Disclaimer: I don't own The Last Airbender. Please don't sue me or say mean things to me. It would hurt my feelings and I might even cry.
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The Potter's Field
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He has counted the money in the small sack three times, round coins slipping through his gnarled fingers and clinking against each other as they fall, a cold, empty sound. Thirty coins. Thirty copper coins, for the last breath of hope in a dying world, for the Firelord's ease of mind and a smooth path to victory. He could stay two nights in a tavern for thirty copper coins, or feed himself for seven days. He could give thirty copper coins to a guide, a guide who could take him to Omashu, a guide who would probably creep away in the night and leave him alone and defenseless in a lawless country.
For all his life he has lived in poverty and hopelessness: he is hopeless still and in two days he will be as poor as he was the day before. He thinks of the boy's sad brown eyes, and wonders whether the world was ever really a better place. It's hard to imagine it, a world where the men don't leave home as soon as they're old enough to enlist, a world where neither Earth Kingdom nor Fire Nation soldiers raid the small villages for food and curse the starving villagers when they find none. It's hard to imagine a world where the women aren't bent and twisted with despair, and where the children laugh and play instead of scrabbling in dusty, fruitless fields or begging in narrow streets.
He had a child once, he thinks. A daughter. They called her Huian: that spring there was a lull in the fighting, and the Fire Nation Army had drawn back almost to the wide beaches where they had landed so long ago. But before the end of summer they flooded back into the valleys and scaled the mountains with their black machines, and the last time he saw Huian she was calling herself Peach Blossom and painting her face with garish whites and reds. He remembers wondering where her smile, her mother's smile, had gone, as she clung to the arm of a drunken soldier and laughed.
That was in the little town at the foot of the mountain, and it's there that he goes, counting the coins again as he replaces them in the little bag. Thirty – thirty copper coins. For thirty copper coins he can buy enough mijiu to hold the world away for a long time.
Nobody notices him when he shuffles into the lamp-lit tavern, except the golden-eyed barkeep and a girl with full lips and a hard look about her. In one corner a rat-faced local is cheating a young Fire Nation soldier at cards; in another a group of men are watching an arm-wrestling match, cursing and cheering and shouting. He squeezes between a sobbing middle-aged man and a younger one who stares blankly at the wall, clutching his drink in one hideously twisted hand, and puts the bag down on the bar.
The barkeep upends it and counts the dull coins that roll onto the counter, then looks up and raises an eyebrow.
"All of it," he says. Thirty copper coins – the barkeep sweeps them off the counter into one hand and turns away. He looks down, and wipes his sweaty hands on the red and yellow robes he's forgotten to shed; the red looks like dried blood.
The barkeep sets down a bowl of the local drink and turns away to murmur to the staring young man. He stares down at his reflection and thinks he can see past it, to a slim, painted face and a round, fearful one. Thirty copper coins. For thirty copper coins he could have bought a bracelet for a pretty girl, or a wooden toy for a child. But the world is no place for children, these days. The world is no place for anyone.
He picks up the bowl and drinks.
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Finis
A/N: This is the first thing I've written since I relocated to Houston over a month ago to help my grandmother take care of my aunt. (She's in the hospital recovering from a stem cell transplant for leukemia. So far she's had mouth sores, pneumonia, liver disease, bad kidneys, and a hole in her heart. We look forward to more exciting illnesses in days to come.)
Featuring Old Man in Temple, played by Randall Duk Kim, from The Last Airbender. I gave his daughter a name in this story, but I didn't give him one. Why? Well, either I think Old Man in Temple is a really cool name, or I was just lazy, or I just felt like it. Take your pick. And thanks for reading.