A/N – I don't own Avatar in any way, shape, form or fashion. This is intended to be a short story with only a few chapters.
Timeline: Ttaking place between the start of the war and Aang waking up (somewhere in that 100 year period). Im pretty sure none of the current cast of the show will ever show up in this fanfic, as it's a side story and not about them.
Prolog:
I married way too young. But he was handsome and I was pretty and we didn't care. The elders warned that we were star crossed when they read our fortune the morning of the wedding. The clouds overcast were a bad omen. But we still didn't care.
Under the shade of the awnings at the Temple of the Avatar, they joined our hands as husband and wife. We were happy. For three years that followed, we were happy. In our little village by the bay, and with a baby coming, we were happy. For us, our world was perfect; we had everything.
Then the War reached our home.
All able-bodied benders and fighters were called to service… my young husband had to go. Though he didn't want to leave our unborn child, and me it was his duty. There was talk of people deserting, of not wanting to fight. The enemies that crept closer each day seemed only to grow in strength as our numbers dwindled.
I had heard of this strategy before, used on the Southern Water Tribe. All able bodied benders were captured first, taking out the primary defenses. Then the non-benders would be picked off. With the village defenseless, there would be nothing to stop the pillaging and burning… and the sacrilegious things done to those left behind.
It wasn't our fault and we were too young to understand we couldn't outsmart this dragon. My husband talked about deserting, about running away and going into the mountains, away from the edge of the Fire Nation where the enemy couldn't reach us. But with the baby perilously close to being born, there was no way I could become a homeless refugee. I refused.
I should not have refused. Everything to come could have been avoided if I had only gone. But I was young, as I have said, and terrified. Mother to be, I did not want to be a widow, or the wife of a deserter. There was no sympathy for either of them in our small village in those days. Not with the enemy getting closer, and the increasing need of more manpower on the front lines.
Everyone who showed the slightest hesitation to fight was punished. People's lives depended on others willingness to risk everything. This is why, when my loving husband went, almost begging on hand and knee, to the General to ask an escorts out of town for those unable to fight, he was executed.
Executed.
Executed.
Executed.
The shock of such a thing happening, in our own village, and by men we knew… When they told me I broke. I screamed. Screamed in horror, screamed in terror, screamed for my life and my sanity. Screamed because if I screamed loud enough my husband would come back to me, and we would flee into the mountains, as he had wanted.
No one was friend. Not in those days. Not after such a demonstration was made of one who was deemed a traitor. There were no friends for a traitor's wife. With the enemy closing in, with so many lives being lost daily… I suppose someone had to take responsibility. It was I, with my swollen belly, that became the embodiment of weakness in my people. I was shunned and reviled; turned away from food stalls and the bathhouse. Taking the blame for everyone who ever deserted, becoming the reason for all their sins, I was ostracized by my people, my nation.
I don't know when I lost the baby: somewhere between the nightmare of my reality and the reality of my nightmare. I don't remember the midwife or maybe there was none. I only remember the pain in my heart and the gut wrenching fear that they would come for me next, a new example to be made, and I didn't know when I stopped being pregnant.
Only with the reality that I had lost my remaining reason to stay, I sought freedom. I needed to flee my home – OUR home!- survival being the only thing on my mind. My second mistake of a lifetime was stopping to think of what I would need to take with me. I should have run… but I was young, as I have said, and had never been on my own. Fear rooted me just long enough…
Racing around my house, I took up a bag. It was green with the Earth Kingdom insignia on the outside. Inside I placed a wooden rice bowl, the meager money I had, and my most durable change of clothing. Also a knife my husband had given me at our wedding. A family heirloom from before the Great War started – the Fire Nation insignia on the handle bespeaking a time when the Four Nations lived together in harmony.
As I stopped to stare down at this knife, hating the Fire Lord's war and hating everything, I wondered if I should destroy it. That hesitation is what cost me, for there came a knock on the door. Smart enough not to answer it, I was almost to the backdoor before the man was on me.
We fought. I fought hard to get him off of me. Blinking threw rage and anger and most of all betrayal I fought. I was overwhelmed though, and drug outside. I was brought to the streets, to the gallows where my husband's blood still stained the block.
It was the General that had murdered my man. He was asking me questions, wondering at my loyalty. He wanted to know where my baby was. He wanted to know if I wanted a real man in my bed. He wanted me to come stay with him and his wife, because I shouldn't be alone in a time like this. After all, as pretty and young as I was, surely I understood why I deserved better than that dog who's head now adorned the pikes on the front line.
And that's when it happened; I Raged. Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Air Nomads and Water Tribe – all have their berserkers. Their War Bloods, who Rage.
Dimly I was aware of someone shouting the lines had been broken. There were much rushing about and so much hollering. The sounds of the benders barking and baying like hounds to each other only infuriated me more. The General, only too aware of what a War Blood was and what kind of weapon I could be for him, directed the non-benders, lease essential fights if I should kill them, to take me to the front line… and let me loose.
Blood. Fire. Earth. Water. Wind. Pain. Fury. … Rage.
My village, my beautiful village that my beloved ghost of a husband and I had so carefully chosen to spend our lives in, burned to the ground that night. Fire Nation army battled the Earth Kingdom troops. Rock and dust flying, charred flesh sizzling and smoking. Lightning in the air. All of this around me and around me and around me mixing with my caterwauling and praying. I knew not whom I fought. Flashes of green I though were friends mixed with flashes of red I knew were enemies.
In the end, the Earth Kingdom troops won the day. Though victory had a cost… There was nothing left of the village; gone with my husband and my baby and my life. I died in that night. I lay in the mud and gore and the sorrow, panting and gnashing my teeth. Someone told me to run, to flee while I still had legs to do so, while I had breath in my lungs.
So I did. I clutched my bag to me, still around my misshapen middle, and fled. Though I died in that village, my ghost turned towards the moon and departed this world. Perhaps I though I would find my husband there, or our child. If I ever found anything, it was that no one was safe from the War and its victims may never find peace as long as they remember what they've lost. I was alone and on the run from the General who killed my man, from the Fire Nation for killing so many of their troops, a childless widow of a traitor to my own people and a dangerous War Blood on the lose.
I was seventeen; I was too young.