⚛︎ ˖⌬ An Excerpt From Quantum Entanglement, Ch4: ⊹ ࣪ ⚛︎
⚛︎ ˖⌬ an excerpt from quantum entanglement, ch4: ⊹ ࣪ ⚛︎
Jack was somewhat preoccupied with glaring daggers at Elsie Hannaway, who he had barely been able to look away from since the moment she had walked in on those teetering tall heels, strung between the arms of Olive and another girl Jack didn’t recognize. He had been in the middle of a conversation when the three had walked in, and Jack had immediately gone to tease Adam upon seeing that he had accidentally matched costumes with Olive, only for the words to die on his tongue the moment that his gaze drifted to the girl on her right.
Elsie. With tall heels, and long legs, and a tiny little short black shift dress, and cat ears. Elsie. With drawn-on sleek, feline features on one side and drawn-on neon bubbles on the other. Elsie. With a softly blooming smile on her face that died and withered and darkened as her gaze passed over him.
Dressed as Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive, all at once.. How fitting. She was, after all, simultaneously the most agreeable girl in the entire Physics department and the bane of Jack’s entire existence.
This party was meant to be an escape, a refuge from Elsie, and yet, she found him even here. Jack took another long sip of ice water, eying the shot Adam held in his hand and wishing desperately that his own drink was made of pure vodka.
“Yes?” Adam asked distractedly, and only then did Jack recall that he had just addressed him moments before. The taller man lifted a bulky black glove to his Kylo mask, adjusting it as if his matching Rey across the room could see right through him.
“ Talk to her.” His words were blunt, but Jack’s tone was nothing but sympathetic. He owed at least that much to Adam, considering that Holden Rodrigez, the one who would usually talk some sense into the two of them, was off in a corner making out with who knows who. “Even if she doesn’t remember you.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Adam’s tone was nervous, uncharacteristically unsure for the man who had one of the most formidable academic records in the school’s recent history.
“Then you start fresh.” Jack’s gaze drifted over Elsie, yet again , against his own free will. “Trust me, history is a hell of a lot harder to deal with than the lack of one.”
Across the room, as if she’d heard him, Elsie leaned over to the friend Jack didn’t know, whispering something before stalking across the room, straight for him. And yes, Jack meant stalking . Something about the way her strappy heels cut through the crowd made him feel the heat of her focus more than he ever had. Beside him, Jack was vaguely aware of Adam throwing back a shot and clapping him on the back in an uncharacteristically frat-boy-ish manner as he strode past him, his own path mirroring that of Elsie’s.
Jack stayed rooted in place. He wasn’t sure he could have moved even if he wanted to. Elsie’s gaze had him pinned. Still, her gait seemed increasingly off as she got closer and closer. Her last few steps seemed to jumble together, and all at once, she was in his arms. Warm, and real. A bit too drunk, the scent of sickly sugary fruity cocktails mixed with the sweet honey and old-paper scent that had haunted him over the last handful of months.
Jack wrinkled his nose at the syrupy scent as it assaulted his senses.
“Were the cocktails good enough to justify the hyperglycemia, at least?” He watched as Elsie’s glare only grew at his casual mention of her diabetes. It had been her best kept secret up until she had passed out late at night a handful of weeks before in the library. Jack had only found her in time because she’d intentionally taken his typical study spot just to get under his skin, a particularly evil habit of hers that he was suddenly grateful for as he helped her adjust her insulin levels until she had recovered enough to hate him for it.
“For your information, as an adult, and a very capable scientist, I am more than capable of adjusting my insulin accordingly.” She turned up her whisker-painted nose haughtily.
“But not capable or adult enough to keep your friends informed on your health?” From the way Elsie flushed red in irritation, Jack knew that his barb had hit the mark- he clearly remained the only person within the radius of their university who was aware of her diagnosis. Her lips parted, itching to retort, but he only raised a finger, tired of fighting her after years of doing nothing but bickering. “Please, Elsie. You’re drunk, and I’m well aware that you hate me. You don’t need to remind me.” His gaze fixed on a point behind her, and Elsie turned to watch alongside him as Adam and Olive danced, the latter looking up with a smile on her face that lit up the entire room.
Jack could only assume that underneath his mask, Adam wore a corresponding tiny half-grin.
“You’re the one who made it my mission to dislike you,” Elsie huffed, bringing his attention right back to her, “seeing as you hate what I hold dearest in this entire world.”
Jack couldn’t bite back his tongue quickly enough to soften his rebuttal. “What, hiding your feelings from everyone around them and subjecting me to every last one?”
Elsie refused to dignify his words with a direct response. “Besides, you’re as drunk as everyone else here. You must be, considering that you usually never bother saying more than one or two words to me at once.”
“Hate to burst your bubble, but I’m just as sober as I am every day in the classroom.” He tipped his class of water against her long-stemmed glass, grinning widely at the chance to be right. “So no, I’m not drunk.”
“Are too,” Elsie scowled.
“Now who’s the adult?” Jack crowed, throwing back another sip of water before lightly easing Elsie’s sugar-rimmed margarita out of her hands and setting it on the table behind them. He expected her to fight back, to snatch at the table and run back to her friends so that she could spend the rest of the night cursing his name, but she did none of that.
Instead, Elsie tipped back her head and laughed, the sound like the clinking glass of beakers settling into a wooden storage frame, and Jack was hit by the thought that perhaps she was slightly more drunk than he had accounted for.
⊹ ࣪ ⚛︎ ˖ ⌬ ⋆ ༘ ⚛︎ ⊹ ࣪ ⚛︎ ˖
-quantum entanglement, quillthrills on ao3
More Posts from Quillthrillswriting and Others
i absolutely agree with everything said before me! as an atla fic writer, i find it difficult to take these incredible three dimensional characters and transfer them to new scenarios while preserving that original dynamic and personality. i end up re-reading the interactions i write over and over, trying to make sure that i'm keeping the heart of the original characters instead of just inserting quotes that vaguely sound like something they'd say.
interestingly enough, i tend to find zuko the most difficult for me to write, at least personally! its very easy to take him at face value and write him as very closed off, typical surly teen, and i often have to go back and remind myself of the moments of softness that are just as much a part of zuko's character as his rough exterior.
Another question
You can answer based on your experience writing fanfiction, what you've noticed from reading fanfics, or just based on what you think based on your understanding of the character.
I would love to see some explanations comments and tags about how and why.
sooo.... anyone else ever wondered how different ATLA would have been if aang had been frozen at age 16 instead of age 12?
yeah... me too 😌 my new fanfic "the teenager in the iceberg" follows the events of the show, but with only aang aged up, while everyone else remains their canon age.
also...cmon....how funny is it to switch zuko and aang's iconic dialogue to "you're just a teenager!" "...so are you?"
this idea was originally inspired by the talented @allgremlinart's aged up aang drawings, so please go show them some love!!:)<3
enjoy the excerpts from chapters one and two!
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
Aang chuckled, pushing himself up with his hands on his knees. He was… taller than Katara had realised, taller than Sokka. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck, turning to look over his shoulder at the remains of the boulder-sized chunk of ice he had just been blasted out of. “Aang. My name’s Aang.” He hesitated, momentarily seeming to puzzle something over. “And honestly? No clue. Don’t remember how me and…Appa!” He yelped, suddenly scrambling back over the hill of ice and snow. Katara followed him without thinking, and Sokka, grumbling under his breath, followed moments later.
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
“So, you’ve brought a monster to invade the village, then? You’re some incognito Fire Nation soldier sent in as an undercover scout? Well, I’ll have you know that I’m the village’s strongest warrior, a-”
“The only warrior,” Katara chimed in, lightly elbowing Sokka’s side, earning herself a responding glare.
“The strongest warrior.” Sokka reiterated. “And I don’t much like firebenders.” He added the words pointedly.
“Ah.” Aang titled his head. “That’s a shame. Some of my closest friends are Fire Nation.”
“Of course they are,” Sokka glared, hunching over into a defensive position and adjusting his fishing spear until it pointed directly at Aang.
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
Katara still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Aang. The Water Tribe boys had always been all flashy muscles, seal-jerky breath, and overconfidence, so Katara had never seen someone move, carry themself, the way Aang did.
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
Katara had admittedly forgotten how much fun penguin sledding was. “Spirits, I haven’t done this since I was a kid!” she called to Aang as he raced past her, surprisingly skilled considering that he’d never even seen a penguin until half an hour before.
“You still are a kid!” He called back over his shoulder. “A kid who’s losing this race, badly !”
Katara’s competitive streak reared its head, her eyes narrowing as Aang stuck out his tongue. She sat up slightly, no longer gripping the penguin’s fur as tightly. “You wish!” She shouted back the words as she raised her hands, breathing deeply. Her hands moved through the positions she had practised from the few bending scrolls the tribe still held on to, and before Aang knew it, the snow in front of Katara turned to ice, and she shot past him as his own ice trail suddenly became dry snow with too much friction to slide on.
She made it to the bottom of the hill, beaming, breathing heavily. The wind had whipped her hair out of her bun, and she knew without checking that her hair must have looked like a lion-turtle’s mane. She watched as Aang made a show of drying himself off with a gust of wind that he then redirected at her, messing up her curls even more.
“You’re a cheater !” Aang gasped, mockingly clutching imaginary pearls at his throat. “I demand a rematch.”
Katara strode past him, only turning her head to cast him a smug smirk. “Maybe you’re just not as good of a penguin sledder as you thought .”
“Oh, not so fast!” Aang grabbed her wrist, tugging her back towards him, and she internally questioned why the momentary brush of their skin made her heart flip. He tried to trip her, she tried to flip him, and they both ended up on their backs in the snow, giggling, cheeks and noses bright pink from the cold.
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
“Trouble sleeping too, huh?” Aang cocked a grin, tilting his head to Katara. She kept her eyes fixed upwards, trained on the moon and the stars, worried that if she looked away, she’d end up staring into his eyes like a weirdo.
“I always feel so awake with the moon’s light on me. Sleeping under the stars has never really been a thing that works. It’s too energising, too… too much. It’s hard to explain.”
“No, no… I get it. I feel the same way in a windstorm, all those breezes and gusts of wind, it feels… exhilarating.” She watched through her peripheral vision as he looked up at the moon. “In times of war, I think we all tend to forget how spiritual bending is at its core. I’d say it’s a good thing that you’re in touch enough with the origins of your abilities to feel the moon’s pull tug at you just as much as it does on the ocean.”
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
Aang smiled back. “Now is our time to try to make up for that. I can’t bring back everyone who was hurt in this war, and you can’t bring back your mother, but together, the two-, three of us can make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
“I’d like that,” Katara exhaled, her breath calming down and tears dissipating. The two spent hours talking back and forth, exchanging the stories of their respective childhoods. Katara learned that Aang had invented several new bending moves and had been a big fan of fruit pies, while Aang learned that Katara had always been the bossier one between her and Sokka and that she had almost chipped a tooth on seal jerky when she was six. They continued talking back and forth in increasingly hushed tones until the world faded away under the cover of clouds and sleep.
Katara awoke to the loud shout of her brother.
“Wakey wakey, lovebirds!” he yelped, chucking a rock-hard stick of seal jerky at both of them.
“Ouch, Sokka !” Katara snapped at him, rubbing her head at the spot where she had been hit, before realising that she was leaning against Aang and immediately jumping away, blushing furiously.
♥ check out the two chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->
absolutely! its almost as though when he tells katara that she still is a kid during their penguin sledding, he's also reminding himself that. yes, both of them are heroes by the time that they've stopped the war and mastered their respective elements, but they're all still so young and i love that aang and katara are both able to help one another feel like the kids that they are by being playful and silly.
additionally, katara feels this need to behave motherly towards her friends & her brother because of their unconventional upbringing and because her love for her friends often manifests in concern and care, but she admits herself to toph that she wants to feel cool too, that she doesn't mean to be motherly all the time. she needs that reminder that she can let herself be a kid, both of them do, which is why i love the parallels between them in the ways they take on so much responsibility, and the way that they both let each other act their age <3
Mal's Avatar: the Last Airbender rewatch: The Boy in the Iceberg 1.01
In love with them♡♡
NO WAYYY YOU DID IT HOLY COW!!!!! THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I IMAGINED THEM WHEN WRITING MY FIC AND STOPPP THE WAY THEIR OUTFITS ARE A PERFECT MIX OF THEIR SHOW SELVES AND THE FITS FROM TANGLED IS INCREDIBLE!!!
and i love love LOVE the little details!! the flowers in her hair, the way aang is holding her necklace, the way she still looks skeptical of him in the first panel and he just has his knowing grin???? ugh i love them and i love this it is so so perfect<3
so so happy to have inspired such a talented artist to make such beautiful art!!
Day 8: free day! 🎏 kataang tangled AU (kataangled) I was inspired from the amazing ka tangled au fic by @quillthrillswriting drawing this <3 come read it here
guys it's OUT NOW!!!! i'll do a proper promo post tomorrow so i guess anyone who sees it before then can be part of a super secret club hehe
new chapter of "the teenager in the iceberg" is gonna be out tonight!!! so excited to show you guys the fortuneteller ep!!
i'm sorry, but the atla fandom is the only place where i've ever seen people unironically use a 12 year old telling his friend that killing someone out of grief is maybe a rash decision and not healthy to argue that that same 12 year old is being controlling and is an unhealthy partner
you guys know that murder is like....a bad thing....right? especially for a 14 year old? you guys know that revenge murder isn't a healthy strategy? you guys know that anyone who would encourage that is probably actually the unhealthy one in that scenario...right??
THE AWE IN HIS EYES IM CRYING ☹️☹️☹️
Commissioned art made by one of the best artists @heyhanibee
*starts talking about kataang* they are kids *starts crying* fighting a war. *sobs uncontrollably* THEY ARE THE LAST BENDERS OF THEIR HOMES *falls on the ground* THEY FELL IN LOVE.
@bxriles hi!! i'm the one from the ask:)
i for one would love to see it even if it isn't fully done:) i loved the concept when i saw the original post, and i'm sure people would be happy to give some ideas or inspo for the final act!
i've had a couple bouts of writers block now where i've just flat out asked for inspo from people and for whatever reason, bouncing ideas off of people is always super helpful for reviving my writing-brain for a particular fic.
if you don't like uploading unfinished work, i totally get that, but i'm sure lots of people would love to see it and give you some help with that final act:)
hi, did you end up publishing that acotar fic you mentioned you were planning last year? i checked your ao3 for it when the post came up on my feed a few days ago, but couldn't find it:)
if not i totally get it and no judgement, as a fic writer myself i start and don't finish WIPs allllll the time <3
Hi!! Sorry for the late response! I missed this one somehow!
I have not posted it yet sadly 🥲 It’s about 75% written at this point, but I’ve hit a wall with the last act and I am STRUGGLING to finish it. I take so much pride in finishing all of my fics, so if I reach a point where I’m struggling this hard I get scared and end up not posting lmao. But it’s nice to hear that there are people still interested!! Maybe I should consider posting it and people can help give me ideas with the ending haha
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hi!!! i'm quill 🕯an a03 writer trying to figure out an entirely new platform!!she/her
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