Stranded II
The healer in white, Yuchi, was leading Aang through a set of bare metal hallways aboard the Fire Nation Gudan. They went up a staircase, through a maze of hallways, and then to a large, three inch thick metal door with multiple sets of chains keeping it secured.
Yuchi turned to Aang, "Avatar, once we enter this room, I would like to ask that you do not speak until we are past it. This is where the more violent inmates are kept, and just the sight of you is enough to give them a reason to become demented."
He nodded, "Of course."
She sighed, "Here we go. Open the gate if you would, please."
A guard off to the side stepped up and unlocked the first padlock with a key, then took out a different key and turned to the next one. It took a full half a minute to get the door ready, and even then it took two soldiers' full strength to push it open.
When the doors were opened, an eerie aura of malice drifted in and made Aang shutter. When they entered, the silence was enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight, as if sentinels watching his back.
The first prisoner he could see within his cell was obviously an earthbender. He had no shackles on his wrists or feet, and the muscles on his arms bulged, so large that any sane man would not dare look him in the eyes.
The second, his cellmate, was most likely a firebender. His hair was slick with grease and pulled back, and both his arms and legs were shackled tightly. So much so that even the sight of them made you feel uncomfortable.
There were hundreds others, some squished four to a cell, other with one all to themselves, but no matter the state of sanity, nor the strength of the individual, all seemed to stare at Aang with their evil, loathing eyes.
He had only made it a few steps in when the taunting started, "Hey! Look! It's the last person alive to be able to wave some air in my face! Go ahead, scrawny, do something!"
The threats and screaming grew a little afterwards, some of them yelling at the top of their lungs to challenge the Avatar, others simply staring in their hateful malice.
He had walked halfway across the hall when the rowdiness was starting to escalate. People were shaking their cell bars, some taking the tin cups given to them and rattling them as loud as they could.
Aang decided to sneak a peek at the top levels of the room. Possibly the worst idea of his life.
He looked up and saw much more prisoners staring back at him. He originally thought it was uncomfortable to keep four inmates to a cell, what he didn't notice were the eight and nine celled prisoners on the top level.
As soon as Aang's eyes met one of the hundreds of inmates, they began to make the loudest and most ear splitting noises bearable to the human ear, and that was just the beginning. Some began to throw things from their room, ranging from cups, to cards, to pai sho tiles.
Yuchi turned and gave Aang a terrorizing stare, before turning around and walking as fast as she could, making Aang have to break into a short run to catch up with her.
"RUN AIR BOY, RUN BEFORE THEY-"
The door shut behind him.
Yuchi turned, "What did you do? I told you not to speak!"
"I didn't! All I did was look up at the top level!"
She scowled and turned back to the hall, "What is done is done, you can't do anything about it without making it worse. Follow me." She returned to a pace a little faster than what they had originally set off at.
Aang followed her as they went straight, through a hallway lined with dim, red electric lights. It never broke into a turn or another doorway, it simply went straight, and slightly upward.
When they had finally made it to the door, Yuchi turned to the Avatar, "When you enter, speak calmly and do not mention anything obtaining to the war. That is one of the things she cannot stand, as our younger healers have discovered the hard way."
Aang nodded, "I'll try and keep her from getting too out of hand."
She looked down and shook her head, "I don't think you'll have too much control over that aspect of her. Please be careful."
She stepped to the side and motioned for the door to be opened.
Two of the four guards nodded and took out keys. They both went to opposite ends of the door, putting in their keys simultaneously before turning them.
The door's locks clicked in acceptance.
"Make it quick, Avatar." one of the guards said spitefully before he opened the door.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
I killed him once, I could have done it again.
But you didn't, now look where you are.
I was so close! If he had let me go with him, we could have watched them burn together! I could have saved him!
He never wanted you with him, you weren't good enough.
No! That's not true! You know I was just as good as him, if not better.
We. We were just as good. And no, I don't believe that.
If only I could wrap my hands around your throat, you know I could kill you in an inst-
If you were just as good him he would have let you come. But he didn't. He didn't trust you.
Why do you trouble me with these incessant ramblings! You've said it yourself, you're me, therefore the more you annoy me, the more you annoy yourself.
She didn't answer to that, she never answers to that.
I'm going to shut you out now.
No, you're not, you need my judgement.
Your judgement is unneeded. I'm shutting you out.
If I had waited for her to answer, she would have stalled with questions I would have have to answered, so I put up the wall.
When I removed myself from her influence, I immediately went back to the cold, black, swirling mass of confusion that was my insanity.
The swirling mass of blackness consumed my mind, racking my thoughts with a round of bizarre punches to the face that would make sense when none should exist.
I would occasionally work up the energy to try and fight back, taking the blue flame that was my soul and battering the blackness with a barrage of flame. But to no avail.
The attacks would be rebounded back with full force. My flame would be swept aside, replaced by more blackness, more hopelessness, more despair.
My soul would flicker and dim, become almost nothing. The only help would be the bar of sanity I hold on to, hope. But it was shrinking every second, threatening to give way and let me drop full on into my insanity, or go back into the deceptive "solitude" that was the voice in my head, her words slick with honey.
It had been weeks -or was it months? Days maybe?- since I had seen light. True light, pure light. The kind that not only lit up my mind, but would help sweep away the darkness. Oh the darkness here, it erases most of my memories and replaces them with their black counterparts, I hardly remember any aspect of my life.
I don't know where I am, the last thing I remember is being woken up, and walking. Oh the terrible walking.
My legs would move, my bones would move, my skin would move, and that would be no problem. But with every passing footstep I would feel it. I could feel it on every inch of my skin, feel it rush in when I moved, feel it inside of me when I breathed. I hated it.
I hated that it was the only thing keeping me alive, the only thing helping me stay from teetering into the black monsters that encircle me, snapping and growling constantly.
The only thing that could help me cope was destroying it, burning it. When I could firebend, I would burn it as much as I could, use it to feed my power and expand my nation. Or at least turn it into smoke, the only form of air I could tolerate.
Wake up.
A voice, golden in sound, white in presence.
Wake up.
Strange, the blackness quivers at its sound.
Awaken!
My mind is clearing, the blackness was rushing away.
Stand!
What, where am I?
AWAKEN!
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Aang entered the cell and looked around. It was noticeably bare, with only a desk and two chairs off on one corner of the room, and a small bookshelf with a bare few empty scrolls lain about carelessly.
This is not my idea of being treated fairly. He thought.
He heard the rustling of cloth and turned to the right, seeing a bed -no, a cot- with one of the same kind of thin blankets used in Aang's room.
On the cot was a girl, with black hair and bags around her eyes. Her face carried the expression of one burdened with the blackest of pains, her hard, steady wince causing sweat to appear on her forehead.
He sighed, and grabbed a seat on one of the wooden chairs in the corner.
He sat there and began thinking of what he would say to her, how could he possibly even begin the impossible repair project he was trying to undertake?
She stirred.
Aang looked up swiftly, surprised.
I would have thought it would take much longer. he thought.
She clenched tighter into a ball, hugging onto a world she was having trouble comprehending, when she suddenly stopped, relaxed her muscles, and popped open her eyes.
The first thing she saw was him, sitting there smugly in his orange robes, eyeing the one thing he had come to destroy, when he had already destroyed her.
Her mind cleared a little more.
No, he wasn't eyeing her as if prey, it was more of a sympathetic look, one of sadness, remorse... what else is it in his eyes? The way he sits?
Guilt. she didn't know where the thought came from, but she went with it.
She said nothing, just stared at him with eyes showing neither hatred nor fear, simply curiosity.
They sat there for the longest time, each waiting for the other to speak.
Aang took it upon himself to start, after all, he was the one to visit her, not the other way around. "Glad to see you're doing well."
Her glare turned from curiosity to annoyance, then to hatred, always the same dull hatred.
She didn't respond, "I thought they would have put you in with others. And that you might try to... well... kill them."
Her eyes remained their constant push of malice, as if she were trying to take her feeling of hatred and throw it at him.
Still no response. "I bet you're wondering why I'm even here in the first place. Funny thing seeing the one person who-" he remembered what Yuchi had said about being a reminder of her failures, "who... uh... has come to, visit you in a while, huh?"
If anything, she seemed angrier. He sighed, "Well, officially I'm here to escort you to the other asylum you're headed to. Must be good to hear something like that."
His attempts at sarcasm were even worse.
He blushed in embarrassment and tried to fight the instinct to leave, wanting at least to get a word out of her.
His mind raced but he came up with nothing.
He leaned forward in his chair and sighed, avoiding her eyes and choosing instead to stare at the ground.
They sat there for only a few minutes, but to them it felt like hours of nothingness, dotted by the occasional cough from an outside guard or clank from someplace within the vessel.
Finally, Aang decided it was time to leave, "This was... nice, meeting you. It's been a while."
He went to the door and gave it a knock, to which the door was opened. He took one last glance at her as he left, but she was turned over to the other side, scrunched once again into a ball, wincing from her mental pain.
"That was quick, I didn't think you to be a quitter." Yuchi said as he came out of the cell.
Aang's mind backtracked, Did she just call me a quitter?
"What do you mean?"
"I expected you to at least have waited an hour or so. No good giving up now when she could wake up later."
"Oh, she did wake up. She just didn't say anything."
Her eyes went wide, "She... woke up?"
"Yeah," he looked at her, confused, "what? Has she been unconscious this whole time?"
"She's been asleep almost the entirety of her stay at the asylum, at which I was her supervisor."
"So, just her waking up is a breakthrough?"
She thought for a moment, then spoke slowly, "I wouldn't get your hopes up, but this seems like a step in the right direction, however small it may seem."
Aang began to smile a little, "So there's hope?"
"Slim... but it's there."
"Good."
Thanks for the support, only one chapter in and three people have already alerted ^_^ but only one person's reviewed, so I implore you sir, do review this here installment :D
Thanks for reading, alert & fav if you think it's worth it, review whenever possible.
(something more for you who like this story, I like to think of X&Y, by Coldplay, to be a good song to describe the story, just something you might want to listen to :D)
PEACE MI HOMBRE!