going to have to do something, or they would continue to sit there regarding each other in silence. He rose up onto his knees. Roku watched him. Sozin frowned, earnestly considering how he was going to do this. He leaned towards Roku, then touched a hand to his friend's face. He swallowed. Roku was flushed bright red.

Sozin had seen people kissing before--his mother and father, or the palace guards walking with their sweethearts. He knew how it was done. He tilted his head to one side and leaned in closer. He knew he should keep his eyes open so he could see what he was doing, but he couldn't look, so he shut them tightly.

At the last moment, Roku leaned forward too, so their mouths bumped together awkwardly as their lips met. Sozin didn't draw back, however. He kept his lips pressed to Roku's. His friend didn't pull away, either. For what seemed like a long time, they were both frozen in place, neither of them daring to move. Sozin's body had never felt so warm, not even when he was Firebending. He parted his lips. He knew he was supposed to put his tongue in Roku's mouth, but he didn't know if Roku would actually let him. It seemed impossible. But Roku had said that they could try it. So Sozin stuck out his tongue and pressed it against Roku's lips.

Roku's mouth opened for him, and Sozin slipped his tongue inside. It felt--strange. But not unpleasant. It was a new sensation, warm and wet. Sozin made a low noise as he moved his head forward. His teeth clicked against Roku's, and the impact was something of a jolt, but that didn't deter him. Roku's tongue slid against his own. So this is what it's like to kiss someone, Sozin thought. He placed a hand on Roku's shoulder to steady himself. He felt Roku's hair, soft against his skin, as Roku kissed him back.

#

A few nights before the day I have awaited for so long, I have a dream. In it, I wake up from a deep sleep to find you standing in a corner of my room, your eyes blazing pale fire. "Sozin," you say as you come towards me, your arms raised, "you cannot do this thing." I feel a wind against my face. In the real world, I bolt awake, breathing hard, my skin afire. I look towards the place where you stood in my dream, but you are not there. You will never be there again.

#

The first day after Roku left, Sozin told himself it wasn't so bad. He had often spent entire days without Roku, because his friend was ill, or because he had things to do with his family, or any one of a hundred simple reasons. He had been fine on all those days, he told himself. He would be fine for all the days to come.

But by the week's end, Prince Sozin had, for the most part, confined himself to his room. He was brought food to eat, but he didn't want to eat it. He made himself wolf it down, but more from a desire to avoid hunger pangs than from any real enjoyment of what he was eating.

Twelve years. That was a long time. He would be nearly thirty by the time he saw Roku again.

His father visited his room to talk to him one day. He gave a long speech that Sozin barely listened to, about tradition and the importance of the Avatar. The world needed balance, his father said. Without balance there would be chaos. Sozin nodded as if he understood, but inwardly, he asked, Why did Roku have to be the one to maintain balance? Anyone could have done it.

Three weeks after Roku left, there was a thunderstorm. It rained all day, the water striking at the ground and the wind tearing at the trees, pulling off fistfuls of leaves and sending them flying everywhere. That night, Sozin lay in his bed with his eyes wide open, listening to the rain drumming against the roof and the low rolling of the thunder. He listened until he felt the noise was about to drive him mad. When he couldn't bear it any more, he sat up and threw the covers back.

Sozin put his slippers on, but he didn't bother to change out of his bedclothes or pull on a heavier robe. He snuck through the dark halls of the palace. He and Roku had done this so many times together, sneaking through the corridors while everyone else was asleep. The night guards were easy enough to avoid, if you knew what you were doing.

The courtyard, usually pristine, was a wreck of grassy mud, soft and slick beneath his slippered feet. Wind-whipped rain stung his face, but Sozin kept walking, undaunted, until he reached the tree in the center of the open space. Once there, he sank to the ground. He knew better than to sit beneath a solitary tree in the middle of a thunderstorm, but somehow he couldn't seem to care about that.

Sozin looked up from beneath the branches of the tree. Rain poured down his face, soaking the cloth of his bedclothes. Lightning flashed across the sky, white and blue and impossibly beautiful--the shapes it made across the sky flashing again and again, different every time. The ancients had said that one who knew how could read the future in the shapes of the lightning. Putting up a hand to shield his eyes from wind and rain, Sozin gazed at the lightning and tried to read his future there.

When the servants found him the next morning, he was curled up on the ground. His skin was so hot that no one could touch him. They called the court healers, who laid cool cloths on his body until his temperature had dropped enough for them to move him onto a stretcher and carry him inside.

Later, his mother, resting a hand on his forehead, asked him what he had been doing out in that storm.

The young prince was clearly still delirious as he opened his eyes and answered her question. "Seeing the future," he murmured, then closed his eyes again.

#

I can feel the comet, much as I can feel my heart beating in my chest. The comet is a part of me. It is mine. It belongs to me always. As you did, although you never acknowledged it. And that is why your fate was what it was. Because you cannot deny destiny without paying a price. No one knows this better than I do.

#

On the day his father died, Sozin sent Roku a message. For weeks, he waited for his friend's reply. And if, during that time, he was cross with the servants and particularly acerbic in the replies he made to the courtiers who addressed him, people said it was because he was grieving.

On the day before his coronation, Prince Sozin--shortly to become Fire Lord Sozin--was being dressed by his attendants when a messenger entered the room, bowing deeply. Sozin saw instantly that the man carried a letter with Avatar Roku's own seal. He waved the attendants away with a scowl and beckoned to the messenger. "Come here."

The man, perfectly trained, moved forward without rising from his bow. He presented the letter to Sozin with his head lowered. Sozin snatched it from him and tore it open.

My Dearest Friend, the letter read.

Sozin. You cannot know how it saddens me to learn of your loss. Or maybe you can. When I read your letter, I felt as if I'd lost my own father. You and I were always more like brothers than friends. I wanted to come to you at once, but my teacher tells me it's impossible. I feel so sick at heart, knowing that I can't be with you now. I've never regretted the limitations of my training so much. Sometimes I wish--

Sozin looked up. His hand tightened around the letter, crumpling it. The messenger still stood before him, head bowed in deference. His attendants waited, ready to continue their task as soon as Sozin asked it of them. Sozin took a deep breath. "Leave me!" he commanded. "All of you!"

The messenger forgot his composure and glanced up, and the attendants blinked in surprise, but nonetheless, all of them did as they were asked, vacating the room without hesitation, without a word.

Sozin stared down at the paper in his hand, covered with such perfect, neat rows of calligraphy, but he couldn't read another word. Roku wasn't coming. Sozin's father had died, and Sozin needed his friend, but Roku wasn't coming. That was all Sozin needed to know. Crumpling the paper further, he made a ball out of it, then tossed it into the air. A breath and a flick of his wrist, and the paper burst into flame. By the time it fell to the ground, it was ash.

#

When the comet comes, I call it down. So do all the Firebenders in the world, but none can take so much of that cold fire within themselves as as I can. I pull it down into my body, until I am so hot I almost cannot bear it. But I do bear it. I can bear anything now. Years ago, I did the most difficult thing I have ever done or ever will do. Everything else is easy now. Everything else is nothing.

#

The young man stood barefoot in the middle of the room. He had taken off his robes and tunic. He wore only his dark red trousers. Seated on the edge of his bed, Sozin regarded him appraisingly, a faint smile on his lips. The young man did not seem to be looking at anything. He looked straight ahead, that was all.

He was tall and slender, his dark brown hair loose around his shoulders, his face long and his chin pointed. The Fire Lord had chosen him out of several youths that had been presented to him, all matching the same general description. This one was nineteen or twenty--nearly twenty years Sozin's junior. "Come here," Sozin said.

The young man crossed the room and seated himself on the bed beside Sozin. Sozin touched his face, then leaned in to kiss his mouth. The young man kissed him back. Sozin didn't ask him what his name was, because his name wasn't important. Maybe he would keep this one with him for weeks or months, but no matter how long he stayed, it didn't matter. Sozin would replace him in the end. He always replaced them when they began to bore him.

Sozin reached down to remove the young man's trousers, and the young man lifted his hips to assist in the effort, his expression neutral, although Sozin noted that his hands shook a little once he had been stripped bare.

"Lie down with me," Sozin said.

The young man did as he was told. They always did. This did not particularly appeal to Sozin, but he didn't mind it. It was to be expected. Everyone did what he asked of them. Nothing was denied him. No, that wasn't true. There was one thing.

He closed his eyes as he ran his hands over the younger man's body. So smooth and warm. The young man was a Firebender. Sozin preferred that. He wanted that warmth. His hands slipped between the young man's legs and closed around his cock. It was flaccid, but after a few light touches, it began to stiffen.

He was never unkind to them. He stroked their hair and called them handsome. And if they were surprised by what he wanted, they said nothing of it as they knelt above him, their teeth gritted as they took him. Sometimes he kept his eyes closed, and sometimes he opened them. Sometimes he called out a name, but never their names. Why should he? Their names didn't matter. He couldn't keep track of their names, there were so many of them, all with the same kind, open expressions and the same long, dark hair.

#

"You are mine," says the comet--its voice like a whisper in my heart--and I do not disagree. "We are the same," I say, as I burn the world away.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Location: apartment, couch
Current Music: Modest Mouse, "Little Motel"