Silence | Zuko

.17 Bato of the Water Tribe

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"Did you just fire bend?" Katara asks with fear.

Iskra looked up at her, opening her mouth to explain but she paused. She held up a hand so in an attempt to try and get words to come out of her clueless mouth and Katara flinched. Iskra's face dropped.

"Explain to us what just happened," Sokka says, trying to seem strong but he just wanted Iskra to be the kind of person he thought she was.

Iskra sighs, looking at the ground. She feels very ambivalent about the situation; on one hand she's scared to leave her comfort zone and find out what they'll think of her if they know and the other hand she just wants to tell them.

"My name is Iskra, I'm 18 years old, my mother is from the Earth Kingdom and my father is from the Fire Nation," She begins to explain. "For some reason I can bend both elements, I can't bend any others."

"How did you find out you could bend both elements?" Aang asks. "Start from the beginning."

"I was born in the Earth kingdom with just my mother but I had the ability to earthbend from a young age. I didn't even think about firebending at the time because I didn't know who my father was," Iskra says.

They all nod, invested in the story and wanting to know everything about her now that she finally talks. Sokka started a fire and they all sat around it.

"When I was 6 our village was attacked by the fire nation, they burnt everything down and killed everyone except me, they took me back to the fire nation," She avoids eye contact.

"Did your mother die?" Katara asks and Iskra shrugs. "Why did they take you back to the fire nation."

"They wanted me to be with my father, they couldn't risk anyone finding out a fire nation man and an earth kingdom women had a child," Iskra answers her question. "However when I got there I was put in an orphanage because my father didn't want anything to do with me, he needed more than me."

They all waited as she took breaths between each answer and each snippet of her life she finally told them after weeks of knowing each other.

"They told me I couldn't earthbend, manipulated me into thinking I couldn't but I knew I could. I was placed in a school, but for the first few weeks I had trouble making friends until I ran into a kind boy who didn't care that I was an orphan," Iskra smiles.

She flashes a brief smile as she recalls the next segment of her convoluted story. She's never told anyone any of this before.

"After being friends for around a year I told him I could earthbend, thinking he wouldn't tell anyone but that was the day the guards came," She begins. "I was eating my lunch, waiting for him when guards marched towards me, weapons in hands; they dragged me out of the school no matter how much I protested."

As she spoke, a tear escaped her eye, but the rest of her face remained expressionless as she told such a heartbreaking tale.

"It reminded me of when they took me from my village so I desperately tried to fight back and in the midst of it I accidentally burnt one of the guards and they stupidly thought I was the new avatar," Iskra, wipes the tear away. "They took me out of school and suddenly my father couldn't wait to parade me around because he thought I was the avatar."