#zuko lost his bending after watching his mother get killed by a vampire

[stardust948]

Zutara Vampire Hunters AU inspired by Castlevania Nocturne

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Selenophobia

Quick Halloween fic. Just because I see so many vampire Azula fics; Azula is a werewolf and Sokka is a werewolf hunter.

A piercing howl cuts through the night and all he has is one silver bullet. He shivers under the full moon light. Winter comes early this year, the mid-autumn chill is setting very deeply in and turning to something much colder. It has already snowed and there a hefty piles of it still left especially in the forest where the sun can’t penetrate. This year is going to be harsh, he notes to himself. The howl drops into something more mournful and somber as he enters the woods. A heavy mist yawns out from the mouth of the forest; he can only see three or four trees ahead of him, hardly optimal for hunting weres. It doesn’t help that he only has lantern light to guide him. He groans to himself, wondering how he’d let the village sucker him into this one.

 He wanders in the direction of the howl leaves and snow crunching beneath his feet. He realizes that he is anything but subtle. He wants to protect his village and his sister, but he isn’t even sure he can protect himself. With the fog so heavy, the wolf could be directly in front of him but he wouldn’t see it until it had his throat in its hideous hybrid hands.

 The howl comes again, but this time interwoven with human wail. It is drawn out and almost makes him feel for the monster that he is going to slay. He isn’t looking down and his boot nudges against something that saps his empathy away at once.

The man is laying on his side, missing a good chunk of his torso and part of his thigh. A musket lay discarded several feet away. It was as useless as a toy.

 Another cry rings out, but it is far more woman than wolf. He shudders because it closer than he initially thought it to be. He thinks maybe only a five-minute run to the east. Looking at the husk of a man he growls to himself and dashes through the tree line. He is going to kill it, but a bullet through its heart and hack its head off for show. Let it see what it is like to be dismembered.

 The wolf isn’t hard to find between the snapped underbrush and the trail of blood and innards. On one occasion as Sokka goes to move a branch out of the way, his hand falls upon something sticky and gooey. He cringes and a chill goes up and down his spine. It is no time to act like a fool but he can’t help it; he is practically squealing as he wipes whatever it was, away, onto the nearest clump of moss.

 He is lucky that she hadn’t taken notice of his ruckus.

 She is on her hands and knees, shivering against the biting cold. A spill of inky hair cascading over naked shoulders, a sharp contrast to the pale skin it tumbles over. She shudders and gasps, in an apparent struggle against whatever pains had just tremored through her teeny body.

She looks up at him almost desperately, her eyes bearing signs of fatigue and suffering beyond his understanding. Blood is smeared across her mouth and drips from her chin. She wipes at it and when her hand comes away tinged with red she stares at it for a considerable lapse of time, until something registers in her mind. And she trembles harder, her eyes some wider, she looks up at Sokka, faintly horrified.

When she does, he recognizes her. She is the wealthy girl that they had carted off to the psych ward as her brother watched, a few nights prior. The girl who is apparently prone to fits and emotional outburst. The girl who cried about how the moon was after her. The girl who had been dragged from her home thrashing and screaming.

The girl who had escaped a few nights after being put in the ward.

 “I told them that it was after me. I told them that it would get me.” No sooner than the words leave her lips, is she crumpled on the forest floor, lost to the world for a time. Sokka observes her sleeping form. It is venerable, unprotected. Suddenly he is aware, once more, of the weight of the musket in his hand. He only has to fire; one quick shot and he can rid the village of its monster. He can finish what he set out to do. He wonders if she had known what he’d come to do to her. He cocks the gun and fixes it on her heart.

 He studies her face, it is so human. Not a trace of wolf remained, her skin is soft and delicate. She looks rather peaceful. And perhaps she is, so long as the moon remains crescent or gibbous. He almost doesn’t want to do it, but he had been given a task. He wanted to protect the village and his sister. He had made a volunteer of himself and now he has to go through with it.

A shot rings out, loud and echoing. It sends owls from their perches and true wolves into hiding. It carries across the rickety wooden bridge and into the village where children cower away and farmers rejoice. Where mothers sigh in relief and Zuko jolts up in his bed. The entirety of the town releases a breath it didn’t know it was holding, it comes out like smoke from chimneys.

He carefully lifts the girl up, she is so cold.

 .oOo.

 She no longer feels pine needles nipping at her skin and the air doesn’t feel quite so cold. She can smell some sort of tea, she is too groggy to make out the type. It is still dark, but a lesser dark. The sky is less black and more of a deep indigo, many of the stars are beginning to flee, lest they be caught by  the sun. And the moon, it still glares through the window, its spell still has her temper in its grasp. It leaves her with a very feral desire to escape the roof she is under.

But before she can bend to the tug of the moon, the boy from the forest makes an appearance. She spies his gun leaning against the fire place, it only registers then, that he had, had it with him the whole time. That she was every bit the game as she was the hunter.

 She snarls at him and she knows that he is aware that she has put the pieces together. Her teeth a bared in such a nasty way, that the boy takes a step or two back and she knows that the moon doesn’t plan on releasing her until the sun forces back behind the horizon.

 Azula fights to level herself. With more effort than it should have ever taken, the snarl is gone and her expression is at least somewhat neutral again. She can tell that the boy is hesitant to approach her. She does nothing to alleviate his fears nor to hike them up to a higher level. At last he makes a decision. He wraps a generously warm blanket around her shoulders and puts a blaze into the fireplace.

 She doesn’t understand his charity and compassion. He was supposed to kill her, instead he is warming her and making her comfortable. In her torment she had tormented others, she thinks she has killed people. Yet, he is treating her as though she is a girl who had simply gotten lost and maimed in the woods.

She tugs the blanket tighter, wishing she truly was just a girl who had wandered too far and too late at night.

 He leaves the room and comes back with a steaming bowl of stew and the tea she had smelled earlier. “This should warm you up.” He notes.

 She accepts the meal and stares quietly into the fire. She brings her fingers to her chin; he has cleaned her up too. “Why?”  She asks at last. Her eyes don’t leave the blazing hearth.

 “I don’t know.” He confesses. “I just couldn’t do it. You looked so…”

 “Human.” She finishes flatly. “But you wouldn’t have thought twice otherwise.”

 The boy is quiet. “That’s not necessarily true.”

 Azula rolls her eyes and takes another drink from the glass. “You’re telling me that you wouldn’t have shot if you’d seen a wolf with a bloody maw?” He looks at his palms and she knows that she is right. There is no compassion until the human beneath is exposed. “So you would have put a bullet trough my heart.” She continues just as nonchalantly. “My body would have dropped and reverted into its original form. What would you have done then?” He still doesn’t answer and it vexes her, because she already knows the answer.

 And he says the thing that peeves her the most. “I would have tried to help you. I’d have taken you to the physicians…”

 “People tend to forget that there is a human beneath the wolf.” She pauses, “At least until the claws retract. Then the sympathy comes out, especially if they see a woman’s face. They never try to reach them through the wolf, but they always feel bad when they see the human bleeding on the floor.”

 She sees him swallow. She almost feels bad for guilting him.

 “Well wouldn’t you shoot a beast?” He cringes immediately after he says it.

 But she doesn’t, she is used to hearing it. Wolf or not they treated her like so. “Would it surprise you if I said I’d kill both in a heartbeat?” She half-chuckles, “humans are beasts too, really.”

 “I don’t think that you would.” He replies.

 “Then you don’t know me at all. You have no idea what you just saved.”

 Azula knows that she has left him wondering if he had made the right decision. She hopes that he can figure it out, because she can’t.