Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. - Helen Keller

Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Chapter 10 - Abandoned

When Zuko entered the infirmary, he expected to see the girl still lying helpless on the bed, but this was not the case. She was standing, facing the cot, one of the soldier's old tunics in her hand. There were wide strips of cloth wrapped around her chest and a pair of loose brown pants hung from her hips. She turned at the sound of the metal door and stared at him wide-eyed. She stood frozen for a moment before jumping back as if she had seen a monster. Zuko scowled. He was used to this type of reaction, but usually only young children looked upon his face with such fear. Immediately the girl's expression changed into one of considerable pain, her hand reaching for her neck.

Shin chose this moment to step out from behind Zuko. "Look who I ran into—what are you doing? Sit down, sit down," Shin chastised, seeing Kaiya half bent over, her face twisted into a grimace. He dropped the tray he was carrying on a nearby shelf and led her back to the cot. "As I was saying," he continued once she was settled, "this is Prince Zuko. He is the one who rescued you. You were quite a mess when he..."

Kaiya heard nothing Shin said after he identified her rescuer. She looked at Zuko in surprise. The man who had startled her so was actually a boy, though an exceptionally fierce and aggressive looking boy. His head was shaven except for a small section at his crown, which was tied into a long ponytail and large scar dominated his visage, but it was his eyes that stood out most to Kaiya. For the first time in her life molten yellow eyes locked onto her own and that feature scared her more than anything else she had seen. Kaiya stared at Zuko and he stared right back at her. Finally, Kaiya looked away, focusing instead on a small rivet in the wall, having lost the silent battle for dominance.

Zuko's frown deepened. "What's your name?" His voice was harsh and commanding, almost unrecognizable from the gentle tenor in her memory.

"Kaiya," she said, an edge of defiance laced her quiet answer.

"Prince Zuko, I must ask that the questioning wait until she has eaten," said Shin, unaware that he had long since lost the attention of his audience.

Zuko nodded and the medic brought forth a steaming bowl of rice.

"Here, you need to eat to regain your strength." Shin said, as he lifted the chopsticks, laden with a clump of the white kernels to Kaiya's mouth. "What?"

Even Zuko, who had moved to stand near Shin's desk, understood the girl's answering glare.

"Very well," Shin said slowly. He placed the chopsticks back into the bowl and held it out to her.

Kaiya reached for it with her right hand, but drew back, scowling against a sudden pain. She tried again with her left hand and took the bowl from Shin. Shifting slightly, apparently to test how much she could move without an accompanying complaint from her neck or shoulder, she scooted back on the cot and crossed her feet in front of her. She sat the bowl in her lap and using her left hand, began to fumble with the chopsticks. She huffed a few times before she was able to maneuver the food to her mouth, very aware of the eyes upon her. The smothering silence was only broken by her own clumsy attempts to feed herself.

Zuko watched the girl closely as if she were an enigma, some puzzle to which he did not know the solution. The burns on her forearms were striking, flashing in and out of view as her hand moved from the bowl to her mouth. The burn across her shoulder looked, if anything, worse than it had before. A crusted scab stretched taut from her jaw line to halfway down her bicep. The only part of the girl that looked any better was the bruise on her jaw, which had faded to a mottled shadow.

When Kaiya finished, she sat the chopsticks in the now empty bowl and remained motionless for several moments, waiting. Shin took this as his cue to leave. "I'll just return these to the kitchen," he said, relieved for the escape from the now oppressive atmosphere.

The following silence grating on Kaiya's nerves and not willing to be the first to speak, she looked down at her hands. Catching sight of the edge of the vivid burns on her arms, she lifted her hand from her lap. The burns were darkest, almost a maroon, where the bandages covered her wrists. From there they flared up her arms in vicious shades of red. She knew these burns were nothing compared to the one that covered her shoulder, but could not bend her neck enough to see the extent of the damage. Without thinking, she reached over with her left hand and carefully traced the outline of the scar. Starting at her jaw, she trailed her fingers across the ragged edge down to her collarbone, down further to the edge of her chest wrap, and across to her arm. The burn continued in a jagged descent down her bicep, then curved around to the back of her arm. The scar then grazed across her shoulder blade before sloping back up to her neck. Somewhere in her self-examination, she had closed her eyes. A single tear slipped down her cheek as an intense feeling of sorrow and isolation came over her, having less to do with her injury than the awful emptiness that seared deep within her chest.

Zuko was appalled that she would inspect her wounds with him still in the room, but as she continued, it became clear that she was so absorbed in her self-examination that she had shut out the room around her. He watched, completely captivated, as the girl's fingers moved across her shoulder and he had to resist the urge to lift a hand to his own scar. When she dropped her hand back into her lap, he realized he had been holding his breath and released it slowly. Then something inside of him constricted when a tear rolled down her face and the anger that drove him to help her rekindled as his fists clenched involuntarily. "Who did this to you?"

The girl, Kaiya, opened her eyes, looked right at him for a moment, and then, seeming to remember where she was, cast her eyes to the floor. "I don't know who they were," she said, sorting through the images of the fight. "I only saw two—no, three of them; an archer, a man with a large black beard, and one man covered in armor. There was at least one more." After a pause, she inclined her head slightly toward her right shoulder and added, "...a firebender."

"How long were you tied there?"

The tree, the ropes, the fight. "It was five days past the new moon, just after dark, that I was burned. I passed out after that."

"You were on that tree for eighteen hours?" he said, the question almost a statement.

Kaiya looked up at him, her expression haunted and distant. I was there for eighteen hours and no one found me. They should have been all over those trees. No one...

"Why did they attack you?"

Her eyes shone with tears at that question.

Because I am— no, I was part of a rebel group who terrorized Fire Nation soldiers and they wanted our leader. "I stole from them."

Zuko eyed her suspiciously but decided to let her answer stand. "Why were you alone?"

I—I wasn't.

Her breath abruptly quickened and fresh tears fell uninhibited. Her misery was clearly revealed in the lines upon her brow and the quiver of her chin. She gracelessly turned on the cot and lay down with her back facing the prince. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she buried her face into her undamaged shoulder as if to hide her sudden grief.

Zuko should have been angry and insulted. She had turned her back on him, refusing to answer his question. She was on his ship, receiving care from his doctor, eating from his kitchen, heck, those were probably his clothes she was wearing, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to remain objective about this girl. Something about the way he had found her, or how he had twice seen her moments from death, or it could be because of the terrible scar he knew she would carry.

He watched her for another minute. Her back continued to shake with muted sobs. Getting up to leave, he met Shin at the doorway. Zuko pushed the man back as he shut the door behind him.

"Leave her alone for awhile," was all he said to the confused medic.

Longshot pulled himself atop the mammoth branch of the gnarled, old tree. This would be the perfect spot. The limb was wide enough to stand on and he had an unobstructed view of the dam. He could see Sneers and several others stacking the red barrels at its base. He pulled an arrow out of his quiver and began to wrap the end with a scrap of cloth and using his teeth, secured the knot. From his pocket, he retrieved a small container of oil. Uncorking the tiny vial, he poured the oil over the cloth until it was saturated. Looking up, he realized the group at the dam had finished and they were climbing the face of the apposing side. It was almost time.

His hands began to shake as he pulled out the flint. Bothersome questions entered his mind and he started to second-guess what he had prepared himself to do. Many people would die if he went through with this, but the valley would be free of the Fire Nation and the Freedom Fighters could then go after Kaiya. But was destroying a village by water any different, any better than destroying one by fire? The slight rumble of a growl escaped his throat.

As he struggled with his decision, he could not help but think back to the times he had spent with Kaiya. He thought of her warm smile, the one that she shared with him so easily. He remembered the way she would take his hand to show him something, but would hold on long after the guidance was necessary. She would tease and play, carry on as if they were normal kids, living normal lives. He knew it wasn't that she was trying to pretend things were okay, that things were different. He had caught her countless times staring at nothing, a look of frozen terror upon her face. They all got that look at one time or another; they each had their own horrors to face. The pain was real and unavoidable, an ever-present shadow at the edge of their thoughts. However, when spotted, Kaiya would immediately push away whatever was troubling her and take pleasure in her newfound family. She always wanted to be there for the other children. That was who she was—who she IS, Longshot corrected himself. She had found a home with him and the others and clung to it with nothing less than a death grip.

The ready call tore through his thoughts and he hastened to ignite the fabric. It took him several tries before the spark landed and the oil caught fire. Moving on impulse, he stood and drew the bow into position just as Jet's answering call echoed across the valley.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as unbidden images flashed through his mind. Each excruciating second passed as slowly as a year and he heard nothing apart from the thunderous beat of his own hammering heart.

Thump, thump.

He pictured his family, the one he had long ago; his mother washing clothes in the stream near their tiny hut, his father returning with the evening's meal slung over his shoulders, but that peaceful image was quickly replaced by one of a village, decimated, wholly consumed by fire. A plume of smoke rising from the ashes like a deathly summon to unfortunate survivors.

Thump, thump.

He pictured Kaiya, happy and laughing as the younger boys threw tiny firecrackers at each other's feet causing them to jump around in the most peculiar of dances. This image also changed. He saw Kaiya alone, chained in some horrible prison, at the mercy of the nation that had already taken from them so much. He felt anger of an intensity that he had never known.

Thump, thump.

He set his jaw; his decision made.

For Kaiya.

The flaming arrow lit a gracefully arc as it sliced through the morning sky, precise upon its deadly path until it struck true its target. The explosion that followed violently rent through the air and rang loudly in his ears. Time resumed and sound returned as the deafening roar of angry waters announced the demise of the small Fire Nation colony.

Longshot slipped down off the giant bough, landing lightly on the leaf-strewn ground. Instead of making his way back to the hideout, he turned and walked despondently into the forest, a deep frown upon his face. He had expected to feel a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction at having completed his task, but instead, he just felt cold and numb. He had protected his family despite the cost; he had forced aside his own reservations to accomplish what had been required of him. He should have felt like a hero.

So why did he feel like a monster?

Author's Note

Yay! Two updates in as many days and over 2300 words! Come on, tell me you love me.