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nebroadweTitle: Ficlet: The Good Servant
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Character(s): Ming, with a cameo from Iroh
Pairing(s): None
Rating: G
Word Count: 150
Warnings: None, as long as you've seen through "The Day of Black Sun."
A/N: Couldn't quite pare this one down to the size of a canonical drabble, confound it, but honor is a complex subject. Concrit welcomed with freshly brewed peppermint tea, because that's all I've got left (the plotbunnies have eaten everything else). Crossposted from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nebroadwe to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
avatar_fans and avatarfic.
Dedication: Forarielen, who also takes risks (and copes heroically with my high-school German :-).
She has always wanted to serve with honor.
Which means (she's been told since childhood) performing her assigned duties, however menial: no one found wanting in small matters is worthy of great. "Prison guard" was not the duty Ming hoped for when she took her oath to the Fire Lord, but she does what she is ordered to do, competently and courteously. Once the prisoners learn there is no advantage to be taken of her, she even finds room for kindness: a smile, a friendly word, a proper cup of tea.
Then the Fire Nation's greatest traitor repays her compassion with dubious counsel: to report herself falsely ill, to play blind, deaf and dumb despite his hints of coming trouble. You do not want to be here, he says.
But she takes his advice, because in order to serve with honor, you must also know honor when you meet it.
[Acknowledgments: Avatar: The Last Airbender was created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko; copyright for this property is held by Viacom International, Inc.]
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Character(s): Ming, with a cameo from Iroh
Pairing(s): None
Rating: G
Word Count: 150
Warnings: None, as long as you've seen through "The Day of Black Sun."
A/N: Couldn't quite pare this one down to the size of a canonical drabble, confound it, but honor is a complex subject. Concrit welcomed with freshly brewed peppermint tea, because that's all I've got left (the plotbunnies have eaten everything else). Crossposted from
nebroadwe to avatar_fans and avatarfic.Dedication: For
arielen, who also takes risks (and copes heroically with my high-school German :-).She has always wanted to serve with honor.
Which means (she's been told since childhood) performing her assigned duties, however menial: no one found wanting in small matters is worthy of great. "Prison guard" was not the duty Ming hoped for when she took her oath to the Fire Lord, but she does what she is ordered to do, competently and courteously. Once the prisoners learn there is no advantage to be taken of her, she even finds room for kindness: a smile, a friendly word, a proper cup of tea.
Then the Fire Nation's greatest traitor repays her compassion with dubious counsel: to report herself falsely ill, to play blind, deaf and dumb despite his hints of coming trouble. You do not want to be here, he says.
But she takes his advice, because in order to serve with honor, you must also know honor when you meet it.
[Acknowledgments: Avatar: The Last Airbender was created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko; copyright for this property is held by Viacom International, Inc.]