Title: Map The World
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender/Heroes
Rating:K+/PG13
Characters/Pairing: AtLA!Sylar
Summary: This is the picture of a boy: bloody knuckles, broken bones. [AU, Crossover
Disclaimer: Neither the Avatar-verse nor Sylar belong to me.

Note: I think these ficlets call for some explanation. People were joking about Azula/Sylar in one of memlu's lj posts; manips were made; fic was written, and I was inspired.

---

This is the picture of a boy: bloody knuckles, broken bones. He is small, and quiet, and does not cry though his eyes are dark, fierce, furious. The rock before him is whole, unmoved, smeared with blood. The rock before him is a force of nature, and he. . . he is not.

He strikes out again, screaming. The smear of blood on the rock's face grows wider, darker--and he is still just a boy, nobody, nothing.

---

He lives in a small house next to a girl who can lift boulders with her bare hands. She speaks loudly, quickly, too easily of inconsequential things. He thinks her slow and stupid and undeserving of power--but the earth bends to her will, shakes beneath her steps, flies and shatters against her palms.

His mother calls it a crush, that he watches the way her feet shift against the earth. Studies the set of her shoulders, the angle of her arms, the length of her spine. Breathes in unison with her. Curls his hands into fists when the earth bends to her will, and does not answer his call.

He is smart, and strong, and better than her--than everyone who 'bends as easily as they breathe.

---

He gains nothing from watching but sore muscles, hands that ache at night and in the rain. Watching is too simple, and far from enough.

The girl is slow, and stupid, and too charmed by his smile, his voice, to react when he hits her. She falls to the ground, and the earth doesn't rumble in protest, doesn't lash out in retaliation.

He slits the skin from her frame, studies bones, ligaments, veins, heart. Splits her open wide on the ground, and traces the inside of her skull.

---

He walks, and stones jitter and dance and shake in his wake.

It is a beginning.

Only the beginning, and so he smiles and scraps and bows to an old man who can command mountains into being, and calls him master.

---

(2)

He says, "what is the meaning of this power? Why does it exist?"

Blood trickles from the old man's mouth. His arms are bent, his legs shattered. He is weak, useless--powerless, now.

"That's right," Sylar says, "all power exists to be used."

He strokes the old master's face, and shatters his skull.

---

The woman's eyes are hard with distrust. Her partner shifts back and forth, back and forth, bored by the the long stretch of dusty road before him, the great wall at his back, Sylar, everyone and everything.

Sylar hands them the old man's papers. They are neat, legal, and he is no threat to anyone.

The woman and her partner turn, feet spread wide and solid on the earth. The great wall splits, slides open.

This is Ba Sing Se, the greatest city in the world.

---

Inside the walls of Ba Sing Se, Earthbenders are at work. Sylar pulls his hat low over his eyes, sneers as he watches men and women of great power toil at their pathetic jobs, their pathetic lives.

Most 'benders, he thinks, are too simple-minded, too stupid to make use of the incredible power granted to them. They work at ordinary jobs, fight for other people's causes--are born, live, die as nothing more than average.

He has taken power, made it his own, and he will be great.

---

Ba Sing Se--the Impenetrable City, capital of the mighty Earth Kingdom--falls quickly, easily.

The streets of the city are awash in red, gold, black. The Fire Nation's banners snap overhead, cast flickering shadows across the city from atop the great walls. Children cry behind their mother's skirts, and proud men slump in defeat, the fight burned clean of them.

Sylar watches, alive with possibilities.

When he sees her for the first time--princess of the Fire Nation, the conquerer of the Earth Kingdom's greatest city--Sylar thinks that he can feel the firm hand of Fate on his shoulder.