Forged In Fire || ATLA

Doomed

The Awakening

"'Cause I can't change who I am but maybe I could try to understand. There is peace inside the panic. Are heroes always tragic in the end or are they only voices in our heads? The more they talk the more I think some things are better left unsaid. Here today and gone tomorrow like we're doomed." - I Prevail

TW: Mentions of extremely distressed mental health.

🌊⛰️🔥🌪

It had only taken three weeks for Aelita Kenshin to no longer feel safe inside of her own mind.

She had remained largely unconscious during the first week following the incident, unsure if that would ultimately prove to have been a blessing or a curse as time passed. Her father's blade had missed her heart by a fraction but the internal damage had been undeniable and by the time she had been seen by a healer, the sixteen-year-old had lost more blood than the average human should've been able to lose and still survive.

But Aelita was far from an average girl, and that much at least she was sure of. The fact that she was so very abnormal had made it all the more surprising that her body had even needed to stay under for an entire week to begin to properly heal, everyone assuming her unique abilities would've sped up the process.

At least, that's what Zetzu had told her. Aelita hadn't spoken to any living person other than the second-born Prince of the Fire Nation since she had woken for the first time after her body shut down. There was the vaguest recollection of one-sided conversations in her head she couldn't place as she had tried to come to grips with her new reality, but the phantom words and phrases she couldn't shake had only made things worse.

"You did this."

"Why him?"

"His fault."

The first week damn well might've been the most peaceful despite the physical pain that had wracked her body, the lingering thoughts about her own death that Aelita couldn't shake, and the undeniable feeling that she had somehow failed. That was all still peaceful compared to the complete and utter breakdown of her already fragile sanity that started sometime during the second week. She didn't cry or sob or shoot off the quick, smart comments she was so known to throw around, but as Zetzu had recounted the tale of how she had ended up there, tied down like a disobedient plaything, she felt as if her brain melted into a puddle of nothing inside of her fucking skull.

It wasn't so much the Prince's words that had wracked her whole so much as it was the fact that some part of her that knew that someone wasn't telling her the truth, at least not the full truth, and she couldn't disguise if the liar was Zetzu or herself. She had gone into shock the first time he had recounted the incident to her, body shutting down as she was pulled back into a thick, cloudy haze for most of another day before coming back to the surface. And then she had argued with him on what parts of her life and his tales were truly fact or fiction.

Every memory of her childhood held firm in Aelita's mind. She was the daughter of the late General Sukomo Kenshin and his wife Mikasa, the latter having passed twelve years before her husband. She had been raised in a small village outside the Fire Nation capital until her father ascended through the military rankings, eventually placing them amongst the true high-born nobles. Granted admission into the Royal Fire Academy for girls, Aelita had proven to be a firebending prodigy, able to control the power at her fingertips as if it were an extension of her body. It was that very talent that caught the eye of Princess Azula, the youngest of the current Fire Lord's three children, the start of a largely one-sided rivalry that brought Aelita into the lives of the twin Prince's. That much Aelita had known to be true.