A/N: Written for season 3 of the Pro-Bending Circuit. This story is the first instalment of a four-part murder-mystery co-written by myself and the members of my team, in response to the issued challenge (outlined below). The entire story is told according to the following chronology, and should be read in that order:
Part One: Victim's relative's POV
Part Two: Bystander's POV - written by Zutarakitten1
Part Three: Murderer's assistant's POV - written by seoul. knight
Part Four: Murderer's POV - written by Tzoulia
Challenge: Each team will write a whodunnit? Each team will choose the same victim, but write related stories from different points of view.
Prompts: whistling (easy), guilt (medium), suspense (hard)
Word count: 1810 words (excluding author's notes)
Disclaimer: ATLA/LOK are property of Bryke forevermore, all characters & settings mentioned herein belong to them.
Without A Fight
He comes around with a jolt, panting heavily, hair plastered to his sweaty skin, the sounds of his screams still echoing in his ears.
It takes him a while before he realizes his eyes are open, and the shimmering gold light is the sunshine filtering in through the cracks in the shutters, illuminating the small flecks of dust lazily dancing in the air.
The hazy light reminds him of the glow of their eyes. Bright and fierce and cold at the same time.
Just let go. Give in to it, she'd hissed, writhing in shining coils of cold blue scales.
Go! Before it's too late, roared the other.
Help me, pleaded the stranger in the dark hooded cloak with his mother's face.
The reflection of the Avatar's face looks back at him in the mirror as he'd screamed.
He touches his face gingerly. The skin is burning hot to the touch, the raised ridges of his scar a relief and a curse.
A chill runs through him and he fights a shiver. The worst of the fever seems to have passed, but he still feels unsteady and thick in the head.
His mouth is parched and dry, and his tongue feels oversized and spongy in his mouth, and every organ in his body screams for water. He reaches for the bucket beside his head, but it's overturned on its side, and the water lies in a half-dried puddle on the ground.
"Uncle?" he rasps through the raw dryness of his throat. His voice is pathetically weak and reedy to his ears.
There is no response.
"Uncle Iroh?" he tries again, his voice cracking at the effort.
The silence is deafening in response.
He wonders if his uncle has left their flat briefly, perhaps to get medicine or ingredients for another herbal tea. If he had been home, he would never have left his side.
Mustering his strength, he pushes himself up to a sitting position. The room spins around him and he claps a hand to his clammy forehead.
In moments, the spinning subsides. With a sharp inhale he gets to his feet, holding a hand against the bamboo wall for support. Staying upright is agony for his head but it gets easier as he picks up the overturned bucket and slowly limps to the kitchen.
The kitchen is also quiet and empty, but a half-filled teapot sits on the stove and a cup of cold tea rests on the countertop. The shutters are still closed, which strikes him as somewhat odd. His uncle is an early riser.
Frowning in confusion, he pumps water into the bucket and drains it all. Most of it slops over, drenching his chest and his clothes, but he doesn't care, all that matters is the cool, crisp water quenching his thirst.
In the distance, the wind is whistling through the cracks in the front door. He hears the wind chimes tinkling softly. The door opens and closes repeatedly, in time to the soft bells.
Feeling slightly clearer in the head, he drops the bucket to the ground.
"Is that you, Uncle?"
He stumbles through their dark flat, his confusion mounting. Everything is so quiet, though the bright rays of sunlight and faint hum of noises from the street outside indicate to him that it must be mid-morning at least. Uncle Iroh's bed is still neatly made, and all the windows are still covered, but the front door is unlocked and slightly ajar, flapping slightly in the persistent breeze outside.
That strikes him as suspicious, for Uncle Iroh would never leave the flat unlocked, not while his nephew lay inside alone, fever-ridden and unconscious.
Until he shifts his gaze and notices his uncle, lying flat by the door.
Shaking his head, he drags himself over to his uncle's side, and drops to his knees.
"Uncle?"
He places a hand on his uncle's shoulder and gives him a gentle nudge.
His uncle slumbers on.
"Uncle, it's me. Wake up, it's late."
No response.
He shakes him harder.
"Uncle Iroh, wake up."
He pushes at his uncle's shoulder until Iroh rolls over on his back with the force of them.
Something isn't right. His uncle is sometimes a heavy sleeper but this – this is unnatural.
He grabs at Uncle Iroh's hand and pinches it hard. His uncle's hand is heavy, and ice cold to the touch.
Too cold, he realizes, his skin crawling with newborn anxiety. A firebender should never be this cold.
He presses two fingers against his uncle's wrist, feeling for a pulse.
His own heartbeat skyrockets.
After a minute, when he can't feel one, he fights to keep himself calm.
You've always been rubbish at taking pulses, he reassures himself, you're probably just doing it wrong.
Instead, he presses his fingers to the side of Uncle Iroh's neck, which feels a bit swollen and appears strangely dark, almost bruised, but it's probably just a trick of the light.
But Iroh's throat is also cold, and when it's been minutes and he still hasn't felt a heartbeat, he feels his stomach tighten with a new sense of dread.
"No," he whispers at last, withdrawing his hand.
"No, no, no…"
The flat is dark in the morning light. His uncle lies on the ground, cold and still as a corpse.
A new realization hits him, one that he can't accept, not now, because it's impossible, he refuses to believe it, Uncle Iroh can't be –
"Wake up," he begs, shaking his uncle's body harder and harder, "please, Uncle, wake up…"
But it's all in vain and he opens his mouth and the scream welling inside of him bursts like an overflowing damn yielding to the river, and hot scalding tears are welling from his eyes as he stumbles back, as away from his uncle's body as he can go.
It doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense. A world without Uncle Iroh can never make sense.
He's shivering now, his teeth are chattering, and his stomach churns and roils, and the walls of the dark flat are closing in around him, and he's going to be sick, right now, he needs to get out –
Lunging for the door, he trips and falls over a pair of long, hooked swords lying by the door, and feeling the nausea engulfing him, he crawls fast as he can outside, making it two steps before doubling over and heaving the contents of his empty stomach onto the street.
The coughs and shudders from his retching hide the sobs racking his body like a violent storm.
How could it be possible? He was the weak one. Uncle Iroh had been his rock in a world that had abandoned him. And now...now…
Guilt washes over him like a tidal wave.
If only he'd been there! If only he could have listened to his uncle's advice and seized their chance for a new life together, and left the Avatar's bison alone! Then he wouldn't have made that decision that had shaken him so deeply, and he wouldn't have had that fever, and he would have been able to help Uncle Iroh, and maybe, maybe he wouldn't be lying on the ground a few feet away right now, dead…
Uncle Iroh. Dead.
His vomiting slows to a stop and he sits back on his feet, his breathing slowing but his heart still racing.
Dead. Lost. Gone. Forever.
"…started from the lower ring and was about to open his new shop here, such a tragedy."
His ears sharpen at the hushed voices conversing nearby. He raises his eyes to the well-dressed couple standing at the flat two doors down. They're engrossed in their conversation, identical expressions of distress on their faces.
"This is what happens when you let refugees into the city, it isn't safe, walls be damned…"
"He really did make the best tea in the city. Such a shame, he was going to turn his life around."
Suddenly he realizes that they're talking about Uncle, and they're right, it is a tragedy, but…
Before he knows it, he's gotten to his feet and is running up to them.
"How could anyone have done that to an innocent old man? Dreadful, just dreadful…"
"Done what?" he demands, a stitch forming in his side. He supposes he looks a fright, and his behavior is completely erratic for the genteel aristocrats inhabiting the upper ring, but he doesn't care, he just needs to know what these people know about his uncle. "What happened to my uncle? Tell me!"
They turn to face him, a man and a woman of middle years, and shock is written on their faces at first, but it softens to pity momentarily as they absorb his words.
"He was your uncle?" asks the woman, shaking her head slightly. "I'm so sorry…"
She reaches to touch his shoulder in a comforting gesture, but he flinches away.
"Just tell me what happened."
"We heard noises last night," recounts the man now, and he looks visibly upset. "There was a boy, he couldn't have been much older than yourself, must have been one of those refugees they keep letting into the city, but obviously not right in the head…"
"He thought the old man was secretly a firebender," the woman tells him tearfully, "he kept shouting it over and over again as he broke down the door and dragged him out and – we saw the whole thing – it was horrible –"
His blood turns to ice in his veins.
His hooked swords had been by the door.
He must have escaped, he realizes, he was certainly crafty enough for it…
The man shakes his head slowly.
"He ran a tea shop, of course he'd been seen with boiling water, but that's no excuse…"
He vividly remembers that night, weeks ago... It had only been his prowess with the dual swords that had saved his uncle from Jet's vicious onslaught that time, before he'd been arrested.
This time, he hadn't been there, and now, his uncle was dead…
All his fault.
And it's too late now. He can't save Uncle Iroh.
But he can avenge him.
"Where is he?" he forces out, and though his face is held terribly calm, his voice betrays the rage within him. "Where is the man that killed my uncle?"
The woman stills and the man looks afraid, but his voice is steady as he replies.
"He was dragged away by the Dai Li. Nobody knows where they took him."
But he does.
He calmly thanks the couple and storms back into his flat.
The blue mask sinks into the lake. His uncle's hand rests on his shoulder, telling him he did the right thing.
As he dons his blacks and dual swords, he is not so sure that his uncle was right.
For inevitably, the Blue Spirit would return to Lake Laogai.
A/N: To find out what happens next, go to the profiles of Zutarakitten1, seoul. knight , and Tzoulia, respectively.