AN: This is an alteration of a dream I had the other night; yes, there's some parts of it that don't make sense, but this is the first semi-decent thing I've been able to write in this fandom for a while, so I hope you'll forgive me. The time is immediately after the second season's finale. And yes, I'm planning on going on with this, but for now this is what I have typed out, and I want to get it out there before I get any second thoughts.
Your humble servant,
Masako Moonshade
Fly Again
The occurrence was hardly a twist of fate. More likely, a coincidence, brought on by inconvenient circumstances. The Avatar and his friends had put too little distance between themselves and Ba Sing Sei, their Bison was already too tired from his breakneck flying to go as fast as they had expected, the regiment from the Taken City had moved too quietly and passed too close.
More specifically, the Lemur had meandered too far to the west in his flight, he had chosen just the wrong mouse to snack on, and he had refused to give it up when a very irate messenger hawk decided that it wanted the same unfortunate prey.
They nearly crashed in mid-dive, both spinning wildly out of control for a moment or two, and then both righted themselves to try again. But this time, the hawk lashed out with its beak, Momo with his little claws, and somewhere in the struggle, the poor mouse was being violently traded between Hawk and Lemur as they fought for the right to keep it. The struggle continued in a tangle of fur and feathers until all three tumbled to the ground, but still they fought, even after the mouse escaped and they had forgotten what they were fighting about. They weren't even aware of the mammoth shape behind them until it had seized the hawk, pinning its wings against its flailing body.
"What are you doing?" he demanded of it, and even though the words meant nothing, its clipped tone spoke volumes. The hawk stopped thrashing, and Momo became very still. And despite a little bit of blood and a lot of disheveled fur, the little lemur was recognized instantly.
"The Avatar's lemur," the figure said very quietly. And Momo remembered very clearly that tone of voice, and he leaped into the air to take off--and fell back to the ground in a heap. The webbing under his arm had been torn in the flight, and now it bled freely as he lay shivering in the clutches of a far more dangerous predator.
"No," the human reminded himself with a condescending shake of his head. "The Avatar's dead." He took a good look at the hawk, checking for blood and broken bones, but the little lemur seemed to have lost that day's fight. "Get going," he said to the bird, releasing it into the air. "And chase something smaller this time." He turned back to the lemur. "As for you--" Momo made a point of baring his teeth and flattening himself against the ground, but his leg stuck out awkwardly where his wing was torn. The human tried to take hold of the little creature, only to earn a fierce scratch across the back of his hand.
"Hey!" he recoiled quickly, but then--carefully--replaced his hand. This didn't make sense, even to him. Why should he care about the late Avatar's little pet? Why should it matter at all? Maybe he'd spent too much time around the kind of people who did care, and... with a frustrated sigh, he tried again.
"Come here," he said, softening his voice the way that he had when talking to his old ostrich-horse. Still the lemur tried to hobble away. And still he shouldn't care, but he knelt down and made himself small, just like his uncle had told him that one time, and spoke again. The words didn't make any difference, so he just said the first thing that came to his mind.
"It's not my fault," he said. "I never thought that Azula would actually kill him; I never wanted that. I just wanted to go home. Do you understand that? Home? Back to where my family is. Where I belong." And then he lemur backed up too much, and its torn wing struck a jutting stone, and the little creature crumpled. "It wasn't supposed to happen that way," he told it again, carefully scooping it into his arms. And whether the lemur believed him this time, or whether it was just in too much pain to keep resisting, it didn't struggle against his touch.