Long Feng
I did not enjoy my visits to the lower city, but at times such as these when my presence was demanded, it was generally because there was no other choice.
This was not one of those times. I did not have to be here, but General Hondu had chosen to be here in person to oversee the deployment of his troops from the wall into the outer city, and so I had to be here as well.
We may as well have been an invading army if the reaction of the crowd was to be taken on its own accord. These were their soldiers marching through the gate. These were their defenders who, just a week ago, had defended the city's outer wall from a Fire Nation assault. These were their defenders who had slain thousands of soldiers to protect their homes, to protect these very people. But those who were valiant defenders a week ago now were an occupying army, and so were met with all the hostility that one would expect of a city being stormed by an invading state.
The men were met with a crowd of hundreds if not in the low thousands jeering at their arrival.
The news had been delivered three days ago that our forces would be arriving, and so the people of the Flower District had had time to organize in order to protest our arrival. I had to give the people of the lower city credit where it was due. They had proven themselves more than capable of organizing quickly when the times demanded they do so. Whether it was taking to the streets in response to new rationing initiatives, harassing food convoys from the outer ring that contained on them more food for the third population of higher standing than for them themselves, or gathering now to protest the arrival of military police, they'd proven themselves organized.
This was a problem.
Were the inner ring of Ba Sing Se at risk of immediate enemy invasion, such organization would have been a pivotal asset. Such cohesion was the likes of which that created a well-organized militia, that kept in constant touch with military leadership, and could seize victory from the brink of defeat. Now, however, we were their enemy, and they were ours. At least, that's how General Hondu seemed inclined to view the situation.
This as well was a problem.
It was a problem because, as these men were marching through the Rose District gate, they addressed the resistance they met from their own citizens as no different from an enemy assault. They were on edge. They marched in perfect formation, trying as hard as they could to ignore as their own people jeered at their presence in their own city. No doubt too, there were soldiers here whose own families may unwittingly be cursing their names. Already, this city was on the verge of declaring war on itself.
"The presence of your men will not help the situation," I said to General Hondu where he stood at my side."
Were I down there in the lower city itself rather than standing atop the wall separating it and the middle city, I likely would have felt differently and been more than glad for the military to protect me. As we were now, however, over a hundred feet above the lower city with the combined ranks of Hondu's soldiers and my Dai Li protecting us, I was at liberty to make such claims.
"Would you suggest the lower city be left without law and order? That we allow it to fall into anarchy?"
"I would suggest no such thing," I said. "The people are angry with our efforts to tend to their affairs. An overt military presence will only deepen their discontent."
"We are acting in response to your own report, Cultural Minister. You yourself have stated that the lower city grows restless, more prone to violence."
"And declaring war on our own city will only make them more violent. What is needed is a more subtle approach, one where we target the organizational structure of these protests and gangs themselves. An approach that the Dai Li excel at."
"You are more than welcome to pay off or kill whoever you please here if contributing to the king's peace, but he himself has given me and my men orders to station ourselves here." Or the man whispering into his ears has at least.
"My men will do what benefits Ba Sing Se, but a hostile invasion will-"
"Do you think I want to be here?" the general asked suddenly through a hiss, turning to address me directly. He lowered his voice now, knowing his men may still very well hear him, but perhaps wanting to ensure instead that none from down below would hear their occupiers already at odds with one another. Such a thing wouldn't be good to give the impression that ours truly was an iron fist. "My men were set to hold the ground that we bled to take after their failed assault. You think I wouldn't rather be there now, taking the fight to the enemy?"
"I wouldn't presume that in the slightest."
"Then understand that my only intention here is to execute our King's aims, put down this petty rebellion, and return to my post, fighting a war against the real enemy."
"This needn't be a rebellion unless we make it one."
"Look around you, minister," the general said. "It's already brewing. They don't have food. They will revolt. It's only a matter of time. The only way to stop it is to remind the people here who owns Ba Sing Se, and that to fight is to betray it
The soldiers, General Hondu's apparent solution to the inevitable, continued to march, and so continued to meet resistance from their own people.
They tolerated the rotten fruits and vegetables being thrown with little more than a blink of an eye, and this continued for quite some time. I wondered how much it hurt them. Not physically, I presumed, their armor built to protect against swords and spears and so likely capable of withstanding a rotten apple. I wondered more how it hurt them to have been fighting the Fire Nation one day, and their own people the next. I had my doubts that many of them actually intended to fight their own people. Most probably justified it as coming in simply to keep the peace. How long they would maintain that illusion, however, remained to be seen.
It would not last very long.
Time passed of harmless projectiles being thrown, and so I considered leaving the scene, believing my presence here more of a detriment than anything else, my own plans for the lower city requiring more of a presence behind a desk drafting plans than watching olive drab uniforms marching through a slum. I was just about to leave too when there was a commotion below, and a shout.
I turned to see.
A rock had been thrown. I wasn't sure if it'd been by hand, or bent, but by the look of it, an Earth Kingdom soldier hunched over on the ground as others gathered around, it seemed to be the latter. That, or the soldier was plain over-reacting, which could have been just as possible. Either way, the soldier now was keeled over on the ground, clutching the side of his head as a comrade by his side into the crowd, "Who threw that!"
Soldiers turned, rallied, drew swords, spears, and shields, and turned to face the crowd, surrounding their comrade, and just like that, suddenly, the streets were caught in a standoff. Ours against theirs.
I turned my head, curious to watch, delaying my exit from the scene by the few seconds it would take to watch the scene play itself out. I was curious, needless to say.
Would these really be the first shots? I wondered. On day one?
General Hondu was watching too, arms crossed, perhaps wondering the exact same thing. He did nothing to intervene, to calm his soldiers down. Way he saw it, doing so was only delaying what was bound to happen in due time anyway. As such, he only watched, and knowing that nothing I could say or do would change his mind in the matter, I did just that as well.
From where I stood, I could see as civilians slowly began to step back, realizing that one among them had tread too close to the line and they now all stood at risk of facing the repercussions. None in the crowd outed themselves as the perpetrator of the assault, likely just as caught in fear as his peers. There were only so many ways this could turn out. If the man were to reveal himself, an example would have to be made of him after a scene like this had already played out. Therefore, most likely, he wouldn't, meaning all rested in what the soldiers down below would do. Would they stand down, or would they press, would they persecute, would they start a war?
Neither action would fix what'd been done. Either they would stand down and make all convinced that they could get away with attacking their King's soldiers, or they would be slaughtered by the dozens as our men shed blood in search for the only man whose blood truly deserved to be shed.
This wasn't a situation for the army, not one where their way of doing things would fix the problem. This wasn't their specialty. It was mine.
I turned to Hondu. "Let me take care of this," I said.
"What are you talking about?" his arms crossed, still watching the scene, waiting for it to unfold, ever the passive observer.
"Let my Dai Li find the man responsible."
"And stand down?" General Hondu asked, aghast. "Let the people think they can get away with such a thing?"
"For a day, maybe," I confessed. "But by morning, the lower city will know the consequences."
There was a silence. General HOndu made no immediate response, and so continued to watch. I felt myself a fool immediately for having thought that I could get through to him, and so the knot in my stomach grew, watching, waiting for a huge mistake to already be made on day 1 of our operation here.
What I wasn't expecting in that tense silence was to hear Hondu's voice, directed towards his men below rather than towards me.
"Stand down!" he called out from where the two of us stood, sending gazes from down below, those of soldiers and civilians alike, to turn our way. I was no exception. "Continue march!"
The soldiers below were out for blood, to secure in the minds of their city that they couldn't get away with such things, but Hondu's order was not one that could be disobeyed. They had to stand down, and so they did.
Slowly, swords were sheathed, spears returned to resting positions, and shields no longer raised.
The injured soldier was raised back to his feet by his comrade. He was fine. There was only a small trickle of blood from where the rock had struck him, and to think of how much more blood had almost been shed for it. Would have been shed if not for Hondu.
I turned to look at the man. I was aware of the man's reputation, and this act here hardly felt in line with it. He turned back to face me, quickly recognizing that look of surprise in my face as well as my unspoken question of 'why?'
"Find the man responsible," he said, and then I understood. "Make an example of him. Make it public."
The act could not go unpunished, but nor could our soldiers just begin plunging their spear into a crowd in the hopes of finding the right man, or, at the very least, sending a message. So he'd understood my intent. Thank the spirits.
I nodded my head. He may have been the one giving the instruction, but the measure was my own, one that rendered my operatives here the solution. We would succeed. It would be easy enough, I knew, to find the man responsible. People would talk, brag, enthuse about it in their taverns tonight, and some time in the middle of the night, the man responsible would be found, and by the time the sun rose, so would his corpse with a rope around his neck.
"It'll be done," I said.
General Hondu nodded, and so began a tenuous alliance. For now, we could agree on something. How long it would last, I had no way of knowing, but for now, it would have to do.
Fluke
I was not in my own body, detached from it, in my mind instead, locked there.
There was nowhere else to go, not from the medical tent bed I was being strapped to as men looked me over and pondered whether I was worth saving or not and, at best, how much of me there even was to save.
Their voices were only vague impressions left on my mind, as I was not there with them. Not for long at least.
I'd been with them partly as they dragged me away from the battlefield where they found me, past the fortress we'd fought so hard to claim, now in flames and shambles. I was drifting out as they lifted me to place me on a bed in a crimson medical tent and called for a doctor in words that sounded little more than mumbles to me. But by the time that medic had come, I was gone. I was…somewhere else. Somewhere new, but, at the same time, familiar to me in a way that I couldn't comfortably elaborate on. I couldn't place a name to this darkness, only that I'd been there before.
For the voice, the presence that accompanied me, however, I could indeed understand as they'd been here before.
"Why didn't you listen?"
Raava.
"You should have left."
And gone where?
"Anywhere."
There was nowhere to go.
"There is always somewhere to go."
Nowhere for me.
It was hard to know precisely when she was talking about. If her attempt to reprimand me now alluded to my failure to leave when marching towards Ba Sing Se, or my decision from just a day past, when I'd made up my mind, when I'd decided that away from this wall, this war, there was nothing for me.
It was likely both, now that I thought about it.
There was a silence, but she was still there. I'd been through this ride before, more times than even I cared to remember if those past whispers that'd gone through my mind back in Citadel had, in fact, always been her.
"I told you not to trust them."
Is that why you're here? To tell me about all the times I should have listened to you, but didn't?
"Your commanders sent you to death. Your general made the order, and all those under him submitted to his demands, knowing it would mean your blood. Your country does not care about you, about what happens to you."
But you do, because I'm just so important.
"Yes."
So you speak in riddles, give me vague hints about how I can't trust anybody and how I need to leave, but without telling me how. You're powerful enough to talk to me in my dreams, but not powerful enough to help me escape a nightmare.
"My connection with you is not what it would be with the avatar."
So all you can offer is a general read on how fucked I am. I'm pretty capable of doing that myself.
"I can help guide you on the right path."
And what path is that?
"One of balance. Your path. One that keeps your world in order, as well as the one we stand in now."
The one we stand in now? There's nothing here. Look around! For all I know, I'm dead! The infection spread and got to me, or they amputated my arm and I bled out, or simply decided I wasn't worth saving and pumped me full of poppy to at least let me pass quickly. Probably the reason I'm seeing you now too, isn't it?
"So you do not recognize where you are."
Recognize where I'm-
I was not where I was before, no longer in a dark void. Instead I was…somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn't a bloodied battlefield overlooked by Ba Sing Se's walls, somewhere that wasn't the inside of a Fire Nation hospital tent. Instead, I stood in an empty field atop a blackened earth, surrounded by mountains that must have been tens of miles away but still somehow felt close, directly beside me, though not there at all.
The sky was not my own either. No amount of soot or ash as created by nonstop artillery could have conjured such an effect. This was not my sky, not my ground, not my world.
And as opposed to before too, in the void, form was also given to myself. I could feel myself, only, something was missing, Discomfort, pain, exhaustion, anything that ordinarily would slow me down, it was gone. I had form, I had shape, but it wasn't…real. It was something beyond the layer of earthly tethering.
My leg was together, nothing broken, and as was my arm, I saw as I pulled up my sleeve. It was whole, untouched, unbroken, but there as it should have been, not as it was.
"This is," I started.
"The spirit world," she finished before me.
And there she was, a light, no longer formless, but making itself known to me through an image I could understand, a kite-like apparition constructed of blue and white. It was the light that countered the darkness of the world around it, around them, around her, around whatever Raava was. But it was there all the same, and it waited for me. It let me look, let me see, let me try, and fail, to understand.
This is a dream, I told myself, thinking my thoughts still my own.
"This isn't a dream," she said. "This is the world that parallels your own, equally torn apart by violence, by hate, suffering, by war. No different from you."
"How am I here?" I asked, still not believing any of what I was seeing now was real to begin with. A year ago roughly, I hadn't even thought the spirits real, or, if they were, long lost to mankind, but this…
"The bridge between the spirit world and the material world is shortest during the eclipse. Our worlds, ever-connected as they are, are closer now than ever, and so we suffer. Look around you."
I did. I looked towards the barren mountains in the distance, the storm-filled sky above, devoid of stars, of light, and of the dead tree that sat in the middle of this clearing, infected, plagued, a deep red.
"Just as your world suffers in times of war, an abandonment of balance, so too does our own. We suffer just as you do here."
I scoffed. "You suffer just as we do?" I echoed. "So your spirits kill each other without end because they come from different countries? Your spirits raze towns to the ground, put women and children to the sword because they were born on the wrong continent?"
"Your strife is our own."
"Bullshit."
"The Avatar exists for this purpose. They serve as the bridge between our worlds, ensuring the balance of both through maintaining balance on their own."
"Huh. Then you should really consider waking 'em up then if they're so important."
"I cannot. It takes all I have as it is to keep them alive. I cannot wake them."
I clicked my tongue, and found the expression my face slowly shift to a grin. Here was a spirit, strong enough to speak to me across planes, but in reality, capable of so little, acting only through proxies, no more than a beggar, asking others to do for what she herself is incapable of. "Tsk. Too bad then."
It really was unfortunate that I could not get an expression out of Raava, a form without one. I wonder if she even felt in the same way us humans did, capable of anger, frustration, anything along those lines. It would have been nice to know that my words were having some effect, but there was nothing in how she conveyed herself that would afford such satisfaction.
"You are the harbinger of the avatar's return. Your actions will safeguard their return, ensure their vision can be met, that stability can be restored."
"So the all-powerful light spirit and its avatar," I scoffed, "need me to ensure their vision is met. Kind of a flimsy grip you spirits seem to have on our world then, huh?"
"Our worlds are no longer one, bridged by the portals you see are now dormant. Times once were different when our worlds were one, but that time has passed."
"Then leave us be. You want peace on earth, let me out of here, and let this war end. Let Ba Sing Se burn, and let it all be over. The Fire Nation will have won, it will be over, and you can have the balance you so desire."
"It will not be balance."
"And who the hell are you to determine that? You say our worlds have become separated, but you get to dictate what balance on earth means for us? If our worlds really are divided, what do you care?"
If I had been searching for a reaction, for some hint of anger, I was finding it now.
"Because the war in your world tears mine apart with every day it is waged!"
"So you choose now to get involved!"
"Because now is the only time that true change can be made!"
"Why?!"
"Because now you are!"
And so it all traced back to the same question. Why me? Only now, it was not a question I cared to ask. What did it matter to me? I had no use for her. Not anymore. She'd promised escape before, a way out, and so hadn't delivered. I was still here, and perhaps under different circumstances, I would have hoped for escape still, but circumstances had changed. I didn't want to leave. I had no reason to. There was a war being fought, and we would win it, this world be damned.
I narrowed my eyes. "I'm already spoken for. People have been killing each other in this war for nearly a hundred years. I've seen too many people killed because of it, and I have a chance to help end it. I'm not standing in the way of that."
"What you are calling for is not balance."
I shook my head. "Not balance. Peace."
"Look around you. This world will only fall deeper into chaos if-"
"Do you think I give a shit about your world?!" People are dying in mine! Men die by the thousands on the battlefield! Women and children are slaughtered wherever war goes. Even in places where the war isn't, people die of starvation and neglect! I'm not your savior! I'm not your shield!"
I turned to look behind me, at the broken earth that surrounded us. It truly was a sad sight, but compared to what already plagued the world, my world: conquest, war, pestilence, death. Why should I have concerned myself with Raava's. This was not my fight. My fight was on my world, to fight for those I knew, for those I cared about, loved. My fight was to protect them, to kill those who put their lives in danger, and stood in my way. It wasn't this.
I turned back to Raava's form where still it was, floating in place, a kite stuck in a windless sky, but not quite yet falling to the end, just there, frozen in place. This was not my fight. This was hers.
"Send me back," I said.
"You will only find pain in this war you intend to fight. You will take on the weight of their sins for yourself, and you will suffer for it."
"If it means an end to it all for everyone else, so be it."
"It will not."
"No," I agreed, not stupid enough to think that the end of this war would be the end of all human suffering on Earth. "But it's a start."
I did not remember the call being made. I did not remember whether it was spoken that I would return, only that soon enough, I was back in my own skin, lying with my back to a soggy hospital bed. I felt near as weightless as I did in the spirit world, likely on account of the fact that my armor had been stripped from me, cut away and cast off, as I saw now, to the dirt floor beside my cot.
Over me, a face was looking at me, focused, every direction his eyes faced deliberate. I followed them. They were staring at my arm, right where it was still at my side, a bloodied mess of blood, bone, and exposed muscle. I couldn't feel it. I couldn't be sure if it was on account of the fact that it was too far gone already, or that further up the length of it, right below my shoulder, all blood was being cut off by means of tourniquet.
I was being prepped for surgery.
They were going to amputate my arm.
My eyes widened instinctually at the realization, as triggered from the shake of my body upon feeling the cold of a bonesaw's serrated blade touch the bare skin of my arm, stripped of its uniform, cut away from me, leaving me bare chested, naked but for a pair of pants that hadn't needed to be torn away.
It was by instinct alone that I tried to move, to get away, the steel of the doctor's saw no different than that of an Earth Kingdom's sword as far as my mind was concerned. For that reason, I fought as I might with a soldier of the enemy. Or at least, I tried to.
I was bound, tethered to my bed, struggling to move, not able to make it an inch, the only movement of mine that of my head, focus set on my arm, a line already drawn with ink across where I would be cut. I couldn't think about anything else. My mind was blank as far as it concerned the journey to the other side that I'd embarked on only moments ago, face to face with the spirits who I'd now since abandoned, only they'd abandoned me first.
The mark was high, just beneath the shoulder. They were going to strip it all away, and by the look of the arm, I could understand why. It was near impossible to tell it was even an arm, looking at it now. Much of the blood had been washed away, revealing, however, the full extent of the burns, where muscle spilled from breaches in my skin and where even flesh had been burnt away, white-yellow bone poked out.
I felt my head grow lighter, my vision darken, and thought that I may just be about to pass out again, my head reeling back before darting forward again, met with the same sight.
Finally, the doctor too became aware of the fact that I was awake, myself no longer the sole person aware of my consciousness.
"Shit," I heard him curse, meeting my eyes as he set his bonesaw down with a hard clatter. "Wore off already."
Wore off? I thought, figuring soon enough that he must have been referring to some form of anesthesia or other. Raava, the spirit world. Of course, I thought. Of course that's all it was. Just drugs.
I felt inclined to laugh for a moment, as though relieved in that moment that the doctor had his back turned to me to fetch more. The relief was short-lived, however. My arm was still bound, about to be cut from the rest of my body. I'd seen men with such amputations before, on their way away from the field, bound for the nearest dock in search of passage back home. Be it an arm, a leg, a hand, or a foot, all were headed to the same place–back home, away from the war, away from the death, the killing, the blood.
That must have been appealing to them, I imagined, in spite of their wounds. They would never need to spend another night trying to catch a wink to the sound of artillery fire. They would never be woken in the middle of the night by the sound of a whistle alerting them about an enemy infantry raid. They would be at home, at peace, done with it all.
But I wasn't ready to be done. I couldn't lose my arm. I couldn't let it end here. Not yet.
As such, when the doctor returned, a small cup of liquid in his hands, putting it to my lip with the words, "drink," I refused, shaking my head.
I recognized what it was by the smell and the way the heat radiated across my face. Poppy milk, meant to dull the senses, more than common to prepare one before surgery lest they feel their body being torn into. I'd seen it otherwise used too back in Citadel near the west-side, more for the intent of dulling the mind than the physical senses. I'd helped peddle such a drug back in the day too with the Hornets, and knew damn well what to expect if it was given to me, and so didn't doubt the doctor's words at all when he said to me, "It'll help with the pain."
I shook my head again, and just barely managed to croak out, "Don't…don't cut it."
By the look on the man's face, it seemed as though this was a conversation he'd had many times before, but had been hoping to avoid this time around. It was a look of disappointment.
"Have to," he said. "Wound's too deep. You'll lose more than just the arm if I don't." He returned the cup to my lips, now seeming intent on feeding it to me whether I intended to accept this ultimatum or not. "Now come on, drink and it'll pass in-"
He wouldn't have the time to finish, however. Not as my one good remaining arm bolted up to find the doctor's wrist, clasping onto it and holding it in place just inches away from my propped up head. Some of the liquid fell onto my bare chest, still boiling, the pain of it nothing compared to all else however.
"Don't," I repeated. "Don't cut off my arm."
"Not a choice, I'm afraid," the doctor said, raising a hand. I wondered what he intended to do with it, the look on his face one that seemed to want to offer comfort, but also showed the expression of a man who had a job to do. As such, his raised hand was not intended to offer comfort, but to get the job done. He placed it on my chest, and pushed me back down onto my bed, the arm immediately moving to tighten the restraints.
"No," I barely croaked out before the hand moved to my free arm to hold it down as the man moved the lip of the cup to my own, forcing it down my throat. He kept the cup there, at my lips so that trying to spit it out only mingled it with the rest of the liquid pouring down. I tried anything I could, to writhe my body, swing at the man, shake my head, managing well enough to spill a good amount of it, but far from most.
I could already feel its effects beginning to settle in, the medic's voice slowly being reduced to just a whisper as he said, "I'm sorry, but this is the only way for you. The milk will settle in soon and, from there, it'll all be over in an instant."
I knew he was right. It would. Its effects were quick, I knew well enough from the past, having seen how enough Hornets in the past would always demand payment first before delivering the goods lest their clientele be too high to remember to pay their debts. Already, no different from when I'd been stumbling half-blind in that graveyard of steel, the corners of my vision were narrowing and soon, soon, I would be gone. I would be away from here, sent home if I had a home, at bst left for dead in the wilderness, at worst, sent back to Citadel. I couldn't go back here. I couldn't leave. I was dead anywhere but here. Only here, only here could I survive. I was a soldier, I fighter, and while the odds were damned good that I'd be dead if they left my arm as it was, I knew that I was just as dead if they cut it.
But it wasn't that fear that lit the flame inside of me, however, no. There was more to it than that. There was an understanding that if I died, Gan and Gunji would go unavenged. If I died, all of the 64th would go unavenged. If I died, I wouldn't be around to protect those who still lived. I wouldn't be around to fight our enemy, and to kill them before they could kill each and every one of us. I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't going to leave this battlefield, and I wasn't going to die. I was going to fight.
The fire that burst from my good hand as the doctor tried to restrain it hadn't been intended to harm him, and, thankfully, he was just out of the way of the burst that flew from the palm of my hand into the ceiling of the tent, bursting straight through.
A shower of embers rained down above me as the doctor threw himself to the ground for cover before rising to dart out of the tent, calling for help. My senses were mine again, for the moment at least.
I turned to the small table at my side, and found a scalpel, clutching it quick enough to turn over and cut the restraints that bound me by my chest, my waist, and finally, my dead arm. I nicked my own arm in the process of doing so, the pain a minor one in light of how far gone my arm was, but still there. It was still mine. I wasn't giving it up. Not yet.
The tent was burning around me, and it was the distraction I needed to run.
I rolled off of the surgical table, and fell onto the ground with a hard clatter, but not one I couldn't recover from. I was on my feet soon enough, using anything I could around me to help me back up, be it the cot I'd been resting on, the table that contained a waiting bonesaw, and all manner of other furnishings expected of such a butcher's shop.
I limped forward, damn near forgetting how my arm was only one of the many parts of me that were broken, but still forced my way through the burning tent, through the tarpaulin entrance, and into the night outside.
The cold that faced me was a slap to the face, unidentifiable from inside, but now that I was out, even with a burning tent to my back, was strong enough with its flakes of snow blowing in the wind to force me to the ground as I stumbled forward and fell into a faceful of white.
I was on the ground, outside. I'd made it out, for the moment at least, but I had to keep going, keep running. I had to find Danev perhaps. He would understand. He would let me stay, but for that, I had to keep moving, keep fighting. I had to run. I tried to rise to my feet, only to fall again to my face. I had to crawl. So, I raised my head yet again in anticipation of the struggle for every inch that awaited me, but when I did so, found myself face to face with a crowd: Fire Nation soldiers in varying degrees of dress, some uniformed for the night's guard, others having emerged from their tents at the sight of a raging inferno in the middle of their camp, already being stifled and put to death. But here I was still, the lot of them looking at me, some with gazes of confusion, and others of pity.
I didn't need it.
I needed to fight.
I put a hand in front of the other to crawl forward, and so pulled myself forward what few inches I could before a boot stepped in the snow in front of me with a loud crunch, and the man it belonged to said from above, "That's enough soldier. You've fought enough."
It was a voice I recognized. It was a fool's hope that my first instinct was to believe it Danev, but even I knew that wasn't his voice. I looked up, and saw who it belonged to instead, a sight almost as welcome–Colonel Lu Ten.
I gasped for the air that was needed for me to speak, just enough to barely say, "Please."
Below me though I was, he refused to look down at me, instead crouching down so the legs of his pants brushed against the snow, soaking them as he lowered himself to meet me in the eye so I could say to his face, in the hopes of being heard, "Please. Let me fight."
I wanted to say more. Much more. I wanted to beg him to let me fight through my injury, to let me fight for what was mine-my arm, my ability to be a soldier. I wanted to beg him to let me fight for my right to be here as a soldier of the Fire Nation. And I wanted to beg him to let me fight this war, his war, now my war too. To let me fight our enemy, and do whatever it would take to end this war so nobody would ever need to fight again. I couldn't say half of that, however. Not as my vision darkened once again, and I felt my grip on the world slip. All I could say in those last few seconds, one last time, was, "Let me fight."
