I lied, there's another chapter after this! Stinky me. ;)

Chapter 19: White Noise

The worst part about being held prisoner wasn't the loneliness or the stench or the awful rations. The worst part was knowing that all of my friends and fellow soldiers were going into a battle completely blind-sided as to what was coming and I wasn't going to be able to help them. To help my commanding officer, as I'd been taught for the past year almost.

I laid my head back against the wall next to my bed. I didn't like sitting on it anymore. The mattress smelled like stinky me. I still couldn't take a shower and besides a light sponge bath every so often, I smelled like burned skin and putrid human.

I was tired of meditating. There was only so much meditating someone could do before they went crazy. And I was going crazy. I knew that we were almost there. I was going to miss everything. We were about to help defend Republic City from the Equalists. I was going to miss my chance to stand by Iroh's side and I was going to miss taking revenge on the bastards who killed my father and grandfather.

I'd been getting updates with every meal. Someone in the kitchen was on my side, thank goodness. Zargo got me a note about the engines being fixed, finally. We were full-steam-ahead toward Republic City. Kojo got me a note saying that he was going to get me some tea, which I'd still yet to see, but it was nice to see the boy's sprawling handwriting on a little card under my bowl of gruel. Li asked a question about if I'd seen him changing since we slept in the same room together. I'd just burned that one and got a strange look from the man on duty.

I hit my head on the metal wall gently a few times to try and clear my raging thoughts. I hadn't heard anything in my last meal which worried me. There was also only one young man on duty and he seemed a little helpless. Helpless enough that it wouldn't be that difficult for me to escape. I was extremely restless, wondering what was happening. It was as if the entire ship was holding its breath, waiting for something to—

I was thrown against the bars, my nose shattering against the metal of my cage. I couldn't hear anything except a high-pitched whine. My vision came in and out in waves and my body was soaked.

Water. The ship's taking on water! Multiple mines rocked against the hull. I yelled, trying to form words, but blood drained into my mouth. One of my teeth was chipped and I'd bitten my lip, making more blood fall onto my chest, my legs. It dissipated into the waist-high water I found myself standing in when I could see again.

"P-Private!" I shrieked to the guard who'd been on duty with me. I shrieked his rank over and over again, pulling on the bars, panicking as the water came in higher and higher, suddenly up to my chest. My burns burned even worse with the salt water attacking them.

I was thrown again as the ship rocked the other way, being attacked from all sides. My mind pictured dozens of awful scenarios—me dying in the prison cell, never able to help; Iroh dying, needing my help; Genji drowning; Kojo being blown up; Li being electrocuted with those Equalist metal rods...

The soldier floated past me, unconscious in the water. I turned him face up, checked to see if he was breathing, then searched his pockets. Please be here, please...there! I snatched the keys from him and unlocked my door. Then I threw the man over my shoulders and trudged my way upstairs.

I hit the water blocks so that the ship had time before it sank. It locked off the first level so that we didn't take more water onto other levels. No one else was down there—only prisoners and food. Second level was animals, third was engines, so on and so forth. I carried the unnamed Private up the stairs and was met with sunlight for the first time in a very long time.

As a Firebender, I instantly was filled with energy. I laid the unconscious officer off to the side and looked around the mass chaos that was surrounding me. The sound of airships filled the air. Small biplanes filled the sky. Bombs were being dropped on us. Mines were exploding below the water. On the water, half of Iroh's ships were on fire and sinking. Men and women started jumping overboard to save themselves.

I looked everywhere, frantically searching for the man I was hard-wired to protect. I was pushed by men who were fighting, running for their lives, just trying to get out of the way, but I didn't budge. It didn't take long to find him. Iroh was up in the crow's next, shooting down planes like I'd never seen him Firebend before. The last I saw of him was a giant missile flying into his face as he bent at it.

I watched in horror as the mast broke in half and fell towards the water. I screamed and tried to claw my way overboard. He could be dying! He could be drowning, he might still be alive! Arms grabbed me and pulled me away. I fought against them, thinking that they were just going to lock me up again. I couldn't let it happen so I fought. I fought so hard but they made me look at them, into a pair of hazel eyes and green.

Li.

Genji.

I still couldn't hear them. All I could hear was the high-pitched ringing in my ears from the explosion. They pulled me away, past dead bodies and dying men. I wanted to help but I was shaking. I couldn't do anything but babble incoherently and lightly struggle against my friends. Everything went white not long later.

HHH

It wasn't white anymore. It was dark. I sat up, slowly, my body aching with every muscle being used, with every fiber of my skin that pulled and stretched. I was soaked to the bone and shaking from the cold. A blanket was covering my legs. There was a fire a few feet to my left but I could barely feel it.

Sitting next to the fire were Li and Genji. They were just staring into the fire, looking like they'd just seen a ghost. They barely glanced at me as I sat up. I just clutched the blanket closer to my chest and tried to ask what had happened. Nothing came from my throat—it hurt to even try to say anything.

"Roade's dead." Li said this, his voice monotone. "So's Hamin. I saw their bodies."

Genji cleared his throat and clasped his hands between his knees, his knuckles white against the rest of his skin. "Our ship went down. It's gone. They're all gone."

I tried to ask about everyone else. Hamin was gone and so was Roade, but that didn't mean that everyone else was. Iroh...he can't be gone. He can't be! Still, nothing would come out of my throat. I put a hand there and felt that it was hot and swollen.

A small hand was placed on my shoulder. I hurt so bad that I couldn't even flinch—I just turned around slowly to see a familiar little freckled face with bright blue eyes peering down at me. "You swallowed a lot of salt water. Your throat is raw and needs to heal. Try not to talk." He looked utterly dejected and destroyed but he was alive.

Kojo! I exclaimed in my head instead of out loud and wrapped my arms around the boy's waist, nuzzling my head into his chest. Thank the Spirits you're okay...

My inner fire could sense that he was all red in the face. "I-I'm okay, Huo. I'm just glad you are, too. I can't do as good a job as m-my dad would have, but..."

One look up at his trembling lips and watering eyes and I knew what had happened. I pulled him down onto my lap and rocked him even though it felt like fire was burning up and down my body. I pushed his hair back and laid a kiss to his clammy forehead. He just clung to me and stuffed his face in my shoulder, shaking and crying like a little boy needed to do.

Genji was watching me with his pale green eyes. He looked so downtrodden. I just game him a small, reassuring smile. "You've always taken care of us, Huo. We just never noticed." I nodded, laying my head against Kojo's and humming a little even though it hurt.

Everyone was quiet for a while. I looked around to see that were were in some kind of cave, but it was obviously man-made because the sides were perfectly curved. We were inside a rounded pipe or something like that. Water was trickling down the center of the pipe but we were up towards the rounded wall. Genji had made a little plateau out of the metal for us to relax somewhat comfortably on.

I wondered about Tagon, then. My best friend since childhood was probably at the bottom of the ocean, unable to escape the hold. I wondered about Zargo. I didn't even know if he had a family outside of the ship who would mourn him. I wondered about the snobby Quartermaster and the old man with the faded jacket. I wondered about the helmsman who probably went down with his ship. I wonder I wonder I wonder...

Li suddenly stood up. I looked over at him expectantly, gently laying a sleeping Kojo onto my pallet. "I need to get out of here," he said in a crazed voice. "I-I can't do this. I can't!" He started moving my way in order to leave the pipe.

I saw his bow on the ground a few feet from me. I stood up and raced over to him, grabbing his shoulder and turning him around. "Li." My voice sounded like a Metalbender was peeling back the hull of a ship full of gravel. It hurt like I was swallowing sand and fire whiskey and salt water, all at the same time. Instead of thinking about the pain, I shoved the bow into his hands and grabbed his face, making him look at me. "We didn't go through all of this training to give up. We're gonna fight this war. We're gonna find survivors and rally the citizens of Republic City to help us. We can't let them win."

"No, I can't—"

"Well I can't forgive you if you walk out on me. These men killed my parents, destroyed our ship, killed our friends. I can't let them do that to anyone else."

Tears welled up in Li's eyes but he didn't let them fall. He just scrubbed his face with his dirty sleeve and smeared dirt all over his freckled face. His light, golden brown hair was sticking up in all directions. "Damn it, Huo...why do you have to make sense?"

Genji nodded and stood up. "You always did seem a lot wiser than your years. I guess you want to get moving, huh?"

I just sighed and laid a heavy hand on Li's shoulder with a nod. That's when I felt Genji behind me. He placed his jacket over my bandaged shoulders and started to pull my hair back for me. I couldn't reach around to do it myself. Li started packing up camp. The last thing that was moved was Kojo—Genji just picked him up and carried him like a baby.

"Where are we going?" Li asked a while later as we trudged through the sludge of the underground sewers that we were apparently in. We'd been walking for a good two hours.

Genji stomped his foot and I could feel little tremors flow through the metal underneath us. "Inward. There's a little village up ahead. Underground."

"A village?" I asked incredulously. "Down here? In the sewer?" I'd lived in pretty bad accommodations, but a sewer took the Fire Flakes. It still hurt to talk but I'd been drinking lots of fluids to flush the salt out.

The Earthbender just nodded. We trudged along, me trying to ignore my pain, Kojo asleep, Li having a psychotic breakdown, and had a lot on our minds. It wasn't until we saw the tent-town ahead that we stopped living in our minds for at least a second and looked at our surroundings and each other again.

It was a town of tent people. Living together harmoniously, it seemed. Every person we passed gave us a small nod of understanding. One offered me a blanket but I couldn't take it—they needed it more than I did from what I could see. Everyone was a little thinner than they needed to be but it was clean. It was dry. It seemed safe.

Gommu was an old man with grey hair and a scraggly beard. His clothes were mere scraps—not that any of my little band could say any differently after being blown up, drowned, and washed up on shore. He took us in, seeming to understand that we were survivors from the attack. He seemed to be a leader of some sort. Someone put a blanket over each of our shoulders and I couldn't help but tear up at their kindness. After a week in a prison where the most love I'd seen was a piece of chocolate cake, a blanket was like a warm hug from my dead mother.

We sat around the fire as Gommu handed us some of his gruel. Sharing, even though he didn't have much. "Thank you," I said with sincerity. I grasped his forearm and he grasped mine and I looked him directly in the eye to show him how much it meant. "We've lost so much, so many friends, that it's nice to have someone on our side."

Li and I dug in, starved. Kojo was still asleep. Genji sniffed at the gruel with his haughty nose and it took a glare from me to get him to take a bite. It was quiet around the campfire until I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't mourn any longer—I had to do what Iroh would have done.

"There's still hope," I said to my two alert teammates. They looked at me with desolation in their faces. "There is! Commander Bumi and his reinforcements are at Red Sand Island as we speak. We were supposed to meet up for land training but we were called away. Iroh told Bumi to stay there. Commander Sakari is out there, too!"

Genji scoffed and itched at his face, looking into the fire. "I'll be damned. You've been in a prison cell for a week and you still know more than us."

"I'm right, I swear! We just need to call Bumi in and warn him about the biplanes. We came equipped for the Equalist mechatanks, not the flying devils that drowned most of our crew." I looked over to Gommu who looked surprised. "Sir, do you have a way for us to contact someone? A radio, maybe?"

The man scratched at his messy hair and looked confused. "Well, I do, but I've already made that call once today. To a Commander Bumi."

I jumped to my feet and stood directly over the man. "When?! Where?!"

"Well, just here a few hours ago, I'd say! It was a, ah, Ear-row, or somethin'. A General, I do declare!"

I fell to my knees in thanks as I sent words to the spirits for all that they had done. I pressed my forehead into the ground and let tears fall from my face, so thankful that Iroh was fine. But then a thought hit me— "Well, where is he, then?" I'd picked my face up off the ground to glare at the man who'd given us so much for nothing in return. "General Iroh, where is he?!"

Gommu looked frustrated only for a minute until he realized that I was crazy with grief. "Well, we sent a wire to Commander Bumi for him to stay at Red Sand Island until the biplanes were taken care of. The Avatar went to Air Temple Island with her boyfriend to finish the leader of the Equalists. Iroh, some Earthbending kid, and a hoity-toity, too-good-for-my-street-gruel girl with a glowing hand went to the mountains to destroy the airbase. I think, anyway. It was a lot to take in, missy."

I was running through plans in my head the second he was done. I wanted with all my heart to join the Avatar and her boyfriend? Since when does the Avatar have a boyfriend? kill the leader of the Equalists, but I knew what my job was. It was my job to be by Iroh's side at all times, in good or bad, whether I could face a life in prison or not.

"Li," I said to my friend, grasping his shoulder and putting a finger to his forehead, "are you well enough up here to go on a mission?"

He slapped my hand away, but I could see in his hazel eyes that he wasn't exactly "okay." "Yeah, whatever, I'm fine, stop being a mom."

"It's okay not to be."

"I said I'm fine!"

I gritted my teeth but trusted him just a little. "Fine. Because I need you to do a survivor check of the surrounding area. Find everyone you can and get them in some semblance of order. If there's a Commander or Major you find, get them to start giving out orders. I need you to do this for me, alright? We're gonna need man power."

"What if I don't find anyone?" The haunted look in his eyes magnified, then. He was still in shock but he was coming to terms with what had happened. It'd happened to me, after the destruction of Jang Hui.

I gave him a hard slap on the cheek, not enough to make his head fly back but enough to leave a little red mark against his freckles. "You can't break down now. There have been deaths, Li, but there are still survivors who may need your help. Do you understand?"

He nodded. "Y-yes, ma'am."

Genji stared at me with a hardness in his green eyes when I turned to him. "Genji—"

"You aren't going alone."

I set my jaw and glared with an equal intensity back. "I am because I need you to get to Air Temple Island and help the Avatar. Her Earthbender is with the General, remember? She may need your help in fighting the Equalist's leader."

Gommu poked his head in at that moment. "His name's Amon!"

"I'm not giving the man who murdered my father a name, Gommu." The dirty, grungy man didn't say anything else for the remainder of my stay there. "Genji, I need you to go and help because I can't be there. I'm not actually going to be able to take revenge on my father's killer, but you can for me. Please."

The Earthbender didn't say anything else. Kojo chose that moment to wake up and rub one blue eye with a pale fist. "What about me, Huo?" His voice pleaded, Please don't leave me.

I bent down and ran a hand through his auburn hair. "Kojo, sweetheart, you need to stay here. Where I know you're safe."

"But I'm old enough to fight! I know how to, my dad taught me!" Tears welled in his eyes, whether from the mention of his dad or my declaring him too young to fight, I wasn't sure. Mostly likely a mixture of both.

My eyes couldn't meet his when they started crying. Who knew that crying children turned out to be my one weakness? "I can't, Kojo. I can't lose you, too."

We left our friendships like that. I didn't know if I would ever see any of them again or if I had sent them all to their dooms—Li, dying in a fight from some leftover biplanes or mechatanks (or to his own mental instability). Genji being killed by Amon or his lackies. Kojo not actually being safe and the underground sewer tent-town being raided by Equalists. Zargo may be dead. Tagon may be dead.

The one thought that kept me going was that Iroh could still be alive, somewhere in the mountains, where I would hopefully find him before I died of hypothermia.