Forged In Fire || ATLA

All Too Well

"Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it, I'd like to be my old self again but I'm still trying to find it." - Taylor Swift

Sokkas Master

🌊⛰️🔥🌪

Aelita faded in and out of sleep and consciousness for two days and still she felt as if she could stay down another two more if stubborn will and a healthy dose of fear didn't keep her upright.

She didn't remember a time when she had felt safe in her own mind. Before she had woken up on that damned navy ship? Maybe, but even her certainty of that was weak at best because her memories had yet to prove they were something to be trusted. Aelita reminded herself of that as she lay in the deafening silence of her room, doing her best to ignore the looming figures that had haunted her shadows since childhood, swearing that the blurry instances that haunted her dreams for the last two days didn't change a damn thing. Still, she couldn't stop herself from thinking back to the moments her memory so desperately wanted to leave behind.

Someone had died that night beneath the crystalized ruins of old Ba Sing Se, that much Aelita was sure of, but as she fought back the overwhelming exhaustion that threatened to take her, she couldn't help but wonder if that someone hadn't been Aang.

A world away from the Palace, Iroh too let his mind drift to the last airbender. Even the prison wasn't safe from the whispers of the city, and it seemed many were whispering about the boy they believed to be dead. They certainly carried on as if he were, the guards that largely ignored the General speaking as if the century-old war was already over and won.

Iroh almost envied their naivety. His battered and beaten down heart told him the boy lived, just as his heart told him it hadn't been Aelita Kenshin that brought the child to his knees. The aging firebender had been too late to see that fate through with his own eyes, his old bones having taken what he considered to be an embarrassingly long amount of time to free himself from his stone confinement beneath Ba Sing Se, the Dai Li in between slowing him down further. Iroh had made it too late to the Crystal Catacombs. By the time he had arrived, the brilliant waterbender held a nearly dead Avatar and Zuko an almost dead Aelita.

But neither did end up dead and Iroh's eldest nephew knew it as well as he did. His heart chipped just a little bit more with the passing thought.

True to his word, Zuko hadn't been back to see him. Still, Iroh wasn't immune to the tales of gossip and glory, and his broken heart almost shattered completely when the proclamations of the nights before made his way to his cell.

Zuko deserved better. Sukomo's daughter deserved better.

Iroh glanced up at the pale moon through the small barred window in his cell and wondered if his old friend could see him now. He sincerely hoped not. If he could, then Sukomo Kenshin was sure to see his daughter's fate and all of Iroh's shame and broken promises.

The sound of approaching footsteps pulled the devastated but determined man out of his mind. A moment later, Poon, a brute of a warden with too tight features and too much facial hair, stopped in front of Iroh's hold with a wooden bowl in hand. He wordlessly dropped the dish, letting it clatter against the cold floor before kicking it through the cell bars. The slop inside spilled out on the ground in a grey mess. Iroh, beyond pride, was on it in an instant, letting the warden see as he shoveled the mush into his mouth like a starved beast.

It worked.

"Look at you," Poon scoffed, his words full of disgust and judgment. "You do nothing, you say nothing, you just eat and roll around in your own filth like a pig. You're a disgrace," He hissed, spitting at the former General's feet before stalking back into the busy prison chatter beyond the dark cell.