15
On those rare nights when our father went to bed early and the soldiers were absorbed in their games, Hui and I slipped away into a secluded hall, an old storage room never used anymore, and practiced our bending. At the morning drills, on the few tours Zhu Ri dragged him to, Hui did his best to observe their movements, the direction of their energy, and on those nights where no one would miss us, he showed me what he had learned. Fire came from the breath. The strongest of blows from the core, channeled either through the arms or legs, depending on your best strength.
He was stronger than me then, two years older and six inches taller. Had been well fed all his life while I had subsisted, until those fake family dinners, on meager stew and grain. After our time on the sea, I spent my next years always training, always fighting. And Hui? I had to assume he had spent his years in prison, starved, weakened. But after? It was impossible to know. I hoped it would be a quick fight, our damage minimal. I didn't fear him alone, or any of his co-conspirators, but together—it made me miss my Academy days, when I was never alone. I had a legion of a hundred others behind me. And our masters. As I stepped into the iron-stiff earth leading to the stronghold, I thought of their power, our power, and hoped its memory would be enough.
Pohuai Stronghold, constructed in the ruins of my village, used to stand ten stories high, surrounded by three steel barrier walls. Now, it bore only six floors and half of each of its walls. The rest had melted on the day of Sozin's Comet, its molten leftovers mixing with the soil.
I had burned it. Took the same power Fire Lord Ozai had intended to raze our nations and battered the beacon of my first wound. And my comrades Hua and Yoon-Mi and Sae-Byeok had flooded the grounds, ripped up the earth. Hua, with her bluebell eyes and white-gold hair, had been our best waterbender before the school fell. Yoon-Mi and Sae-Byeok, plum-cheeked and short, twin sisters, had the rare gift of lava bending, and thus prevented my wreckage from ruining the valley below. They were the only survivors I had found in my search for my old Academy comrades, locked away at the Boiling Rock prison. The others—they could have been alive, but I never knew the truth.
I searched the grounds as I entered and found no sign of life.
I passed the first wall, then the second.
I considered if their coming here, Hui and his men and Zuko, had been pointed, but Hui couldn't have known about my time here.
Just as I finished that thought, a whistle sung through the air and, inches from my face, a blade of ice soared by. Harpooned the ground behind me.
I looked upward, expecting the young blue-eyed man who had attacked me at the Cranefish Inn. Instead, I saw only Hui, six stories up, his thin frame poking above the half-melted wall. Even from this distance, I could see that, for once, he wasn't smiling. He stared at me the rest of my walk. As I entered the remains of the building, I felt an unusual cooling in the air, like the building had become one big ice box. Every lower room was empty. The staircase cleared. The only sound that accompanied my climb was the dripping of water down from one caved-in floor to the next.
By the sixth floor, my breath was quick and my heart anxious. I steadied myself on a wall, took a moment before the confrontation to come. I told myself that only two things mattered from here on out: that Zuko be saved and Hui, if possible, redeemed. Then, I rounded the corner.
The room dropped in temperature as I entered. There was half a roof, half a wall, and ice snaking across the floor. Before I had dissolved half its interior, seven years ago, this had been a war room. A long table, charred, had been slid to the corner. Next to the table, touching its carved-wood map, stood Hui. His back was to me, and we were alone.
I looked above, below, through a hole in the floor. We were alone.
"Where is he?" I asked, keeping my place by the entrance. Hui didn't move.
"How many months did you spend chasing him?"
"I-I don't know. Three or four."
"And during the war?"
I sidestepped to the other end of the table. Saw in his face the eyes of the restless.
"Why are we here, Hui?" I asked. I tried to meet his gaze but he stuck to the carved map.
"I've heard a lot about your life," he said, rubbing his palm over the open sea. "Your journeys with the avatar, your government gig, your academy. This," and he waved around us.
Something in his lax posture and open hands told me to approach. I carefully stepped across the ice and came to his side. Still, he wouldn't look at me.
"Grand adventures," he said, lowering to a whisper. "Ten years and you never tried to find me."
It didn't make sense. His knowledge of my past, his surety that I had never looked for him. I touched his arm and he didn't pull away.
"I'm sorry, Hui," I said, "but I did try to find you. I did. I never found any credible leads."
"Are you lying?" he asked, his voice low, his eyes dead on mine and frigid.
"N-no," I stuttered, shaken by his off demeanor. I wanted to hug him, tell him that I had missed, had felt such a destructive, ravenous guilt for years about abandoning him. A year after I left Zuko's counsel and roamed the continent, I fell into a deep depression, unable to press on, to find my purpose. It took another year to break out of that cage. I wanted to show him how deeply I had hated myself for failing him, but I didn't feel that any of that would convince him.
"I also had to rebuild my life," I said. "I had nothing. No home, no money, no food. But," and I tried to ground myself in that memory, "I found our brothers and sisters. Not necessarily in blood, but I found others like us, children and teens who shared our same heritage. At the Academy. And I learned to fight, to really use my bending. I wanted to help end the problems our father and his men started, and I did."
Hui. He smirked. "Did you?" He walked away from me, peered outside, across the forest.
"Hui, is he here?" I didn't understand this. Any of it. If this had been a ploy, if Zuko had never been in his possession, why did he lead me here, to the wreckage of my first home?
I cried. I couldn't help it. I felt an insurmountable dread. That Zuko had never been here; that Hui was purposefully drudging up my pain; that our relationship was dead. Unsalvageable.
"You're right," I said through shaky breaths, "I could have tried harder. I should have tried harder to find you," and he came back to me. I thought I saw a give in his expression. That he was beginning to forgive me. "I broke into the Boiling Rock prison, partly to find my friends, but also, Hui, to find you. I really believed you might be there."
And his lip twitched and his eyes seemed to glass over.
"You know," a voice called from behind me, "she isn't lying."
I turned. Heart jumped, words caught in my throat.
Hua, my old comrade, stood at the entrance. The two men from the inn lingered behind her. To her side, the twins Yoon-mi and Sae-byeok, rolled up their sleeves.
I struggled to keep my composure. I looked back to Hui, whose face had gone cold again.
"Hui?"
But he avoided me. And I faced my old friends and new enemies. I considered their might and my weaknesses. I watched as first the burly earthbender and the twins stepped forward. Felt Hui tense behind me. And though there was the open mouth of the wall to my right, where a six stories' fall could be survived, I knew their blows would follow, and who could say if I would regain my footing before hitting the ground. So I jumped, but not out the side. I leapt high, above even the earthbender, and over the heads of my would-be attackers. I sprinted down the stairs until, distracted by a swell of water behind me, I slipped on ice littering the stairs.
I hit the floor hard. Banged my temple against the wall. Tumbled into the fifth floor room. Without thinking first, I quickly shut and locked the doors. Melted the hinges. Heard the raging wallop of earth and water against the other side of the doors.
Dizzy from the impact of the steel against my head, I backed away and leaned against a nearby wall. I panted and as my breath exited me it condensed, spread into mist.
I closed my eyes, saw swimming lights, collected my thoughts.
When I opened my eyes, I finally saw it. A mass of ice crowning the ceiling, and in the middle of it, Zuko.
I scrambled forward. Placed myself directly below him. I had checked the room on my ascent, but the ceiling was high and I hadn't thought to look upward. His skin was losing color, his long, tangled hair stiffened into icicles. His fall, when I released him, would be a good fifteen feet.
With a calculated stream of fire, I freed his extremities first. As the ice around his chest diminished, I braced myself, and as he hit me, I tried my hardest not to fall head-first into the floor.
He was heavy on top of me, and I didn't hit my head on the floor, but still my vision blurred. I rolled him off of me, carefully. Rubbed my hands into his. Pressed my cheek to his mouth and felt his breath, ragged there. He needed heat. He needed dry clothes. But first, we had to get out of here.
Still, the others pounded at the door, at the ceiling above us. Trying but failing to breech metal.
The only way out was through the side, and so I chose a panel, speared it through with my fire and, when it was properly weakened, I kicked the panel free.
Moonlight and a preternatural silence greeted me. I gathered, with some trouble, Zuko onto my back, and when I saw the earth below me empty, leapt out. We soared, ten, twenty, fifty feet. Even with my fire, we collided into the ground quick and hard. I felt blood against my tongue. A whistle in my ear. Still, I could see Hui atop the tower. The faces of the others emerged, too, ready to fly.
I waited for their descent, but before they leapt, Hui raised his hand. Halted them.
I didn't understand. Didn't have time to think about it. I picked up Zuko and started for the woods.
