The Ashes Stairs
(the triple apology of fire)
I'm sorry for being slightly late for the last chapter. Due to RL being a pain in the neck, Avocadolove won't be my beta-reader from now on. I thank her eternally for all the great advice she has given me all this time (years? I think it has been years. Oh my god). That also means that, from now on and until I find a new beta-reader (if I do find one), I will have to rely on my own translation skills, and on those of my sister Nadramon. I hope it won't come out too bad: please don't hesitate to point out mistakes if you find some.
That also reminds me that for years, my sister Nadramon has been beta-reading all of my works, the French versions as well as the translations, and hearing me blabber and complain about my ideas or lack thereof, without me even acknowledging it on my authors' notes. Soooooorry, Sis, and thanks for everything! Thanks as well to Spry for your kind review!
I hope you have a good reading!
And soon, Fire itself
Jeong Jeong has always lived near the Spirit World: he knows it. Gods, ghosts, creatures of the dark constantly talk to him, and among them, he can always recognize the sinister crackling of his malediction. Reddish and lukewarm, the treacherous thing, she hides in the core of his small camp fires. She waits for the old man's attention to wander, waits for the day she can break free and devour all living beings.
Spirits talk to him all the time: calls, pleas, sometimes threats, but above all else, they teach him. He owes them his knowledge of the malediction. The other firebenders have let their element eat into them like rust into a sword: they are long blind. They have no spirit to whisper into their ear how wrong their very nature is, how hideous they are, all of them, day after day…
Tonight (a dark night, with no moon to be seen aside from the bloody form of a comet, slowly growing larger), the spirits are restless: they rustle, murmur, rumble; they shiver all the way to his veins and along his nerves. They know. They are warning him: tonight it shall be done.
And Jeong Jeong nods, and answers quietly: I know. My time has come. Our time has come.
Soon Fire will be destroyed.
He is hiding with his peers from the Order of the White Lotus near the gates of Ba Sing Se. The city exudes hatred, annexed as it is by the Fire Nation. Licked by the flames of the damned (his own flames, he too is cursed, he too…) but soon Fire itself will turn to ashes.
And perhaps he, Jeong Jeong, will be free at last. Perhaps…
The spirits' voices fill his ears. He is but vaguely aware of the outside world. It is enough to accomplish his tasks, though. He knows the Avatar's allies have arrived to their camp. He knows his legs are moving, bringing him towards the group and their giant white mount.
He thinks the girl blessed by the spirits of water will probably be with them, she who can heal the horrible wounds Jeong Jeong is condemned to inflict. How he envies this child...
Yet perhaps, very soon, once Fire will be destroyed, perhaps there won't be a malediction any longer, and he won't need to envy anyone, not even the blessed child, for there will be no fire to put out and her power will rot, and little by little the streams will run dry and one day there will be nothing nothing at all, at last, nothing but dust and death and silence and the spirits will finally fall silent.
Perhaps.
Jeong Jeong listens to the spirits, more so than to the people who surround him: their voices guide him, in his world and in their own, when he gets lost in their realm during his dreams. The spirits know what mortals don't, and through their whispers the old man senses, long before he can see the four faces in the dark, the presence and the scent of the cursed one hidden among them.
Scent of burned flesh, of incense and storm.
Calmly, his body is heading towards the travelers. His White Lotus peers surround him, dressed in armours of shining grey like the moon's glare. Not one muscle on his face twitches. His heartbeats have never been so even. His white-hot hands are already clenching around a neck he cannot reach.
He can see his face.
The spirits roar.
He knows him.
He will not be able to say, later that night, from where comes the memory of this being he has never met. A wanted poster, he will be told, the face of a criminal placed not too far from his, on a wall, above the twisted smile of a blue monster. He will not believe it.
But it may be that no one will even think of saying the words "wanted poster" to him, anyway, for they will all kneel before the smoking corpse and scream, and his own comrades will have to overcome violent spasms of horror to tie him up and shut him away (but I am cursed, didn't you know?), and even the face of the Water Tribe girl will be bathed in shining tears, twisted by despair and rage, and above all else it will be that look, the distress of the blessed child, that Jeong Jeong will never be able to understand.
No, he will not believe it: his memory is much older than his desertion. He knows him. His guise is that of a young man with eyes of gold, the colour of the cursed star that eats at them all, and he would be perfectly hidden behind his mask of kindness and courage if the left side of his face had not been torn out to reveal the monster.
He sees fire. A young man nearly bald in spite of the rich black hair framing his face, dressed like a soldier in spite of his dark tunic, furious despite his smile. His skin is distorted and rough like scales. And he stands straight and proud, the cursed one, surrounded by flames and the scent of flames, and though he remains silent his roar is louder than all the spirits' voices:
I am Fire!
I am the sun, I am the soul of dragons!
I am not cursed and I will never be ashamed!
YOU ARE CURSED!
Proud, the young master of the cursed element. Proud in spite of the hideous burn that denies him all resemblance to the human race, proud even as his eyes widen and he throws himself backwards to try and escape the javelin of fire shredding his red tunic. Jeong Jeong's heartbeats remain even. The monster is too slow: he only has the time to wave his arms in a reflex of panic, pushing the blessed child out of the way before the fire can reach her as well.
He can hear screams. Spirits, probably, unless it is the horrified voices of his comrades as they watch him step closer, he Jeong Jeong, he the cursed man, fire still gushing out of his arms and fists to the ground where the monster twists and screams, his whole body arched, ablaze and still proud and the suffocating hatred drowns out what the spirits and mortals are trying to tell him.
The monster's roar is ringing in his ears; perhaps it will never cease. The smell of incense, storm and burned flesh has engulfed everything. He cannot hear nor feel a thing, even as Iroh runs up behind him and with one strike shatters half of his skull. He collapses, but fire still surges out of his broken arms and feeds the human torch (Iroh is screaming out in even more pain than the boy, Jeong Jeong does not understand why).
YOU ARE CURSED!
The sentence drills into his mind. He wonders what sort of spirit is shouting it, mad with laughter, scratching his throat and aping his voice.
Fire has risen around the monster, the boy whose face was destroyed by his element, by his own curse, but still he looks proud, even at the very moment of his death when he seems to stand against the black sky, flames and ashes and golden sparks like his stare, proud, a great figure glowing red in the dark, like a dragon with fiery eyes looking down on him, the curse, Fire itself, and the old man remains helpless on the ground without turning his eyes, his body broken, paralyzed with cold, misery, and with insufferable longing:
I am Fire! Says the dragon, the banished boy dressed in the armour of the cursed nation, the murdered man who in sixteen years has learnt more about his element than Jeong Jeong will ever grasp. I am the sun, I am the soul of dragons! I am not cursed and I will never be ashamed!