ANYTHING BUT; avatar the last airbender

chapter 11

[act two; chapter eleven     -     I believe that you're my savior]

    As she pushed into her tent, her eyes found what lay before her. Clothing. Weapons. Green. Gold. It was all she could see. It was clothing belonging to her. To her people. To earthbenders. Laid out, ordered from light to dark, from cloth to metal. As if they were laid ready for a funeral pyre. For someone to pray upon them. To rest their hands against it and pray to whomever, or whatever, they believed in.

    She knelt before it. She folded her hands together, dropping her forehead to her hands. And she breathed. Felt the air shudder through her lungs, forcing its way through as if it had been trapped all her life. She lifted her head, then, eyes looking down at what lay under her.

    A circlet. A golden circlet. At the center lay an emerald stone, the same green as her eyes. As the eyes of those who came before her. Her family. Her ancestors. Those who had been colonized for so long. For too long.

    With a deep breath, she disrobes. Pulls the black clothes from her body, folding them. Placing them aside. She unties her hair, feeling it fall against her neck, against the rough skin, the burns. She reaches, then, for the first layer of clothing, a gray-like green. It fits tight against her skin, as if it were one with her. It is long, reaching for her waist and for her wrists. She tugs on the black pants, and her shoes over top, layered with metal; something akin to a scale pattern. And over her top, she pulls on a black vest-like layer, just as tight-fitted as the layer under it. She reaches, then, for gloves. Half-sleeves, layered with metal, just as her shoes were.

    She tips her chin, then, to find the mirror across from her. From where she sits. And there, in the reflection, she finds a woman who bears a nation's future on her shoulders. The world's future. And she finds that she accepts it. That she bears the weight willingly. That she would do so with a smile on her face. Proud, she was, to carry it.

    Her hands reach for her hair, tugging and twisting. Braiding and tying. And when she is done, she finds that she appears almost as she had all those months ago. As she had before she left her home. Before it had been taken from her.

    Lian, the truest version, stares back at her, and she knows, then, that she is ready.

    She pushes herself up, and through the flap of her tent. There, she finds Sokka, Suki, and Toph waiting. Ready to leave. To carry the world's future atop their shoulders. They leave, the four of them. She spares Zuko and Katara a small nod, a wave. A wish for success. And then they are gone.

    She does not know, then, how far or long they travel for atop the back of the lizard-like creature. She sits just behind Suki, the girls leaning against each other as they watch the sun's movement all around them.