(this chapter has now been updated/re-written too)
San slept for more than 12 hours, when she finally woke up it was already dark again. No one else was home, so none of the lights had been switched on which didn't bother San, she walked into the bathroom and poured a pitcher of cold water over her head.
The nightmare had been the same as it always was, it started with 4 year old San sitting in the dirt around a playground.
San had just started learning how to earthbend at this age and she sat punching the earth with her pudgy toddler fists and making it shift so they moved through easily. she didn't sense the approach of three teenage boys who seemed to be looking for an easy target. The area was deserted, no one had been there to supervise her, she had in fact, made her own way out while her mother was at work and her sitter was asleep. The boys laughed together as they teased her and pulled her hair, in a desperate attempt to make them stop she had a fit, San stomped the ground, making small pebbles of earth pelt at the three boys. They didn't like that at all, one of them said something about her bending while another boy, who was an earthbender, opened up a hole in the ground. They forced her into it and then closed it around her so that only her head and the tips of her shoulders were sticking out one of them kicked a rock at her, slicing her across her head just above her temple. Once that was done, then they just left her there.
Stuck in the ground, scared, bleeding and alone, San cried. She was crying mostly because the cut on her head hurt and she couldn't do anything about it, she couldn't even wipe away her tears she was so stuck, she had tried everything to get out of that hole, she tried wiggling, she tried using her hands and feet to bend out of it, but she wasn't good enough. What happened earlier was an accident, and she didn't know how to do it again.
She knew that there were people close enough to hear her if she screamed loud enough for help, but she didn't want to do that, she didn't want anyone to know she had been bullied and trapped in a hole and she was scarred she would be in trouble for running off while the babysitter was asleep, she thought it was somehow her fult because if she hadn't run off she would never have been there when those boys were.
San was stuck in the hole for so long that night fell. Her body went numb, her head had been dizzy for so long and she kept drifting in and out of consciousness. San suspected that she wet her pants as well, but at the time she was too out of it to notice. She had drifted into consciousness at one point in time to see the shinny metal of a policeman's uniform as he gently picked her up. Then moments later, she came through again and saw a darker colored uniform, with gold trim. San felt a pair of arms tug her out of whoever's arms she had been in, the new arms held her tightly and she remembered hearing her name in a familiar voice and knowing she was safe.
But the dreams didn't end with that memory. The memories continued.
10 year old San threw a bolder in the direction of three young adult males. A fight was breaking out so large, that the police had to show up and arrest them all. San was placed in an interrogation room it seemed that the damage she had done while kicking butts had been so bad that the chief was notified, or maybe it was because San refused to cooperate with anyone.
"What is your name?" Officer Jia demanded as he leaned across the table and looked down at her. San held her ground and glared at him, "Tell me! you- you have to tell me who you are so I can call someone to get you out of here" he switched his tactics at the last moment for a gentler kinder approach.
San remained indifferent, "Not my problem." she told him.
When the chief showed up, she took Officer Saikhan in with her to teach him how to interrogate using the good cop, bad cop routine, Chief Beifong was obviously bad cop.
"Whats your name kid?" the chief demanded, her voice deep and unyielding. She and San stared at each other for a few minutes, seeming to communicate with their eyes before San huffed, they managed to get her name, age, and an explanation of what had happened before the girl clamped up again. The chief and Saikhan's tactics didn't work and eventually, they just put her in one of the back cells to cool off. San had told them there where no parents to inform, which was partly true and not so uncommon. All the same, Lin knew she was lying, even though her heart rate and breathing had fooled Saikhan.
The chief waited until everyone went home to fetch San from her cell. Lin first yelled at San, and San yelled at her, it went on till Lin walked out closing the door behind her and leaving San alone to vent her frustration against the metal cell walls.
The next morning, San was given a ticket to the earth kingdom and enough money to live off of for a month, a police officer escorted her to the station and onto her train. she was being sent to the earth kingdom to her great grandparents estate.
Gaoling held nothing for San and she refused to use the money that was given to her or stay with any of her distant snobby family who would lecture her on cultural rules and edict, so she went to farm after farm until she found one to work at. She worked there for almost two years while ignoring any communication from Republic City half heartedly.
A week after her twelfth birthday, the farm was attacked by a group of benders, fire and earth alike. The benders tore up everything, they burnt the animals in front of San and the small family who owned the farm, being forced to stand in the mud as she watched. They took the mother of the family hostage, and told the husband, oldest son and San, if any of them tried anything, they would burn her just like they had burnt the animals to death. San didn't dare defy them as she held the youngest child to her side and covered their ears, trying to protect them from the horrible sounds of screaming cattle, burning flesh and boiling insides. The smell hurt San's nose and the heat hurt her eyes but she refused to cry, crying had never gotten her anywhere before, she stood as straight and defiantly as she could The two attacking benders noticed this and they did not like it so they tore San away from the child, and threw her to the ground. They beat her until she bled and screamed, until tears of pain fell, and until she was unable to breath properly or focus she curled up in the dirt and soot, covering her face, her eyes watering. She yelled at the family to not do anything stupid and that she would be fine. They obliged, none of them were benders anyway and the two men who destroyed everything were physically stronger as well as benders, eventually they grew bored of beating San and instead they went into the house to destroy it. The small family rushed over to San, who was already struggling into a crouch. The eldest son pulled her up and she hushed them and pointed to a bunker in the ground that she had earthbend earlier that day to store equipment in. She told them to get inside and she convinced them that she would follow before she earthbended the entrance closed and concealed all indication that it had ever existed. San knew they would be able to get out through the back that opened up in the stockroom on the other side of the farm later, but she also knew that she wouldn't follow them. She wasn't strong enough and as soon as she finished closing up the entrance, she collapsed back into the mud, going unconscious. she woke in her bed with the family cleaning up the mess that was left three days earlier.
San remembered staying with that family and helping them rebuild their farm with her earthbending. This was the first time she sent anything back to Republic City and what she sent was a letter to her mother confessing how she felt that she had failed miserably in her duty to protect that family and the cattle, and how she felt that if she hadn't been such a coward, she would have stuck up to the threat and pummeled them into the ground before they had the chance to do any harm. She felt as if it was her to blame, and as far as San was concerned, she was as bad as the two benders who destroyed everything, and maybe even worse, because she had done nothing to stop them. She later informed her mother she would stay there until the farm was in a better condition than it had ever been.
It wasn't until she was 15 when she returned to Republic City. Although, it wasn't on her own accord, her mother had forced her to return, claiming that San needed to stop trying to make Amiens for something that wasn't her fault but San had not agreed. She, however, returned because if she was honest with herself, she missed home, republic city and she had missed her mother, she missed having someone take care of her, but then she also didn't want to lose the independence she had developed.
Since she left the farm, San had been having these nightmares every night, at first her mother had rushed into her room and shaken her awake, then held San for a very long time which was comforting though San hadn't known she wanted to be held.
Nowadays, San stopped having a physical reaction to the dreams when she slept, she knew that sometimes her mother would know anyway and wake her up or just sit in San's room while she slept.
But they never went away, the memories of being buried at 4 and the memories of the animals being burnt alive, of failure, weakness and pain would never leave her.
San was brought back to reality as the front door opened, and a voice called out to her, asking why she hadn't turned the lights on.
(so I stopped halfway through editing this to do a few sketches of San and Lin, and the new cover image is one I did of Lin holding San after she was found half dead and half berried at 4)