Faith Walks on Broken Glass: Minato of Kyoshi Island

I'm already awake, laying there and thinking about children (my-children-not-my-children, their-children, but they are my-children because that is who they are, that is all I've ever known them as, but they aren't-my-children because I've-never-met-them, I was the-one-who-gave-birth to them, but I'm a guy, I can't give birth-) when Vasuman goes still, and the quiet sounds of his breathing cut off. I hesitate for a moment, then roll over so that I can see his silhouette in the darkness.

"Hey," I whisper, just loud enough to carry. For a long moment, the tension builds, tingling up my spine like a shiver. Then Vasuman breaths.

"Minato."

He doesn't relax, but to be fair, I can't either.

"Do you want to get tea?" I ask softly, even as I sit up and push my blanket off to the side. Even if he doesn't, laying around doing nothing isn't going to help me tonight.

"Yes," he says, pushing his blankets off. "Please."

Vasuman follows me through the dark, down the stairs to the kitchen. The sound of bare feet on wood is utterly different from the sound of boots on ice, and it helps me concentrate on the here and now.

I prop the window shutter open as Vasuman crouches by the fire pit with the spark rocks. In the moonlight, I can see his hands shaking, but after the first two tries, he pauses, takes a deep breath and manages to still them long enough to send sparks into the piled kindling. He flinches back from the sight of the sparks. Before they can go out, I slide into place next to him and gently blow on them so they flare and catch more of the tangled dry grass.

Vasuman's hands are over his eyes when I sit up to check the water level in the kettle hanging over the fire pit, but I don't comment on it. It's not like fear of fire is a particularly rare thing. His shoulders hitch occasionally, but by time I've got the fire going, he's still again.

"You asked me once about hoshi no tama."

Star balls. When I'd asked him about them, he'd frozen. I hadn't heard of the stories that said that they're a kitsune's soul when I asked him. If I'd known, I wouldn't have asked.

"I remember," I say as I turn away from the fire and reach for the tea leaf tin and the teapot.

"When the war started between the air spirits, I was seven. And my mother tried to keep me away from the war - she tried - but it wasn't just some little confrontation between two spirits. It was a full blown civil war between Makani Storm Lord's spirits and Era of the Breeze's, and Era was winning. She had long since scattered his people. Makani was never the most popular, and with his people in hiding, fewer and fewer pledged their children to him."

I turn back to the fire and set the teapot and two cups down next to the fire pit.

"Who were the Storm Lord's people?" I ask. "I've only heard of the Air Nomads. Were they like the Water Tribes? Split in two, each one worshiping a different spirit?"

"Nomads." Vasuman snorts. "Didn't you ever wonder why they were called that? The monks weren't very nomadic. Makai's people were the ones who earned that name. They went anywhere and everywhere, brought trade to remote villages, helped people escape bad situations - it was both their salvation and their undoing. Because they were hard to find, and because those they had helped hid them, the genocide lasted for centuries. People only noticed the monks after Makani's people were gone. They figured the monks were the nomads - just settled down - and there wasn't anyone to correct that assumption."

He focuses on my hands as I use the winch to raise the kettle before it can whistle, then carefully pull a stream of hot water out and direct it to the kettle. He remains silent as I go through the familiar motions of measuring out the tea and pouring the water in, then pouring the tea into our cups once it's steeped.

Vasuman accepts his cup with murmured thanks.

"Like I said though, the actual nomads were scattered long ago - long enough that even my grandmother only knew stories of them." Vasuman frowns and shakes his head. "We're getting off track."

"You don't have to tell me anything."

"No," Vasuman says shortly, looking up from his cup. Even in the orange light of the fire, his fingers look pale around his tea cup. "You should know. You deserve to-"

"Your past is your own, no matter where you live. Your bedroll under my roof doesn't give me the right to every corner of your mind."

There's a moment where the crackle of the fire and the hum insects outside are the only sounds, then Vasuman looks away.

"I want you to know," he says. "I want - I want someone to know. I want to be able to talk to someone about it, and you know me better than anyone else." He laughs bitterly. "What's one more secret?"

I watch as he takes a deep breath. My fingers clench convulsively on my cup.

"I was saying . . . that it was a full scale civil war, and my mother had tried to keep my away from it, right? Well, she tried, but . . . I guess she made a mistake. One day, some air spirits found the place where she'd been hiding me. And maybe it was because they were angry, and just looking for any target. Or maybe it was because they're spirits. You know how spirits are - even the ones that used to be human have a hard time telling humans apart. Well, they're just as bad with kitsune - they probably thought that I was the kitsune attacking them-"

"Breathe," I interrupt him, setting my cup down of the woods floor with a click and prying his hands off of his cup before it cracks. Once I have his cup on the floor, I wrap my hands around his and look into his eyes. "Breathe with me, alright, in, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, out, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6, 7, in-"

It takes several long minutes to calm him down, but I don't begrudge him the time. He'd walked me through more than one panic attack when some memory from the storm had rushed abruptly to the surface of my mind because I saw a fish in the market or because the way he moved reminded me of the Fire Nation soldiers who had killed someone (me-not-me, but me all the same).

"I'm sorry-"

"Don't. Remember, no apologies," I tell him, repeating the words he'd told me a hundred times as I squeeze his hands. I get a weak smile. I glance at the moon outside the window. "It's getting late. We could-"

"I want to finish," Vasuman says. "I want to - to get it over with. I don't want to wait for some other night and to have to rip open these wounds all over."

". . . alright." I settle into a more comfortable position, then take his hands again. "So, the spirits-"

"Yes. Whatever their reasons, they attacked me, and they took my . . . they took my hoshi no tama. I . . . what do you actually know about hoshi no tama?"

"I've heard that they are a kitsune's soul, and that with one, you can get a favor," I reply cautiously. Vasuman isn't looking at he. His eyes are flicker around the room, constantly moving - landing on everything except for me.

"What wouldn't you do to get your soul back?" Vasuman mutters, before he nods and closes his eyes. For all of his insistence, his hands are shaking, and he has to breathe slowly before he starts talking again. "That's all true enough. And when it's been taken for long enough, it hurts. And I don't know why they didn't kill me-"

His voice breaks, and he drags in a deep breath, practically crushing my fingers.

"By the time they let me go, by the time they gave me back my hoshi no tama, the Air Nomads were all dead. The spirits' war was over - mostly because they didn't have a cohesive enough people to fight over - and I was . . . more than a little insane."

For a long moment, there's only the sound of the fire crackling in front of us and the hum of insects outside. It feels like there should be silence, echoing silence.

Then I sigh and carefully work one of my hands out of his so that I can grab his abandoned tea cup and take a drink.

"How'd you get better?"

Vasuman takes another deep breath as he squeezes my other hand, then releases it. "The long way." He pushes his bangs back and rubs at his eyes - which are somehow still dry - as he yawns. "So you wouldn't happen to have a burning desire to tell me why you were up, would you? Because it is late, and I am tired."

"Well, you've heard all about my nightmare before, so it won't take nearly as long," I comment dryly as I stand and walk around the fire to grab my cup so I can place the pair next to the sink. "It was the usual."

"And what set it off?" Vasuman asks, handing me the teapot, to put in the ice box.

". . . Yumiko. She was running ahead of me while I was running errands, and I almost called her - I almost called her someone else's name."

(Ulva. I almost called her Ulva. Ulva, who saw me die in front of her, Ulva, who probably died right next to my corpse-)

And now it's my turn to take deep breaths, my fingers clenched around the handle of the ice box as I fight the memories and Vasuman rubs my back, counting out my breaths for me. I stare blankly at my white knuckles, made even paler by the silver moonlight.

Here we are, a couple of broken little children, trying to save the world in our spare time. I make myself let go of the handle, and let Vasuman turn me around to hug him.

"Why can't I stop?" I ask him, my voice muffled by his shirt. "Face Stealer take it all, they are not my memories-"

"Come on. Let's go back to bed."

Author's note: So, I've decided to start writing shorter side stories about the characters with scenes I didn't manage to fit into their main story, or that I didn't think of, or simply that I want to write. This is the first one, but there will be more.