Team: Earth Kingdom
Round: 4
Category: Drabble
Prompt: 1) If Only…
Word count: 443
ATLA
If Only Things Were Different
If only things were different, if only things were better, if only he'd been given a different choice, maybe he would not be here, broken and bleeding on a frozen slab of ice.
But they weren't, and he was.
Jee knew that he was probably dying. He had a gaping wound in his side that was going blissfully numb with cold. His right leg was submerged in the icy waters of the North Pole. It, too, was numb. He wasn't even sure the leg was still there at all.
Grimacing, he turned his face to the side, wincing against the ice that met his cheek. When he and the rest of the crew Zuko's ship had arrived for this mysterious siege, they'd all wondered, some in awe, some in disgust, that so many people could live in a frozen wasteland like this. Granted, as captain of the exiled prince's ship, Jee had seen landscapes like this many times before, but he'd never been submerged in it.
He could see the remains of his ship, savagely torn and burning from a savage assault they never saw coming. They'd arrived at the North Pole with more than enough troops to take the Pole, and with faith in the whispers of a secret weapon up Admiral Zhao's sleeve.
Sure, there were rumors that they would be up against the Avatar, but he was little more than a kid. How much of a threat could he really be against an army? He and his crew had all been hoping that this would bring them one step closer to the end of the war.
For a while, they'd held their own admirably. For a brief while, they'd been winning.
And then a monster had been unleashed. He didn't even have time to draw his weapon before a great blue arm came crashing down on the ship and swept it aside like a child's toy. He fell quietly and quickly, just a nameless, faceless background character in a war he'd never asked for.
He wasn't cold anymore. He eyelids drooped. He caught sight of an enormous blue monster gliding back toward the decimated city walls.
He wondered what might have been if he'd never met Prince Zuko, if he'd stayed behind from this fruitless quest for the prince's honor, maybe if he'd requested to work as a palace guard like his sister, Ming. What might have been if he'd been born in the Water Tribe, fighting on the wrong side of this war? He wondered if there was a wrong or right side at all.
If only things had been different.
But they weren't.