noracharles | Comment fic meme: Breaking up

Any fandom, any character, any sort of relationship.

Write about a character breaking up with a person they have any sort of relationship with, or a character breaking up with an institution, an organization, an ideal...

Comment with prompts by putting this in the subject line:
Prompt: fandom or just Prompt if it's for any fandom. Feel free to specify characters and relationship types too, if you have any preferences.

Answer any prompts which interest you, and also feel free to comment directly to this entry with an off the cuff ficlet or fragment, or a link to where you've posted it. Reposting previously written fic which fits the theme is fine.

Absolutely no care or effort or beta-reading or editing is expected or required! I'm just hoping someone will entertain me. People I don't know are very welcome indeed ♥

Master list

The Aeneid - Dido breaking up with Aeneas: Vergil fanfic because that's how I roll by

calvinahobbes in both Danish and English

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Mai breaking up with Zuko: Avatar: TLA, during The Boiling Rock by

jalendavi_lady in English

Red Dwarf - Rimmer breaking up with the Space Corps: Red Dwarf: Rimmer leaves the Space Corps by

evilawyer in English

White Collar - Neal breaking up with Peter: Four years and counting [White Collar] by

snakeling in English

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(Spoiler Alert if anyone hasn't watched that far yet, I know I'm not the only person who got introduced to the series this year.)

They didn't know what hit them.

Of course they didn't know what hit them. Mai's uncle was the only member of the prison staff who knew about her fascination with knives, and she was fairly sure he'd let her keep them so that she could take her revenge - if she wanted it.

"What are you doing‌!"

Isn't it obvious? How did you survive this long as a prison guard, anyway? "Saving the jerk who dumped me."

It was one thing to break up with a girlfriend. Another to do it by letter.

To do it by letter left on the very couch you had snuggled on together with no chaperons not three days prior?

And that wasn't even the depths of what he had done.

A second later she was fighting the rush, doing all she could to keep the guards away from the line, to keep them from killing her uncle and her ex-boyfriend.

She succeeded, somehow.

It was the greatest sign she could have had that the realization she'd come to, that Zuko was right that there was something broken with their nation, and that he needed to be the one to fix it, was correct.

She hadn't expected to be able to do it, not alone. Not without Ty Lee and Azula.

It was the first time she'd really fought alone, no backup possible or expected.

She looked up at him as the gondola moved away, saw the shock and horror on his face.

Saw the scar on his cheek, the greatest symbol she knew of for just how broken the world had become - now that she was willing to recognize it.

Damn. If she'd realized earlier, she could have run with him when he left the Fire Nation.

Things could have been different.

There wouldn't have been the letter from him, or this last silent goodbye from her.

I'm probably going to die for this, she thought at him.

The look in his eyes told her he knew it too.

Make this count for something, please. Make a better world for my little brother.

Goodbye. Good luck.

...

Mai didn't expect Ty Lee to save her when Azula tried to be judge, jury, and executioner.

Mai didn't expect to be shoved into a prison uniform and then shoved into a cell with Ty Lee, far from the other prisoners, until decisions could be made about what to do with them.

And she certainly didn't expect to start crying.

"Mai?" Ty Lee put a hand on her shoulder. "It could be worse."

She couldn't argue with her friend. "It's not that."

"Then what is it?"

"Zuko."

"He'll be all right."

Mai nodded. She hoped he would be. She hoped he wouldn't try to free them.

She wondered what would happen if he ever did manage to return to the Fire Nation, if he ever gained access to the records, if he ever found out what their mothers had done shortly after the day he'd knocked her into the palace fountain to save her from a flaming apple.

She shook her head.

"Mai?"

"The mothers were right," she whispered, choking on the tears she was finally letting go of.

Ty Lee gasped.

They were words she would never hear from her mother, words every young noblewoman hoped she would hear.

(Instead, Mai had found out by listening to her parents' whispers after he was burned and banished, their worries that he wouldn't return before the arrangement had to be announced, their worries about their honor - not their daughter.)

The words that said she had already fallen in love with a man she was betrothed to, and wasn't it grand their mothers had known their children so well so young?

Words of joy, words of celebration.

Words that belonged to another life.

She had to survive in this one, now.

No use daydreaming he'd win soon, and sweep her away into a world where no one would grow up as she had again because no one would need to.

(She soon discovered night-dreaming was another matter.)

Yeah, Mai, kick their asses! :-D

I wish I had seen Avatar: The Last Airbender so I could better understand the context of your fic, but I get enough to feel gripped by the story you're telling.

What an astounding, world-rocking experience this has been for Mai. She's very brave to be able to not only risk her life to save her ex who dumped her like that, but also to take a hard look at her own culture and find it wanting.

Poor Mai. I hope she can find a new equilibrium she can live with. Hearing her parents be more concerned of their honor than about her must have burned, no pun intended :-(

I like her strength and determination, and her having a cell mate she can talk to, it gives me hope. Does your story have a happier ending for those who know canon?

It does.

He wins the throne before the end of that summer (it's already past the summer solstice when this ficlet occurs), and she's freed fast enough that she and her friend both attend the coronation. Her last speaking scene is just before the coronation, and it's very clear that they are still a couple.

And yeah, her parents are pretty much like that in canon. She's emotionally flat in presentation most of the time because she was trained from early childhood not to risk her father's political standing by acting out in any way, ever.

Thank you for letting me know, it makes me happy for Mai!

Ugh, parents like that are scary. Good angst fodder, though :-)

Comment fic meme: Breaking up

Master list

Avatar: TLA, during The Boiling Rock

Re: Avatar: TLA, during The Boiling Rock

Re: Avatar: TLA, during The Boiling Rock

Re: Avatar: TLA, during The Boiling Rock