She'd killed him.
She may not have lifted a blade to his throat, but as Kavik recounted the initiation process for Zongdu Chaisee's association, it was imminently clear to Yangchen that her actions had killed him. Qiu, the boy from the tea shop, barely older than herself, who'd completed the clumsiest information hand-off she'd ever seen, was dead now.
And it was her fault.
Bile rose in her throat. Qiu was dead, just like Jetsun, and Mesose, and Alornerk, and a thousand others who had suffered and died because of the Avatar's incompetence. Guilt pressed down on her, and Yangchen struggled to keep her thoughts on the here and now.
"How could this have happened?" She asked. "You didn't say your broker was coming to Jonduri!" She said it more accusatorily than she should have. After all, Kavik hadn't written the misinformative message that led to Qiu's murder.
Misinformative. Her thoughts snagged on the word. Yangchen had carefully released so much misinformation in her brief time on the world stage. It was complete chance that she'd learned Qiu's fate. How could she be sure that her other false missives hadn't resulted in similarly brutal consequences?
"He obviously changed his mind after I talked to him," said Kavik. "What do we do now?"
(She couldn't afford to be indecisive-) (it wasn't his fault, Passang was the one who-) (Blood. So much blood, if only she'd learned how to-)
"What do we do?" Kavik repeated.
(Her enemies wouldn't hesitate, she needed to-) (it wasn't. his. fault.)
"Avatar, this is your call," said Tayagum
(Had she gambled too much? Was it time to cut her losses?)
"I don't know," she muttered.
"You can't not know!" Kavik cried. "We've been following your orders, and now two people are dead! What is the plan here?"
"I said I don't know!" She snapped.
She should retreat to the mountains, like she'd done before. Find a remote cave to sequester herself in, and scream until stalagmites rained from the sky and her throat was bloodied.
… had she done that before? Had that been Yangchen?
(In my era- ) (She'd brought this upon-)
"Avatar-," Akuudan began
"If you could just shut up for a moment—there's too many of you, there's always too many of you, and none of you ever stop. You never stop—"
Yangchen stood up with a gust that sent the papers in the room fluttering.
She needed to get out of here, away from the people whose lives she held in her hands like pai sho tiles, away from their watching eyes, somewhere she could drown out the voices.
She barely had the presence of mind to don the pieces of her disguise before she stormed out the door.
Author's note:
Hello, please accept my humble first offering to the Chronicles of the Avatar fandom
Disclaimer 1: I'm aware that this ficlet borrows heavily from The Dawn of Yangchen, and covers very little new ground. However, I wanted to write it anyway because I'm convinced there was more happening in that scene than was apparent to Kavik and the rest of Team Avatar, and I wanted to explore that. In general, I'd like to write more fanfic exploring Yangchen's relationships to her past lives and her current teammates. My future stories should be more original ^^'
Disclaimer 2: I've only read the audiobooks; please forgive me if I misspell some things.