Yon Rha is a model soldier.

He's powerful, dutiful, loyal. Everything he does, he does for his nation. He lives to serve his country and his Fire Lord, and no one who knows him would ever claim any different.

He runs a tight ship, keeps his men in line, and carries out his missions with pride. No dissent is permitted among his troops. Orders are obeyed without question. Disloyalty is dealt with accordingly. His men are some of the best in the fleet, and he is proud to be among them.

He leads skirmishes and raids, and crushes threats to his nation with cold efficiency. Uprisings fall, dissenters are punished, and rebellions crumble to dust beneath the force of nature that is the Southern Raiders. And he revels in it. Revels in the power he wields, in the fierce brutality that leaves his enemies as charred husks on the battlefield. The Southern Water Tribe will not be a threat so long as his men are there to keep the upstarts in line.

Yon Rha is a model soldier.

But sometimes...

Sometimes he doesn't like his job very much.

Waterbenders are dangerous. Yon Rha knows this. A waterbender is a much greater threat to the Fire Nation than any earthbender can ever be. Fire and water are opposites. Water can snuff out fire faster than blowing out a candle. The Fire Nation cannot allow a single waterbender to remain and challenge their might.

And yet...

Large blue eyes stare, terrified, into his own. The little girl is shaking, fighting back tears and staring up at the man who is threatening her mother. Her gaze is frightened and confused and distressed and accusing all at once, and a small part of him, a tiny corner of his soul that is still untouched by that model soldier he worked so hard to become, twinges at the sight.

She is Water Tribe. His enemy. By all rights, he should blast her to ashes simply for daring to be in his presence.

But she is a child. An innocent.

And she did not ask for this.

Her gaze digs into him even after she turns and flees. Even when she is not present, even as he burns her waterbender mother's body to charcoal, that gaze stays with him. It follows him out of the tent. Back to the ship. Across the water.

Begging.

Accusing.

Burning.

Yon Rha doesn't sleep much that night.

Years from now, they will meet again. She and her firebender friend will ambush him by the road. He will kneel in the rain, grovel at her feet, and she will look at him with more hatred and disgust than he has ever seen on another's face before. He will snivel in the mud, and she will bend the rain into ice and throw the frozen daggers at his face.

She will let the daggers fall. She will sneer and call him pathetic. And she will let him live.

And deep down, that untouched piece of him will know that he doesn't deserve it. He may snivel and grovel and plead for his life all he wants, but a murderer is a murderer - and he will not deserve any of her mercy.

One day, all this will happen.

But today he lies awake in his bunk. And that untouched corner of his soul wishes that there was another way.