Right: Okay, so here is a second joint-fic for this account. Left and I tried something completely different in writing this story as opposed to our other ongoing joint fic (In Which a Game Is Played). Where we wrote separate but interwoven arcs for that story, this one is literally a joint effort paragraph by paragraph! It's been a blast to write so I hope you guys enjoy it as much as we do!
Warnings: This is a fusion fic! Human names (that are available) will be used for the nation-tans who are living in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender (show. Not movie. Show.). This is an Alternate Universe. There is plenty of character death before everything will be done. Relationships (ESPECIALLY past relationships) are littered throughout this, so if you would like for us to announce what they are now, please leave a review stating as much. The majority of them aren't important and fairly predictable (and Right's too lazy to write them out right now...) but we will confess them upfront if you would feel more comfortable that way.
Disclaimer: Everyone should know this is a fanfic. Alas, let me confess my uselessness to the world. We, Ad Idem, do not own Hetalia or Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Avatalia: Earth Book
Chapter One: The Runaways
The cold air whipped at their faces, their noses turning a frosty pink despite the many layers that weighed them down. The landscape they faced was vast and unchanging and very, very white. Matthew worried at his lip at the rolling-in clouds that spoke of an even colder night.
He leaned forward against the saddle, petting the furry head that bobbed in and out of the water. "C'mon, Kuma – can you move any faster? Please?"
The giant polar seal rumbled in a sad, sorry kind of way and Matt rubbed at the creature's ears. "That's alright," the blonde sighed. "We'll just have to outrun that storm, won't we?"
"Matthew," Seychelles, the other occupant on the saddle, said with a worried little pout. "Did you pack the seal blubber?" Kuma grumbled loudly, his eyes bright and wide. Sey rolled her own eyes heaven ward. "No, you great big bundle of fur, the other kind of seal blubber."
"Uh," Matt said, his brows knitting. "It's not in the uh – the back?"
The dark-skinned girl stared at him. "You mean this back?" She waved behind her. "Or this back?" Now, in front. "Because this is the entire saddle, Matt, and I don't see it."
At first he was unsure if any audible response would be worthwhile. They both already knew that in his panic he had done what was usually left to his twin: charged ahead without properly preparing himself.
He could have kicked himself right then had it not been for the fact that he was really at the mercy of their faithful, blubbery friend now. And Kumajiro would not have appreciated a boot dug into his neck. "Sorry."
"Yeah, yeah," the girl scowled before clutching to the saddle more. "I'm sure Alfred will appreciate the fact that after we save his sorry butt, we can all starve together on the trip back."
Kuma released a concerned mewl at this which brought Matthew to gently stroking his side and whispering gentle reassurances to him.
But Matt was not so sure himself. If they miraculously beat this storm before they reached Peaks, the last stretches of tundra and 'dry' land before the great ocean, what were the odds that they could find a one passenger canoe? What were the odds that they could convince its sole passenger that he should come home?
And who, in their right minds, left to cross the entire ocean in a canoe to begin with?
"Although, knowing the twit, the only thing he brought with him to keep himself alive is food," Sey mused aloud, a hand wrapping around her parka's hood as she hunkered further down. Matt, seeing this, surreptitiously scooted next to the younger girl in an effort to keep her warm.
"Yes, well, I suppose we'll find out soon enough." I hope. Scenes from the last time Matt had seen his twin flashed angrily across his mind's eye, just as raw and full of rage as it was when he had lived through it. He sighed, drained, running on nothing but anxiety and kept his eyes trained toward the horizon. Lightning streaked across the sky.
Please be okay, Al.
(&)
Alfred was shivering.
Not that that was different from any other day of the week. It was just now he was cold, hungry, and completely alone. Which made complaining about the shivering completely worthless. And unhelpful. Instead, he fought back the biting cold by digging through the only bag he bothered to bring with him.
Which was now empty.
"Son of a Serpent," he hissed. "I know I packed more food than this!" His eyes darted around the makeshift tent, consisting of one overturned canoe and the oar keeping it from cracking down on its captain's head. He found nothing but a rock. "I don't suppose you ate the food did you?"
The rock said nothing.
"That's what I thought," he hissed before drawing his knees up to his chest and folding himself tightly together.
For a moment, he closed his eyes, his mitted hands grabbing the sides of his hood as he pressed his head as far back into the warmth as he could. He could almost feel the warm northern beaches, the hot summer air. Even if he had never been to the faraway lands, he knew what they looked like from the stories of his youth.
"Can't be that far now," he reminded himself, ignoring his chattering teeth and rolling stomach. He had only been gone for a day and a half, he could go a little longer, wait out the storm, catch some fish. His right hand reached back almost by its own will and withdrew the stolen map he tucked in his belt.
Straightening the map out the best he could over his trembling knees, Alfred stared at the beautiful, and all too familiar, details of the map. A master geographer had crafted this map of the known world with the fastest routes to each important port. It almost made him smile if he covered up the signature on the bottom.
Instead that signature mocked him. Loud, open, it scolded him, its invisible voice ringing in his ears. You can't do this, it chided in an all too familiar voice. Without me you can't even get there on your own. You can't do anything on your own. Just a child. Still just a child.
Growling, Al roughly folded up the map and stashed it back in its rightful place. He knew the way, anyway. He had the whole place memorized. He didn't need its guide. He didn't need anyone's guide. Least of all his.
"I got this far, didn't I?" He tried to ignore the steam that rose from his mouth as he spoke, the tremble in his voice. "I don't need him," he grumbled to the rock. Although his intention hadn't been to get angry all over again, he found the adrenaline pumping through his heart warmed his extremities and he clung to the warmth.
"I d-don't n-need any-y-o-one."
Something grumbled close by, loud, dull, earth moving. Al couldn't bring his sluggish mind to care. His whole focus was on the anger the map had given him. It tugged at his thoughts, along with the lingering whisper of hypothermia and something about shivering. That shivering was good, right? Or... or was it the other way around? Not shivering was... better? No, worse. He should know this. His mother told him.
He looked down to the hard, black rock beneath his boots and felt his eyes widen as the invincible ground suddenly cracked and split beneath him like the tip of a canoe split the water. His already labored breath hitched just as he felt the rocks which supported the left of his body give a jerk and he was tumbling onto a slab of stone.
The carefully placed oar fell to the right rock and left the canoe free falling until it met with Alfred's already cloudy mind. He let out a yell before collapsing beneath the heavy wood.
He muttered to himself about the indecency of a young Water Tribe Brave being pinned and trapped beneath his own canoe. Still, the shivering had returned with a vengeance by the time his mind decided to give up and quit beneath the canoe's weight.
All Alfred wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep. Whoever lifted the canoe off of him, however, had a different plan.
"What's-a this? Siesta?"
A face haloed in brown, curly haired looked down at Alfred with an all too wide smile. In a blur all too fast for Al's sluggish mind to follow, two wide and wonderfully warm hands griped the young warrior by the shoulders and hoisted him to the air with strength that belied the man's age.
The world tilted and churned sickeningly around and around and just when Alfred thought he might lose whatever lunch he had mindlessly stuffed down his throat, everything turned an inky black and he was falling... and then there was nothing.
He awoke with a jolt with his father's face looming down at him. The frost in his mind chipped away and cleared to the point where he expected his hand-made canoe to be hovering above him.
He found neither.
It was a man, but one with eyes soft and lined with years of laughing – something his father's face hardly ever showed. And he was standing far, far too close.
"Jeez!" Alfred flailed against the man, scuttling back on his butt until his back hit a frozen wall and he cried out in shock as the ice forced itself through his parka. Cursing wildly he flew forward unseeingly, his mind working over time to catch up with his body. He barely had time to wonder where Matthew was and that something bright and warm was coming in close, when arms caught him around the middle and held him steady.
"You are so wild!" The man laughed jovially, ignoring Alfred's flailing. "You almost walked right into the fire~!"
"What?" Al questioned, his voice releasing an unhelpful timbre as, somewhere deep in his gut, he heard that snappy voice telling him to man up. "Let-let go of me! What do you think you're doing?"
The man's rugged face became long for a moment, his oddly stiff nose giving a strange wiggle. In his soft, golden eyes, Alfred could actually see him thinking over the question in his mind. Then the man stopped and grinned a boyish grin, one that would even put Alfred to shame.
"Imma saving you," he said, his words rolling off of his lips like water from a stream. He then tilted his head, pulled Alfred over to the side and, at last, released him.
He then stared expectantly at the youth, as if the answer to the first question was so obvious he felt bad enough to let him have another go. That did not sit well with Alfred's already injured psyche.
"Just who do you think you are?" Al demanded. "And where's my canoe? Where am I—" he turned and looked at the glow of the large fire. His eyes narrowed. "How did you get a fire going in that storm?"
"Your canoe smacked a'down on your head," the man responded as he rolled his right hand through the air, his left staying submissively by his chest. "So I had m'Statue take it off you and bring you here to this cavern I made! You were such'a cold lil' thing. You made'a my heart want to break."
This made Alfred's already cluttered mind whirl again. He was going to have to find some steady ground soon else he might actually start getting sick. He then glared at the man again. "Your what?"
"Statue!" He waved his arm to the corner. "David."
Alfred turned his head and felt his breath hitch as he stared at a very life like, very naked sculpture of a man who, oddly enough, looked a bit too much like his supposed savior. The Water Tribe Brave really was about to get sick.
"That's disgusting!" Al growled before shaking his head. "And I don't understand. Who are you? And how did you start that fire?" The boy's eyes narrowed. "Are you a firebender?"
The man's face broke into an impossibly wider grin as his laugh echoed in the enclosed space. "Si, part of one. But I am made of many parts!" He thumped his chest as if to solidify this fact. He grinned and waved Alfred to sit next to him. "Sit, sit! The storm rages for now, si? We shall wait it out. Oh!" He clapped his hands, startling Al into nearly hitting his head against the roof of the cavern. "Do you know any, ah, sinistro stories?"
But Alfred just stared at the man as if he'd gone completely mad. His blue eyes were bright and sinister looking in the fire light and it made the man pause, his eyebrows furrowing. "You do not like'a stories?"
"You're a firebender." Al's voice was smooth and sharp and it hissed like the stray snow flurries that were caught in the fire's tentacles. The man frowned, clearly confused at the rapid change in the boy.
"Si," he said slowly, "I am but a part of one! Here, I will show you!" He raised a hand, ignoring the way Al retreated a few steps further from him, and with a twist of his wrist, the earth bunched and formed and shot out around Alfred, encircling the Brave. Al thrashed against it until he and the earth mound crashed back to the ground, a perfectly formed earth chair settled neatly under his rump.
"See!" said the man brightly. "Part of one! I can do many things, you see!"
It was suddenly a very, very good thing that the man had created the seat beneath Alfred's feet because the boy's head was threatening to spin straight off his shoulders. He felt sick, he felt like he had just smashed the Water Tribe Shrine, broken his mother's Sacred Water Tablet. He felt as though he had just rolled over his own religion.
Still, he had to be sure. It couldn't be a mistake. "Who are you?" he tried again, weakly.
The man grinned a lackadaisical grin and rubbed his stubbly chin. "L'avatar di Roma," he said, his voice managing to retain its songful lull while so many other chords were added to his tone. Pride. Wisdom. Humility.
Al felt himself grow weak, his body giving way into shakes. "You're really him," he whispered. "You're . . . you're the Avatar."
(&)
He stared at the pathetic, swishing remains of fuzzy rum in the bottle. His reddened eyes peered mercilessly at the vile liquid before he flung it with a swift toss of his arm. He ignored the fact that it broke against the icy wall of his home, narrowly missing a collision with the long haired man's head.
"Is that any way to treat the one who has been taking care of your boys, mon cher?" Francis' words were not unkind as he ducked around the bottle's remains littered on the floor and took the seat opposite the man with a patient little tilt of his head. "And keeping your house in one piece?"
"I don't want to bloody hear it!" Arthur snapped, slamming his fist against the table. A few empty bottles shuddered under the tremors and fell to the floor, shattering as well. He blinked furiously to get the man across from him to focus before he pointed an accusing finger at him. One of him. "Th—this s'all your fault."
Francis leaned back into his chair, a thoughtful look on his face. "This might be true – and it could not be. Who is to blame is not the concern here, mon cher. Your boys love you very much, Arthur."
Arthur snorted loudly, sweeping his arm wildly across the table toward one of the less empty bottles. "S'certainly have a funny way of showin' it, frog." Swinging the bottle back, he spluttered as the rum missed his mouth and ran down his face. The second swing actually made it to his mouth. "Ungrateful brats. The lot of them."
Francis clicked his tongue, snatching the bottle from his friend's lax grip. Ignoring the infuriated, "Hey!", he threw the bottle in the corner of the room, watching it smash into a brilliant array of red against white with a certain satisfaction. He turned back to Arthur, hands on his hips. Arthur slouched back slightly at the force of the glare.
"Now that I have your undivided attention, your boys, Arthur, the very last of what you have left of Elizabeth, are gone! They left because of your foolish stubbornness and only you can bring them back!"
Arthur stared blearily at the blonde-haired man with a distinctive drunkard haze. "They're gone?" He asked, his voice low and hoarse. Francis nodded curtly.
"Qui, Alfred has left many hours ago. Mathieu has gone after him with his rather large bear."
This caused the shorter man to scowl. Oh, how he loathed that blubbery creature. "Knew s'was th-the bear behind it all."
Francis found no amusement in the slurs. Instead, he found himself sucking in air until his lungs were utterly filled before releasing a hint of his anger. "Arthur, this is quite enough of your silliness," the older chided. "You have been home for not even five days after being gone for three years. Now it is time for you to be Pére and your boys need you most. Do not waste it in one of your sorry spells!"
The thick brows of the captain hinged together and he pulled himself into a shaky stand. "Don't s'you talk t'me 'bout being a father! Lizzie 'n me basically took your girl in t'help you!"
"A debt I have always sought to repay," Francis said pointedly. "One you have made much too easy to do so." A pained expression came to his face. "She is gone, mon cher. But Alfred and Mathieu are not. Do not lose them to this storm. Do not lose them to your grief. There is still time to make amends."
Arthur stared at him painfully before rubbing his face. "Oh, by the gods. Why woul' they leave wi'd winter hittin'?"
"From the same stubbornness their father has in abundance, I'd imagine," Francis huffed, pulling his brightened fur coat closer to his neck as the wind whistled in the crevices of the wooden home they took shelter in. "Arthur," he started again, his voice full of warning, but the shorter man silenced him with a raised hand.
"Alright, alright," he scowled, pulling his arms through the Captain's coat that had been thrown haphazardly across his chair. It was proving difficult with the other bottle of rum he'd managed to tightly grasp in his hand. "I'll go brin' 'em b-ack," he scowled at his own slurring speech and shook his head in attempt to clear the blur that had fallen across his vision. But the movement caused the room to spin uncontrollably and he had to close his eyes to keep from being sick.
He didn't realize he'd been falling until Francis caught him. The taller man tsked in his ear, shouldering his weight. "Maybe I ought to go with you, non?"
"I don't nee' your help, frog," Arthur grumbled, but there was no heat behind his words. Francis shook his head, leading the Captain toward the door.
"Of course not, mon cher. Just to the ship, and then your merry band of pirates can keep you upright, yes?"
TBC
Right: Please review!
