Metanoia || Avatar: The Last Airbender

𝐯. 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞

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 ❝ Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ❞

Winston Churchill    

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THE WEATHER WAS FAIR AND QUAINT, and the forest was alive with birdsong.

Despite the cheery weather, however, Shia felt... melancholy.

Zuko had left, and Iroh's mind with him. Even if he'd smile at her and act like his usual, joyful self, she'd catch moments where he'd be staring off into the horizon with a faraway look in his eyes. Zuko's absence was taking its toll... on both of them. It felt odd not hearing Zuko complaining every single day.

Shia heaved a sigh and tossed another berry into her sack, after inspecting it closely for worms. In the days since Zuko had left, she'd been busy stockpiling a good amount of dried meats and berries. It'd be enough to keep them from starving, at the very least; she wished inwardly that she'd started doing it sooner so she could send Zuko off with some. She wondered, briefly, what he was up to — and then she snapped herself out of it.

There was no point lingering on him. She had to keep her mind clear, and focus on what was important; keeping Iroh and herself alive and healthy until they knew what to do next.

Shia parted a heavy curtain of vines and stepped through, continuing her search for berries.

She froze.

Crumpled on the ground in front of her, partially covered in dried leaves, lay a bleeding boy.

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"Huh...? W—where am I?!"

Shia looked over from the bubbling pot and saw that the boy had sat up from the ground, the blanket pooling around his waist. She'd wrapped his arms up with some bandages and dabbed a mixture of healing herbs on his bruises. It wasn't much compared to what an actual healer could have done, but it was all she could offer from her limited training as a soldier.

"You're safe," Shia reassured the boy gently. He blinked and looked to her curiously, eyes a vivid, startling green.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Hei, a traveller," she introduced herself politely, using her fake name. "You?"

"Akhil... everyone calls me Aki, though," he blushed and looked away from her, rubbing the back of his neck. He noticed the bandages then, and his gaze returned to her curiously. "You patched me up?"

"I tried to," Shia offered him a sheepish smile. She was curious about why he was lying unconscious in the middle of the forest. "What happened to you?"

"Oh..." Akhil realised, "you're a traveller, so you wouldn't have known... be careful while you're in these parts. There's a group of bandits in the area. They've been terrorising the village for months, but no one can do anything about it because all the soldiers are out on the battlefront."

Shia scooped some soup into a bowl and moved to kneel beside him. He thanked her, before continuing the story between sips.

"You see, my gran-gran's a healer – the best in the area, too! She lives with the rest of our family on the outskirts of the village... but lately, the bandits I mentioned earlier have been turning up at our house demanding that she takes care of their injuries free of charge." Akhil's cheerful smile shrunk, the shimmer in his eyes fading, "when she protests, they threaten our family. The other day they said they'd take my baby sister if she didn't do it... they said they'd return in five days... and when I tried confronting them yesterday, they..."