Author's Notes: I don't own Avatar, or else Zuko wouldn't have betrayed Iroh in Ba Sing Se. Here's the next chapter in Walking a Wire. I'm finally setting up a bit of Akira's backstory, as well as revealing how he knows Ty Lee. Read on, and please review!
Chapter IV: Memory
Ty Lee threw the cloak down as she entered the room, then staggered to the bed before falling facefirst into the sheet. It took her a few minutes to remember that her hands were throbbing, and she rolled over, holding them up to examine. Most of her knuckles were bloody, and it hurt to flex her hand, but she had dealt with this before against the Earth Kingdom soldiers.
Whatever it is, tell me and maybe I can fix it! Why was he here, what had she done to deserve this? It's been years, he's changed, but he instantly recognized you. She shook her head. Yes, he had changed, but it was for the worse. He was one of the cold, professional killers that the Fire Nation trained as bodyguards, commanders, and special forces soldiers. When did it start falling apart?
It started falling apart the day you met him. The image was still burned into her mind, the group of boys running through the streets of the city, the palace towering nearby. She remembered that she noticed him because he was the one in front, and while the rest of the boys were gasping for air, he wore a slightly lopsided smile. That, and his skin was a darker shade than she had ever seen before, standing out from the paler skin of the boys. They kept going, pursued by the trainer shouting all manner of abuse at them, and disappeared around the corner of a house. She didn't really think about it much at the time--soldiers were all over the city--but a few weeks later she saw them again. This time, they were putting on a bending demonstration in one of the city's public squares. Thinking back, she was sure it was also a test of their abilities, but at the time it was the most wonderful thing in the world, as each of the boys, wearing a cute red gi that she instantly wanted, had come up and shown off their skills. Being only young trainees, they couldn't really do much, but she had never learned to bend, so anything they did was amazing.
She had clapped after each boy was finished, until only three boys were left. Then, he came out. He hadn't looked so confident then, looking mostly scared and a little sick. Then, he took a standard ready stance, and began drawing the fire up and around him into a sort of curtain. Then, suddenly, the fire was leaping out at her, and she had yelled and jumped back, and then it twisted up into the sky and now came back down, rushing across the square only to be drawn back to the boy. He had been smiling again, but now he seemed unsure of what to do.
The fire faltered, threatening to fly from his control, and then the smile, the lopsided smile that she would come to adore, came back. This time however, there was something else to it, an edge that she hadn't seen before as the boy walked through several stances, letting the fire slowly spiral around him. As he continued moving, his steps became less like the textbook Fire styles that the other kids had used, and transformed into something much more fluid, more alive. She had watched him do things with fire that she hadn't thought possible, using every empty space in the square. Dragons appeared, and wolves, and the fire swirled around him until all that could be seen was a hazy sillouette moving as if possessed behind the flames. She didn't know how long it went on, certainly a lot longer than the others, but finally the flame flickered and died, leaving the boy kneeling in the center of the square. The only other thing she remembered about that day was that his teacher, or whoever it was that was watching them, looked furious as he led them back towards the barracks.
She hadn't see him for a long time after that, maybe a few months. She had begged her father for a gi like the ones worn by the boys and he had reluctantly had one made for her, on the rule that she was to never wear it outside the house. This rule, routinely broken on her walks through the city, had been one of the first that she remembered her father handing down and justifying by saying, "You must act more lady-like, Ty Lee." She hadn't seen why he couldn't understand, she never wanted to be lady-like. She wanted to be like the girls at the traveling shows, the ones who could appear to walk on air without falling, who could do all of the fun things that she wanted to do.
"Ty Lee, you in there?" Mai's voice came through the door. Ty Lee jerked upright, "Yeah, I'm here!"
"Just making sure, you've been awful quiet recently. You know, this trip hasn't been nearly as boring as I thought it would be. First that soldier shows up and you start acting all funny, and then I--nevermind, it's just not as boring as I thought it would be. Goodnight." Her steps faded, and Ty Lee flopped back onto the bed. She likes Zuko, she always has. Ty Lee wondered when, exactly, she had started liking him, and guessed it was probably about a year after she had first seen him. She had known their schedule better, and begun the habit of watching them as they ran through the city, using alleys and shortcuts of her own design to catch up with them multiple times. The boy she had learned was Akira, after the instructor had yelled at him for falling during one of the runs. After the run, she knew, they usually gave the boys a few minutes to rest, then began running again, back to the barracks. She had thought about talking to him while they were having their break, but kept shying away at the last minute. One time, however, she had finally made herself go over when they were through running. He had been laying on the wall of a fountain, and when her shadow fell on him he groaned and opened his eyes.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Ty Lee. You're Akira, aren't you?" It really was more of a statement than a question, and she felt the other children look over at them. Akira just nodded, before getting off the wall and standing in front of her. He frowned and said, "Hey, you're wearing one of our gis! Where'd you get that?" Now of course the other boys had to crowd around and examine the gi. Akira started grinning at her, and she suddenly felt embarrassed that she was wearing the gi. She turned to go, fending off questions from the boys, who of course also wanted to know where she had gotten it. Someone suggested that she was a recruit from another city, and that got everyone arguing about whether a girl could fight, and whether any of the other cities let their recruits travel. The instructor noticed the commotion and came over yelling. He looked mean, and she almost ran from the courtyard when she felt a hand on her arm. Turning around, she saw it was Akira. While the guard was distracted with the still-arguing boys, he leaned in and whispered, "Azulon Pavilion, tonight, if you want to talk without these guys around." Then he was gone, running back with the other boys, with the instructor verbally abusing them loudly enough to earn complaints from residents and pedestrians.
That night, she had snuck out--again--and was waiting in the Azulon Pavilion when she heard a horribly familiar voice call out, "Ty Leeee." Her father came striding into the square, his face a mask of fury. His grip on her arm was like a vice, and he was prying her off the bench when Akira appeared, seemingly from nowhere. He wore the gi she had seen him in earlier, as well as a child's traveling cloak. He was also playing with a small wisp of flame, which she noticed was blue. Blue fire, wasn't Azula still working on that back then? Her father had seemed stunned for a moment--maybe he simply wasn't used to seeing a Firebender at night in a deserted pavilion.
"You must by Ty Lee's father." Akira made a respectful bow, and she noticed her father's lines of hostility softened, just a bit. "I've seen your daughter before, she has a great interest in our training group." Dang it, the frown lines hardened again.
"My daughter will not be working with the military, she is going to be a proper noblewoman of the Fire Nation, and not that you would care, but married to a fine man from a noble house." Why did her father always have to say the wrong things? Akira stopped toying with the flame, letting it fizzle out in his hand. He looked down at the ground, his mouth working silently.
"Sir, I do not doubt for an instant that your daughter will grow up to be a wonderful lady, and an honor to your family, nor can I say that I do care about...that last comment. However, you have to understand sir, that in the modern Fire Nation, there are not many facets of society that are not affected by the military in some fashion. I can teach your daughter all the basics a noblewoman would need to acquire favor with the military leaders, and thus advance herself in that area of Fire Nation society. It is entirely your choice, of course." He backed off a few feet, sitting on a bench across the pavilion. It seemed her father was silently thinking as well; after a moment's deliberation, he huffed a "very well" and set off the way he had come.
"How did you do that?" She had asked. He simply shrugged, "Not all we do is simple exercises and drills. We've been learning a lot about how to win fights just by talking, and how to convince people without resorting to force, or even argument, since that's really just empty, angry words."
"So you manipulate people." Just like Azula, she thought. Azula always lies, she thought it was Zuko who had come up with that bit of wisdom.
"Umm, what does "manipulate" mean? I mean, I've heard it used before, and I sort of know, but I never really got it." For a moment she couldn't believe him--why wouldn't he know a word like that? He had seemed so well-spoken with her father.
"Well, "manipulate" is a word that means, umm, getting people to do what you want without directly telling them to do it, but I guess most people assume it's a bad thing when you use that word. Umm, how old are you anyway?" Why did I even ask him? She mentally kicked herself, wondering what he was going to say.
"I'm twelve, but I'll be turning thirteen in a few months. Uh, how old are you?"
"I'm eleven." She wondered what he would think about that. Usually, you didn't play with kids who weren't your age. Well, there's Azula and Mai, but that's different, they're just twelve.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" She noticed he was staring at the moon as it rose over the mountains surrounding the city.
"Yeah, it is." She couldn't think of what else to say, so they sat there in silence for some time. The moon had well cleared the mountains by the time Akira spoke up again.
"You're the first person I've seen since I came here that hasn't wanted something of me yet." She stared at him for a moment, while he went on, seemingly oblivious, "I mean, the guys are alright, and Seargent Nei, he's the guy behind us on runs, he's not so bad once you--once you get used to him," he gripped his arm suddenly.
Ty Lee asked him if it hurt. He looked down at his arm, somewhat confused. "I guess it doesn't hurt really, but he, he was so mad. The day of our first demonstration, he was really angry with me after my turn, when we got back to our beds he told me to come with him, then he, well--" Akira pushed up his sleeve, revealing a mass of burns along his lower arm, "He told me that I was to never bend like that again. He said it wasn't firebending, what I did. He said it was too close to waterbending."
He looked over at her, "I don't know why people think like this! How can one way of treating fire be so wrong, and another be perfectly acceptable? I bend like that because I think that fire is alive, not just some dumb servant, but alive. That's the way my dad taught me, he said that if you look hard enough, the elements really aren't all that different. He said that other people could bend more than one element, by using its connection with their native element. He tried to teach me how to bend stone, by heating it until it melted, then using the fire that you had put into it to control it. He also thought there was a way to bend air and water by using heat. I don't know if he was right or not, but I've been trying to melt the stones around the training area and I think I might have actually done something!" Ty Lee thought he was wierd, flashing from sad to angry to excited in a moment's notice. Still, when he gave her that smile of his, she couldn't help but think that maybe his wierdness was a good thing.
They met more often after that, and when her instructors at the Academy began giving her some free time to study as she wished, they met then as well. Once, Ty Lee voiced her wish to travel with the circus performers, and at their next meeting Akira brought her several scrolls detailing advanced routines that gymnasts and dancers used to train. He had also accidently grabbed an extra scroll, detailing the body's chi lines, and explaining their purpose. She memorized all of it, partially to keep her father from seeing her reading them, and in their courtyard she practiced, claiming that she was working on exercises that would help her posture.
Eventually, her mother stopped pestering her, although her father never quite gave up, insisting she tell him what Akira was teaching her at their meetings. How was she supposed to tell them that she had spent two hours skipping rocks across the fountains, or how they had narrowly missed the guards, after knocking over a vendor's cart, by jumping on top of boxes to reach the rooftops and waiting there making faces at them until they left? That had been such a good time for her, always looking forward to the next meeting, the next wonderful thing that Akira would show her, or their so-called "dances," sparring matches that could last for hours before either admitted defeat. And then he left. All he did for you, and then he suddenly goes and...and... She angrily flopped back down onto the bed, noticing as she did so that the moon had risen a lot since she had come back. I should get some sleep, Azula said we'd be in the Fire Nation soon.