Changes

It's from Longshot's P.O.V on Smellerbee's transformation from the episode Jet, to Lake Laogai and beyond...

The first time I saw her, she was like the rest of us. This kid, a thick mask of hair over her face, rubbing her nose on her arm and unable to look anyone in the eye.

Jet changed her most of all. He changed all of us. But after she met him, off went the hair chopped off in a rough fashion with a hunting knife they'd squandered from a fire nation camp and on went the clothes, a perfect imitation of his own... his unofficial protégé.

I barely thought about it when she started imitating his stride, or planning attacks of her own with the other freedom fighters as if she knew she could do the job just as well as he could.

Before we went to Ba Sing Se, something changed. Little by little she blossomed. Her hair began growing out slowly. Her stride started becoming a little more feminine, sometimes a little more skulky and less of the confident, 'don't mess with me' stride that Jet walked in.

I told her to be herself and I realized that finally she was listening. Finally she'd given up wearing a mask that she could never hold on to, and started to look within herself.

There was still a little of Jet in her. There was a little of Jet in all of us, I supposed.
Although I hid it often, his reckless disregard for the rules had rubbed off on me.

The tears she wept over him, were confusion at a time in her life when the pathway was beginning to look so clear. When loyalties of a past she was trying to shrug off for her own good had collided with who she needed to be.

"He's our leader..."

Would she ever listen to me again when I told her that she had to just be herself, or would she still wrestle with the mask of trying to emulate her leader in every way possible?

"Don't... do it..." I said, as she hunched over a pool of water in the moonlight with a knife at her hair.

She turned with suprise to me and twiddled the knife around between her forefinger and her thumb, playing innocent.

"It's only hair. It's no big deal. It's getting annoying anyway." She said, her bottom lip stuck out as she still crouched and kept her eyes trained on her reflection.

I crouched beside her. Looking at her reflection inside of the pool. Her long neck, her worn eyes, a warrior's facepaint...

I reached out and touched her hair, almost to her chin, running a hand over the thick strands, matting it where it got too wild.

She turned her head as I did so, ever so slightly, to catch my eye.

"You're going to need to get me something to tie it back" she said knowingly, looking back to her reflection.

Spending our most influencial years with each other, our small group of freedom fighters had left it's mark on all of us... but now, it was her chance to choose who she wanted to be. To change again.

Perhaps finally leaving behind that cocoon of herself and experiencing something new...

And with any hope, I would be with her the whole way encouraging her and giving her the chance to find herself, the way knowing her after all these years, helped me find myself.

She never doubted me. I would never doubt her... becoming something new.